GRAPEVINE Snow Monsters, Osage Orange, Roger’s Red, Black Beauties, Mushroom Bees, Acorns, Shady Conifers, Garden Edit, Smelling Plants, Melanthium, Scarlet Mallow, Nasturtiums, Salutary Gardening
Aurora Australis, Tasmania, April 2018. Photo Kent Wellard, Western Advocate.
What makes a snowflake special? Photo and article at Chemistry World.
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer someone else up. – Mark Twain
Arboreal ‘Snow Monsters’ Overrun Northern Japan Every Winter
Intense, relentless Siberian winds blow clouds and fog over the region’s native Maries’ fir trees, enveloping them in a thick, granular coating of ice called rime. The result: Once-verdant forests are transformed into throngs of “snow monsters,” or “juhyo,” as they’re called in Japan.
Smithsonian
Osage Orange In Winter
I seem unable to resist thorny, spiny, and prickly plants not in spite of those painful features, but because of them.
Louis the Plant Geek
Vitis ‘Roger’s Red’
The colorful grape known as ‘Roger’s Red’ has become a popular ornamental vine, valued for its brilliant red fall color, vigorous growth, and ease of cultivation.
Pacific Horticulture
Five Favorites: Black Beauties
There’s such a mystique about black flowers, especially, that it’s clearly very tempting to include “black” in plant names and promotional hype, even when it’s nowhere near the truth, and to be heavy-handed when adjusting colors for catalog photos.
Hayefield
Will Mushrooms Be Magic for Threatened Bees?
Beekeepers in the United States lost an estimated 40 percent of their colonies between April 2017 and April 2018. But we might be able to save honeybees at least from this parasitic scourge without chemical intervention.
New York Times
Acorns: The Inside Story
At least 450 species of oak populate world wide. Some 30 species in the United States have been used for food and oil.
Eat The Weeds
My Favorite (Unexpectedly) Shady Characters
Here in the South, full sun is often too much for some traditionally “full sun” conifers and ginkgos, but they will tolerate and even thrive in part shade (four to six hours of sun each day) or even shadier locations.
American Conifer Society
Garden Edit
This year, perhaps for the first time, I really like my garden.
Rooting for Ideas
Plants can smell, now researchers know how
Plants don’t need noses to smell. The ability is in their genes. Researchers have discovered the first steps of how information from odor molecules changes gene expression in plants.
Science Daily
Melanthium
Melanthium is a genus of four species from eastern North America in the Melanthiaceae family commonly known as bunch flowers. …Species of this genus are considered poisonous.
Pacific Bulb Society
Hibiscus coccineus; Red hibiscus, Scarlet rose mallow
Hibiscus coccineus or Hibiscus coccinea is a vigorous, sturdy, erect, woody-based perennial that typically grows 3-6′ tall and features showy, hollyhock-like, 5-petaled, bright scarlet red flowers (3-5″ diameter) borne in the upper leaf axils of the plant over a long, mid-summer to early fall bloom period.
North Carolina State Extension
Durable, Delectable Nasturtiums
I can’t think of better annual flowers than nasturtiums. Not only are they fast and easy to grow–a bonus where the growing season is short — but they look and taste good, too. In fact, nasturtiums are so easy to grow that many home gardeners overlook them.
Charlie Nardozzi, National Gardening Association
13 Reasons Why Gardening Is Good For Your Health
The results of a multitude of research is now showing what gardeners have intrinsically known for generations – that gardening is good for your health.
Fran Sorin, Gardening Gone Wild
The earth belongs to the living, not the dead.—Thomas Jefferson
Virginia Bunchflower, Melanthium virginicum. Photo Kansas Native Plants.
Hibiscus coccineus. Photo i_am_jim, Wikimedia Commons.
My Education of a Gardener 
Thank you for the link to the article about nasturtiums. Not many would choose to write about them. I happen to really dig them.