What's blooming now?
By Richard Cretcher

The featured bloom this week is the Lippia queretarensis, a specie similar to Lippia found in the US called frog fruit. It is a tiny flower with extraordinary features that are easy to overlook. The actual size of the bloom is about that of a dime. In this enlargement, it's easy to see the purple gumdrop center surrounded by white petals with red, orange, yellow and magenta accents in a marvelous display of artistic design and color.

Since many area flowers are small, but well worth examining up close, a magnifying glass or a digital camera with macro capabilities is a good tool to take on flower walks. Many point and shoot cameras, set in the macro mode (flower icon), allow photographing as close as a few inches from the subject. Further enlargement in prints can result in ten to twenty times larger than life-size images.

Another plant with interesting characteristics is the pegarropa. Two species are found locally and both accurately perform their Mexican/Spanish common name. Those who walk through a patch of these plants may find the Velcro-like leaves plastered to their clothing.

Other wild flowers blooming now are agritos, peonia, cabezona, ojo de vibora and amor seco, all pictured in Flores Silvestres.

Richard Cretcher has published the wild flower pocket guide Flores Silvestres and will be conducting wild flower walks for the benefit of El Charco on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month starting August 8. For more information or to reserve a space, contact nzerriffi@yahoo.com.
 
Every Tuesday morning El Charco hosts a tour of the gardens and flowers with Mario Mendoza, Assistant Director of the garden. The tour includes a visit to the nursery that contains many rare species and is not usually open to the public.

Entrance fee is 30 pesos (waived for members) and the tour is 50 pesos. For information call 154-8838 or email charcodelingenio@gmail.com.