multicoloured redwoods

When we got the chance to plant a little arboretum, the redwoods and other primitive things featured heavily - 12 or so years since the first plants went in here's a few pics (some of these plants are a lot younger than 12 though). Some of the images are bigger than others as they just didn't downsize and retain any detail I'm afraid. So this is the standard Giant Sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum in the arboretum as a colour control.....

and this is Sequoiadendron giganteum "greenpeace" which, unsurprisingly is green....

but this is my favourite form in our collection Sequoiadendron giganteum "hazel steel". I found 2 of these in a nurseries discount clearance section for 4 quid. nice! The tree itself.....

A close up on the fabulous blue needles....

We're not the only ones with a Sequoiadendron taste though. I spotted this in a front garden down the street which I believe is either S. giganteum pendula or barbarits requiem.

If it is either of those trees, a front garden is probably not the ideal place for it but who am I to judge?

Agouti

Another mammal from Hato el cedral's garden and pool. This is an agouti and a very tame one at that. I suspect he was probably habituated to humans as a rescued baby as he was happy to approach people and liked having a scratch (which triggered a bizzare trembling behaviour). The hair of these is very coarse and wiry interestingly.

Agouti are fairly big rodents; fruit and seed eaters which disperse rainforest fruit and provide food for a variety of species including humans. In fact, as this one shows, they can be quasi-domesticated and as a result of this local tribes introduced them to a number of Caribbean islands including Grand Cayman as a food source (rabbits arrived in England in the same way ).

There was another mammal in the garden, a species of armadillo. Unfortunately I didn't get shots of it for a very good reasons. What were those reasons you ask? Well I'll tell you. I first saw an armadillo trundle across the lawn as I left the room to go to breakfast. I grabbed my camera and discovered that, due to the rooms aircon, all I got were steamy window shots. of a grey blob. I relaxed, convinced I'd see another and mentioned it to our guide. No worries says he, there is a nearby field where they are plentiful. We'll drive through it on the way out this morning and get plenty of shots.....and so it came to pass that we were driving through a grass field sat in the back of an open-backed safari truck when all hell broke loose. I became vaguely aware of a few insects buzzing around and suddenly our guide, Rafael, was flicking frantically at his hair and banging on the back of the truck cab shouting "GO! GO! GO!". It took me a moment to assess what was happening and then the penny dropped - we had disturbed and were now under attack from a swarm of Africanised or Killer Bees! I pulled my fiancee to the opposite side of the cab from Raphael - he'd already been stung and I knew the bees released a pheromone when they stung that effectively instructs all the other bees to target this spot - I determined we should be as far away from that spot as possible. Discretion truly is the better part of valour. Behind the truck, a black swarm looking remarkably like that which would feature in a cartoon was tracking us. The truck was now doing about 45mph across a very bumpy field and the main goal now was not to fall out and get left with the bees! We eventually put space between us and the bees and regrouped. Raphael had taken 7 or 8 stings, the missus 1 and the driver and I had somehow come out unscathed. Had we been on foot we'd have been absolutely screwed. As it was we let the armadillos have that field to themselves. I think the experience may have limited the chances of my persuading my better half to let me have a beehive somewhat too.

Wordless wednesday - low wire act....

Commensal goby on wire coral, Philippines 2006.

A funny coincidence.

So remember how I was pondering the vagaries of listing as a result of my (failed, multiple) attempts at twitching a vagrant american duck (and national first) at a time when I didn't have blue tit on my list? Well yesterday as I passed the reservoir I noticed some birders parked up and when I stopped a kindly gentleman pointed to something hidden in the bushes which eventually resolved itself into this:

Lesser scaup, Aythya affinis, although I prefer the colloquial name Little Bluebill (according to wikipedia). So I got my lost yank duck after all and still with no blue tit on my list.

Just then a flock of long-tailed tits flew past into the surrounding trees and with them was this little chap.

Not the best photos of either species but a fabulous coincidence n'est-ce pas?

Ghost cycads in the sky

Obviously the true plantsman (or plantswoman) is not going to settle for a hanging basket of trailing petunias when there are so many awesome plants in the world and cycad fans are lucky enough to have an epiphyte of their very own to address the hanging basket issue. This is Zamia pseudoparasitica, a cycad that lives in trees!

Interestingly there is an argument this is not a true epiphyte, in the wild Z. pseudoparasitica produces a huge and long tap root that finds its way down to the ground. Apparently big one's often fall off the opposite side of their branch to their tap roots with the result they end up hanging upside down by a single root just below their branch. There is a paper on the subject here with some amazing and bizarre photos.

Why "ghost cycad" in the title (other than then obvious lyrical reference)? Surely its not another endangered cycad? Well in this case the ghost refers to the memory of another specimen alongside this one. This was taken at Fairchild Tropical Garden which, in the aftermath of a Hurricane a few years ago cleared itself up to find a few very rare cycads had apparently been stolen to order - at least one of these was part of the lost batch.

That is not to say this species is safe in the wild; it is not and it is also (obviously) habitat dependent in a way many other species are not. Happily this one had a cone on it. To me, this looks like a female cone which has been fertilised (hence the slightly lopsided shape where some ova have been fertilised and others haven't) but I could be wrong - obviously at height it wasn't easy to look at.

King Rat

So having shared some photos of, and raved about, Florida's beautiful corn snakes I must make a confession, the corns were not my favourite of the week's snakes (nor were the pythons), hell - they weren't even my favourite rat snakes of the week. Why? Well because from the moment I saw it, this was always going to be the top critter of the week.

As you can probably guess from its size in comparison with the yellow lines; this was a pretty big snake. To be a little more specific this is a pretty big Everglades Rat Snake, Elaphe obsoleta rossalleni. I probably don't have to tell you that seeing a fat 5 foot bright orange snake in your headlights as you drive a quiet road is a pretty awesome sight. I think that is part of the reason I enjoyed this one so much - it was so spectacularly obvious as to be almost unbelievable which was how I felt about my first experience of proper roadcruising: I couldn't believe it was so easy and so much fun.

'Glades rats are (depending upon whose taxonomy you listen to) a subsepecies of the black rat snake and so are technically the same species as that monster grey rat snake that FC posts from time to time though it looks completely different. It would live a similar life too cruising the forest eating small rodents and reptiles and making the odd foray for nestlings or eggs. All the while looking absolutely spectacular. I would say that critters like this make me understand why so many amercians move to Florida but apparently for many of them these guys are absolutely not a reason to move home (at least not to move toward them!). People are strange. How could you not love this guy?