Victoria Regia Water Lily at Pantanal Matogrossense, Brazil
While we have published many photos of the awesome Victoria waterlily being grown at the NYBG, I’m not sure we’ve ever shown them in the wild. So, here you go! ~AR
(Source: lalulutres, via condenasttraveler)
Brazil to Count Every Tree in the Amazon
Or at least come to a close-as-possible estimate, anyway. With deforestation still a significant threat to the world’s largest rain forest (despite a major reported drop in cutting since 2004), Brazil is making further moves to step up and take action. But to start, they need to know what’s there to protect.
Over the next four years, teams will be sent throughout the Brazilian wilderness (which encompasses 60% of the Amazon), recording the trees present at 20,000 different sites. That includes species IDs, population, height, diameter, soil composition and more. Not exactly a small-time undertaking.
With perseverance, Brazil is hoping to bump down deforestation by at least 80% of 2004 levels in an attempt to stave off the end of one of nature’s great accomplishments. Click through for more. —MN
So gorgeous. Makes me want to jump on a plane and go visit my colleagues in Brazil! What a way to pass a Sunday. ~AR
Botanic Garden in Curitiba - Brazil. There is a reason why sunday afternoons are so empty: the slow stroll of tourists here and there, the sound of laughter around the lake, sweat pouring like weekend rain under the South American almighty sun, football, television madness and the expectations of tomorrow. Sundays can be hard but they tend to be pretty.
I can barely comprehend how amazing the Instituto Inhotim must be. In the “middle of the Brazilian nowhere,” the brainchild of the mining magnate Bernardo Paz, Inhotim is a botanical garden, experimental art space, and open-air museum spanning over 1 million square meters in southeast Brazil (it was also recently profiled by the New York Times). A bit closer to home, each day we’re getting closer and closer to the official opening of Manolo Valdés Monumental Sculpture, our own exploration of art and landscape. Has anyone been to Inhotim? I would love to hear what you thought! ~AR
(via Inhotim: Bernardo Paz’s Botanical Eden of Sculpture - Newsweek and The Daily Beast)
The difficulty of keeping most passion flowers in your own garden is almost inversely proportional to the number of exotic varieties they come in. But I suppose that’s sort of evident of the commonly held belief that beauty is equivalent to rarity and fragility. —MN
(Source: sleepyeyedboy)
The Tipuana of Rua Gonçalo de Carvalho
Executing the perfect display of nature in the midst of an urban jungle requires nuance and a complementing hint of the untamed (we like to think we’re decent at this). And the people of Porto Alegre, Brazil, seem to have it down.
The road known as Rua Gonçalo de Carvalho takes a stunning landscape concept and launches it into the stratosphere. Often called a “living tunnel,” the planting of Tipuana tipu—or rosewood—on either side of the throughway shades three blocks of residential neighborhood in spectacular fashion. Almost pushes me over the peak of motivation to learn Portuguese.
Click through for Treehugger’s write-up on this, the most noble of urban aesthetics (in my unsolicited and laughably snotty opinion). —MN
A handyman, José Carlos Mendes Santos, working in the Bahia, Brazil backyard of amateur plant-hunter Alex Popovkin, has discovered a new plant, the Spigelia genuflexa. The plant is named genuflexa for its unique habit of bending its fruit-bearing branches down to the ground so that seeds are deposited safe and sound into the soil. The action is similar to the North American-native peanut.
Sure. Here are just a few of my favorites (in no particular order):
11 Prairial: Fraise (strawberry, Fragaria spp., including various hybrids and other cultivars)
It turns out that the end of the eighteenth...
New York Botanical Garden
Yes, mushrooms growing in our library in Sunnyside.
What did you expect to find?
Artist Philip Haas installation of the Four Seasons in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyard at the NYBG (New York Botanical Garden)....
Imagined conversations from bygone times
What do we want?
A robust variety of naturally-occurring flora in bloom for campus beauty and...
Botanical Gardens, Bronx, NY.
People just accept that I love the New York Botanical Garden and look at the pictures of the pretty things.
BTW NYBG I love the new Native Plants...
