Desert flowers

The last two posts have focused on desert ferns, but it's only fair to share some photos of the incredible flowers we saw too. Thanks to above average rainfall this spring, the desert was truly in bloom, and we caught the end of a major flowering of cacti and desert annuals. Here is a small sampling of what we saw.

First, an assortment of cacti:

Next, a classic feature of the Sonoran and other southern deserts, Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens): 

A beautiful Yucca and a few other flowers:

Phoradendron californicum, a mistletoe

Member of Malvaceae, the cotton family

Palafoxia sp., member of the sunflower family, Asteraceae

Funastrum cynanchoides, a vining milkweed

Epipactis gigantea, an orchid!

Pine Rocklands fungi

We took another trip to southern Florida to visit the Pine Rocklands this weekend. While we saw many beautiful plants (which is of course the purpose of our collecting visits), I wanted to highlight some really beautiful fungi that we came across one morning. It had rained heavily the night before, and the palmetto trunks must be loaded with fungi spores that exploded with growth after the water came through.

And one of my favorite pine rockland ferns, Anemia adiantifolia:

Last but not least, two beautiful Gulf Fritillary butterflies mating.

Proteaceae at Kirstenbosch

I'm back from my trip to South Africa, and while the purpose of our trip was to search for ferns, no visit to this region would be complete without expressing proper appreciation for the incredible members of Proteaceae that define much of the flora of the area. This flowering plant family occurs primarily in the southern hemisphere, with the greatest diversity in South Africa and also Australia. Here's an assortment of photos of these plants, all from Kirstenbosch...

OTS Fern Course

I just got back from spending three weeks in Costa Rica, attending a special course on Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes from the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). This course was first offered in the 1960s, and not again until 2008. I went on the 2008 course as a student, and returned this time as a visiting faculty member. We spent a few days in San Jose and then a week each at two OTS field stations, Las Cruces in the southern part of the country, and La Selva north of San Jose in lowland rainforest.

Las Cruces is particularly fun for the bird life, and many beautiful species show up for the daily offering of bananas outside the dining hall:

Blue-crowned motmot

Male green honeycreeper

Silver-throated tanager

Speckled tanager

And now just a few of the dozens (possibly hundreds) of ferns we saw over the course of three weeks...

Tiny sporophytes of Asplenium holophlebium

Hymenophyllum 

Ophioglossum

Hymenophyllum sporangia with green spores apparent 

Two members of Gleicheniaceae, Sticherus (darker green) and Gleicheniella (lighter green)

Gleicheniella

An tree tipup with incredibly dense fern gametophytes