Friday 30 March 2018

The Fab Four

No, not those erstwhile Merseyside mopheads but four rather special plants that are looking their best at the Botanic Gardens at the moment. As you may remember I invested in an annual subscription to the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens this year. Besides giving me free admission for the whole year I also receive a newsletter which keeps me abreast of what's flowering each month. Here are four of the best:

The Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys)


If you've been following this blog for a long time you may have seen this before as I wrote about it long ago having been directed to it by a six-year-old botanist who told me I ought to see it. "There's only four of them in the country, you know". Well, I do now.

The jade vine comes from the Phillipines where it is pollinated by a certain kind of bat which hangs upside-down to suck the nectar. As these bats have become scarce due to the destruction of their habitat so the Jade Vine has become an endangered species too. They really are that psychedelic colour and are apparently related to runner beans, something which you can appreciate if you look closely at the structure of the individual flowers.


You can find the Jade Vine in the hottest, most humid part of the glasshouses.


Rhododendron 'Cilpinense'


Outside, braving the cold wind and rain that English people ironically call "Spring", is this small fragile-looking Rhododendron. Rhododendrons don't normally do well in Cambridgeshire as the soils are all wrong being too alkaline, but here the soils have been treated so that heathers and rhododendrons can thrive.



 Muehlenbeckia astonii

Some plants have names that are sheer poetry;  Muehlenbeckia astonii is not one of them. Just to make matters worse it's also known as the Wiggy-Wig Bush, though the Maori people of its native New Zealand know it as Tororaro.


It's one of those rare plants that looks better before it gets its leaves or flowers and you can see the bewildering geometry of its tangled branches. It looks even finer on a day like today when misty drizzle has added myriad water droplets like tiny scattered jewels.


Although it's become rare according to the New Zealand Department of Conservation, it is an easy plant to encourage and grows well from cuttings or seed.


And finally,
Darwin's Orchid (Angraecum sesquipedale)


In amongst the rampant vegetation in the Rainforest part of the glasshouse range, standing meekly in a common plant-pot is a rather interesting plant that could be easily passed by. I passed by it last time I was here anyway and had to make a special return visit today.

In 1862 Charles Darwin was sent a number of orchids from Madagascar. In the time it took me to pass by and dismiss it as a plant of little consequence, Darwin realised that this was something special. What makes it unique is the long spur which hangs down from each flower. Yes, that rather nondescript green dangling thingy. Darwin discovered that in the end of this tube, which measures over a foot long (30 cm), is a small amount of nectar. Darwin postulated that there must be a moth with a proboscis of equal length in order to pollinate it. And he explained how the two organisms, the plant and the moth, must have evolved together. The only problem was that everyone thought that the idea of a moth with a tongue so long was absurd.

Twenty-one years after the death of the great naturalist just such a moth was discovered in the jungles of Madagascar.



And besides this quartet of splendid plants there are just some parts of the garden which look splendid, even on a grey drizzly day...


Every once in a while we like to introduce you to useful words that lie in neglected corners of the dictionary. You may have noticed that the Latin name for Mr Darwin's orchid is  Angraecum sesquipedale, the last part of which means "a foot-and-a-half long", a slightly exaggerated reference to the spur which makes it unique. It's therefore closely related to the word sesquipedalianism, which literally means using words which are a foot-and-a-half long. In other words using lots of unnecessarily long words. Words like sesquipedalianism, for example.


Take care.



21 comments:

  1. Fantastic!

    Six-year old botantist? :-) cool!

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  2. Beautiful plants John - love that Jade vine = it really is Jade coloured isn't it?

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  3. Never seen a Jade vine before, it is beautiful. The Botanic Gardens looks like a fantastic place to visit and photograph. Well done, John and thanks.

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  4. That jade vine is an amazing colour. I wonder if they have bats to pollinate it too?

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  5. I can see that this Botanic Garden membership is going to be a fine investment.

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  6. Like the orchid, not so sure on the whiggy wig plant which looks like it could eat me

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  7. Those really are fab four plants. Love seeing these photos of them. And thank you for making me laugh out loud.

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  8. Fascinating post! All four plants are fab but the Jade Vine and upside down bat pollinator is my favorite!

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  9. Brilliant! There's always so much to see, I think that membership was well worth it.

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  10. Your post brought a smaile for several reasons this morning! Happy Easter!

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  11. So glad you take the time to talk about your pictures. I'm usually at a loss by the time I get home with pics and can barely name the plants. I'm working with a friend on this!

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  12. Wonderful plants, love the colour of the Jade Vine and the facts about Darwin's Orchid and the wiggy-wig bush:)

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  13. More beautiful plants and bushes. A feast for the eye!

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  14. The poetically named Wiggy-wig bush is my favourite covered as it is with droplets!

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  15. You need a moths tongue to be able to say those sort of words, The orchid and the Wiggy Wig bush are amazing plants, Great photos of them too. You would have loved the plants in the "Gardens by the Bay" in Singapore.

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  16. Beautiful plants and bushes.
    Wish you Happy Easter.

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  17. Enjoyed this post so much John, lots of inconsequential long words are fun 😀 The green jade is fabulous, the Rhododendrons so pretty. The Wiggy-Wig Bush weird but wonderful with added gain drops. So unjust that the moth with long proboscis was discovered after Darwin's death, but he knew anyway 😀

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  18. Oh that jade vine is gorgeous, what an unusual colour, not normally found in nature I think. I'm happy that it's related to the runner bean, I grew some last year and throughly enjoyed the flowers, and then the beans. I wish I could see that moth with the long tongue! I think you're going to enjoy that Botanic Gardens membership.... and so are your blog readers.
    BTW what's the difference between Botanic and Botanical? The Gardens near here at Burlington are called The Royal Botanical Gardens.

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  19. Another of your informative posts. This is probably the only jade plant I will ever see, as is the Darwin plant. But, rhododendrons are very common in New England . . . actually all over the USA beginning in Georgia. This one looks like the kind we call an azalea, which is in the rhododendron family and has smaller leaves and smaller flowers and is sometimes deciduous.

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  20. Those are some interesting and beautiful spring blooms, especially the delicate colors of the rhododendron and the exuberance of the Wiggly Wig bush.

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