Honeybush Melianthus Major

Browsing through the pages of Blipfoto I have noticed that there have been quite a few offerings involving seeds, a favorite subject of mine. They fascinate me with their variety and ingenuity.  In another lifetime, when I was Miss Eastman and a student teacher in a second grade classroom, I did a little project on seeds. It was remarkable how many other subjects could be brought into collecting and arranging of seeds and talking about the ways in which they traveled. 

When OilMan came in and told me that the honey bush had interesting seed pods on it, I went to check it out. This is not such an easy proposition on this property, nor is it recommended for someone in inappropriate shoes (again), but out I went nonetheless.

We planted this plant in our first year here on (yet another) steep slope at the top of our front lawn. The actual ground has now been swallowed up by grasses, Spanish lavender, and dozens of baby agaves, offspring of the giant one which is in the process of sprouting across the driveway and producing dozens more of these interesting but lethal plants. I teetered my way through the lavenders, clutching at razor sharp grasses, and managed to get some passable pictures,  but when I put them up on the computer I realized that the neighbor's dying redwood tree featured rather too prominently behind my shots, so out I went again, this time trying a different route through the thickets of threatening plants.

The main picture shows the unique structure of the seed pods, and I put a picture in the extras of a wider shot for which I risked life and limb. I avoided the dying redwood tree but did get the olive bushes, and a bit of palm and oak tree against the blue sky which took its time appearing today but is quite lovely now, just in time for a glass of wine under the arbor....

Here is a link to the same plant when it surprised us with a rather unusual looking flower a couple of months ago.