April 2022 Photograph: Colors of spring.
If you have any themes for future contests, shoot me a Tree-mail. I'm really in need of Ideas!!!

It's spring now! Maybe your plants are blooming, or having amazing stress colors. Show them here!
Directions:
Submit a photo that matches the theme. You can submit as many photos as you want.
Have fun!

-Flowers
-Stress colors

I encourage you to like the picture(s) you like the most. You can like your favorite, or if you like all of the pictures, like all of them! I highly encourage you to give pictures Acorns.

This theme will end at the end of April, and a new one will be up in March.

Have fun,
Evan.

Spring colors here in a couple of fresh database pictures. Click to enlarge, the original is not square:



The aloe is green with orange highlights in late fall but turns more of a bluish color at this time of year, with more reddish highlights. It seems like the thing that brings out the stress colors the best is the sharpest increase in light, which is right about now.



The Dudleya is doing what all plants of this species do during spring here in full sun, very much a normal thing for the season.

More database pics of the same species during spring, to give a bigger picture
The first of those 3 dates all the way back to 2012. What a long strange trip it's been. That plant has mothered dozens of offspring including unwanted hybrids, and now I don't even let her flower any more because she's so promiscuous.

We don't have spring here, but I can share some colorful summer here

I had to throw my microdasys away, because it was getting too large, and becoming a hassle. Not to mention it's hard to move with that thing in your car. The cinnamon spined are the most vicious. Opuntia basilaris, yellow, and white spined Microdasys are tolerable.

Here's an Echinopsis hybrid blooming. I think I took this picture last spring.

Plenty of flowers.

Lovely pictures, guys. Thijs, is that barrel cactus the kind that makes edible fruit? I can't tell what it is, but it sure seems to be fertile.

It is F. wislizeni, and yes you can eat the fruit, but I think they do some kind of drying or candying process on them. I have had some that was prepared a long time ago. I am not sure this is pull of the plant edible (well it probably is but I am not sure if it very palatable). It is the outside of the fruit, because the inside is mostly hollow containing a lot of seeds.

This plant essentially bloomed all summer starting in mid-late June. I think it was because it was a good monsoon, with not crazy extreme temperatures.

From August last year:

Yeah I don't think those hollow fruits are particularly worthwhile. Our native viridescens is like that, with a hole at the base to release the seeds. The edible ones I had today (latispinus) are fleshy and soft and sour but not very sweet. I still haven't yet mastered ripeness, because if you wait too long the pulp just starts drying up. The fruit is actually the reason I got histrix, and the reason I have 3 of them.

Regardless of those details, those red flowers are incredibly intense, and the buds and fruits provide sharp contrast. Such a lovely plant as that would last about three days here by the sidewalk, before it sprouted legs and walked away in the night.

This would probably have to be driven away. It is probably not quite obvious from the pictures but that plant is already a beast. It is a good 1.5' across if not a little more and going on that tall. It has the bones to be one of those 6'+ wislizeni behemoths you can find pictures of on the web if keeps growing and does not get to distracted by reaching for the sun and leaning too much to stay upright.

That is not a quick dig and grab.

I wouldn't try digging up that one... Too spiny, and too heavy. Even the pickup truck and salad tongs method won't work. I am wary of putting my plants too near to the roadside after hearing so many horror stories of people's plants getting stolen.

It happens here, but not to big plants and generally to plants in pots. Thing with barrel cacti is that their root system is generally pretty shallow so dislodging that plant is definitely not that hard, but you'd need to buddy lift with a sling to go anywhere with it.

I keep all potted plants that I care about on my tiny front porch in view of the Ring doorbell camera.

Also having a car parked in the driveway (my truck) pretty much 24/7 does give the sense that someone might be home, which works against spur of the moment kind of things which most plant burglaries are.

Aloe hybrid doing its spring thing



Looks like I need to get in there and do some weeding soon.

Gathering together some photos from other threads ...

Aeonium nobile in its usual green form on the patio


Aeonium nobile on 4/9 (sunburn, immediately after the triggering exposure)


Leaf detail showing some colors in transition


And the same plant on 4/19


Now how's that for spring color!

For comparison, here's a landscape plant of the same species, about to flower (very exciting)

Baja_Costero said:

For comparison, here's a landscape plant of the same species, about to flower (very exciting)

Looking forward to seeing those red (more accurately rusty-brown) flowers!