Lilac to purple

A few flowers from around my block.

Lilac. It seems everybody here has a lilac bush. The streets are perfumed.

Unidentified flowers growing in a great mound by a driveway. Beautiful, even the dying ones in the centre.

I had to sit on the curb for this one. A tiny, tiny vetch, growing in cracks in the cement.

Zooming in.

Vetches can be differentiated from most of the other members of Fabaceae by the fact that the terminal leaflet of each set of leaves is actually a tendril. (Islandnature.ca)

Purple iris

Zooming in. A "come hither" wave for pollinators. The yellow pollen banks remind me of the opalescent nudibranch.

Wordless #2

(Well, almost wordless. It's been a busy, stressful week. Purple vetch is calming.)

Return to Colony Farm

Colony Farm, along the Coquitlam River, used to be one of our favourite places to walk, before we moved to Delta. We returned this afternoon, after years away; it's as beautiful as ever.

Heading northeast along the Coquitlam River.

The section we walked through this time is mostly open grassland; well-watered bottom land, sun-drenched, fertile, and bursting with life.

The tufted vetch (Vicia cracca) that grows knee-high in our vacant lot reaches chest height here.

Detail. "... dense, 1-sided clusters of 20-50 flowers." (From Pojar & MacKinnon)

The flowers were buzzing with bees, bee mimics, and the inevitable mating soldier beetles.

And a black-and-red Stink Bug, Cosmopepla lintneriana, 5mm. long.

With the flower head he came on, in my collecting bottle.

The rest of the story will wait until tomorrow. I'm stiff and sunburnt and weary and I'm going to bed.