|
Vocapedia > Earth >
Wildlife > Flowers, Flora

Cherry trees bloom
during the National Cherry
Blossom Festival
along the Tidal Basin in
Washington April 2, 2011.
Photograph:
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Boston Globe > Big Picture >
Flower Power April 6, 2011
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/flower_power.html
photosynthesis
USA
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/06/02/
531262435/the-extended-beauty-of-photosynthesis
the British flora
British wild plants
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,5961,1479906,00.html
stinging nettles
UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/
court_and_social/article5385746.ece
- broken link
flower / flower
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/
opinion/our-vanishing-flowers.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/
science/08flower.html
sunflower
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/
science/how-sunflowers-follow-the-sun-day-after-day.html
spring flowers
desert wildflowers >
USA > Death Valley, Calif. USA
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/24/
467977309/death-valleys-harsh-desert-blanketed-with-wildflower-super-bloom
Celsea flower show
UK 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/24/
the-best-of-the-chelsea-flower-show
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2016/may/23/
chelsea-flower-show-preview-in-pictures
Picture perfect: a
visual tour of the Chelsea Flower Show
UK 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2015/may/22/
picture-perfect-a-visual-tour-of-the-chelsea-flower-show
Chelsea flower show 2014 – in pictures
UK
20 May 2014
Guardian photographer Linda Nylind
captures the colour and shapes
at the Chelsea
flower show in London
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2014/may/20/
chelsea-flower-show-2014-in-pictures
Chelsea Flower Show
UK 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/may/21/
chelsea-flower-show-magical-tower-garden
Chelsea Flower Show
UK 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/30/
dan-pearson-chelsea-flower-show2010
Chelsea Flower Show
UK
http://www.theguardian.com/gall/0,,1781408,00.html
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/24/1
botanist
UK
bloom
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/17/
daffodils-winter-spring-weather
blossom
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/apr/29/
readers-spring-blossom
Fritillaria meleagris / snakeshead fritillary /
Frawcups, lepeper's bells, minety bell
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2013/apr/26/
snakeshead-fritillary
bluebell
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/19/
bluebell-woods-under-threat
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/03/
germaine-greer-bluebells-dogs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/apr/01/
green-shoots-bluebells
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/13/
bluebells-britain-beauty-praise-summer
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/may/03/
conservationandendangeredspecies.uknews1
honeysuckle
mistletoe
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/09/
plants-christmas
marigold
dandelion
UK
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/01/
let-dandelions-have-their-day-in-the-sun
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/01/
dandelions-gardens
love-in-a-mist
thistle
UK
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/27/
gardens-thistles-dan-pearson
primrose
UK
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/02/
flower-birds-eye-primrose-widdybank-fell-teesdale-country-diary
daffodil
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2010/oct/20/
why-i-hate-daffodils
ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/17/
daffodils-winter-spring-weather
snowdrop
UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/23/
spring-photos-flickr
orchid
UK
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/22/
rare-orchid-blooms-at-sewage-works
ochid
USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/
arts/design/orchidelirium-explodes-with-color-
at-new-york-botanical-garden.html
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/10/
455510053/scientists-work-with-cuba-to-bring-lost-orchids-
back-to-florida-state-park
Britain's rarest flower, Lady's Slipper
orchid UK 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/
britains-rarest-flower-given-roundtheclock-police-protection-1965606.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/
commentators/michael-mccarthy-return-of-the-native-
the-great-secret-of-20thcentury-botany-1965607.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/
leading-article-flower-power-1965474.html
hedgerow / red
campion UK
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/01/
red-campions-hedgerow-silene-dioica-country-diary
central dome
floret
spiky ruff
collar of bracts
smell
A Beloved Wife
Lives On in Memory,
Through
Roses
June 11, 2006
The New York Times
By J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN
In the late 1980's, Nancy and Gene Bliska
added three rosebushes to their small backyard garden in Greenwich, Conn. On
sunny days, they spent hours tending to the roses; on rainy ones, poring over
the Jackson & Perkins catalog for new varieties.
The next spring they planted a few more rosebushes, and the following year even
more. Soon they had 12 flourishing bushes, the centerpiece of the garden, and
Ms. Bliska's joy.
But as the roses were flourishing, Ms. Bliska was fading. In 1990, after 28
years of marriage, half of them spent battling breast cancer, she died at age
54.
At first, Mr. Bliska couldn't bear to look at the garden. But then a year
passed, and spring arrived, and the roses came to represent "the renewal of
life," as he put it. He joined the Westchester County Rose Society (of which he
has been president for the last five years), became a certified rosarian, and
devoted himself to filling the land behind their house with roses and other
perennials.
It now has 1,400 rose plants on more than two acres. The American Rose Society
says it is the largest private rose collection in New York, Connecticut and New
Jersey.
This weekend, Mr. Bliska opens the garden to the public, as he has for one
weekend each year since 1996. Visitors can stroll the grounds and buy rosebushes
donated by the Jackson & Perkins Company. Admission is free, but donations
benefit the American Cancer Society's breast cancer research programs. Over the
past decade, more than 11,000 people have toured the gardens and contributed
more than $40,000.
"This garden is my way of celebrating Nancy," Mr. Bliska said. "I truly believe
that these roses keep her memory alive."
There are 32 rose beds, 30 different classifications of roses and 100 varieties
of perennials, all tended by Mr. Bliska himself with the help of a part-time
gardener.
He estimates that he spends four hours a day in the garden. For three solid
weeks in March, Mr. Bliska, a part-time sales manager for PepsiCo, pruned each
rose to its classification. ("A hybrid tea rose gets pruned differently than a
shrub rose," he explains.) After last week's storms, he and the gardener removed
the raindrops from each petal by hand. ("They don't like having to sit there
getting wet.")
His wife, who was a secretary and left behind a son and a daughter, was
especially fond of the yellow roses.
"Nancy turned to me one morning and said she thought it was a shame for us to
keep all that beauty to ourselves," said Mr. Bliska, 72. "She had a real passion
for arranging roses, and I used to tell her: 'You should enter competitions. You
could win prizes.' "
Instead, every Saturday, she created enormous bouquets, and took them to the two
nursing homes up the road.
"She believed in helping people," Mr. Bliska said. "She was involved in our
church and our community right up until the end, even when she felt sick."
The Nancy Bliska Memorial Rose Garden, at 91 Stonehedge Drive North — also
called Rose Acres — will be open to the public today from noon to 7 p.m. "I
think of my wife whenever I'm out there," Mr. Bliska said. "Tending our roses is
my way of communicating with her."
A
Beloved Wife Lives On in Memory, Through Roses,
NYT,
11.6.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/nyregion/11roses.html
The vanishing flowers of Britain:
one in
five species faces extinction
09 May 2005
The Independent
By Michael McCarthy,
Environment Editor
One in five of Britain's wild flower species
is threatened with extinction, according to the most detailed analysis to date
of the British flora.
The total is far higher than previously thought and has shocked the team of
senior botanists who discovered it through a two-year intensive survey of all of
Britain's 1,756 native plant species.
The survey, published today, paints a completely new picture of the conservation
status of Britain's wild flowers, listing no fewer than 345 of them - or 19.6
per cent - as "critically endangered", "endangered" or "vulnerable to
extinction", according to internationally recognised criteria.
Britain has always had great rarities in its flora, such as the lady's slipper
orchid. But the survey's most startling finding is that our threatened species
now include nearly 80 that are familiar and widespread and have never been
listed as being at risk, such as the corn buttercup, field gromwell, yellow
bird's nest and English eyebright, pictured.
All of these flowers may still be found in at least 100 locations across
Britain. Yet, in fact, they are in headlong decline, undocumented until now.
In the past 40 years, the survey shows, the corn buttercup has declined by more
than 80 per cent, corn chamomile by more than 70 per cent, and field gromwell
and yellow bird's nest by 65 per cent each.
It is this picture of massive decline in flowers which are not yet actually
considered rare which has been highlighted by the survey, The Vascular Plant Red
Data List for Great Britain, produced by a partnership of some of Britain's
leading conservation bodies.
The pattern has been found in no fewer than 78 species which are now designated
as threatened with extinction in Britain.
The findings mean that priorities for conserving Britain's wild flowers in
future will need to be reordered, with more concern for commonplace plants in
the fields of the wider countryside outside protected areas - the ones that are
really at risk.
"We had no idea that some of these declines were as bad as they are and we were
very shocked to discover them," said Dr Trevor Dines, of the wild flower
conservation charity, Plantlife, and one of the authors of the survey.
The Red Data List project has been made possible by the interlinking of two
great mapping surveys of Britain's wild flowers, made 40 years apart. The first
was The Atlas of the British Flora, published in 1962, which displayed the
distribution of our wild plants on a grid of 10km squares imposed on the map of
Britain.
If a plant occurred in fewer than 15 squares, it was considered "rare"; in fewer
than 100 squares, it was considered "scarce".
In 2002 a successor volume, The New Atlas of the British Flora, was published
which showed not only where plants occur but where they have disappeared from
locations in the earlier atlas.
So the corn buttercup, for example, was shown as occurring in 157 grid squares
in 2002 - but it had occurred in 672 grid squares 40 years earlier.
As it was still in more than 100 grid squares it was considered neither "rare"
nor "scarce" by the old criteria - but it was clearly undergoing a catastrophic
decline, and needed to be flagged up as a species at great risk. Its rate of
decline means it has now been listed as "critically endangered".
* Cheffings, CM and Farrell, L (eds): 'The
Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain', Joint Nature Conservation
Committee, Peterborough
On the endangered list
* Corn buttercup Ranunculus arvensis
Red Data List status: Critically endangered
An attractive annual buttercup with small yellow flowers, a weed of crop fields,
which has undergone an astonishing decline of 81 per cent, mostly in the past 30
years. Introduced into Britain by Roman farmers, along with opium poppies, peas
and beans.
* Purple milk-vetch Astragalus danicus
Red Data List status: Endangered
A small perennial herb of short, unimproved turf on well-drained calcareous
soils, mostly on chalk and limestone, and also on sand dunes. Down by 51 per
cent. It has declined largely because of agricultural improvement or lack of
grazing.
* Lesser butterfly orchid Platanthera bifolia
Red Data List status: Vulnerable
A well-loved orchid that grows in a wide range of usually poor soils, including
heathy pastures, grassland, open scrub, woodland edges and rides, and on
moorland. It has disappeared from 64 per cent of grid squares in recent decades.
* English eyebright Euphrasia anglica
Red Data List status: Endangered
Eyebrights are small annuals of unimproved grassy habitats, with 23 species in
Britain. This particular one grows in tightly grazed acidic grassland,
heath-land and moors and is down by 62 per cent. Compresses from eyebrights were
once used to treat eye disorders.
* Prickly Poppy Papaver argemone
Red Data List status: Vulnerable
A small, brightly coloured poppy which often has black marks at the base of its
petals. It has declined by 61 per cent. A species of traditional arable fields
that has not yet made the jump to waysides and road verges as the common poppy
has.
Field Gentian Gentianella campestris
Red Data List status: Vulnerable
A biennial or annual herb with attractive purply blue flowers, found in
pastures, hill grassland, grassy heaths, sand dunes, machair and road verges.
Locally common in northern England and Scotland, but absent from most of south
and central Britain. Gone from 57 per cent of grid squares in recent decades.
The vanishing flowers of
Britain: one in five species faces extinction,
IoS,
9.5.2005,
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=636855
Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia
wildlife
Earth,
population growth, environment,
disasters, pollution, waste
weather
agriculture / farming, gardening
climate change, global warming
|