Passionflowers and carpenter bees

At mid-day in the meadow, the passionflowers open up. Our native passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is a lovely sprawling vine (sometimes a bit too sprawling, but it's easily pulled up when it gets out of hand). Each flower only lasts for a day, fading quickly. They're pollinated by carpenter bees, who drink the nectar pooled at the base of the flowers. I noticed this bee busily working one of the flowers about noon. Check out the pollen on its back! It's such a great example of how flower shape is adapted to promote cross-pollination. As the carpenter bee takes up nectar, pollen is continuously brushed on its back, to be transferred to the next flower visited.

This bee had so much pollen on its back that it was getting down around its mouthparts. Apparently, the pollen doesn't taste good, so she/he busily cleaned up, taking a break from nectar drinking.

Yard long beans and ants

I've loved growing yard long beans (Vigna unguiculata ssp. sesquipedalis) for the last few years; they're so unusual-looking, productive, and tasty, with the added bonus of beautiful flowers and attractive foliage. I first noticed yard long beans in Asian markets, marveling at their size and the flexibility of the pods. They're incredibly heat-tolerant, being native to Africa, and are easy to grow. (They were first domesticated somewhere in North Africa, and then spread throughout Africa, India, and Asia. In the process, cowpeas and yard long beans were selected for their different characteristics.) Interestingly, an older gardener in Belton told me that her mother grew yard long beans here in SC, perhaps the field pea relative that's also viney. Cowpeas are documented to have been brought from Africa by slaves. Yard long beans (also commonly called asparagus beans) can be snipped up and cooked like green beans, and have a lovely taste. Another nice aspect is their beautiful flowers, which have extrafloral nectaries visited actively by ants.

Heat and more heat

I heard on the radio today to expect the heat wave to continue through late August. This was not welcome news. The afternoon thunderstorms have been non-existent lately and even the hardy perennials need watering. My friend Meg's husband Joey grew up in this area, and remembers that the thunderstorms came like clockwork every afternoon at three. Not much evidence of them currently.

I ran the hose on all of my vegetables (they're waterhogs, of course), but we're now watering plants that normally never droop.

A climate change specialist mentioned on our public radio station today that rain events more than an inch had greatly increased over the last decades. It went from something like 8% of rainfall events were over an inch to 12 or 15%.