Monday, September 11, 2006

Most of the rest of the Peony seeds, somewhat overdue...

All these photos were taken at the end of August... I almost got them posted last week but the Blogger site got hung up. And then more good weather descended and miles and miles passed under the tires of my road bike... Anyways, here they are at last. One species has yet to open its carpels: Paeonia lactiflora, the Chinese Peony, which is predominant in the ancestry of most of our, dare I say common?, "garden peonies".


Carpels of Paeonia mlokosewitschii, the Golden Peony, had taken on an interesting and showy red tone. (These have since opened, but not until about a week ago. Photo to follow)


Paeonia obovata, the third-last of my species to show its seed display.





Paeonia macrophylla, close kin of Paeonia steveniana (some might say identical or close enough to it) but a tiny bit later to ripen seed.



Paeonia officinalis (in this case, subspecies villosa). Not so exotic and showy, but on close inspection the inside surface of the carpels are satiny reddish in tint. None of the officinalis mob here have had the bright red aborted beads; rather theirs are tiny, shrivelled, and brown. Only the viable seed has any size to it.
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An interesting development during an Argentine football (soccer) match I was watching on tv today: one of the Ball Boys got red-carded and ejected from the field (well, the margins of it anyways!). The kids had been taking their time in giving the ball to the visiting team when they had won a throw-in.

1 comment:

Denis Wilson said...

Hi Leo

Argentinian kids understand the true nature of sport - never give a sucker an even break!

Glad you posted the bulk of your seed photos. It seems that P. officinalis is off on its own genetic pathway, even when it comes to seeds. Why not? Everything alse about it is different from the Asian group.

Cheers

Denis