Ed. note: The blogging bryologist, Mary Flagler Cary Curator of Botany, Bill Buck, is back! This time, Buck is reporting from Tasmania where he is researching mosses for a week before flying to Melbourne for the International Botanical Congress.

Thursday, July 14, 2011; Pyengana, Tasmania, Australia

Bill Buck searching for bryophytes

Winter reared its ugly head again today. Sunrise was at about 7:00 a.m., and as soon as it became light, it was obvious that a heavy frost had whitened the landscape, including our car. So, after thawing out the car, we headed to our first site, the Weldborough Pass Rainforest Walk.

Under the canopy, the frost hadn’t covered everything, and since our primary stop that day would be at a much higher (and thus much chillier) elevation, checking out the forest, which is dominated by large southern beech (Nothofagus cunninghamii) with an understory of large tree ferns (Dicksonia), seemed like a good idea. The multitude of tree ferns at this locality was a special treat. We found a large number of bryophytes and lichens (as well as epiphytic ferns) that prefer the spongy, moist root mantles that comprise the tree fern trunks. We also found quite a large number of mosses that we had not seen before. It took a while for our fingers to thaw from the morning chill but the collecting helped keep us active and warm. In fact the collecting was so good that we ended up staying in the Weldborough Pass Rainforest an hour longer than we had scheduled. We decided to quit at a very good time, though, because as we were packing our collections into the car trunk, two other cars of tourists drove up to use the trail. We cleared out in a hurry before they could see the divots and scars we had left from our collecting!

More mossy adventures below.

Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education.

Daylilies start appearing in the garden in June, but the heyday for these flowers is in July. Starting from the beginning of July until the third or fourth week our Daylily Walk is awash with color. This is happening right now at the Garden!

Daylilies are generally grown for their large, trumpet shaped blossoms that jump out at you in a mixed planting, shouting ‘look at me’. And you should; they come in a vast array of shapes, colors and sizes and there are over 52,000 cultivars to choose from–many of them garden worthy companions.

When you are navigating catalogs and descriptions to find a daylily that suits your gardening style there is a basic terminology that is helpful to know. The throat is the interior of the flower, the eye zone lies just above it forming a band of color on the petals, and a halo is a faint band of color.

Some daylilies are bi-colored, some are doubles and some have a graceful recurved (curling backwards) shapes. While size, color and form are generally the attributes that gardeners assess when buying a daylily, fragrance is another factor to consider.

Learn more about fragrant daylilies below.

We’re just overachievers.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen