Focal point

The eye is rather drawn to the male cone on this Dioon mejiae n'est-ce pas?

It's a specimen grown in a bit of shade which may account for the somewhat stretched leaves. It's nice for once to post a cycad and be able to say it is doing well in the wild. D. mejiae is native to Honduras and, whilst plants are being lost to habitat clearances, burns and general degredation, its thought there may be as many as 1 million wild adult plants there making it perhaps the most abundant wild cycad in the world.

As that earlier link also shows this is up there with the giant cycads in size as well as abundant. With trunks up to 10 metres this is a genuine tree of a cycad. Big plant, big population, general awesomeness. Nice.

Another ancient...

Monday's Ginkgo wasn't the only survivor of prehistory in that little public garden......

This is a Podocarpus, I think perhaps Podocarpus salignus - the long-leaved Manio. Podocarps are fairly primitive conifers which once formed primal forests across the southern supercontinent Godwana. Continental drift and evolution of more modern species has left about 150 Podocarpus species spread across strongholds in South America, Australasia and the Southern African countries with a few remaining in Asia, the Caribbean and Central America. In the UK this forms a small mop-headed tree with a rather different looking foliage to what one might expect.

With its small size and predictable shape this is another ancient tree whose tolerance of ranging conditions makes it an ideal specimen for the urban park or garden.

Wordless wednesday - white and frilly

The problem with these white double Camellias is that, like other pure white and frilly things, they tend to show up any marks or stains. This was the closest I could find to perfect.

Some thoughts on goldfish

Many of my readers probably have ponds (why? because you're wildlife people) and I suspect many of them have goldfish in them. I thought having done a post on sturgeon I really should also do a post on one of the world's most popular pets: goldfish; so here it is.

First up a couple of ground rules on the keeping of goldfish:
1) Don't release your goldfish out of your pond/fishtank into the wild. Goldfish are almost certainly not native to your region, they are very prolific, they will probably eat local wildlife and may hybridise with native species like crucian carp.
2) Don't release your goldfish out of your pond/fishtank into the wild. Seriously. I' sick of seeing them in wild ponds and rivers - and there are plenty of people that will take them if you make the effort to look.

So now we've got that out the way lets consider goldfish in ponds.

I think the first question is whether to put goldfish in your pond or not. There are reasons to go without fish, your pond may attract more wildlife without them - especially if it is very small when goldfish will tend to devastate anything coming in. You may also choose to go with something different; perhaps a native - sunfish in the states, various minnows and cyprinids in Eurasia, all sorts of cool stuff in aus. These alternatives are well worth considering..

If you do go with goldies in your pond then I think the next step is to take a genetic approach. Why? Well your goldfish will spawn and you will end up with a load of fry. I did in less than a month of putting 10 goldfish in my pond this year. As a result you want to think about attractive looking babies. You may also want to think about introducing fish from varying sources to try and add a little diversity to the gene pool.

young goldfish fry

As a result of this fecundity you want to think about introducing stock which will produce nice offspring. I've gone with a mix of Sarassa Comet types (red and white, long caudal fin) and common goldfish of varying shades of gold and red. I'm hoping this will result in the herd's offspring being attractive fish with deep reds, some having white markings and good fin development.I think a bit of white in the mix is good as it gives your fish some character and makes individular red and white fish easier to recognise.

Try to steer clear of fish like the one in the middle with the black back when buying. Red and black fish may be very attractive but goldfish fry tend to colour up as they age by turning from black to red with the back the last to change. In other words this fish will probably turn red as he ages anyway.

For ponds one should also avoid the more elaborately finned fishes. Those varieties with double tails will invariably struggle to compete with other fish and to move around quickly enough in a large pond. I've also added some shubunkins. I suspect the orange goldfish will predominate in future batches of offspring with the odd orangey-looking shubunkin showing up too.

In terms of raising your goldfish offspring, in most ponds with plants they'll do it themselves. If there are no plants then the adults may canabalize their offspring but then nobody's perfect.

Fallen gold.

Sometimes plans go awry. The tree below is said to be the oldest Ginkgo biloba in the British Isles. I have no means to confirm that but it seems similar in size (slightly smaller perhaps but its not in such a favourable position) to the famous Kew specimen. The plan was to capture this spectacular specimen backlit with its leaves turning that spectacular shade of golden butter yellow almost unique to Ginkgo. Instead I got this:

You can see a few branches still clad in yellow but due to a week of high winds and a lack of timing on my part the yellow was now in the form of a carpet.

Happily I can think of worse things to look at than a carpet of golden ginkgo leaves. Much more artistic as a floor covering than a shedload of toxic fake sunflower seeds.