In All Things of Nature

go to site The Spanish Bayonet agave is a wicked sounding plant, and no doubt if you bump into it or step upon a fallen spike, it gives a wicked stab, too. But just as you can’t accurately judge a person by his or her name, or a new food by its appearance, you cannot know a plant by its name, nor a casual glance.

https://tudiabetesbajocontrol.com/relanzam/buy-real-valium-online.php It usually takes time to get to know a plant, or a person for that matter.

go site When I first saw the Spanish Bayonet agave, it was a mass of red tinged, spiky green stabbing sticks. Those who knew the desert well called that bundle of danger an agave plant, or according to some botanists, a very close relative of the agave. I thought perhaps they were being generous.

Spanish Bayonet in Bloom

Prescription Tramadol Online Spanish Bayonet in Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

Tramadol Order Online Overnight In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. ~ Aristotle

https://www.infotonicsmedia.com/about/buy-actavis-diazepam-uk.php Then one day when I was out and about in the Sonoran desert, I saw the Spanish bayonet, but it was no longer simply a spiky plant. Its center had opened, the heart of the plant, and bursting forth was a mass of purple florets. This spiky plant, this plant which has red-tinged tips and a vague look of battle, had always had this beauty in its heart.

https://opponix.com/oxdyzfkng0 It was unknown to me, a newcomer to the desert. But what a wonderful gift for me – a surprise bouquet!

Spanish Bayonet

follow url Flower Spike © 2012 Bo Mackison

enter site One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. ~ Joseph Campbell

Buy Diazepam Online Australia The sotolillo – the name I have since learned is the Mexican name of the plant, and one that I quite prefer – offered even more delight at my next visit, a week or so later. The bouquet in the middle of the spikes had stretched – like, I imagine, Jack’s beanstalk grew – and it   stretched towards the sky, a full ten feet high. Lovely!

https://www.pslra.org/xtgs3og There is one last photograph of the sotolillo blossom that I will save for Sunday’s post. It is a beauty, perfect for Part II.

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go to link Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She remains amazed and grateful for the opportunity to see the diversity and beauty of the Sonoran Desert.

Color in the Desert

Hedgehog Cactus Blossom

source link Hedgehog Cactus Blossom © 2012 Bo Mackison

Purchasing Tramadol Overnight Our difficult and very urgent task is to accept that nature is not primarily a property to be possessed, but a gift to be received with admiration and gratitude. ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

Order Valium Online Cheap I have taken many photographs of many cactus blossoms. But this bright offering of the desert, this magenta blossom perched on the very tip of one of the many stems of this cactus, is my first cactus blossom taken in the natural desert.

see Last year the desert was dry, very dry, and the flowers I did see were in botanical gardens where sufficient care was provided to keep the plants satisfied and blooming. But in the desert, along the trails wandering miles from the nearest building, the cactus were late bloomers and I had returned to Wisconsin before there was any blossoms of color in the desert.

see But this year? This year I feel as if it is my birthday ever time I hike in the desert, and the desert is intent on giving me daily surprises, gifts of nature that I can only accept with my awakened senses, and then document with my camera and notebook.

https://thelowegroupltd.com/afwbi86ttz It is impossible for me to explain how thrilling it is to be walking along a trail, weaving in and out, and up and down along mountain trails, studying the saguaro cacti forests one mountain over, the saguaros on the southern face of a mountain, as common as pine trees in a Northern forest. And I spot the first blooming cactus I’ve ever seen in the desert – a hedgehog cactus. And it sports one perfectly formed magenta blossom from one stem.

https://www.iql-nog.com/2025/01/19/qnnuojlc And suddenly, as I walk along, everywhere I look there are magenta flowers popping off the tips of the hedgehog stems. The Sonoran Desert is blooming in bright color as I watch. Occasionally I see a few yellow buds on other hedgehogs, and as I survey the mighty saguaro, I notice a few that have flower buds at their highest tip.

Saguaros typically bloom in mid-May through mid-June in the Tucson region of the Sonoran, but it has been an early blooming season, and the cacti are proving no exception. This year I purposely stayed in Arizona through April, hoping to see the cactus bloom, and I am  quite ecstatic that the desert is showing me her colors.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona until the end of April. She is thrilled that the cactus in the Sonoran desert are beginning to blossom.

Lessons from Desert Flowers

Rock Gilia

Rock Gilia © 2012 Bo Mackison

       The desert’s beauty suggests patience and struggle and endurance. Even in the brightest colors of its brief spring flowers, there is something austere. ~ from The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch

Most of the desert flowers are mere specks on the ground. If there are dozens of them, the color is fairly noticeable, but if there are only two or three quarter-inch blossoms sprawling against a bit of green leaf and a lot of gravelly desert floor, it takes some careful observations to see those pretty little things. Of course, in the desert, the smaller, the better chance at survival. A flower, or leaf on a shrub for that matter, that is minute requires considerably less moisture for survival than a flower or leaf a hundred times that size. Adaptation of the species, as we know it.

Blooming Aloe

Blooming Aloe © 2012 Bo Mackison

Notice how present a flower is, how it has surrendered to life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Of course, the cacti and the succulents found in the desert have a totally different way to guarantee a flowering season, necessary for the continuation of the species. (No flowers, no seeds. No seed, no new flower).

This aloe is a succulent and has adaptive measures for desert survival. Succulents (and cacti, too) have the ability to suck up water when it does rain and then store it in large quantities. These plants send shallow roots in a wide circumference around the plant, and so the root absorbs the water before it evaporates. And when a succulent, like this bright-orange, flowering aloe, traps water in its system, its waxy surface helps keep the water in the plant and reduces water lost to evaporation.

We humans could learn much by consulting with nature and her ways:

  • Assess our weaknesses and strengths – bolster our weaknesses and play to our strengths.
  • Be resourceful and use our resources wisely. Do not use more natural resources than we need. Consider needs vs. wants.
  • Share your beauty, whether it be small and hidden, delicate and ethereal, or bright and showy.

 

Mexican Tree Flower

Mexican Tree Sunflower

Mexican Tree Sunflower © 2012 Bo Mackison

Nature can be trusted to work her own miracle in the heart of any man whose daily task keeps him alone among her sights, sounds and silences. ~ Gene Stratton Porter

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She had never seen a sunflower tree until last week, but now she has.

Spanish Bayonet in Bloom

Spanish Bayonet Agave in Bloom

Spanish Bayonet in Bloom © 2012 Bo Mackison

The Cheapest Tramadol Uk Spanish Bayonet has many common names, plus an out of date genus name and a corrected genus name. One look at this eye catching plant, and it is understandable why it has attracted much attention (and many names, too.)

The name that seems the most fitting is that of Spanish Bayonet. While the literature reports the sharp tipped leaves as “dangerously rigid” and states it was named after a bayonet because of its dagger like tendencies, I cannot help but think that the lovely red tips also influenced this name. As I have been (unintentionally) stabbed by one of these daggers, and as this unfortunate contact drew blood from my arm faster than a needle, I associate the Spanish Bayonet with blood letting tendencies.

Spanish Bayonet

And It Grows © 2012 Bo Mackison

This used-to-be yucca, now a hesperoyucca, still bears names from its misidentified yucca past — enter site chapparal yucca ( yucca growing in a chapparal habitat) and Tramadol Online Overnight Usa foothill yucca (obviously named) and it is even called the see url common yucca, though it is no such thing. (Though “common hesperoyucca” is rather a mouthful.) The Spanish Bayonet was only found to be a misidentified plant through DNA testing, so one can hardly fault any of the yucca names. It is similar to a yucca in looks, but only distantly related.

Blooming Sotolillo

Blooming Ten Feet High! © 2012 Bo Mackison

This plant and its relatives, the agaves and yuccas, are some of the most conspicuous plants in the arid Southwest, not only because its plant form is highly attractive and frequently used in xeriscaping, but also because its flower (or inflorescence – what the flowering stalk is called) is hard to miss.I find them attractive nuisances, because when I see them flowering along the highways, I want to either look — a definite no-no — or stop and take photographs.

The Spanish Bayonet blooms only once, after it spends its lifetime accumulating enough sugars and starches to provide the fuel for the rapid development of its shooting floral stalk. This type of plant is called a monocarpic — it spends its life energy to produce one huge floral stalk which then sets a huge quantity of seeds. The plant’s cause of death is most commonly ‘setting flower’.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona. She cannot resist the occasional botany lecture interspersed with relevant photographs.