Pondskaters and dead-nettles in the botanical garden

On my way, a herring gull and jackdaw eating leftover human food.

Near the canal inside the garden, a grey heron.

However, a species with flowers smaller than Victoria amazonica, but bigger than the European water-lily, has a white flower now.

In the canal outside, European water lilies flowering.

Pondskaters in the brook.

Since 2005, the systemic garden has been changed.

It aims now to show the new classification of plants, based on DNA research, different from Carolus Linnaeus and his successors.

Many plants species which look like being related, are not, in fact.

Recently, there came a new sign in the plant bed furthest away from the entrance in the systemic garden.

It is about “doubles”; plants which look like being related (maybe by convergent evolution etc.) but are not.

The sign has dead-nettles and stinging nettles as examples.

They are not related at all, stinging nettles belonging to the Rosales; dead-nettles to the Lamiales.

Stinging-nettles are important for the caterpillars of many butterfly species.

Including peacock, small tortoiseshell, Araschnia levana, which only eat the stinging nettle Urtica dioica.

Red admiral caterpillars eat only the stinging nettle Urtica dioica and its smaller relative, the small nettle.

Nettles are also important for painted lady and comma caterpillars, though they don’t eat them exclusively.

Apart from the two stinging nettle species, in Britain and The Netherlands are six dead-nettle species.

Like stinging-nettles, they like “rich” soil.

The US myth of ‘unmanliness’ of flowers: here.

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