Three Sacred Lotus

 

Sacred Lotus

Nelumbo nucifera cultivars

(nee-LUM-bo) (noo-SIFF-er-uh)

This picture is from a summer trip down to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Lily Pool Terrace area is always a highlight for me. The long pools feature many different Lotus and Waterlily plants as well as a great fountain. There is also easy access to the Palm House and Garden Café. The long Perennial Borders flanking the side usually feature some interesting plants. On one side of pools there is a large featured border of annuals that is loaded with spring bulbs, very colorful!

Although the trip to the BBG is a little more difficult for us it always seems to be worth it. This was shot with Karen's D80 with an old style 24-70mm Nikon lens.

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
Bethel, New York

Here is part of the water garden from the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. The grounds of the venue were astounding to me. Everything looked perfect including the several acres of turf. There were a lot of flowers and overall it had a nice well cared for look. It is built on the site of the original 1969 Woodstock festival.

Christina Grimmie performing at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

The concert was amazing. Huge and vocal crowd was in attendance. Selena was a gracious host at the meet and greet. She is stunningly beautiful and has a very nice way about her. We Own the Night lived up to expectations with a lot of production and musicianship. Selena’s secret weapon is her band. They are all top quality players that can play together. Also of note at the show was opening act YouTube sensation Christina Grimmie. She is cute and has a huge voice. Her piano playing was also good. She reminded me of a little elf. I didn’t get a lot of pictures. I couldn’t find the Nikon P6000 and had to go with old technology a Nikon Coolpix 8400 and Cp5300. It shows the glaring difference which newer cameras can deal with lower light and digital noise so much better.

Selena Gomez performing at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

Lotus

Lotus
Nelumbo 'Charles Thomas'
(nee-LUM-bo)

One of the highlights of a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is seeing the Lily Pool Terrace. It is a couple of long rectangular pools with a smaller round one in the middle. The round pool has a big but slow fountain that drips down the sides. Both sides of the area are filled with various flower gardens with annuals, perennials and bulbs. The Café and the entrance to the Conservatory are there also.

It was nice not to have to be the guy hanging over the side of the water trying to focus on the flowers with a short lens. The 200mm was perfect for getting shots of the few Lotus and the large amount of water lilies blooming. Seeing the Koi swimming among the flowers was nice too.

Lotus flowers always seem special to me. I am not sure if it is the fact they are blooming out of murky water or it’s their shape and structure. The colors are usually muted although ‘Charles Thomas’ had a nice kind of cherry red shading to it. According to research on the subject the flowers bloom pink and then fade to light pink as it ages. ‘Charles Thomas’ was the first Lotus ever granted a patent in the Unite States and is named after the former president of Lilypons Water Gardens. It was introduced in 1984.

Hardy Pink Waterlily

Hardy Pink Waterlily
Nymphaea 'Sumptuosa’
(NIM-fee-uh)

Hawaiian Flower Stew

Hawaiian Flower Stew
Click Here for a Larger Version

Scared Lotus Bud and Flower

Scared Lotus
Nelumbo nucifera 'Pekinensis Rubra'
(nee-LUM-bo) (noo-SIFF-er-uh)

Pink Justicia

Pink Justicia
Dianthera nodosa
(dy-ANTH-er-uh) (nod-OH-suh)

This tropical plant was blooming at Wave Hill yesterday. It is a relative of the Shrimp plant and hails from Eastern Brazil. From all accounts it is easy to grow and very free flowering. I liked the way it was blooming all the way down the stem.

This was a tiny leaved plant that was growing in pot with a Taro (which is where the shadows came from). Not sure what it was but it looked very nice.


Tune in tomorrow fro a couple of pictures of the new pup. We pick her up two weeks from last Friday.

Lotus Flowers

Here are two Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) flowers from this August. My archiving has reached late summer. Use this Wikipedia link to learn more about the Lotus ( click here). It is a flower I would really like to try and grow someday. There have been a few other Lotus posts on this blog and if you click the label you can find them.

Short post as I need to get back to digging out from the storm we had. Final total was about 10 inches of snow and a nice crust of ice in between. I shoveled everything once yesterday but it was a little too early and several inches of snow fell after. It is spitting a little snow today and I hope it doesn’t add up to much.


I keep quietly repeating to myself, spring is not that far away.

Black and White Flower

Black and White Flower

Here are a couple of black and white pictures from this summer. The first one is a Datura (I think) or Jimson Weed. At first I thought it was a Brugmansia (broog-MAN-zee-ah) but read that the flowers point down (non-erect) on that genus where the Datura flowers point upwards which this flower did. One of the funny things I read about this plant is it is called Devil’s Trumpet since the flowers point upward toward heaven and the Brugmansia is called Angel’s Trumpet as those flowers point down from heaven. I really want to stress that all parts of both of the mentioned plants are poisonous. Small doses may produce a hallucinogenic effect but often times can cause an overdose and even death. Some towns and counties have outlawed its cultivation. I am not sure which species of Datura this is.

All that said it is a beautiful flower that can grow tall and is perennial in some areas. I had a patch growing that I didn’t think was perennial but produced a new crop of seedlings each year. It eventually thinned out and died off. I wouldn’t mind growing some more in an isolated area of the garden.

These are pictures shot with my Nikon CoolPix 8400 on the monochrome setting. I have the function button set up for the two User Settings and one is color and one is Black and white so it is easy to switch between the two.


This is a water garden I saw this summer at the Staten Island Botanical Garden. This picture turned out more effective than the color version.

Two of my favorite garden blogs are discussing content scraping of garden blogs by other sites. I don’t like it and so far people I have contacted have removed my posts from their sites. I have again gone to the shorter RSS feeds because of the scraping.

Discussion is ongoing here:
annie in austin

and here:
Mr. Brown Thumb

Plumeria

Plumeria
Common name: Frangipani

I found these couple of pictures on a flash card that had become wedged between the wall and my desk. My housekeeping did have a purpose! It had been there for quite a long time as these were shot in August. When the drug store was getting rid of their stock of Compact Flash cards they were selling the 512MB SanDisk cards for $12.99 I bought 4 of them. It is nice to have a lot of memory cards but it can get confusing. Now that I have them all in front of me I am going to number them.

The first picture is the beautiful and fragrant Plumeria. Rather then type a lot of information about it I will direct to the Wikipedia page:
Plumeria


This second shot is from the water garden at the NYBG and is shot with a 60mm lens.

Miscellaneous Water Gardens

Miscellaneous Water Gardens

I saw some great water gardens this summer. I will leave it up to your imagination to think where these were taken. If you look closely at the Water Lily there was a Bee flying around.



Just a short post as I have to leave early for work. I have a couple of early meetings and a few things that I have to take care of before the weekend. I am tired already and will have to take a nap when I get home. I am trying to think of something to do this weekend other than go to the NYBG or Wave Hill. I really enjoyed my trip to Staten Island but don’t want to make that journey. I will probably figure something out.



I wanted to add we had a big anthrax scare in my little city. When I got home from work the other day there was a message from the Health Department (those broadcast kind) that they were investigating an Anthrax discovery across town. A road here in town, a main one, has been closed for a couple of days. The phone call told me I had nothing to worry about (yeah right).

I have been doing a lot watering. The last rain we got here was .02 inches on August 21st. I won't use the 'D' word that would be an insult to the people that are really having drought problems (oops used the word anyway). It is just an extended dry spell but the plants are beginning to suffer. I spent an day and a half this week patching up some of the irrigation systems I have. Any weakness in the systems become painfully apparent in times like this.

NYBG Water Garden

NYBG Water Garden

I went down to the New York Botanical Garden today. I saw some unusual flowers and learned a couple of new plants. It was a quick tour with my main goal of hitting the Rose Garden. These are a couple of shots of the Water Garden that is outside the Conservatory. It was in bloom with a good collection of Lotus and Water Lilies. Lighting wasn’t optimal and it felt like it was going to rain at any minute.



I will probably be living on the photos I took today for a while. My upcoming week doesn’t really have a lot of flowers forecast. I wanted to get my ‘E’ picture for ABC Wednesday. I have a couple to choose from now. I kept my eye out for plants that start with the letter e. That was kind of fun.

I probably won’t be providing a lot of commentary with the pictures that I post for a spell. I have revived a project that I was working on a few years back. I wrote a book on the history of the Premier Gold Mine, which was along the Alaskan/BC Border. A couple of my cousins worked there. I had a deal to publish it but it didn’t work out. I have recently been researching self-publishing the book on the internet. It still needs a bit of work (bit of an understatement) and I have literally hundreds of historical photographs to wade through, again. This blog has always been mostly about the pictures so It probably won’t be a bad thing.

Dwarf French Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla 'Pia')

Dwarf French Hydrangea
Hydrangea macrophylla 'Pia'
(hy-DRAIN-juh) (mak-roh-FIL-uh)
Hydrangeaceae (hy-drain-jee-AY-see-ay)
Synonyms: 'Piamina', 'Comet', 'Winning Edge', 'Pink Elf’

This is from the Brooklyn Botanical Hydrangea collection. The collection itself wasn’t that big nut it had some interesting members. I hadn’t seen this dwarf before and I thought the flower color was outstanding. Some research revealed some problems with this plant including reverting to a tall type and leaf spot. I still would try anyway as the size and color make it look like a worthwhile garden denizen.





This Variegated Hydrangea was marked ‘Lemon Wave’ but it wasn’t as yellow as some of them I have seen. I liked the flower color which was a nice pale lavender. The little splotches of yellow on the teeth of the leaves was interesting. You might miss it if you didn’t look closely. The plant itself was also compact.



This is a shot of the Lotus Pool. The pool and the garden surrounding it was my favorite part of the garden. I shot this with my Point and shoot camera. It is a
Nikon Coolpix E8400.



I hadn’t had it out in awhile but Karen was using her D80. I have the 8400 set to a 3:2 aspect ratio (instead of it’s normal 4:3) which I like a lot better.

Double Rose Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera ‘Rosea Plena’)

Double Rose Lotus
Nelumbo nucifera ‘Rosea Plena’
(nee-LUM-bo) (noo-SIFF-er-uh)

These are some Lotus photos from the BBG. Overall they have a world class collection it was however not presented the best it could have been. That is all I am going to say about it. I got in free because we have a membership at the New York Botanical Garden and it was $12 to park. Afterwards I noticed that there was some free on street parking available.



This is a different cultivar of Lotus and it was quite pretty also.



Even the buds looked good.



”You must be a lotus, unfolding its petals when the sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it!”
Sai Baba

Here is a link to an article on the spiritual meaning of the Lotus flower at
CosmicLotus.org