Flowers and leaves and taking today carefully

 Maramataka


Tamatea-a-aio (or Tamatea Kai-Ariki)


A time to be aware of your surroundings, be prepared for the unpredictable.
Things may appear calm but under the surface things may be churning and bubbling.

Miss W and I were meant to be on an excursion to the beach today with kohanga, Miss W was keen for a day at home relaxing after 3 full days before another excursion to a farm tomorrow. This was before I looked at the maramataka and I am pleased I listened to Miss W and we stayed home.

Toddlers and preschoolers are already unpredictable on an outing without the added pull from the moon.

Me tūpato! - Be careful.

A dozen words to describe a leaf...

Module 2: Plant Portfolio is covering the identifying features and appearance of flowers and leaves.
With a leaf we look at the shape, margin (leaf edge), dispostion and venation (speard of veins). With leaf shape there are a heap of descriptive words e.g ovate, oval, obovate, awl-shaped,lineal, elliptic and heaps more. Thankfully I don't need to memorise all of these shapes, yet... It also turns out that one leaf could fall in to several shape categories... Thank goodness we live in 2020 and I have a couple of plant ID apps on my phone to identify these shapes while I learn them.

There are also simple leaves and compound leaves - this made my head go what?! I thought a leaf was a leaf.. A simple leaf would be say a Kawakawa leaf, one whole solid structure sprouting out from the branch or it's bud. A compund leaf looks like several leaves such as a fern when in fact all those littel leaves make up the one compound leaf! 

Compound leaves also branch in to compound categories:
  • Palmately compound - leaflets are arranged like the fingers on a hand. The leaflets radiate out from the centre of their attachment to the petiole, which is again attached to the twig.
  • Pinnately compound - leaflets are attached like the vanes of a feather.

         If a pinnately compound leaf consists of paired leaflets it is called even pinnately compound.

         If it has uneven number of leaflets, it is called odd pinnately compound.

  • Bipinnately compound - (or twice pinnately) leaflets of a pinnately compound leaf are divided themselves as well.
  • Trifoliate - leaves with three leaflets, e.g. white clover.
I also never gave much thought to the arrangement of leaves, turns out since I was little I have been drawing leaves in an opposite leaf arrangment, there is also alternate leaf arrangements and whorled arrangements (like on our tī kouka - cabbage trees).

First there are leaves then there are flowers

Did you know a group of flowers without foliage leaves is called an inflorescence? An individual flower on a plant is a solitary flower.
There are also different types of inflorecences, some common ones:
  • Raceme - single stem of flowers arranged on small stalks along the stem
  • Spike - single stem of flowers with no stalks, like a raceme but these flowers develop directly from the stem and not borne on stalks
  • Panicle - main stem is branched one or more times
  • Head - dense cluster of stalk-less flowers (aka capitulum)
  • Catkin - soft hanging group of small unisexual flowers
  • Cone - male and female 'flowers' of conifers

Update on W's Plants

Red cabbage growing strong and a little basil has appeared - NW little garden successes

The 2 successful swan plant seedlings (of 6) that were planted in mid-August

From our weekend planting - 4 sunflowers are hatching and one swan plant is about to emerge; $10 flower propogation set from The Warehouse for the win!


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