Fremontodendron

After yesterday's exertions, I've gone for a somewhat lazy garden blip today. Not much time for photography in the morning, as Alex and I were at Orton Pit nature reserve helping to cut down hawthorn to make some sunny scallops for butterflies. This part of the reserve has quite a lot of elm, and it's hoped that the clearance will make the area more suitable for white-letter hairstreak. I now have sore hands, as the vicious thorns were able to penetrate the work gloves I was wearing.

I took the photograph shortly after lunch, in a bit of a panic, as the sky seemed to be getting darker and I thought we might be going to get rain. The shot was taken against the very pale grey sky, and is much as it came out of the camera, except for a little cropping.

The subject is a flower of Fremontodendron 'California Glory', which is planted next to the house. I first saw a specimen of this when I was in my teens, and fell in love with the showy flowers, but had to wait for about fifteen years before I had a suitable place to plant one.

It's a native of the USA and New Mexico, and in the UK normally flowers in early to mid-summer. I don't ever remember it producing a bloom as late as this before. It's best grown near a warm sunny wall, and this one certainly survived last winter just fine. The down side of this shrub is that it produces irrritant hairs. I didn't realise this when I planted it, otherwise I wouldn't have put it so close to our greenhouse!

Tomorrow is another busy day - I have to go and survey some woodlands in Oxfordshire, so I may well catch up with commenting on Saturday.