Sunday, July 03, 2005

Wayne's world

The other day Wayne at Niches caught a cicada emerging and photographed it.

We used to find the shells (exoskeletons) everywhere as kids, but I hadn't found many lately. So after saying that publicly, of course I immediately started finding them everywhere.

I had told Wayne that we used to wear them around like brooches when we were little. I made my husband demonstrate:



Wayne is about four hours east of us, but at almost the same latitude, so why are his Bottlebrush Buckeyes (Aesculus parviflora) blooming so much earlier than ours? Blog-scooper!


Not yet blooming.

12 comments:

Wayne Hughes said...

Ahh, but they're getting there! Look at those pretty spires! Mine were there for a month before they finally flowered up - maybe that delay is variable or something. Or maybe Athens is just *special* :-)

I love the cicada brooches. Hint: String them together with a snakeskin for special effect!

Happy Fourth!

Anvilcloud said...

Is this a type of Veronica?

Rurality said...

Wayne - well there is REM to consider... :)

Anvilcloud the only Veronica I know is one with little blue flowers. And the one that hangs out with Archie.

Anvilcloud said...

:) I think it's commonly called Speedwell here. Does that help at all? The flowers are spikey, but my cultivar is less elongated than this.

Karen Schmautz said...

EWWWW...wearing cicada skins as jewelry. Although, I guess I shouldn't talk because we used to throw old, dried up cow pies around like frisbees. Kids are weird.

We call it speedwell, too. I love that stuff.

Maktaaq said...

Cicada jewellry?

During the research phase of my cockroach article, I received two cicada exoskeletons as a gift. Looking at them now, they would look good as a pendant, too.

Anonymous said...

And the one that hangs out with Archie.

Well, and there's me.

But buckeye's a tree, an Aesculus, and of the zillions of veronicas, I don't know of any that are woody. (Stop that.) And "Veronica" is the official genus name anyway, just also used in English. And if that's not muddles enough I can always write more.

When I was a pro, I used to plant some veronica somewhere in clients' gardens by way of signature. Sometimes it was a prostrate form called "Veronica repens" and I'd have to put the back of my hand to my forehead and declaim, "Non, je ne regrette rien!"

Rurality said...

Anvilcloud, the Bottlebrush Buckeye is a huge bush - I got kind of close in on the flowering parts so maybe you can't tell from that pic. Anyway all the Veronica/Speedwell I know is pretty small, and like Ron said, non-woody. So they are probably not related, unless there's a bush form that I'm not aware of.

Hick I won't bring up what we used to do with lightning bugs!

Maktaaq maybe I could sell some to that taxidermy jewelry site, LOL.

Edith, I mean Ron, how could I forget?! Well probably because everybody I know named Veronica actually goes by some other name.

Anonymous said...

My bottlebrush buckey finished blooming a few weeks ago, and I'm not all that far from where you are. There are at least two varieties that I know of, though, and the serotina, variety blooms a few weeks later than the species, according to Dirr.

Anonymous said...

My bootlebrush buckeye finished blooming a few weeks ago, and I'm not all that far from where you are. According to Dirr, the variety serotina blooms a few weeks later than the species, so maybe that explains it.
Grace

Wayne Hughes said...

What an excellent couple of comments about the two varieties of bottlebrush and the delayed flower - I even have Dirr and didn't notice that! (And it is definitely bottlebrush!)

And Karen, I bet I know what you did with lightning bugs.

Rurality said...

Dangit I definitely need to get that Dirr book. It's been on my list for a while. :)

Oh Wayne, yeah it wasn't a very nice thing to do, even to a bug. Poor little bugs.