A fortnight ago to Wisley to see what was cooking there, our last visit having been in January, as noticed at reference 1, a visit for which the photographic record is dominated by the dry department of the big hot house. A department for which I have a soft spot, and which may have provided some of the motivation for the current flirtation with phyllotaxis, this being very visible in the patterns made by the leaves of many of the plants there.
No problem getting across the A3/M25 interchange, but we did manage to miss the turning to Wisley, which meant carrying on more or less to Guildford before we could turn around. Where we passed a sick Wellingtonia on a roundabout, but it was not convenient to stop at that particular point. Having arrived on one navigation failure I thought it prudent to take a couple of sighting shots from the car park which should have helped with finding the car, had we lost it on the way out. Which is not as silly as it sounds given the size and number of car parks.
Next stop the cafeteria where I took tea and sausage roll. The tea cup was on the heavy side and the roll was one of those flaky confections which are popular at the moment, lots of rather fatty meat inside, dripping oil and not very thoroughly cooked in this case. But no harm ensued.
The overall impression of the gardens was lots of fine flowers - including lots of onions of various sorts. And, having recently acquired some camassias ourselves, we were pleased to find some meadows in which there were lots of them.
But we started with a handsome, wall-mounted magnolia, Magnolia delavayi, named for a Catholic missionary to China. With the Magnolias being an ancient lineage, older than bees according to reference 2.
While the Magnoliaceae are the second family listed in the reference 3 catalogue, out of well over a hundred, corroborating the ancient theory. Plants organised on rather simple lines, mostly pollinated by beetles attracted to their strong smell - without there being any nectar on offer. It seems that the Lirodendrons which attract my attention from time to time are a somewhat anomalous genus in this family. That aside, the arrangements of the many stamens, carpels and seeds look like they are well worth the attention of a phyllotaxist.
What I do not get, or at least not yet, from reference 3, is a sense for what make magnolias different from everything else. What are the distinguishing features?
Some quite decent foxgloves. More spirals.
Not like the liriodendron, aka tulip tree, aka state tree of Kentucky, on West Hill (at Epsom) at all.
Not least because of the variegated leaves. On the other hand it was called Liriodendrum tulipfera 'Snow Bird'.
Wikipedia admits to a variety which has variegated leaves, so maybe these handsome trees, similarly shaped by pruning and snapped in Vancouver, are the same.
A very striking and showy tree in the bright noon-day sun. Either the label had gone missing or I failed to note it, but Google Images says some kind of dogwood, possibly the Japanese dogwood (Cornus kousa) of reference 4. Something to check on our next visit: I believe there is a facility whereby you can ask in which bed a particular plant is to be found, so maybe time to give it another whirl. Helped along by both beds and plants being labelled on the ground.
There were a lot of roses. All shapes and size and some very handsome, both plant and flower.
The edge of one of the camassia meadows.
A heavily zoomed snap of some tower blocks to the northwest (I think). With the zooming leaving a curiously rectangularised effect on the trees on my laptop, an effect which may survive publication here. Looking at the map, we have the Woking-Weybridge corridor in that general direction, but picking out these particular buildings in the absence of a bearing is pretty hopeless. Oddly enough, I had thought to take a compass on this occasion, but didn't.
A cluster of very smelly trees on the way to the hothouse. BH found the smell obnoxious, but all kinds of insects thought otherwise as the flowers were covered with them. The ticket said 'Crataegus persimilis (Prunifolia Spendens)', but there was what looking like common or garden hawthorn sprouting just below what I took to be the graft, just above ground level. Wikipedia, at reference 5, says a US variety of the common hawthorn, and I did not see anything about the smell. That said, Horton Lane is quite smelly when the hawthorn is out.
Next stop the 'Company of Cooks' in the cafeteria next to the hot house, an establishment which served us well on our last visit. Started with the same fizzy drink that I took last time, mainly made from concentrated grape juice, label and branding notwithstanding, plus something which might have been described as cheese straws. Very light and insubstantial they were too, but perfectly edible.
Followed by a mushroom risotto, the whole providing balance to the Gregg's style sausage roll with which I started the visit. A very civilised establishment, very comfortable inside, out of the sun.
And so into the hothouse, where the first plant to catch my eye was the whale fin snake plant, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rather short Wikipedia entry does not say how it got its name.
Are they whorls or are they spirals? Can one be sure without taking the thing apart?
A fruit with six segments, rather than the popular five? Google Images not too clever on this snap.
But does rather better with this one, suggesting the Crown Imperial, which I did not know was a variety of fritillary, Fritillaria imperialis. Which seems quite plausible, but a closer look is needed in the morning. The fruit looks spot on, but I have no idea how specific this particular form is. Maybe there are lots of them. In the meantime, see reference 6.
Closed the day by inspecting some large carp in one of the ponds. One wonders just how much grub one of these fish, some of them perhaps half a metre long, need to keep them going. Are they fussy about what they eat? Do they eat each others' offspring? Their own offspring? I think I once read that crocodiles are not particular in that department.
In the course of the day we passed just three people showing any kind of tattoo and just one person with a fag on. A bit slack compared with the Saturday morning show at Epsom. Nevertheless, another good visit.
PS 1: while writing this, Microsoft Start has brought me the news that our former fat leader has lent his support to convicted felon Trump, using his column in the 'Daily Mail' as a platform. As one fat conman who thinks that rules and telling the truth are for little people to another? Real men go to Putin's parties. A reminder that we had Trump-lite here, and might, if we are not careful, get the the real thing one day in the future.
PS 2: the next day: the back garden turned up three three-lobed seed cases, snapped above. From the top: dwarf iris, bluebell and ceanothus, this last being a shrub with showy blue flowers. OK, so the wrong number of lobes and the wrong size, but the general idea is clearly common enough.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/overdue-visit.html.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnolia.
Reference 3: Guide to flowering plant families - Wendy B. Zomlefer - 1994. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornus_kousa.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crataegus_persimilis.
Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritillaria_imperialis.
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