We don’t have mountains in Kansas, but we do have sunsets. Last night’s was a full 360°. Here’s a portion of it. (Click to embiggen and see in better color; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.)
Category: Photo gallery
My home parish
Visit the little church where I attend Mass here.
(The linked panorama is composed from five photos taken with a fisheye lens. I also made a much larger panorama from 37 wide-angle shots (printed at 300 dpi, it would be nearly eight feet wide and four feet high), but it’s larger than I want to upload to this site, and it has some annoying glitches.)
Not Lady Whiskey …
… but Queen Beer. Specifically, Doritaenopsis Queen Beer, a cross of Doritis [or Phalaenopsis] pulcherrima and Phalaenopsis Meteor, which I picked up at a raffle last month.
For Lady Whiskey, see A. Powell, T. Turner et al.
A useful site for those interested in orchids: a list of abbreviations. Of particular note are the man-made intergenerics. Some orchids have eight or more different genera in their parentage, e.g., “Sya. = Sallyyeeara = [Brassavola x Broughtonia x Cattleya x Cattleyopsis x Diacrium x Epidendrum x Laelia x Schomburgkia x Sophronitis].”1
Not an orchid: Pleiospilos nelii at about five months.
Lilies, spines and more
I took a lot of pictures this weekend, which you can view at the following links:
One advantage to taking pictures at Botanica on a wretchedly hot and humid July afternoon: you have the place pretty much to yourself, without swarms of pesky kids running all over.
The name game
Belamcanda chinensis. Or is it Iris domestica? Or Pardanthus chinensis? Or Morea chinensis? Or Ixia chinensis, Gemmingia chinensis, Vanilla domestica or Epidendrum domesticum? Taxonomists have too much time on their hands.
There are more pictures from Saturday’s trip to the botanical garden here.
Not an alien, nor a triffid …
… just Mammillaria scheideana at one year, much enlarged. Actual size is about an inch in diameter.
Ad orientem
The big 360° panorama I did yesterday didn’t turn out properly, and I’m not publishing it. I did salvage a piece of it, above. It’s the altar of St. Anthony Church in Wichita, east of the central business district.2
St. Boniface parish was erected in 1886 to serve German-speaking Catholics in the Wichita area, and a wooden church was built the next year. Franciscans took up residence around 1890. When a more permanent church was built during the first decade of the 20th century, it was named for the Franciscan St. Anthony of Padua. Nowadays the best place in the area to find German Catholics is western Sedgwick county, and St. Anthony has become a center of Vietnamese Catholic activity.
Update: Here’s the quick and dirty version of the panorama, using five images taken with a fisheye lens rather than 37 at the wide end of a cheap but sharp zoom. It’s much smaller and less detailed than the large one, but it gives you an idea of what the interior of the church looks like. I hope to return soon to the church, preferably on an overcast day, and make a full-size panorama that meets my standards.
Snack time
Most websites give you cookies whether you’re hungry or not, but how many serve coffee cake? Come back next week; there might be brownies.
Update: And here are some brownies with crispy edges, in stereo.
Soft and fuzzy …
… but not the least bit cuddly. I paid another visit to the botanical garden this morning. There are more pictures here.
Aerial photography
Some recent pictures from a dance rehearsal. There are more here.
A little something extra
The Phalaenopsis orchids I got back in November have been doing well, so I picked up a few more at an auction yesterday.3 When I took some close-ups of the ones in bloom, I discovered that I had acquired more than just orchids. The plant below is in isolation until the insecticide arrives later this week. (Click to embiggen; right-click and open in a new window to see at maximum size.)
Purple dragon
The botanical garden recently added a “Chinese” garden. It doesn’t look like much yet, despite the big ceramic dragon on the wall leading to the little pagoda, and the plants that catch your eye are as likely to be American as Asian. I did spot the tree peony above there yesterday, which is definitely Asian, albeit Japanese. It’s Paeonia suffruticosa “Kokuryu-nishiki”, first introduced at a Yokohama nursery in 1905. The name, according to at least two sources, means “Black Dragon Brocade,” though Giggle Translate says “Small clew nishiki.” More pictures from yesterday’s visit are here.
Spiny, fuzzy and smooth
Last year’s seedlings are approaching their first anniversary. I’m gradually potting them up individually, which will take a few weeks.
The samurai orchid
The Neofinetia falcata (or Vanda falcata) that I got back in November survived my inept care and is now in bloom. It’s a small plant, almost a miniature. The blossoms are about five-eighths of an inch across, and the length, including the spur, about an inch-and-a-half. This, I gather, is on the small side; an inch across and two-and-a-half long is more typical, according to what I’ve read. At night the flowers smell like vanilla with a slight hint of lemon.
I’ve mentioned before that the Japanese obsessed over these little epiphytes.4 Cacti, which would have been unknown in Japan until the later 19th century, turn up in everything from Martian Successor Nadesico to Elf Princess Rane, so there ought to be an occasional Neofinetia here and there in animated shows. But, as far as I know, there isn’t. Perhaps there’s one in the later episodes of Hyouge Mono, which I never finished, but probably not. I can’t think of any shows featuring orchidaceae.
Typical Kansas afternoon
Snapshots from the local renaissance faire on a dreary March day. (The calendar says “April,” but the thermometer doesn’t agree.)
Update: there are more pictures here.
Caution: if there are Scotsmen toting cabers in the area, make sure that they are heading away from you.
Greenhouse in detail
Greenhouse at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas
I spent last Sunday afternoon at Southwestern College in Winfield, where there are a couple of humid greenhouses filled with orchids. Above is a panorama from inside the smaller greenhouse. It’s the largest panorama I’ve made yet, assembled from 37 individual pictures: 29,186 x 14,593 pixels, which works out to more than 400 megapixels. You can read the labels in the pots if you zoom in. It’s best viewed in full-screen mode.
If that doesn’t work for you, try the lower-resolution Flickr version below. (Panoramas in Flickr don’t work well in Safari, unfortunately.)
I also took some conventional photos in the other greenhouse, which you can see here. I wasn’t able to take as many pictures as I had hoped, unfortunately. There was the inevitable society business meeting, which wasted half an hour. That was followed by a slide show, which wasted the remainder of my time there. Why would I want to look at pictures of orchids when I can see the real thing the next building over? Grrr.
The view from the front porch
The seasons in Kansas tend to get a bit scrambled. After several weeks of April weather, it’s back to February today.
Hanami II
The Yoshino cherry is coming into bloom now at the botanical garden. Unlike the crypto-British Okame cherry I photographed earlier, this one is a genuinely Japanese variety. (Click to embiggen and see with better color.)
Other colors on display include red-orange,
pink,
purple
and yellow.
There are many more pictures from yesterday’s outing here.
Bright color for a dreary morning
Hanami 2018
Yesterday, the Okame cherry at the botanical garden reached peak bloom on a sunny day with light wind, and I was able to visit there then. Most years this doesn’t happen, so I took a lot of pictures to record the event. There are more here. As usual, click to embiggen and view with better color.
Curious fact: although Prunus “Okame” is a hybrid of asian cherries and has a Japanese-sounding name, it was actually bred in England.
