Lambs-Ears or Stachys byzantina is a cute plant that most of you will already be familiar with. It has silver furry foliage and is widely grown in gardens. I took these photos on 08 December 2020 in the Dunedin Botanic Gardens. It was flowering and being visited by bumblebees. New Zealand.
Click on any photo to enlarge.
I like the form of the flower heads.
They cover an extensive bank area that’s behind a large rock retaining wall, in the Mediterranean Garden.
I’ve previously posted photos of this area, taken Christmas Day 2019. It was extremely busy with visiting bumblebees that day!
Text and photos by Liz; Exploring Colour (2020)
They look so furry and stroke-able – plant substitutes for pets! It’s a long time since I’ve seen these growing but now I feel I should grow some for visiting bees. 🙂
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Gotta have some lambs ears 🙂
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This may be a bit too frivolous, and a part of me tried to stop me from writing this, but I can’t shake the impression that they’re standing there with their hands on their hips and sticking out their tongues at us.
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Frivolous comments happily accepted! Your description is especially apparent in my second photo where I see a whole face with eyes, and even fingers waggling at the side of the head like some rude child from the schoolyard teasing another – or alternative hands-on-hips just as you described 🙂
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We have lots of that stuff but I don’t remember seeing it flower. I wonder if you get a super special variety…or I’m just not very observant!
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The one that’s common in NZ gardens does send up flowers although I’ve seen advice that they should be trimmed off to keep the plant compact. I’m glad the Gardens people let them flower! In our last garden I’d planted a variety that hardly sends up any flower heads and it has larger leaves – that being the reason I’d bought it. I loved the big felty leaves and I loved the name – ‘Big Ears’ hahaha 🙂
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I’ll watch this stuff closely during the summer to see what it does.
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