DESKTOP 3240 - PERIWINKLE

Vinca major, with the common names bigleaf periwinkle, large periwinkle, greater periwinkle and blue periwinkle, is species of flowering plant in the family Apocynaceae, native to the western Mediterranean. Growing to 25 cm tall and spreading indefinitely, it is an evergreen perennial. Vinca major is a commonly grown ornamental plant in temperate gardens for its evergreen foliage, spring flowers, and groundcover or vine use. It can become weedy, especially in moister climates.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

DESKTOP 3191 - FRENCH LAVENDER

Lavandula stoechas (French lavender, Spanish lavender, or topped lavender) is a species of flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae, occurring naturally in Mediterranean countries. It is an evergreen shrub, usually growing to 30–100 cm tall and occasionally up to 2 m high in the subspecies luisieri.

The leaves are 1–4 cm long, greyish and tomentose. The flowers, which appear in late spring and early summer, are pink to purple, produced on spikes 2 cm long at the top of slender, leafless stems 10–30 cm long; each flower is subtended by a bract 4–8 mm long. At the top of the spike are a number of much larger, sterile bracts (no flowers between them), 10–50 mm long and bright lavender purple (rarely white).

This species is more fragile than common English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), as it is less winter hardy; but harsher and more resinous in its oils. Like other lavenders, it is associated with hot, dry, sunny conditions in alkaline soils. However, it tolerates a range of situations, though it may be short-lived. Selected forms are grown as ornamental plants. The cultivar 'Willow Vale' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

DESKTOP 3152 - BY THE SEA

Williamstown Beach in Melbourne Australia.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

DESKTOP 3012 - BEE AND ANEMONE

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme.

DESKTOP 2513 - IRIS

Iris unguicularis (also commonly known as the Algerian iris or Winter iris) is a rhizomatous flowering plant in the genus Iris, native to Greece, Turkey, Western Syria, and Tunisia. It grows to 30 centimetres, with grassy evergreen leaves, producing pale lilac or purple flowers with a central band of yellow on the falls. The flowers appear in winter and early spring. They are fragrant, with pronounced perianth tubes up to 20 cm long.

This plant is widely cultivated in temperate regions, and numerous cultivars have been selected for garden use, including a slightly more tender white form 'Alba', and a dwarf variety I. unguicularis subsp. cretensis. The cultivar 'Mary Barnard' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

DESKTOP 2318 - FLIGHT

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.

DESKTOP 2314 - FLORAL

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.

DESKTOP 2275 - UP IN THE SKY

Flying out of Brisbane as evening falls.

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.

DESKTOP 2274 - SUTERA

Sutera is a genus of annual and perennial flowering plants and shrubs of the family Scrophulariaceae mainly confined to Africa. S cordata was named Manulea cordata in 1800 by Thunberg. Bentham renamed it Chaenostoma in 1836, Kuntze changed it to Sutera in 1891 on the grounds of Synonymy. In 1994 Hilliard considered the two terms subgenera of Sutera, but in 2005 Kornhall and Bremer separated the two again, placing S cordata in Chaenostoma!

Illustrated here is a garden hybrid, Sutera 'Dancop28'( SCOPIA® GULLIVER BLUE SENSATION, SCOPIA® SERIES) PP21551. They are pretty little pale blue-violet flowers with yellow throats cover the toothed foliage on the Scopia® Gulliver Blue Sensation. This hybrid cultivar from the Scopia™ Series is a vigorous, trailing, tender perennial, descended from plants native to South Africa. It was selected in 2007 by plant breeders at a greenhouse facility in Israel.

Like other Suteras, it is prized as a container plant and groundcover. The flowers rise above just the stems, facing upward, are larger than those of parental species and appear continuously as long as the plant is growing and conditions are sunny and mild. With a rounded habit and somewhat spreading branch tips, 'Dangul14' - marketed as Scopia® Gulliver Blue Sensation - grows and blooms best in well-drained, moist soil or potting mix. Its mounded, rather compact habit and tireless bloom make it useful for hanging baskets, planters and containers, or as a year-round groundcover where winters are frostless and summers are mild.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

DESKTOP 2265 - NEW DELHI, INDIA

New Delhi is the capital of India and one of Delhi city’s 11 districts. Although colloquially Delhi and New Delhi are used interchangeably to refer to the National Capital Territory of Delhi, these are two distinct entities, with New Delhi forming a small part of Delhi. The National Capital Region is a much larger entity comprising the entire National Capital Territory of Delhi along with adjoining districts.

The Akshardham or Swaminarayan Akshardham complex (seen below) is a Hindu mandir, and a spiritual-cultural campus in New Delhi, India. Also referred to as Akshardham Temple or Swaminarayan Akshardham, the complex displays millennia of traditional Hindu and Indian culture, spirituality, and architecture. The temple, which attracts approximately 70 percent of all tourists who visit Delhi, was officially opened on 6 November 2005 by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. It sits near the banks of the Yamuna River adjacent to the 2010 Commonwealth Games village in eastern New Delhi. The temple, at the centre of the complex, was built according to the Vastu shastra and Pancharatra shastra.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

DESKTOP 2225 - IRIS

Iris is a genus of about 300 species of flowering plants with showy flowers. It takes its name from the ancient Greek goddess of the rainbow, Iris, referring to the wide variety of flower colours found among the many species. As well as being the scientific name, iris is also very widely used as a common name for all Iris species, though some plants called thus belong to other closely related genera. A common name for some species is 'flags', while the plants of the subgenus Scorpiris are widely known as 'junos', particularly in horticulture. 

It is a popular garden flower and its blossoms provide wonderful splashes of colour in the Spring garden. The genus is widely distributed throughout the north temperate zone. Their habitats are varied, ranging from cold and montane regions to the grassy slopes, meadowlands and riverbanks of Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, Asia and across North America. Irises are perennial herbs, growing from creeping rhizomes (rhizomatous irises) or, in drier climates, from bulbs (bulbous irises). They have long, erect flowering stems which may be simple or branched, solid or hollow, and flattened or have a circular cross-section. The rhizomatous species usually have 3–10 basal sword-shaped leaves growing in dense clumps. The bulbous species have cylindrical, basal leaves.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

DESKTOP 2177 - PETUNIA

Petunia is genus of 35 species of flowering plants in the family Solanaceae, of South American origin, closely related to tobacco, cape gooseberries, tomatoes, deadly nightshades, potatoes and chili peppers. The popular flower of the same name derived its epithet from the French, which took the word petun, meaning "tobacco," from a Tupi–Guarani language.

An annual, most of the varieties seen in gardens are hybrids (Petunia × hybrida). Here is one of the Surfinia series of petunia, called 'Purple Vein'. It is perfect for creating colourful summer displays in containers and hanging baskets. It is also a good ground cover plant, making a carpet of lavender blooms with contrasting veins. For the best displays, feed and water regularly.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

DESKTOP 1873 - GLOBE

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the My Sunday Photo meme,

and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

DESKTOP 1676 - MORNING

Sunrise in the suburbs can be very beautiful, apartment buildings notwithstanding. At least we have a back yard with some flowers and trees that attract the bird life. Two rainbow lorikeets can be seen hurrying to breakfast as the sun rises.

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,
and also part of the Friday Photo Journal meme.

DESKTOP 1549 - SWEET PEAS

Sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus) is a flowering plant in the genus Lathyrus in the family Fabaceae (legumes), native to Sicily, Cyprus, southern Italy and the Aegean Islands. It is an annual climbing plant, growing to a height of 1–2 metres, where suitable support is available. The leaves are pinnate with two leaflets and a terminal tendril, which twines around supporting plants and structures, helping the sweet pea to climb. In the wild plant the flowers are purple, 2–3.5 centimetres broad; they are larger and very variable in colour in the many cultivars. The annual species, L. odoratus, may be confused with the everlasting pea, L. latifolius, a perennial.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

DESKTOP 1500 - LAVENDER

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,

and also part of the Weekend Green meme.

DESKTOP 891 - FILAREE

Erodium moschatum is a species of flowering plant in the geranium family (Geraniaceae) known by the common names musk stork's-bill and whitestem filaree. This is a weedy annual or biennial herb which is native to much of Eurasia and North Africa but can be found on most continents where it is an introduced species.

The young plant starts with a flat rosette of compound leaves, each leaf up to 15 centimeters long with many oval-shaped highly lobed and toothed leaflets along a central vein which is hairy, white, and stemlike. The plant grows to a maximum of about half a meter in height with plentiful fuzzy green foliage. The small flowers have five sepals behind five purple or lavender petals, each petal just over a centimeter long. The filaree fruit has a small, glandular body with a long green style up to 4 centimeters in length.

This is widely known as a common weed of gardens, roadsides, disturbed sites, waste areas, crops, and pastures. However, it also grows in natural areas, such as grasslands and open woodlands, and is sometimes regarded as an environmental weed in Victoria. It appears on some local and regional environmental weed lists in this state (e.g. in Banyule Shire and in the Goulburn Broken Catchment), is an invasive weed of woodlands on granitic hills, and is also present in conservation areas (e.g. Brisbane Ranges National Park). It has also been described as an invasive coloniser of grasslands in South Australia, and is widespread in conservation areas in this state (e.g. Cleland Conservation Park, Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park, Coorong National Park, Belair National Park and Para Wirra Recreation Park). It has also been recorded in conservation areas in Tasmania (e.g. Greens Beach/Kelso Coastal Reserve and Tasman National Park).

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,

and also part of the Friday Greens meme.

DESKTOP 699 - LAVENDER

This post is part of the Blue Monday meme,
and also part of the Macro Monday meme,

and also part of the I Heart Macros meme.

DESKTOP 447 - LAVENDER

This is Italian Lavender (Lavandula stoechas, or "Princess" Lavender).

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

DESKTOP 373 - STREET ART

This post is part of the I Heart Macros meme.