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Spring this year has been exceptional - exceptionally wet with hot spells in between. This has made for some spectacular flowers, and the hills have been green for longer than usual.
The collection is doing well, and the spring flowering plants are almost all in bloom right now. It's a beautiful time of the year.
Even the cool-growing Nepenthes are taking off with the warmer weather and more plentiful sunlight. They mostly like warm days, in fact, but require temperature drops at night, which is exactly what they are getting right now.
Macropiper excelsum - New Zealand pepper tree. I just found out that there are separate male and female plants; maybe I have a female here?
Arisaema does worse for me than anyone I know, but this one has come back for a few years. It is probably a combination of my growing them in pots and a lack of winter dryness in this climate.
A very old Aristolochia fimbriata seedpod.
Ledebouria cooperi. I got this lovely little plant in a sale at the UC Botanical Garden, and it is has done very well for me, spreading more each year. Goes dormant in the winter.
Ledebouria cooperi flowering.
Echium wildpretii is supposed to be a biennial or something like it, but mine has held on to life continually flowering over the winter, even after the main flower stalk died and was cut back.
I think I am seeing more honeybees this year.
It turns out that California poppies are drought tolerant and becoming a popular landscaping choice ... who would have thought?
The cherry blossoms are getting a little old, but their color is still subtly wonderful. This is a marginally unhealthy double weeping cherry.
Some sort of sparaxis - these come back for me every year, though I think there are fewer colors than there once were.
Mugo pine blossoms in the front yard. Pollen clouds off them when you brush by.
Purple sage that survived the winter.
Black bamboo - the culms turn this shade of black after a year or so.
Nepenthes lavicola pitcher.
Nepenthes truncata - Paisan Highland.
Nepenthes aristolochioides.
Nepenthes hamata - a very small one still.
Nepenthes diatas dried pitcher. These dry golden like some N. veitchii pitchers do.
Perfect unopened sarracenia flower.
Ledebouria zebrina - a giant one.
Zantedeschia odorata seedhead.
My Darlingtonia looks like it wants to flower.
I am not quite sure which one this volunteer is - it came up by the back steps, and all the ones I grow have white flowers.
Flower of Ceropegia woodii - very elaborate for a common houseplant, but quite small.
Philodendron lazori, collected by Dr. Tom Croat. A cutting from the living type specimen.
