Back to botany mode¹, and in that vein there are a couple of botanically-oriented carnivals with new issues just out. The first is Berry Go Round #15 at Mary Farmer’s A Neotropical Savanna. An expert botanist herself, Mary presents a nice selection of March blog posts with themes ranging from spring (or not), tropics and the Southern Hemisphere, evolution and extinction, research, and food. The second is Festival of the Trees #34 at Seabrooke Leckie’s the Marvelous in Nature. A naturalist of many talents, Seabrooke has collected posts on trees from around the world and introduces them with her usual sagacity. I have contributions in both of these carnivals, but of course, you’ve already read them!
¹ One caveat – it occurs to me that I needn’t be apologetic every time I switch to botany mode – the name of my blog is, after all, Beetles In The Bush 🙂
On to business – it’s quiz time again, and while much of the country moves into spring mode, winter hasn’t yet lost its snowy grip completely. These pictures were taken in the waning days of winter, and I have my suspicions that somebody out there is going to ace this test considering the abundance of clues that have been dropped over the past week or so. In addition to the plant identities, bonus points to anyone who can identify a key commonality among them. As usual, comment moderation has been turned on for the next couple of days or so to give all an equal shot.
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2009
Beetles In The Bush 
Greetings Ted — We’ll be getting out our ID guides and trying to identify these, since none are immediately familiar to our mid-western eyes. What is remarkable is to realize that these trees are as recognizable to some people by their cones, needles, or silhouettes as our conifers are to us. This nation is so vast and represents so many habitats — it just shows how much exploring there is to do!
I have no idea about the IDs, but I, too, am waiting for the bug season to start! Can’t wait!
Okay, either this quiz was harder than I expected, or everyone is suffering from quiz fatigue.
Oh well, here are the answers:
#1 – White fir (Abies concolor)
#2 – Red fir (Abies magnifica)
#3 – Incense-cedar (Calocedrus decurrens)
#4 – Sierra juniper (Juniperus occidentalis ssp. australis)
#5 – Mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana)
It was a hard one. The quizzes are fun, hope you keep doing them!
Thanks, Huckleberry. Hopefully I can make the next one easy enough to at least get some guesses.
That is a great photo of the Incense-cedar in the quiz (that was the only ID I was able to correctly answer)
Thanks, buzzybeegirl – I love those ‘trunk-up’ shots of the really massive trees. There’s another one of ponderosa pine in my Winter botany quiz #3 post and one of coast redwood way back in my Muir Woods National Monument post.