Hibiscus
Houghton is always so beautiful in mid-June, when the hibiscus bloom. Like this beautiful Chinese Hibiscus
. . . and if any of you checked that link before going further, you might be thinking “wait juuuuuuuuust a minute here. That’s a tropical plant! Are you seriously suggesting that you can grow those in Houghton, of all places?
Well, no. Not really. Not unless you grow it indoors. This one is in the front atrium of the Dow building, which houses the biology, geology, and environmental engineering departments at Michigan Tech. And somebody has decided that a hibiscus will make a nice indoor potted plant.
They really do have very nice blossoms. They start out like this:
And open up like this:
Here is a closeup of the actual business end of the blossom, with the pollen-bearing anthers (male part) about halfway up, and the pollen-receiving pistils(female part) looking like some weird sort of puffy suction cups at the end.
When the flower closes up, the anthers are enclosed, but the pistils are still exposed. I don’t know if they can still take up pollen at this point, but it sure looks like they could.
OK, so we aren’t going to get these going feral outdoors anytime soon, but it actually turns out that we do have related plants that will grow here. It seems that hibiscus are a variety of mallow. And back in 2016, I found these Musk Mallows growing beside the road. And while the flowers aren’t quite that big and showy, they are still pretty substantial, and it is certainly possible to see the family resemblance:
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Good hummingbird plant
We can grow these outside here in San Diego. About 30 years ago, we had a horrendous infestation of whiteflies which massacred our hibiscus. Hibisci? Anyway, I had lots of them and they all died. Curse you, whitefly!