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A very clear advantage of my new camera is the more than double amount of megapixels. My old camera has 5.0, the new one 12.1. Today I
took a close-up picture of what I think is called a bract in English (schutblad in Dutch), a 'flower petal' of a hopplant's female flower, a hop (hopbel in
Dutch). The picture below is a crop but has kept it's nice quality thanks to the large amount of pixels. You can clearly see small yellow grains at the base
of the bract. Those have the bitter taste for which Hop is used in the brewing of beer. Hops are composed of these bracts, as can be seen clearly on the
beautiful drawing in the book 'Nederlandse Oecologische Flora' (Dutch Ecological Flora) (part 1 of 5) and on several pictures in the diary of the summmer of
2009 (like this one, that can be found in the entry of August
29th 2009. Though they're nothing like Orchids or Roses which are commonly regarded to as beautiful flowers, I think most people think hops are beautiful as
well. Perhaps most people don't realize these are flowers as well though. The Flora also writes about the use of Hop for brewing beer of course. It says the
use of Hop was mainly promoted by monasteries starting from the middle ages, perhaps to reduce the use of Bog Myrtle (Myrica gale, Gagel in Dutch)
because of Myrtle's wicked action. Myrtle is treated in the same part of the Flora and there it says this plant was used, in spite of bans, for centuries to
add spice to beer. The plant's aromatic oil is toxic and can make you feel high, something the Christian church doesn't approve of of course.
There are still quite a few hops on the plant in our back garden, though most are evidently falling apart. Those bracts can be found pretty much everywhere
in our garden. No wonder, as the Hop (had I mentioned it's scientific name is Humulus lupulus yet?) flowered quite abundantly last year. The back
neighbours have a male Hop growing in their garden, which flowered quite abundantly as well last year. I don't know if they planted or sowed it, but for some
reason I don't think so. I guess it's very likely our Hop has set seeds, as fertilization only needs a bit of wind and the plant of our neighbours is only a
couple of meters away from ours. Not that we need more Hop plants...
The string the Hop climbed along to the iron tube between our shed and garage (for beating mats) has broken. But that's ok, as the old Hop liana are still
strong. The fresh plant will be able to grow along those this summer.
Something very different... There was a plant growing beside our house that, according to a plant expert friend was either a Goat Willow (Salix caprea,
Boswilg in Dutch) or an Apple tree. Either would grow into something too big for the place where it was growing, so I re-planted it in the back garden. It'd
be nice if it was a Goat Willow, as in that case we might have a couple of Willow species in our garden that flower more or less successively in the early
spring. Goat Willow flowers in March/April as does the Grey Willow (Salix cinerea, Grauwe Wilg in Dutch), when exactly depends on the weather, but I
think Goat Willow flowers first, followed by Grey Willow. Both are very important for early flying insects. I'm also trying to get White Willow (Salix
alba, Schietwilg in Dutch) to grow in our garden, which flowers in mid spring, around April/May. All these Willows are very important insect plants.
Their nectar and, for male plants, pollen, are very important food sources for the first insects that fly around and for their larvae. The leafs, which for
Goat and Grey Willow appear after flowering, are important food sources for all kinds of insects and their larvae. In short, great garden plants if you like
to see some life in your garden!
But what I actually wanted to say about that possible Goat Willow is that after re-planting it, it has grown about 10 cm. Very curious to see what it'll
become. An apple might be nice as well of course, though I guess that might be a bit harder to keep small enough for our garden. We'll see! It's the twig in
the last picture by the way. :)
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