Garden chat & photos for torts and people ♫ ♫

Prairie Mom

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Hello, my wonderful Forum friends! All your photos are so pretty! I'm enjoying some nice vacation time and you've been on my mind. Here's a photo of my Mavis taking a break in the strawberry leaves.
mavis strawberry.jpg
And another just because my tortoise baby is growing and I'm a proud mamma!
mavis sidewalk.jpg
I'm working on building a new winter habitat for her and will probably be posting for help later.
 
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Cowboy_Ken

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Here's a fun one I found (?)


Seven complete specimens of new flower, all 100 million years old
15 Aug 2017, 11:17 AM
ImageUploadedByTortoise Forum1502859589.987007.jpg
Tropidogyne pentaptera. 100-million-year-old fossilized flower identified and named by OSU researchers George Poinar Jr. and Kenton Chambers. (Image courtesy of George Poinar Jr., Oregon State University)
A Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus rex bulling its way through a pine forest likely dislodged flowers that 100 million years later have been identified in their fossilized form as a new species of tree.

George Poinar Jr., professor emeritus in Oregon State University's College of Science, said it's the first time seven complete flowers of this age have been reported in a single study. The flowers range from 3.4 to 5 millimeters in diameter, necessitating study under a microscope.

Poinar and collaborator Kenton Chambers, professor emeritus in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences, named the discovery Tropidogyne pentaptera based on the flowers' five firm, spreading sepals; the Greek word for five is "penta," and "pteron" means wing.

"The amber preserved the floral parts so well that they look like they were just picked from the garden," Poinar said. "Dinosaurs may have knocked the branches that dropped the flowers into resin deposits on the bark of an araucaria tree, which is thought to have produced the resin that fossilized into the amber. Araucaria trees are related to kauri pines found today in New Zealand and Australia, and kauri pines produce a special resin that resists weathering."

This study builds on earlier research also involving Burmese amber in which Poinar and Chambers described another species in the same angiosperm genus, Tropidogyne pikei; that species was named for its flower's discoverer, Ted Pike. Findings were recently published in Paleodiversity.

"The new species has spreading, veiny sepals, a nectar disc, and a ribbed inferior ovary like T. pikei," Poinar said. "But it's different in that it's bicarpellate, with two elongated and slender styles, and the ribs of its inferior ovary don't have darkly pigmented terminal glands like T. pikei."

Both species have been placed in the extant family Cunoniaceae, a widespread Southern Hemisphere family of 27 genera.

Poinar said T. pentaptera was probably a rainforest tree.

"In their general shape and venation pattern, the fossil flowers closely resemble those of the genus Ceratopetalum that occur in Australia and Papua-New Guinea," he said. "One extant species is C. gummiferum, which is known as the New South Wales Christmas bush because its five sepals turn bright reddish pink close to Christmas."

Another extant species in Australia is the coach wood tree, C. apetalum, which like the new species has no petals, only sepals. The towering coach wood tree grows to heights of greater than 120 feet, can live for centuries and produces lumber for flooring, furniture and cabinetwork.

So what explains the relationship between a mid-Cretaceous Tropidogyne from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and an extant Ceratopetalum from Australia, more than 4,000 miles and an ocean away to the southeast?

That's easy, Poinar said, if you consider the geological history of the regions.

"Probably the amber site in Myanmar was part of Greater India that separated from the southern hemisphere, the supercontinent Gondwanaland, and drifted to southern Asia," he said. "Malaysia, including Burma, was formed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras by subduction of terranes that successfully separated and then moved northward by continental drift."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Oregon State University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

George O. Poinar, Kenton L. Chambers. Tropidogyne pentaptera, sp. nov., a new mid-Cretaceous fossil angiosperm flower in Burmese amber. Palaeodiversity, 2017; 10 (1): 135 DOI: 10.18476/pale.v10.a10
 

Jacqui

Wanna be raiser of Lemon Drop tortoises
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Hello, my wonderful Forum friends! All your photos are so pretty! I'm enjoying some nice vacation time and you've been on my mind. Here's a photo of my Mavis taking a break in the strawberry leaves.
View attachment 215672
And another just because my tortoise baby is growing and I'm a proud mamma!
View attachment 215673
I'm working on building a new winter habitat for her and will probably be posting for help later.

You have been on my mind a lot lately. Glad to see this post!
 

Yvonne G

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Hello, my wonderful Forum friends! All your photos are so pretty! I'm enjoying some nice vacation time and you've been on my mind. Here's a photo of my Mavis taking a break in the strawberry leaves.
View attachment 215672
And another just because my tortoise baby is growing and I'm a proud mamma!
View attachment 215673
I'm working on building a new winter habitat for her and will probably be posting for help later.


Oh, Chrissy! I'm so glad to see you here. How are all the kids? Your tortoise is looking good!!
 

Jacqui

Wanna be raiser of Lemon Drop tortoises
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Same color but not with the extra stuff, But on July 4 I did snatch a small double bloomer the same color from a friends yard ad plan on gathering seeds later. Do all the blooms on that bush look like that one pictured ?

Yes all the blooms are like that.
 

Yvonne G

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You have some beautiful rose of sharon. I love the double pink.
 

Jacqui

Wanna be raiser of Lemon Drop tortoises
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Guys I SO ENVY all of your ROS bushes!!!! I have none! And that's changing this Fall and this coming Spring

Come on over and help yourself to some of the newest clearance ones I still have in pots. ;) Every year I just pick up more once they go on clearance. The oldest one is probally about 20' tall and about as round. It took years, but I finally have a few babies that came up volunteer... and all come up in bad locations like in the walkway. :rolleyes:
 

Pearly

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Come on over and help yourself to some of the newest clearance ones I still have in pots. ;) Every year I just pick up more once they go on clearance. The oldest one is probally about 20' tall and about as round. It took years, but I finally have a few babies that came up volunteer... and all come up in bad locations like in the walkway. :rolleyes:
I know right?! The volunteers always come up in the least appropriate place but I hate to disturb them bcs typically they grow to be the fullest/prettiest plants, like Mother Nature at work selecting the strongest best quality seed to grow in the spot where it's conditions are right for it. And thank you! I would totally swing by your place if you were in driving distance. Would love to have some of your ROS's baby plants. It's good DNA worthy of perpetuating
 

Jacqui

Wanna be raiser of Lemon Drop tortoises
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I know right?! The volunteers always come up in the least appropriate place but I hate to disturb them bcs typically they grow to be the fullest/prettiest plants, like Mother Nature at work selecting the strongest best quality seed to grow in the spot where it's conditions are right for it. And thank you! I would totally swing by your place if you were in driving distance. Would love to have some of your ROS's baby plants. It's good DNA worthy of perpetuating

So far I only transplanted one and only because I had no option. It survived and is growing now in the baby sulcata enclosure. I have a couple more that really are no option too, but are okay at their current size.
 

MichaelaW

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Some blooms from south Texas.
 

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