[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XXXV

Mostly greens this time around, but they're interesting greens, with fairly distinct textures. But first, an uncompensated product endorsement.

The husband and I finished watching The Wire last night. For those who don't know, The Wire is an HBO series that ran from 2002 to 2008, and it's about, among other things, the drug trade, police department, city government, prisons, and school system of Baltimore, MD. And it's the real Baltimore: filmed on location, with lots of actors who are actually from Baltimore.

It's also the only show I've seen lately that's genuinely suspenseful, the only show that sets up rules about what can and cannot happen in this world and then sticks to them (I'm looking at you, Caprica), the only show with characters who seem like they could be real people and change in ways that real people might change, and some really fascinating things to say about American society, the War on [Some People Who Use] Drugs, politics, being a police officer, redemption (as well as fucking up), and a ton of other stuff.

Except not all boring and shit, like that made it sound.

Also, the realism and occasional bleakness mean that they can make some amazingly funny jokes sometimes. Seriously. You'll die. People have called it "the greatest television series ever made," and meant it. (Dunno about that, but it's surely got to be in the running.)

The Wire is not for you if you blanch at strong language, including but not limited to slurs relating to race and sexual orientation. (Though if that's a problem, you probably stopped reading a couple paragraphs ago.) You're also not going to like it if you have a problem with occasional nudity, simulated sex, drug use, or graphic and frequent violence.

It's also often very sad. Bad people don't always get what's coming to them; good people either. Also it's frequently very hard to tell the difference: this is not a show where everybody's either good or bad and they all have color-coded hats on at all times so you know who is who. You'll be amazed at some of the people you'll eventually feel sorry for.

The Wire is also frequently hard to follow: like most shows, they'll tell you what you need to know, but unlike most shows, they won't keep telling you and telling you to make sure you get it. (Closed captioning helps, as does watching with someone else.) But paying close attention pays off. Also, do yourself a favor and start watching from the beginning of season 1: we were getting DVDs from the library, but we missed some episodes in season 1 because some people hadn't returned the relevant discs yet, which made our experience more confusing than it had to be.

Anyway. If you're looking for more specific things about what the show's about or what it's like, you can check the Wikipedia page for the show; the above is just what I like about it. If you've heard nice things before and thought, oh, I should check that out sometime, this is me letting you know that you really, really should.

Anyway. On to the leaves.

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Rubus sp. Good leaf, but bad photo. With a lot of these, I was taping them to the light on Nina's terrarium and then taking pictures that way (It's easier to keep the leaf still when it's unable to move.), and this one apparently caught more of a shadow than I intended.

Plantago major. I'd been curious about what broadleaf plantain would look like by transmitted light for a while before I actually got around to doing it. It's one of my favorite weeds, going back to when I was a kid. The photo, obviously, was disappointing. These things happen.

Vitis sp. Surprisingly similar to the Rubus picture, just in a different color. Which I guess is kind of cool?

Trifolium pratense. My favorite picture from this set, for reasons I don't quite understand. I like the plant quite a bit, too, as far as that goes.

Begonia NOID, possibly 'Texas Coffee Star.' I've done this plant before, but this wound up being a slightly better picture than the previous one.

Aspidistra elatior. So far, this is working out much better for me than A. lurida ever did; it hasn't been that much time, and it's not growing very fast, or at all, but I'll still be ecstatic with the plant if it makes it through the winter. Wish me luck.

Musa x 'Cheeka.' Picture's pretty cool, but this was a really bad purchase. Although the plant is still alive, it's not happy: each new leaf is smaller than the one before, and it's gotten better-than-usual care, by my standards -- more light, more warmth, more fertilizer -- so it shouldn't be complaining the way it is. We won't be trying any Musa or Ensete species again. At least not unless something big changes around here.

Asclepias syriaca. Was not expecting the common milkweed to have so much going on, vein-wise.

Abutilon 'Bella Red,' petals. The color is wrong here; it's a lot less orange than this, really. I blame the camera.

Ficus elastica 'Tineke.' (ID uncertain; there are lots of variegated Ficus elastica varieties out there.) Also too orange. I don't know how many pictures of this species I've tried, but I don't think I've been happy with one yet. I blame myself.

Pretty pictures: Pink

Today we have various thoughts from the plant kingdom about the idea of "pink." In a couple cases, it's maybe more my questionable judgment, and the plant was actually thinking of "purple," but whatever. I had a whole bunch of pictures that I needed to do something with, having just sifted through almost the whole photo backlog, and this sort of post is a really efficient way of getting through a lot of photos in a hurry, even if they're not seasonally-appropriate, as some of these aren't.

Asclepias syriaca flowers in extreme close-up. Some insect life visible if you look closely and/or open the photo full-size in a new window.

Polygonum persicaria. I don't think anybody actually likes this plant, but it's awfully familiar, at least. And technically pink, so it counts.

Lamium NOID. Shortly after taking this picture, I was looked at suspiciously by two women talking to one another over their backyards' fence. I expect that the suspicious looks happen all the time, but I'm not normally in a position to see them, so it was noteworthy.

Cyclamen persicum NOID. I don't see the frilly-edged Cyclamens for sale very often. Not that I necessarily want one. I just think it's interesting what is and isn't popular.

Torenia 'Catalina Pink.' This is arguably more purple than pink, but the tag said it was pink.

Ipomoea NOID. If loving morning glories is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Zinnia 'Profusion Cherry.' I had sort of intended to get some Zinnias this year, or at least some Zinnia seeds. As with all my other outdoor-related plans, that didn't work out.

Cyclamen NOID. This is probably my favorite photo from the batch.

Portulaca grandiflora, second-generation flower. These have not yet taken off like I'd hoped, but considering how late I started them, I suppose I can't be too disappointed. I should still be able to collect enough seeds to try again next year.

Weigela NOID. Came with the house. The husband and I are both kinda meh about it, but it'd be a lot of work to take it out, and neither of us have any ideas for something we'd rather see in that spot, so it stays.

Hibiscus moscheutos 'Dave Fleming,' at the ex-job. I've seen hardy Hibiscus varieties I covet, but this isn't one of them. It's big and bright enough that I find it sort of alarming. Not the sort of Hibiscus you want to run into, walking around the back yard at night.

Pretty picture: Asclepias tuberosa

I really like this plant, and at some point during the late winter or early spring, I bought seeds of it, with the idea that I could plant them somewhere in the back yard and then enjoy them forever. That didn't happen, due to dithering about where and how a back yard garden would be constructed, which regular readers already know because they got to read some of the dithering.

View full-size by opening in another window and see the fly (?) peeking out of the mass of flowers. It's really quite adorable, if you're the sort of person who can find flies adorable.
I'm assuming that it's probably too late, now, to do anything with the seeds, and even if it weren't, the back yard plans change frequently: I wouldn't know where to put them. Also "plans" is a charitable way of putting it: it's more like I have vague, mutually exclusive intentions about where to put certain plants. So oh well. It's not like the world is going to run out of seeds, and failing that, lots of places around here sell the grown plants. Whatever. Consider this post my announcement of intent to have one or more Asclepias tuberosas planted somewhere on property I own at some point in the future.

Pretty pictures: July roadside flowers, pink/orange

Took a back-roads route from Iowa City last Thursday, and found all these. Plus there's another post with more flowers coming up tomorrow Tuesday. As always, if you know the identity of the one NOID, let me know in comments.

All of these will be bigger, clearer, and more detailed if opened in a new window.

When I took this picture, I was pretty sure it was a Queen Anne's lace, Daucus carota. Then as I got to looking at it afterward, I was thinking that it seemed awfully full for Queen Anne's lace, and maybe it was some other, related plant. Now I'm kind of leaning toward the Daucus theory again, but I'm unsure. Open in a new window to see the odd insect sitting right in the middle of it all.

I've taken photos of fleabane (Erigeron sp.) before. It's not a big thrill, and this particular batch looks kinda ratty (it's been windy a lot lately) but I feel obliged to include it for the sake of completeness.

Hadn't ever really noticed these NOIDs before: they're pretty tiny, and the plants look like hell (which you can kind of see from the foliage I didn't crop out), but when you get up close enough, the flowers are very nearly attractive. Not quite, but very nearly.

I have yet to take a picture of milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) flowers that didn't also include a ton of bugs as well. I think the common name should be changed to "pink orgyflower" or something similar. Interesting greenish, non-metallic bee in the top right.

I think this is a Rosa arkansana, prairie rose, in which case it is the official state flower of Iowa. If I'm wrong, then it's most likely a multiflora rose, Rosa multiflora, in which case it is a noxious invasive weed. Thorny son of a bitch either way.

Red clover, Trifolium pratense. I can't imagine any readers not knowing this plant, but I've led a sheltered and exclusively North American life thus far, so maybe they're news to someone. These are everywhere here, all the time. I also really like them.

Michigan lily, Lilium michiganense. We have orange daylilies all over the place here -- in some spots they're lining both sides of the road for a couple hundred feet. I remembered my grandmother having Michigan lilies along a slope to one side of her house, but was beginning to think I must have confused them with daylilies, because I'd never seen any around here that weren't obviously cultivated: I was pretty sure that hers hadn't been deliberately planted.

Now that I've seen this bunch, though, which was just sitting in the middle of nowhere along a road, with no house or other structure nearby, I feel a little more confident in saying that no, what she had really were Michigan lilies (which she called tiger lilies). 'Cause apparently they are around if you look for them. Just not to the same degree as the orange Hemerocallis.

Asclepias tuberosa. OMG guys I love these. We had had them at work last year, but sold out before any flowered, so I never got to see.

I've been noticing little flashes of orange low in the grass along Highway 218 for a couple weeks now, but of course we're always going by too fast to get a good look, so I wasn't sure what they were. The batch I finally took a picture of happened to be conveniently located near a gravel/highway intersection near Lone Tree, where we had to stop anyway.

Pretty pictures: Pink and Purple

Anemone tomentosa 'Robustissima.' I have to say, I'm not sure these could really be called "robust:" they've barely held it together and are only now, this late in the summer, being remotely interesting.

Monarda sp. From the Kent State Park trip, whence I also got a lot of the Yellow pictures, and the Park NOID pictures. (Also the carrion beetle larvae pictures, though those had less universal appeal, it turned out.)

Monarda sp. again. As befits the common name (bee-balm), the bees really were fond of these.

Asclepias incarnata, swamp milkweed, is my guess, though I'm not an Asclepias expert and don't anticipate becoming an Asclepias expert in the future.

Another shot of the Asclepias. I think the main reason I like these -- and I do like them, very much -- is because they remind me of Hoyas.

Pelargonium x hortorum 'Americana Violet." Possibly got the color cranked too high on this one, but in person, you know, they're pretty bright. It's kind of realistic.

Pelargonium x hortorum 'Strawberry Sizzle.' I liked this variety a lot, but the customers . . . not so much. Stupid customers.

Circium arvense? It's a thistle of some kind, but I don't know which. Not a thistle expert either. By the way, this reminds me of something. I've been told that "Hyacinths and Thistles" is something sadistic speech therapists try to get lispy kids to say. It's fun to try. It's also, incidentally, the title for an album by The Sixths. Which is how I found out about the speech therapist thing. One feels bad for the college station DJ who had to talk about "the new album from The Sixths, 'Hyacinths and Thistles.'

Good album, though, incidentally. The fifth track, "Just Like a Movie Star," is sort of an important song to the husband and I. Not "our song" (that's probably the Cowboy Junkies cover of "Sweet Jane"), but one of "our other songs."

The Sixths' other album is "Wasp's Nests," which is clearly titled the way it is for the same reasons as "Hyacinths and Thistles."

Catharanthus roseus 'Pacifica Lilac.' This is an old, old picture, from before the spider mites overran all the Catharanthus (no I will not call it "Vinca:" it's not Vinca.). Pretty, but so not worth the trouble. I've sort of had a grudge against Catharanthus since the mid-80s: I was sort of forced to plant some when in junior high, at a tiny Christian school in Alamo, TX, long ago, and I wasn't happy about it. Calling it "P.E." doesn't make it any less slave labor.

Pardancanda 'Sangria.' Similar to the Belamcanda chinensis, presumably related but I haven't investigated this. I liked the Belamcanda a lot better, initially, but I've warmed up to the Pardancanda. This is a nice color.

More Pardancanda 'Sangria.'

Pretty pictures: Iowan roadside flowers, and a large wad of metal

The husband and I went southwest down to Sigourney, IA, a week ago,¹ and I was kind of shocked at how many things seemed to be blooming along the side of the road. I guess it hadn't occurred to me that summer was necessarily a bigger time for that than spring, but it pretty definitely seems to be.

Anyway.

So I know some of them, but there are a few that I can't identify, and one of the NOIDs has been bothering me for several years now, but for some reason it only just occurred to me to ask the internet. I suppose because I didn't have a picture until now.

(I've also thrown in a few other plants that I didn't see on the trip, because they're also weedy and they fit this post better than they could fit another one later.)

So, Iowa roadside stuff. I suppose we should get the obvious one out of the way first:

Zea mays, and Zea mays, and Zea mays . . .
Not really amber waves just yet, but still. That's a whole lot of photosynthesis there, my friends. Oxygen!

Asclepias syriaca, the common milkweed.
I've always liked milkweeds. The leaves get no attention but are actually quite nice. Somebody should slap together a tropical version of these that can be grown indoors.

Or maybe not. "Yeah? You got mealybugs? Well listen, buddy, I'd kill to trade for mealybugs right now. I got monarch caterpillars all over my bed, my toothbrush, the kitchen sink; chrysalises (chrysali?) blocking the air vents and dangling over the toilet; and we can't even watch TV anymore because as soon as we turn it on, all these butterflies jump up and fly into the screen. So I don't even want to hear about your mealybug problems."

One of the NOIDs.
Very patchily distributed. Maybe a deliberate planting. Damn pretty in large quantity.

Rudbeckia hirta, black-eyed susan.
Not a good picture, but I don't like black-eyed susans well enough to care, apparently.

A chicory (Cichorium intybus) flower.
These were everywhere in certain areas, which surprised me: I don't remember seeing them as a child, and I grew up not far from Sigourney, so it's a puzzler. I remember violets, asters, milkweed, plantains, red clover, white clover and dandelions; surely I would have noticed chicory, had it been there.²

Another NOID.
This is the NOID that's been troubling me. Again, I don't remember seeing it as a kid, and yet now it's everywhere -- large stretches of I-80 are lined with it on one side of the road or another. Occasionally both. It's such a vivid yellow that I can't imagine how I would have missed it all those years. So is it new? Invasive? What is this thing?

UPDATE: Julia, in comments, says it's the birdsfoot trefoil, or birdfoot deervetch (Lotus corniculatus), which does appear to be the case. I'll be back to add to the post again if I can find out anything about what it's doing in Iowa.

Another NOID.
This one sort of looks related to the yellow NOID; they both produce small circles of flowers, and they tend to grow in the same places. If I remember right, though, the foliage is completely different. So maybe not.

UPDATE: When I was watering perennials yesterday at work, I saw that we actually have this for sale. It wasn't in flower, but the foliage looked right. Turns out it's crown vetch (or purple crownvetch), Securigera varia, which is found in most states of the U.S. and is a problematic invasive in some of them. So why are we selling it, when it can be invasive, and when anybody could dig some up from along the side of the road if they really wanted some that badly? Bless me, I have no idea. I'll have to ask the boss, or somebody, if anybody actually buys it.

NOID.
When I was a kid, I remember being told that this was an aster. The actual botanical genus Aster has been split up, with Old World species retaining the designation Aster and the New World species getting shattered into a half-dozen or so other genera. So I don't know what this is, but I remember seeing it as a kid. Lots. The bees liked it, as I recall.

UPDATE: Well, it's an Erigeron of some kind, probably E. annuus, which is known to be in southeast Iowa and is a pure white. There are other Erigeron in Iowa that are supposed to be slightly pinkish, though I can't say I've ever seen anything like that. Thanks to Frances for the tip.

Verbascum thapsus, the common mullein.
I like this plant. I see these particular specimens on my way to work every day, but the species seems to be common around Iowa City.

Another NOID.
This was also one I saw on the way to work; the flower didn't last long, and turned into a dandelionish puff of seeds. I feel like I ought to know the name, like I did at one time or something, but I got nothing right now.

Ostrich ferns, Matteuccia struthiopteris. Pretty sure.
I took this picture because I think these are resprouts from disturbed ground: they're alongside of a house in a town near here (Wellman, maybe?) that has, for some reason, had all the ground around the foundation dug up. These appeared to be coming back from roots under the soil, or maybe the original plants were just covered up, not torn to pieces. Not sure how it works. All I know is, I've heard ostrich ferns were tough, and now I believe it.

Large wad of metal.
This was a large wad of metal sitting in a field near West Chester. What is it from? Why is it just sitting there? Is this, perhaps, Art? We do not know. There was some brief discussion of how we might heave it into the car and take it home with us, or offer to buy it as scrap metal and then try to pawn it off to someone else as sculpture, but practical considerations prevailed. Also it's actually more interesting, attractive, and likely to give a person tetanus than a lot of art I've seen, which made the whole thing seem less workable.

If you know any of the NOID plants, or if you'd like to bid on the giant ball of twisted rusty metal (what a garden ornament it would make!), sing out in comments. Or, you know, keep it to yourself, if that's how you want to be.

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Photo credits:

¹ (To look at an empty library. Sort of a long story.)
² I know: stop calling you Shirley. Wilco.