The 2024 Philadelphia International Flower Show

This year's theme was United by Flowers, which is as good a theme as any I suppose. I liked this year's show because it was well balanced. In years past the designs were too heavy on bulbs, then they mixed it up a bit, and it was nothing but orchids for one year, then there was another year where it was lots of plants from Australia and tropical parts of the world. This year's show brought everything together really well. 

 We entered and there as that immediate fragrance of hyacinths that reminded us that spring is just around the corner.

 

Lines of cherry trees, hanging balls of what I think are statice in assorted colors, with a garden planted with orange tulips and grasses, with these fancy bouquets of roses, delphiniums, and a dozen other things, and they're all mirrored in the reflection of the black pool of water.

 It's almost like watching fireworks at night. It's just this huge celebration of flowers.

Moving onto another design we have a bamboo structure with lots of plants growing on. While some of these seem to just be cut flowers, lots of the orchids I believe were epiphytes. It's nice seeing a design where some of the elements would also work in nature. 

Also the lighting in this part of the event is awful for taking pictures. Lots of the promotional material and behind the scenes videos show all the ceiling lights turned on. It would be nice to go to a show where they left all the lights on. 

Gradually the show moves from high art, impractical pieces that are over flowing with flowers, and then onto landscapes, then more art set pieces, and gradually into just single plants in pots, then shops selling plants, then shops selling things that can be used on plants, then shops that are just selling items that can be used outside. 

Pictured above I would put in art set pieces. We have hanging baskets with wreaths of flowers hanging from them. Very pretty in a flower show setting but probably not in many homes. 

I like the idea here but I'm not a fan of the color scheme. I think they were going with the USDA Growing Zones. There is a classic car hidden in there.

I regret I didn't get a nice enough shot of the full display this is from. But I loved the use of leaf litter in it. Despite all the plants used in these displays most of the shows just use patches of lawn, but the use of decorative leaves was refreshing to see.

The line was going out the door seemingly just to see this. You'd think France put the Mona Lisa on tour for how long we waited just to get close. When we finally managed to get to her, I have to say it was just okay. The abundance of fabric on the chest and front seems almost like cheating and it was better when we were far away and only able to glimpse that fantastic hat. My photo doesn't do her any justice as she was a bit of a show stopper. But it was nicer when she was 10 feet away.   

This was another great display. Lots of design going on as if inspired by a children's toy or 1980's game show. And to have made it with the price of wood being what it is.

It's like looking through a window into someone's room. 

This display wasn't getting enough attention. Who wouldn't love getting their hair done up in a florist shop? People with allergies probably, but as a concept the two stores seem to marry perfectly together. 

I "liked" this one I think but I'm not really sure what to make of it. I know it's supposed to be the potential of an abandoned lot but it's hard say look how great these broken cement columns look. It's like a landscape you'd see in a video game like Fallout. The only thing missing is an abandoned car covered in rust. 

This is a great example of beautiful flowers but the full exhibit isn't all that practical. 

This looks amazing. Who wouldn't want to have Easter Dinner at that table. If only the table were a little bit wider so you could put the food on it. As pretty as the flowers are, you probably can't see the people sitting across from you very well. Very pretty but not very practical.

This is another one that looks like an abandoned lot. I love that they used Staghorn Sumac as you don't see that a lot. The trouble though is that is a suckering species so this isn't a very practical landscape. Most of what is planted though is native so there's this idea of succession as the landscape ages. 

Echinacea pallida isn't often used in these displays, especially since they flower in the summer time, so someone has a greenhouse of these. 

I laughed when they thought to include decorative trash. 

I thought these tulips looks pretty and made a note to track some down for next year. 

This is a more practical dinning room. The centerpieces are pretty and up high so they don't distract or block the view of guests seated at the table. 

As much as I've complained about the use of bulbs in the past, this is what my front yard is going to look like in a few weeks. I've come to appreciate sweeping drifts of color especially when it's used sparingly. Seeing what 10 or 100 of something looks like side by side is always great to get an idea of what they will grow well with. Stem length and foliage color/texture and flower color are all factors to consider, and sometimes bulb mixes aren't mixed well enough. The line in our front garden was completely lacking the purple tulips that were supposed to be in the mix.    

As an example of timing issues, mixed among the yellow Daffodil/Narcissus here were some sort of crocus which were only just pushing through the soil. So look for those if you see the show on this coming Friday or Saturday I guess. 

Orange. 

I love seeing almost full sized trees in these shows. Normally they're something flowering but this display used a full on Pine Tree. 

This is a nice practical garden. I've seen youtube videos of gardens that look like this in the spring.Good job. 

The Amsonia wouldn't be flowering but it's a design and great to see them used. The Mt. Cuba Center just released the results of a 10 year trial on these so perfect timing as well.

 Summitry, now if only I'd held the camera level. 

Floral displays as Art didn't really catch my eye this year. One group seemed to use the same props from last year so I basically skipped them.

Onto single plants, or pots containing one type of plant. 

These can be just as enjoyable as those huge displays and landscapes overflowing with flowers. Often these are bread by people from seed who have bread them specifically to bring out different colors or textures that might not be available on the market yet. 

Other times it's just a really well grown plant.

In the case of the Orchids, it's often both. 

This unimpressive little plant is a Sundew. The leaves have hairs with little dots of glue on them. When they catch an insect the whole leaf will coil up and bring the dead insect to the middle. I like to think it was the reason I didn't see any flies around.

There was a bonsai tree section with some very impressive entries. One of them was over 100 years old. Sadly I was getting pretty tired by then so I didn't take too many pictures of them.

Even commonplace plants such as these African Violets had a spot to shine at the show. I say commonplace because they're in every garden center at Home Depot and Lowes.

The sign reads "This ATCO Lawn Mower from England is one of the first riding lawn mowers ever produced. It hales from 1910 and still works!" I kind of wish they had demonstrated it cutting but also understand it's a gas powered engine and would slowly fill the convention center with carbon monoxide.

This wasn't so much a landscape as it was a stall selling fine prick work and pavers.

These stalls have everything you could possibly want... or not. There was another stall selling kites, another one selling things made of wood, a leather shop... their connection to the flower show was tenuous at best.

I did find a few shops selling plants, seeds, and things you would actually use in a garden so that's nice. It was a great show and I look forward to going to next years.

Fire Ants Invade Italy

This is old news at this point but The Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta has invaded Italy. Being on a few Ant Discords and Facebook Groups word on the street is a kid thought it would be great to send a colony to his friend in Italy. But his friend had no effing clue what to do with them and just dumped them in their yard. Oh unintentional Echo Terrorism, the CIA would be proud. 

Thanks to iNatrualist we can monitor their spread. Or at least monitor where people who use this app/website to ID and report ants in that area. 

Something that jumps out at me is this gap in the dots. When Fire Ants first invaded the US they spread at a rate of 5 miles per year. Assuming that holds true in Italy there should be a dot somewhere in this area I've drawn a circle around. Either that or they've already established a colony in nursery plant or farming media and been shipped around which might help explain this sort of coastal distribution.

There are likely dozens of colonies around each of these dots that haven't been reported. 

Anyway we'll check back in with this invasion from time to time.
 

Last Year's Pipevine Swallowtails!!!

 So, I have been growing Woolly Pipevine for at least 14 years. I went with Aristolochia macrophylla over A. tomentosa because it's less aggressive.... or at least, it's easier to control. A. tomentosa sends up new stems from everywhere its roots spread out, so just one plant can take over a whole garden bed with new stems poking up and climbing all over the plants that grow there. A. macrophylla doesn't do this. It's just the one main trunk and lots of stems that come off of that and climb all over whatever. Put another way, the roots stay where you planted them. 

I initially planted this as a host plant for the Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly. But this isn't a species very common to my area. They are found in New Jersey and have been sighted in my county, but there aren't any large populations nearby. The reason for this is there aren't many host plants around. Black Swallowtail are abundant because they're a generalist on the carrot family, so every field that's been invaded by Queen Anna's Lace, or home gardener growing Parsley, Carrots, Fennel, Dill and so on are helping this species thrive. Tiger Swallowtails are even more common thanks to Tulip Trees, Black Cherry, and what remains of the Ash population being staples in the patchwork of our local forest lands. 

The nearest sighting of the Pipevine Swallowtail to me is about a 30 minute drive from my house. So for 14 years the vine pretty much went unused aside for the occasional Robin's nest, and Ant which used it to get from our shed to the Redbud it's latched onto. 

Ohh yes, the shed. The vine is slowly consuming it on both sides, though hasn't quite taken over the roof yet. The shingles still get too hot for its stems to lay but each year I see it adding another layer as the leaves it makes up there grow larger and larger and shade out enough for new stems to safely sit without getting baked off. 

I'd been thinking about pruning it back but then one day last July I went out there and noticed these clusters of little orange eggs. "OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!" I shouted.

A female Pipevine Swallowtail had found our vine and graced it with four clusters of eggs. Sadly one of them was on a vine that stuck out into the path and I was going to prune off. Raising butterflies in captivity is normally frowned upon but I decided to make an exception here, and this would let me better document their life cycle. And for the record, the majority of the egg clusters I left outside. It was just a cluster of 9 eggs that I brought in and raised in a butterfly cage. Also a few days later I discovered additional egg clusters that seem to have been laid after the first four clusters, so I guess she came back or a second female flew by. 

Outside I noticed all of the egg clusters were laid on the newest growth. This is likely because the toxin in the leaves will be at the lowest here and the caterpillars will be better able to handle it.

 

After a few days, they entered the "Forbidden Gummy Worm" phase of development. Seriously though don't eat these. The toxin pipevine plants make, and caterpillars eventually store in their bodies, is an actual carcinogen. This is likely why the plant fell out of favor among gardeners. 

I was making a mistake with raising the ones indoors. You're not supposed to bring them inside it seems as this throws off their natural rhythm. Should I do this in the future I'll be sure to keep the butterfly cage outside. 

It was neat having them inside though. Their constant chewing is loud and with nine of them going at it there was an ambient Yule Log effect going on. I wish I had recorded it.

Being Swallowtails, this meant their caterpillars have "horns" this yellow/orange tongue-like appendage that comes out of their head and sprays a kind of formic acid or foul smelling chemical out. The idea is should a bird try and pick one up, BAM!!! Awful Perfume Sample right in the eyes! The caterpillar will likely die soon after this happens but rest assured, that bird certainly won't be picking one of these up to feed to their kids. 

All that being said, I had to poke this thing with a pencil for a good ten minutes or so just to get him angry. 

Large black worms with orange dots all over them don't exactly blend in. It's almost like they're asking to be eaten. And as it turns out, this is exactly what they're doing. This is the same/similar strategy the Monarch Butterfly uses. Monarch caterpillars are black, white and yellow, and they actively feed in the day in full view of predators. They taste nasty though and have bad chemicals in them that might kill a baby bird. Eventually through repeated predator, the birds learn not to feed these caterpillars to their babies. The trouble with this strategy is there's always a new generation of birds to teach but eventually the local population learns to leave them alone and the caterpillars thrive.

 

It's around now that I noticed none of the outdoor caterpillars have survived past the second or third instar. This makes me glad I at least brought a few indoors. Maybe I'm greedy but I didn't want to wait another 14 years to photograph them. Also as far as caterpillars go, they look really cool.

 Chrysalis Day!

 One by one, they all shed their last layer of skin off and formed a chrysalis. 

10 to 14 days later, they started to emerge. 

BTW I have no idea how you tell the gender in this species. Some people say the females are this navy blue color while males are more of a green... but uhhh.

This is the same butterfly as the navy blue one pictured just above. I don't think the color thing is accurate. Either that or I somehow managed to hatch 8 girls. (1 did not emerge from its chrysalis at all. I'm assuming it's going to hatch out sometime this Spring.)

I released all 8 of them once their wings were expanded and they were able to fly. Sometimes they would hang out on the flowers I put them on but not for long. Within the hour they were fueled up and flew out into the world. 

A few days releasing them all though, I was delighted to come home and find one in my garden. This wasn't staged at all. I had to pull out my phone and quickly snap a picture. 

Hopefully they'll find my garden again this year. And hopefully more people will give Pipevine a try so this butterfly becomes a more common sight every year.

British House Hunters

I used to be addicted to HGTV. There was nothing more fun than watching a couple get assistance from a bunch of landscapers to transform a space, for better or worse. Or following a young couple as they go "house hunting" and weigh their options. Well sometime last year, my mom had the TV on in the kitchen and it was the very tail end of the British version of what looked like House Hunters. It was right at the end of the episode where they have the couple sat at a table weighing their three options. 

Which house are they going to go with? House One was great but too far from Grian's job. House two cost eleven times the budget they were willing to spend but Madge was keen on the garden. House Three was close to work but built next to train station, below a bowling alley, out front of an airport, and above an ancient Pagan burial ground. 

The couple sit at the table looking down at three folders representing their three options. Then they share a knowing look at one another and the husband says, "I think we both agree, yeah the answer is obvious." And the spouse has this frank look on her face, "It's the right choice." And then normally we find out which one they go with but this time it rolled credits over a high angled shot of the two walking out of the house. The narrator then says, "Grian and Madge decided to not go with any of the three homes, because they were absolutely horrid. Coming up next! It's an episode of ...." 

I was dying laughing at this. I wish I had gotten the name of the show.

Here We Go Again

Alright, let's try this again. 

Every year it feels like I try to blog only to peter out somewhere before the summer really begins and I just go dark for the rest of the year. I think the trouble is I get more interaction from social media posts, whereas on Blogger if I enable comments it's dozens of spam links posted every hour of the day. 

My blog has also outlived it's usefulness. I feel like one of the main draws was the fact that I had a species list for Ants in the US. I added very generalized distributions some of which are wrong but it's right enough to still be useful. I just don't have the time to check them all and correct them. I was slowly making the names all link to their Ant Wiki but even that is verging on obsolete because iNaturalist has come along and is probably the most useful website/app I've used in ages. 

Seriously, you can just type in a species name and even narrow your search to your state and it gives you distribution data on species (generalized if it's threatened or endangered). It's not 100% complete but usually it's experts or grad students making the ID's on the content being uploaded.

So, I'm going to try and post some things here every week and we'll see how far we get this year.

Easter Garden Tour 2021

No ants this time. Just a quick garden tour. This was recorded the day before Easter. Additional Daffodils and Easter Lilies and Tulips were set out in the garden afterward. Several plants featured in the garden had to be replanted because squirrels had removed them, mostly hyacinths and pansies, over night. Not in the video was an Easter Egg hunt I arranged with my niece who had a great time finding them all among the flowers.

First Day of Spring!

Witch Hazel 'Amethyst' uncurling it's flower petals. This is actually a photo from two or three weeks ago. It's one of those plants that blooms in the winter and takes it's time to finish doing blooming. If it was a warm winter these flowers would likely have finished up by now, but because they're hardy and built for cold temperatures individual flowers hang around for several weeks.

Here they are today and their internal timers are still ticking. Their blooms are waiting for warm days when flies and winter moths to become active. A slightly sweet fragrance is released into the air to entice them into pollinating the flowers. This particular cultivar isn't all that fragrant sadly so it's unlikely I'll see much of anything on it. Last year there was an early Beefly though. 

Trilliums are starting to spring up too. This one in particular is much farther along all the others in my garden. In the past I've called this one a Trillium hybrid because nothing ever seemed to match up, and Trilliums do indeed hybridize a good deal when different species are planted near one another. I've recently learned about Trillium cuneatum though which is pretty variable and I read has a very strong or intense fragrance that I've associated with this individual. You can seriously smell it 15' away!

So I've ordered a bunch of T. cuneatum to see if they measure up. Actually they're a named Trillium cultivar called Trillium cuneatum 'Sessile of Hort' which should all have a white strip going down the middle of each leaf. Hopefully the fragrance part is still somewhat true to the species though so I can compare. 

Also emerging now are Twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla, which all have their first sets of twin leaves and flower buds emerging.

Ant Chat with Alex Wild

Back in 2016 when I attended Bugshot, Texas where I met Alex Wild for the first time. He gave a basic class on ants without talking down to the audience or over generalizing things the way lots of documentaries do. I recorded it with his permission and hopefully it's still okay for me to publish it four years later. If not I'm more than happy to take it down. For now though, enjoy!  

Jewelweed Setting Seed

Impatiens capensis, Jewelweed or Spotted Touch-me-not has exploding seed pods that cast the next generation far and wide. Though an annual, they can aggressively take over damp sites usually along forest edges. It can be weeded out or thinned easily, however; seeds will sometimes take up to three years to germinate, leading to small patches of plants returning. While flowering though it is treasured by bees and hummingbirds. 

 

 

The nectar is kept all the way in the back of the flower, right in the back of the tube there so that only long tongued bees and hummingbirds have access to it. This one however has been chewed open by a carpenter bee. 

 

 

 

Jewelweed is a prolific flowering plant though and seems to bloom well after the life cycle of most carpenter bees, thus pollination still occurs.   

Seedpods, when ready, explode on a hair pin trigger. Just the slightest disturbance to the tip and they pop open, flinging seeds several feet away. 

 

 
They produce air roots too which pull nutrients from the air. 

 

 

 One plant in the patch I have suffered something that caused it to become variegated above a certain point.