St. John's Wort Relative?

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

This flower is blooming in a gas station planter next to the sidewalk we use to get into town. The plant is a low growing perennial shrub which appears to me to be some sort of commercial hybrid related to St. John's Wort.

The light was just perfect last Friday morning when I saw this beauty just begging to be photographed. I added watercolor brush effects in Photoshop.

Wild Blue Iris

Iris missouriensis

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

A Wild Blue Iris (Iris missouriensis) blooms near the shore of the Stanfield Marsh this morning.

I sometimes find myself blushing in the presence of such sensual beauty, so feminine in its expression.

I spent half an hour with this Iris today and that wasn't near long enough.

I laid down close to it, touched its soft tender petals, took in its delicate scent, and painted its graceful beauty into my memory. And then I photographed it to share with you.

Georgia O'Keefe was inspired by flowers like this to create some of her most passionate and controversial work.

I share Georgia's love for the passion and sensuality in nature, it's what drives evolution and the perpetuation of life.

~Long Live Sensuality, Passion, And Life~

Botanical Scans From The Garden...

Please Click On The Following 'Botanical

Prints' To Enlarge For Viewing

© 2008 jim otterstrom


I was looking at some old botanical prints this morning and decided it would be fun to try and re-create something similar by scanning native plants into the computer.

So I picked a few fading flowers from the late summer garden and scanned them with our HP Photosmart C7180 All-In-One printer.

Even though we had some pretty substantial thunderstorms here today, I managed to keep the computer up & running long enough, between lightning strikes, to make some rather nice looking botanical art out of them.

Scanning flowers can give very nice results but it's a bit of a messy process.

As careful as you might try to be, it's inevitable that pollen, bugs, and plant detritus will get all over the scanner screen, becoming part of the image, so considerable time is required in cleaning up the pictures in Photoshop, or some similar program.

Scanning gives three dimensional objects an almost painted quality, the subdued lighting and shadowy details creating life-like impressions.

I spent most of the rainy day working on the pictures, time well spent if you ask me. They are rather large images so you'll need to scroll down to view them in their entirety.

Flower Of The Day - Sunday, August 24th

Zauschneria californica

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Zauschneria californica (Epilobium canum), or California Fuschia as it is commonly known, is a profuse late-blooming Big Bear native which thrives in poor rocky soil and full sun at our 6,750' elevation.

It's a perfect plant for the rock garden and an excellent butterfly & hummingbird attractor. Ours are from locally collected seed.

California Fuschia

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

The above photos are from one of several patches of Zauschneria blooming in the garden today.

For The Contrary Goddess...

Buddha and the Mushroom Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Fellow blogger, The Contrary Goddess, gave me a "tiny challenge" I couldn't resist.

"Name 100 species which live in your neighborhood", she asked.

Well, here's 117 native (or migratory) species which are residents or visitors to our own yard, and I've barely scratched the surface of the bird and insect visitors.

As I find the time I'll be adding the scientific names to the list below and will include links to various botanical websites for plant profiles.

Earth Home Garden Species

1. Common Yarrow

(Achillea millefolium)

2. Wild Onion

(Allium sp.)

3. Indian Hemp

(Apocynum cannabinum)

4. Rock-Cress

(Arabis pulchra)

5. Prickly Poppy

(Argemone munita)

6. Crimson Columbine

(Aquilegia formosa)

7. Narrow Leaf Milkweed

(Asclepias fascicularis)

8. Green Striped Mariposa Lily

(Calochortus invenustus)

9. Wild Morning-Glory
10. Indian Paintbrush
11. Ash Gray Paintbrush
12. Thistle
13. Miner’s Lettuce
14. Virgin’s Bower (Pipestem)
15. Wild Hyacinth (Blue Dicks)
16. Fireweed
17. California Fuschia
18. Stream Orchid
19. Fleabane
20. Yerba Santa
21. California Buckwheat
22. Pine Buckwheat
23. Sulfur Flower (Sulfur-Color Buckwheat)
24. Wright’s Buckwheat
25. Western Wallflower
26. California Poppy
27. Wild Geranium
28. Gilia
29. Rydberg’s Horkelia
30. Western Blue Iris (Blue Flag)
31. Granite Gilia (Prickly Phlox)
32. Mountain Aster
33. Humboldt Lily
34. Lemon Lily
35. Blue Flax
36. Brewer’s Lupine
37. Grape Soda Lupine
38. Dwarf Lupine
39. Giant Lupine
40. Tarweed
41. Pineapple Weed
42. Coyote Mint
43. Coyote Tobacco
44. California Evening Primrose
45. Anderson’s Penstemon
46. San Bernardino Beardtongue
47. Firecracker Penstemon
48. Bumble-Bee Penstemon
49. Scarlet Penstemon
50. Mountain Bugler
51. Showy Penstemon
52. Desert Blue Bells
53. Mountain Phacelia
54. Sticky Cinquefoil
55. Buttercup
56. Southern Goldenrod
57. Apricot Mallow
58. White Hedge Nettle
59. Stinging Nettle
60. Hedgehog Cactus
61. Beaver-Tail Cactus
62. Cane Cholla (Snake Cholla)
63. Prickly-Pear Cactus
64. Utah Service-Berry
65. Greenleaf Manzanita
66. Silver Wormwood
67. Great Basin Sage
68. Rubber Rabbitbrush
69. California Flannelbush
70. Fremont’s Bushmallow
71. Western Choke-Cherry
72. Antelope Bush
73. Sierra Currant
74. Rose Sage
75. Apricot Mallow
76. Snowberry
77. White Fir
78. Incense Cedar
79. Mountain Mahogany
80. Western Juniper
81. Jeffrey Pine
82. Singleleaf Pinyon Pine
83. Quaking Aspen
84. California Black Oak
85. Pygmy Nuthatch
86. White-Breasted Nuthatch
87. Mountain Chickadee
88. Western Bluebird
89. Steller’s Jay
90. Northern Flicker
91. White-Headed Woodpecker
92. Anna’s Hummingbird
93. Rufous Hummingbird
94. Western Tanager
95. Wilson’s Warbler
96. Yellow-Rumped Warbler
97. Mourning Dove
98. Acorn Woodpecker
99. Hairy Woodpecker
100. Violet-Green Swallow
101. American Robin
102. Black-Headed Grosbeak
103. Rufous-Sided Towhee
104. Band-Tailed Pigeon
105. Lesser Goldfinch
106. Dark-Eyed Junco
107. Cassin’s Finch
108. Mourning Cloak Butterfly
109. Giant Swallowtail Butterfly
110. Painted Lady Butterfly
111. California Sister Butterfly
112. Monarch Butterfly
113. Western Gray Squirrel
114. California Ground Squirrel
115. Merriam Chipmunk
116. Western Toad

117. Western Terrestrial Garter Snake

A Peggy Picture...

Indian Blanket Flower

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 peggy otterstrom

Peggy caught this image of an Indian Blanket Flower (Gaillardia pulchella) yesterday evening as the sun was lowering in the sky over Earth Home Garden. Indian Blanket Flower (also known as Firewheel) is a hardy drought-tolerant perennial wildflower native to the Plains States. It's also the State Flower of Oklahoma.

Ours come from a wildflower seed mixture I planted over 20 years ago about where the giant rock birdbath is now. We've enjoyed their reliable profusion of summer color scattered throughout the garden ever since.

Summer In Bloom...

Papaver oriental

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

One of the few non-native flowers at Earth Home Garden unfolds in todays morning light.

Paradise Lives...

...all around us

The closer we look...

...the more we see

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

A vivid Beaver-Tail Cactus-Flower (Opuntia basilaris) caught my fancy today, in the soft-filtered afternoon light, revealing ever more sensual beauty as I moved in closer with my camera to discover that I wasn't the only one intoxicated by the attractive powers of this stunning display.

Beauty Unfolds...

11:21 A.M. Yesterday

Wild Blue Iris (Iris missouriensis)

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Same Iris - 4 1/2 Hours Later

3:51 P.M. Yesterday

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

I planted several of our native Iris missouriensis in the garden over the past few years and this is the first one to bloom. You'll see these growing wild alongside of streams in the San Bernardino Mountains. Ours are growing around the giant rock bird-bath near the solar waterfall.

Flower Of The Day - June 3rd, 2008

Echinocereus triglochidiatus

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

This Hedgehog Cactus, a native of Big Bear, is flowering in our garden today.

BACKLIT HOLLYHOCK...

...with a little help from Photoshop

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Canon S5IS - Manual - Supermacro - f/7.1 - 1/60 - ISO 100

Tweaked in Photoshop with brush strokes/accented edges, slightly increased brightness & saturation.

GOOD MORNIN' SUNSHINE...

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella)

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

This picture was taken in the garden at 10:14 yesterday morning. With all the recent news about diminishing Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) populations it's very good to have so many in our garden this year. They're here in good numbers but it seems to me they arrived a bit late.

Canon S5IS - Manual Mode - f/6.3 - 1/160 sec - ISO 80

Native Lemon Lily among Wild Geranium

Lilium parryi with Geranium richardsonii

Click on photo to enlarge © 2007 jim otterstrom

The native Lemon Lilies growing in our garden began to bloom a couple of days ago and, this morning when I took this photo, there were six wonderfully lemon-scented flowers open and many more buds ready to go.

Lilium parryi has been red-listed in California as threatened and is a Forest Service 'sensitive species'. The 5 plants we have in our garden were grown from seed at Las Pilitas Nursery where they specialize in rare native plants. The hope is that if people can purchase these plants commercially it will reduce the incidents of them being illegally collected in the wild and enable the Lilies to expand their populations.

During the early part of the 20th Century specimens of Lemon Lily were widely collected here in The San Bernardino Mountains and some were hybridized to create the Lilies you find at today's florests and nurseries.

We've admired Lemon Lilies in the wild for many years and it's nice to have a source for them now, so we can grow them in our own native plant garden, here in the mountains to which they belong.

They grow near streams so we have them planted near the boulder birdbath and solar waterfall where they get more water than the rest of our native garden which consists mostly of drought-adapted natives. The lilies in this small, but consistantly damp, part of our garden are mixed in with other local plant species associated with moist habitat such as Wild Geranium (Geranium richardsonii), Crimson Columbine (Aquilegia formosa), Stream Orchid (Epipactis gigantea), Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis), and the Wild Blue Iris (Iris missouriensis) or Western Blue Flag as it is sometimes called.

The garden is magical this time of year, making it difficult for me to be anywhere else, so I'll catch you later.

Saving The Seed Of Giant Lupine

PICTURES BELOW

These are seed-saving days around here and I’ve just finished collecting and cleaning the seeds of our Giant Lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus), a nitrogen fixing legume in the pea family with a very neat seed dispersal method.

When the seeds are mature, and the casings have completely dried out, they snap open with a forceful spiral twist which sends the seeds flying some distance from the parent plant so they might find their own place in the sun.

The first time I collected seed from Grape Soda Lupine (Lupinus excubitus), another native lupine with the same dispersal scheme, I put the seed in a bowl on top of our refrigerator. That night when Peggy and I sat down to dinner we heard these popping sounds and noticed lupine seeds were flying all over the kitchen, so after that we covered our bowls of lupine seed with a screen like you put over the frying pan to stop grease splatter.

From the time these lupine pods begin drying you only have a few days to collect the seed before they've all dispersed.

The Lupine pictured here was started in the spring of 2004 when I planted 6 seeds that I collected in the wild. These seeds have a very hard shell, so, as an experiment, I nicked the shell of 3 seeds with a small file and planted the other 3 as is, all spaced about 6 inches apart and their places marked so I'd know which ones germinated.

Two of the nicked seeds sprouted and none of the others, but one of the sprouted plants didn't come back the second year. As you can see the other is thriving and was over four feet tall this year.

The pictures below show, from top to bottom:

1. The plant just beginning to bloom.
2. A close-up of the flowers.
3. The still green pea-like seed pods.
4. Harvested seed in a bowl before separation from the chaff.
5. Seeds, and their dry twisted pods after separating, with an old dime to give an idea of the size.
6. One of the packets of seed that are now available for locals who wish to grow Big Bear native plants.

Our one mature Giant Lupine produced over 500 seeds this season and we have two younger plants coming up now as well.


Click on individual photos to enlarge

Fritillary With Yarrow...

Click on photo to enlarge

A Fritillary Butterfly with a beak nick in its wing visits native yarrow in the garden today.

A Female Worker Bee On The Job...

Click on photo to enlarge

I'm totally consumed by the abundance of life in the yard right now. Countless insect pollinators of every shape, size, and description, are working over the tens of thousands of flowers now in bloom here, and yesterday, I counted 26 species of birds visiting our tiny piece of paradise.
The lovely Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) posing for me, a female worker, was photographed this morning as she collected pollen from a Prickly Poppy.
Note the bulging pollen sacs on her hind legs.

Canon S2 IS on Manual setting, Super-Macro mode, f/2.7 at 1/1000th of a second, no attachments.

Oriental Beauty...

Click on photo to enlarge

A gorgeous non-native drought-adapted Oriental Poppy (Papaver orientale) graces Earth Home Garden at 8:35 this morning.

Honey In The Making...

Click on photo to enlarge

A Honey Bee is so engrossed with this native thistle in the garden that it completely ignored me for 15 minutes of shooting even though the camera lens was nearly touching it at times. It took me so long because I was waiting for just the right angle of light to sharply define the eye while also trying to keep the entire bee in focus. This is the best shot out of eleven.

Photographed at 9:44 this morning under thinly clouded skies in Super-Macro mode with a shutter speed of 160th of a second at f/3.5 in the Manual setting .
I normally keep the ISO setting at 50 for the highest quality image but on this shot I switched to ISO 100 so I could use the relatively fast shutter speed needed for a constantly moving subject.

Coming Into Color

Click on photo to enlarge

A Giant Lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) begins blooming against the backdrop of our gigantic granite boulder birdbath. The big beautiful rock was rescued from a housing development near here by our friend Bob Varga, who then placed it in our yard with an even more gigantic skiploader, almost 10 years ago. Bob now has a handmade Earth Home Garden pine-needle basket and we hope he treasures it as much as we do our boulder.
Thanks again Bob, the boulder is the centerpiece of the native garden and has added much-needed character to our flat rectangular lot. The birds love bathing in it and it gave me something to build the solar-powered waterfall up against.

Bee Heaven...

Click on photo to enlarge

Grinnell's Beardtongue (Penstemon grinnellii) is known locally as Bumble-Bee Penstemon but in actuality I see many more Honey Bees visiting the flowers. The flower opening seems to be a bit snug for Bumble-Bees but occaisonally I do spot a smallish individual way inside one of these.

On this plant, our first Bumble-Bee Penstemon to bloom this year, one particular flower faces north, with the morning sun backlighting the interior, allowing me to capture a well lit and detailed close-up.

Pentsemon grinnellii's maroon stripes are somewhat like airport runway lights in that they guide pollinators directly to the pollen.