Levant Cotton

Levant Cotton
Gossypium herbaceum nigra ‘Black Cotton’
(gos-SIP-ee-um) (her-buh-KEE-um)

Well I finally found a plant that pretty much stumped Google. There really wasn’t much information on it. I took some pictures of this plant at Pound Ridge Nurseries in Westchester County. It is a fun place as they carry a lot of different unusual plants. I was immediately drawn to the color of this plant. It was sitting on a ‘sold’ cart with some yellow and pink mums. It was hugely effective against the colors. This was the first time I had seen this plant and the little information I could find stated the flowers and cotton bolls (seedpods) are very nice. Come to think of it there were a few unopened seedpods on these plants. They were wonderfully weird. I didn’t see any cotton though. The foliage alone is worth growing this plant. Since this is a tender perennial that thrives in full sun and humidity I am sure we will be seeing a lot more of it.



I was going through my camera bag and found an old memory card with pictures from February. We packed up the cameras, computers and dogs and spent the whole month on Cudjoe Key, which is about 28 miles from Key West. I have some other pictures on the Florida Keys section of Digital Flower Pictures.com. Here is the best photo of the bunch that was on the card. It is a night shot from the historic Harbor walk. It was a 30 second exposure at F13. It was hard to take long exposures in the Keys because of the wind. It is always blowing. I used the D70s kit lens (Nikkor DX AF-S 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED) at a focal length of 28 mm. It is a pretty good lens but I don’t use it that often.