Elephant Rhubarb

This is a photograph of the leaf of a giant gunnera plant (I'm guessing gunnera manicata?) taken at Trebah Gardens in Cornwall. Along with other curiosities (including a Stumpery and bamboo maze), the Gardens sport a Gunnera Passage, which winds along underneath the huge leaves of these plants. They have giant spikes on their stems, and their leaves are several foot across (there's even a picture of me pretending to sit on one). It was one of my favourite areas in the garden; it's very cool to feal like a tiny midget creature creeping along in the shade of leaves the size of umbrellas.

Even though gunnera manicata is known as Elephant's Rhubarb, it's not related to rhubarb at all and sadly isn't edible. If it were then I guess we'd be one step closer to solving the world food crisis because one stalk could probably feed you for a week - some of the stalks were as thick as my arm. Interestingly, although rhubarb is usually classed as a vegetable, it's legally a fruit in the United States. For tax purposes.

Also, rhubarb leaves are poisonous, although you'd have to eat about five kilograms for it to kill you. In news of other toxic plants, I recently discovered that wild almonds are all poisonous as well! They contain cyanide. So if you're ever wandering desolate through a forest and you're feeling peckish, avoid anything that looks almondy.

Raspberry Ripple Flower, and a Fact of the Day

The pattern of these petals is stunning and reminds me of an interesting thing, which I hereby present to you as my Fact Of The Day: some flowers have markings on their petals which we can't see, because they reflect UV light that our eyes don't pick up. Certain pollinating insects can see into different spectral bands than humans, and the flowers' colouring reflects this; sometimes what appears to us as a fairy unexciting bloom looks quite different if you use a camera which is able to record ultra violet or infra red light. There's a really nice website here which has photos of different flowers shown as they normally appear to us, and coloured to show the UV patterns and fluorescence which we can't see. Some of my favourite examples include this picture, which I think is featured in Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show On Earth, this very jazzy example, and this rather dramatic bloom, which clearly shows the "bulls-eye" pattern that a lot of UV-patterned flowers exhibit.
So next time you see a rather plain and insipid bouquet, just remember: perhaps it's your eyes and not the flowers which are at fault...