The state of Minnesota has 43 species of native orchids. Its rarest orchid is called the Queen's Lady Slipper, which reigns in the state's bogs and damp woods.
Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State, for a grass that flowers blue and yet the grass in Kentucky is generally...green. Our Botanic Notable column this week takes a look at the plant that gave a whole genre of music its name.
The Bodhi Tree is a sacred fig under which Buddha found enlightenment, and the Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka, grown from a cutting of the Bodhi Tree, is considered the oldest tree planted by human hands and is more than 2,000 years old. These two botanically notable trees have a sacred and interesting history.
Rambling over the desert steppe and into our romantic visions of the American West, the iconic tumbleweed is the Clint Eastwood of plants—an itinerant survivor that seems to thrive on solitude, parched land, and a mean wind.
Queen Anne's Lace is a weed, but an undeniably beautiful one, whose botanic descendent is the domesticated carrot, and named for the royal lace-maker Queen Anne of Scotland.
If you're the type of person to travel the world for its flora, grab your favorite Indian Ocean field guide and head to Socotra, a remote island that is home to the legendary dragon's blood tree.
In South Africa's coastal grasslands, to explore a forest is to walk along its canopy—indeed, it's the only way to observe an extraordinary group of so-called underground trees, where only the uppermost leaves and branches are visible. Tucked away and protected from so many environmental threats, they underground forests are considered all but immortal, with estimated ages of 13,000 years or more.
We've all seen neat tree houses, but did you know that there's a tree church? In France, the Chêne Chappelle (Chapel Oak) is 800 years old, houses two tiny chapels in its hollow trunk, and was said to have been visited by William the Conqueror himself.
The dandelion is a flower of medieval legend and contemporary ignominy. It is also a master of survival. A profile of the unpopular flower may seem blasphemous, but, in the garden it is best to know your enemy.
A desert plant, the Welwitschia mirabilis is beloved among botanists who seek the very old and the very strange. It's a living fossil that survives in the desert, neither a typical succulent or a cactus, and neither a shrub nor a bush. It has been named a dwarf tree, and a director of the Royal Botanic Gardens once described it as "the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country, and the very ugliest."
