More Flowers

Above:  Cryptanthus warasii.  Ooooooooooh!
Previous post:  flowers at home, this post, flowers from the Huntington--we attended something called the "Desert Forum", an opportunity for several local Cactus & Succulent clubs to visit the Huntington's Desert Garden and buy some plants.  

We had coffee and donuts in the Desert Conservatory.  Caffeine, sugar, and plants:  heaven! 

It got crowded.  

We got out of the tumult and went looking for Aloe flowers.  
Blogger in habitat:

More Aloes flowering.  Aloe x princips, 'David Verity', and ferox

 Rupestris, maybe

 Arborescens, x princips, marlothii...

 Aloe marlothii and yellow flowers on the Euphorbia cooperi behind it.

 Orange form of marlothii, maybe, and a ferox, and more x princips. 

 A big Crassula ovata, commonly called Jade plant.  A popular houseplant--I've never understood the attraction.  Growing up in Southern California, Jade plant is what you'd see in vacant lots, the remains of gardens where everything else had died. 

 Aloe aculeata, soon to open.  A most attractive Aloe. 

 Another ferox, perhaps

 Aloe barbarae is the majestic tree;  Aloe africana on the right.

 We had to move on towards the plant sale.  Past some lovely Camellias. 

 A delight to see a few bearded Iris cultivars in bloom.

Some other kind of Iris--Siberian?  Pacific Coast?  Gorgeous, whatever it is, even flopped in the mulch.

   A big (8'+) Mahonia showing off under an Oak

 An orchid or two in the tropical conservatory

 Pleurothallis marthae:

Several Acorn Woodpeckers in a dormant Magnolia

Acorn woodpeckers peck cubby holes into trees and store acorns in the cubbies.  There's a big Phoenix canariensis in the Desert Garden with a trunk filled with acorns that must be their work.
 
 The tropical Conservatory looked like a space ship beyond the conifers.

Time for the plant sale!  If the Desert Conservatory was the storm, the plant sale was the tornado. 

  Here's what came home:

Another Maireana sedifolia, for the Fall Project area,  two Agave victoriae-reginae 'Snow Queen', a dwarf form with plentiful white markings,  Gasteria nigricans var nigricans variegated, and Aloe bargalensis, from the northeastern tip of Ethiopia.  It holds its white longitudinal stripes as it matures.  Fun day.