Not from Iceland - a glowing poppy

In the late afternoon, a pretty soft orange Iceland poppy flower lights up a dark corner.

The crinkled tissue-like petals and the dramatic boss of stamens with golden anthers are emphasised by the side lighting, and the flower has a lovely delicate glow.  But Iceland poppies (Papaver nudicaule) are quite tough.  They come from subarctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America...and true to the oddities of horticultural naming habits they do not from come from Iceland. 

I have been noticing the lasting damage caused by the severe storm many weeks ago - more about this to come - so the glimpse of this little jewel was a most welcome sight.

Lilies from A to Z

Actually only two different lilies, found in the Bolton Street Memorial Park growing beside graves from the colonial era.  A is for Arum italicum, I presume brought here by English settlers who were used to growing it in gardens as a woodland or shade plant - it provides winter interest in places where much is bare at that time.

Here in New Zealand it is categorised as a pest plant - in autumn it produces crops of brilliant red berries which are poisonous to people but palatable and tolerable to birds - like the also imported blackbird - which spread it around.

This dense clump made an attractive weed-suppressing carpet of the rich green arrowhead-shaped leaves with their distinctive creamy markings.

Z is for Zantedeschia aethiopica.  Confusingly it is called the arum lily - so this is a full alphabetical circle.

Also an introduction, it is often found in damp areas on pastureland, wasteland, where settlements once were, and in cemeteries - as this one was.

This close-up of a bud shows the unfurling shape of the spathe which appears almost a yellowy cream at first but opens to the familiar white flower (in botanical terms strictly not a flower, the white spathe curls around the central yellow spadix, which has a grouping of tiny true flowers.) 

Although strikingly elegant in flower and prized elsewhere as a garden plant, here it is also a pest, and for many people strongly associated with death.

Maybe it could be seen as a sinister beauty, but caught in the winter light I see only the gorgeous swirl, and fresh life here amidst memorials to people and times past.

Cloud pattern lichens

Clouds on an obelisk in the Bolton Street Memorial Park - or that's what it looked like to me.

Towards the top were reflections of the cloudy sky on the shiny stone surface.  Over the rest of the obelisk the lichen encrustation reminded me of Japanese cloud patterns - the shapes seen on fabrics, prints, and in the pruning of shrubs and trees.

Lichens are a wonderful example of the power of cooperation.  A fungus and an organism capable of photosynthesis, generally a green alga or a cyanobacterium, work together in a symbiotic relationship to form a distinct new organism.  They are able to grow in very inhospitable environments, coping with extremes of hot and cold - in the arctic, in deserts, on rocks, metals, human made structures, on plants and on soil. 

Despite this versatility and toughness, they tend to be vulnerable to environmental disturbance.  So some can be used as indicators of air pollution, ozone depletion, metal contamination and so on. 

Not quite like the canary in the mine, but sort of.

The air in Wellington is of good quality, and there are a lot of lichens growing on the old stone memorials from the colonial cemetery which is incorporated in the Park.

Do you see clouds?  Or maybe bushes?

The wonderful textures and tenacity of lichens.

Little white forget me nots - and earthquakes.

Wellington is a known earthquake hot spot - we are located in a "collision zone" between two of the Earth's great tectonic plates.  The Wellington Fault is a major fault line going right through the city, and there are many smaller fault lines too.  Earthquakes are a regular occurrence but I usually don't feel them.  Not so this weekend.  On Friday things got started with a 5.7 earthquake, and we were surprised by an even bigger one - 6.5 - just after 5 pm today, Sunday.  There have been lots and lots of significant aftershocks keeping us rattled, not letting us forget that the Earth is ever-changing and that the apparently solid ground is subject to strain and movement. 

Another forget me not that I have experienced in recent days I find much more agreeable - a little white flower quietly shining in a dry scree garden of alpine plants at Otari.

There are a number of little low growing white flowered native forget me nots (Myosotis) of similar appearance with their delicate flowers and bright green leaves.  These ones, nestled amidst other low growing alpine plants and in the shelter of grasses, Carex species, glow in the late afternoon light.

Such subtle beauty - a most acceptable contrast to the rumbles and shakes that currently distract me.  

There are reports of some damage to buildings, but no injuries to people.  We are lucky.  We will just have to get used to shudders and shakes for a while - no forgetting about earthquakes yet.

Textures and light at Otari

The storms have subsided and the sun is back in evidence (I know, I know, it didn't really go away - it just felt like that).  In the late afternoon the wintery sunlight was lighting up parts of Otari Native Botanic Garden, emphasising the wonderful plant shapes and textures of some of the plants growing there.

Looking across the lichen encrusted rocks of the alpine garden, the dappled light playing on the low growing alpine plants and the grasses and Astelia.  Behind them, and opened up by some tree loss from the storm, the backlit trees, shrubs and ferns bordering the fernery area. 

And some of the shapes and textures of New Zealand native plants are, frankly, a bit weird...

The spiny shapes and the jagged edged textures of Pseudopanax ferox - the so-called fierce pseudopanax.  These are the juvenile forms, but they don't get much more conventionally tree-like when mature.  Just a clump of these jaggedy leaves atop a skinny trunk.

Despite the ferocious name, they have a rather comical appearance I think - in any case, I had lots of fun trying to get an image that showed their wonderful weirdness.