Flowers Photos (2)
الثلاثاء، 24 سبتمبر 2013
الاثنين، 23 سبتمبر 2013
Random plant event: Eucodonia NOID
Random plant event: Eucodonia NOID
I got this plant from a reader (who can choose to reveal him/rself in
the comments if s/he wants to), in the form of tubers that were just
beginning to break dormancy, and it's been a very up-and-down kind of
emotional experience thus far.
It grew fine throughout the early summer, and produced its first bloom in mid-August.
It grew fine throughout the early summer, and produced its first bloom in mid-August.
(17 August.)
Which was nice. And even the buds are kind of attractive. Or at least I think so.
I tried to get a decent picture of the whole plant, but the lighting wasn't great, so it didn't completely work.
A few days after that, I had the photo-taking area set up, and tried to get a better picture of the whole plant, with partial success. Though the color was still not quite as accurate as it could have been:
The close-up pictures were way better, though.
Then as I was bringing the plant back inside, I dropped the whole box of plants I was carrying (described here), and the Eucodonia got knocked out of its pot. I scooped everything back up as well as I could, but it seemed like it never fully recovered from being dropped. The problem is that for all I know, it might have peaked in late August anyway -- most of what I've read about Eucodonia on-line suggests that they do start to go dormant pretty immediately after blooming. So I don't know if it's just doing what it's supposed to do, or if I actually hurt it somehow. We'll have to wait until next year, to see what happens when it doesn't get dropped. (Assuming that I can refrain from dropping it.)
I don't have a picture, but the Amorphophallus konjac leaf has yellowed, and has almost fallen off, as of the last five days or so. I don't know if this is when that's supposed to happen or not, since I apparently didn't bother to record the event last year. I'm worrying less about the Amorphophallus these days, and the Clivias almost not at all, so apparently I can learn to be less anxious about plants that have winter dormancies, given a few years of things working the way they're supposed to. May the Eucodonia live so long.
---------------
الأحد، 15 سبتمبر 2013
.jpg)
The Life Cycle of Plants
The Life Cycle of Plants
----------------------
Click
here
------------------
Flowers
Flowers
A flower is a part of the plants
called angiosperms that holds the plant's reproductive organs. They are formed
from buds. The flower is attached to the tip of a stem at a point called the
receptacle.
There are four basic flower parts.
They are, going from the outside of the flower to the inside
Sepals: A group of leafy like parts
at the base of the flower altogether called the calyx.
Petals: The colorful parts of the
flower arranged within the sepals - altogether called the corolla.
Stamens: The male part of the flower
within the petals or corolla. They contain sacs holding pollen, the male sex
cells and are called anther sacs.
Carpels: The female part of the flower
at its very center altogether called the ovary and also the pistil. At the bottom
of the pistil are the eggs or ovules which are the female sex cells. When these
tiny ovules become fertilzed with pollen they form seeds. The ovary then develops
into fruit.
The number of flower parts differs
from flower group to flower group and is but one of the ways to tell the different
plants apart. In the monocots, or plants whose seeds have one seed leaf, the
parts tend to come in groups of threes. In dicots or plants with seeds with
more than one seed leaf, the parts tend to come in twos or fours or five.
Flowers can be without stamens, or
without carpels or can have both.
-----------------------
Home gardens: eat what you sow and sell the surplus
Home gardens: eat what you sow and sell the surplus
Sow, reap, eat, sell – home gardens as tools of empowerment. Photograph: Hat Margolis
Could global food security
be achieved by growing tomatoes up a wall and pumpkins on a rooftop? It
sounds unlikely, but food security isn't just about full stomachs.
Adequate nutrition
is also crucial, and helping women in particular to run productive home
gardens could save millions of lives in developing countries.
Research published by The Lancet just ahead of the Nutrition for Growth summit in June revealed that malnutrition kills 3.1 million children annually,
and caused stunting in 165 million in 2011. Micronutrients such as
vitamin A, iron and zinc are essential, particularly in the first few
years of life, and it is women who tend to be responsible for feeding
families.
But women also have unequal access to land and, according to the FAO, receive only 5% of agricultural extension services globally.
This is why some development agencies are putting the tools for good
nutrition into women's hands, helping them make better use of one space
they can control: their homestead garden.
In 2009, Care
International launched an EU-funded Food Security for the Ultra-Poor
(FSUP) project targeting 55,000 women in the north-east of Bangladesh, which included training in homestead gardening.
"The
training showed the women how to use the small space available around
their homestead," says Sekhar Bhattacharjee, FSUP team leader.
"It
demonstrated the use of trellises to grow vegetables, growing
vegetables in plastic bags on the ground, and how to use the roofs of
homes to grow vegetables. The women received training in summer and
winter vegetable cultivation, and were given vegetable seed packets to
begin their own gardens."
The crops grown as part of the project
include cucumber, gourds, red amaranth, spinach, papaya, carrots,
tomatoes, and beans, and they're grown both around homesteads and in
shared community gardens. The harvests may not be huge, but they provide
a year-round supply of nutrients to communities who would otherwise
rely heavily on rice alone.
Homestead gardens have not only
increased access to vegetable and fruits, but have also provided
participating women with income from selling surplus produce. A sample
of 1,614 families taking part in FSUP showed that between December 2012
and March 2013, households produced an average of 53kg of vegetables and
fruits, consuming on average 36kg and selling on average 18kg.
The
impact of this income is just as important as what is eaten directly,
says Larissa Pelham, food security adviser at Care International UK.
"I
can't emphasise enough the importance of getting money into women's
hands," she says. "Suddenly they can make choices in how they spend for
the household. This has a phenomenal impact, and research has shown that
when women have control over household resources, they are likely to
spend it on the wellbeing of the household overall."
This is backed up by findings from Helen Keller International's homestead food production programme which launched in Bangladesh in the early 1990s and has since expanded to Nepal, Cambodia
and the Philippines. HKI works with local NGOs and extension workers to
establish Village Model Farms (VMFs) in villages, which serve as
training and support hubs for women to learn to manage their own
homestead gardens.
"They identify a farmer, preferably female, who
has adequate land for a model farm, and that farmer will get training
and inputs," says Victoria Quinn, HKI's senior vice president of
programmes.
"Other women then come there around once a month in
groups of 20, and the village model farmer who has been trained will
share their knowledge with those other mothers and provide them with
seedlings so they can go and do it themselves."
In a study
of its programmes between 2003-2007, HKI found that in Cambodia, 92% of
households engaging in homestead food production spent the income
earned from garden products on buying more food for the household. In
Bangladesh, the figure was 70%. However, having more food – even a good
variety – doesn't automatically translate into better nutritional
outcomes on its own.
"You have to improve not just food production
but practices too," says Quinn. "You have to provide access to
healthcare and hygiene training, because if children are sick it will
just come out the other end."
Care found evidence for this through another project – Shouhardo
– which bundled training in home gardens with support in maternal
health, nutrition, immunisation and financial services to women. This
package of interventions reduced the incidence of child stunting from
56.1% to 40.4% in less than four years.
"The gardens have an
important role in dietary diversity, but you need a range of other
things going with it," says Pelham. "You need to teach women and
families about sanitation, health and hygiene too. Without that, the
gardens are not a silver bullet."
Meanwhile, climate change is also an increasingly pressing issue for women engaging in homestead gardening, just as in other forms of agriculture.
Flooding in Bangladesh is becoming more unpredictable and severe, and
the 2009 cyclone there increased soil salinity in more than a third of
home gardens but also showed resilience in certain crops, according to
Lalita Bhattacharjee, a nutritionist with the FAO in Bangladesh.
"These
included Indian spinach, sweet pumpkin, and okra. Kang kong, or water
spinach, also flourishes naturally in waterways and requires little
care, making it resilient to the effects of climate change. There's a
need for awareness and knowledge among those households who are reliant
on home gardens for their food and income. Women farmers should be given
training on key salinity coping practices such as mulching with rice
straw to increase retention of water in the soil."
Home gardens
have thrived in Bangladesh and other parts of Asia, and HKI is also
actively promoting them in sub-Saharan Africa now. Perhaps the biggest
challenge, though, is to convince more policymakers that what women grow
in their gardens can actually make such a difference.
"I think a
lot more work has to be done in advocating that this is a really
important part of the solution to food insecurity and undernutrition in
these countries," says Quinn.
"Fruits and vegetables and small
animal husbandary gets short shrift in ministries of agriculture, so we
need to promote the fact that you can produce a lot of highly nutritious
crops this way that will help address the chronic problem of
undernutrition."
---------------
الخميس، 12 سبتمبر 2013
The sward is rich with sedges, grasses and an assortment of herbs and flowers
The sward is rich with sedges, grasses and an assortment of herbs and flowers
Common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii). Photograph: FLPA/Alamy
The sun is hammering Wharfedale, the air is still and exertion
is uncomfortable. Perhaps the fishermen clustered around the lakes,
casually snaking flies across the water, have the right idea. Scoured
clean by glaciers 10,000 years ago, the green mantle of the valley is
still frayed, bald patches of ashen limestone show through on the slopes
and shoulders. This is a big landscape, a broad expanse, not
mountainous but rugged. Kilnsey Crag is reminiscent of the overhanging
cliffs that edge limestone valleys in southern France.
The grass
on the valley floor provides good grazing, but despite its superficial
attractiveness it has been "improved" and has lost its once stunning
bounty of wild flowers.
One fragment has escaped the fertilisers and herbicides. Among the
springs and streams of Kilnsey Park is a gem of a site. Saved by the
slopes, hillocks and boggy patches, the little meadow was too much
trouble to "improve". The sward is rich with sedges, delicate grasses
and an assortment of herbs and flowers. Most impressive are the orchids:
hundreds of thick, pink candles projecting from the green swaddling.
The common spotted orchids, predominantly white with little purple dots,
abound alongside velvety purple northern marsh orchids, and shorter,
pale orangey-pink early marsh orchids. Marsh helleborines are scattered
in one area of the field; the loose, drooping sprays of green buds soon
to provide the next splash of colour.
Minute orchid seeds do not
contain enough resources to start a new plant. Only by forming an
alliance with a soil fungus willing to give the orchid a start in life
can they germinate. It is thought that marsh helleborine shares its
fungus partner with the lady's slipper orchid. Hence this fabled rarity
has been introduced into the field in the hope that it will proliferate
and provide a genetic reservoir should anything happen to the last
remaining wild plant. So far so good: the introduced plants are flourishing, several flowered well this spring, and everyone is waiting to see if they will reproduce.
-------------------
الاشتراك في:
الرسائل (Atom)