Many-flowered Sunflower

This is Helianthus x multiflorus, the Many-flowered Sunflower. Picture taken August 19, 2010.

Link to Helianthus x multiflorus:

Alocasia and Colocasia

This is an Alocasia, cultivar 'Calidora'. Alocasia, along with Colocasia, Xanthosoma, and Caladium are commonly called elephant ear plants. They are all members of the Araceae family of plants. As a rule of thumb the leaves on Alocasia go in the same direction as the petioles, usually pointing upwards. The leaves on Colocasia and Xanthosoma are attached at an angle to the petioles, usually pointing downwards.

Link to Alocasia:

Link to Araceae:

This is another Alocasia at Purdue Horticulture Gardens.

Here are two varieties of Colocasia esculenta. The Colocasia with the speckled leaves is Colocasia esculenta 'Mojito'. The plant with the black leaves is Colocasia esculenta 'Imperial Illustris'. Pictures taken August 13, 2010.

Link to Colocasia:

Link to Colocasia esculenta:

Link to Colocasia and Xanthosoma on Purdue campus:

Link to post on Caladium:

Castor bean plant 'Carmencita'

This is a castor bean plant, Ricinus communis 'Carmencita'. Picture taken August 8, 2010.

Link to previous post on Ricinus communis:

Link to Ricinus communis:

Carmencita was the first female performer in the movies, here is a link:

Pulmonaria longifolia ssp. cevennensis

This is Pulmonaria longifolia subspecies cevennensis. The cevennensis part of the name comes from its native locality, the mountainous Cévennes region of southern France. Picture taken August 7, 2010.

Link to Pulmonaria longifolia ssp. cevennensis:

Link to Pulmonaria longifolia:

Link to description of Pulmonaria longifolia (PDF file):

This plant's region is the setting of Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, one of the first works of outdoor travel literature.

Link to Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes:

My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march of Vivarais and Gévaudan. The hills of Gévaudan on the right were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. Black bricks of fir-wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river; the only bit of railway in Gévaudan, although there are many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell me, a station standing ready built in Mendemap. A year or two hence and this may be another world. The desert is beleaguered. Now may some Languedocian Wordsworth turn the sonnet into patois: ‘Mountains and vales and floods, heard YE that whistle?’

At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of Vivarais, the modern Ardèche; for I was now come within a little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not a sign of man’s hand in all the prospect; and indeed not a trace of his passage, save where generation after generation had walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the beeches, and up and down upon the channelled slopes. The mists, which had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. It was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction for the human heart. I own I like definite form in what my eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes were sold, like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of twopence every day of my life.

--Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

Rudbeckia nitida 'Herbstonne'

This is Rudbeckia nitida 'Herbstonne'. This is an ornamental commercial Rudbeckia cultivar thought to be derived either from Rudbeckia nitida or Rudbeckia lacinata or both. The true native Rudbeckia nitida is native to parts of the Southeastern US and is an endangered species. This cultivar should not be used for habitat restoration as it could outcompete and displace the original native genotype.

Picture taken August 7, 2010.

Link to Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne':

Link to Rudbeckia nitida:

Painted Lady butterfly on Tithonia

This is a Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) feeding on the Tithonia rotundifolia at Purdue Horticulture Gardens. Picture taken August 7, 2010.

Link to previous post on butterfly on Tithonia:

Link to previous post on Painted Lady butterfly:

Zinnia marylandica

This is Zinnia marylandica 'Zahara Coral Rose'. Picture taken July 27, 2010.

Link to last year's Zinnia marylandica post: