Botany Primer

In recent years I’ve regretted not taking an introductory botany course in college, so I was glad when I got an e-mail the other day pointing to a free pdf document called Botany Primer. That 79-page illustrated primer is the first link at

http://plantworldnews.com/category/links/

which also provides links to other documents you may find interesting.

UPDATE: See the additional free resource that’s linked in the first comment below.

Ungnadia speciosa blossoms

So much has been going on in springtime Austin that after the last 11 posts about New Zealand I’m turning back to Texas again for a while before going ahead with another round of pictures from Aotearoa. That alternation makes me wonder why we English speakers almost always say back and forth but hardly ever forth and back? For anyone who’d like to be a trendsetter, I encourage you to use forth and back in a post or an e-mail sometime soon. To be fair, maybe you should keep going forth and back between back and forth and forth and back.

In any case, let me go forth and get back to plants by saying that botanists classify the Mexican buckeye tree as Ungnadia speciosa, where speciosa means ‘showy.’ This picture of blossoms on March 28th along Rain Creek Parkway in Austin shows why that species name was chosen (aside from the fact that botanists probably couldn’t figure out how to say ‘long curving bright red snout’ in Latin).

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman