Botanical garden flowers, insects and birds

Still 10 August 2018, in the botanical garden in Leiden, the Netherlands. After the Chinese garden, we continued to the pond near the source of the stream: where we saw these green water lily leaves with a black pondskater near the upper water’s edge.

Like all photos in this blog post, this is a macro lens photo.

A great crested grebe swims in the canal.

Near the old astronomical observatory, these Chrysanthemum flowers.

Not far away, these bladder campion flowers.

On an old, nearly dead, tree, this sign explaining why it is not removed. The bird on the sign is a male great spotted woodpecker, a species living in the botanical garden.

Then, these rough horsetails. At 90 centimeter, they are now one of the taller horsetail species. During the Carboniferous, long before the age of dinosaurs, some horsetail relatives were 30 meter high.

We continued to the systematic garden, to the many flowers near the bust of Linnaeus.

One of these flowers attracted this white butterfly.

Among the other flowers, these two wild pansies.

We left the botanical garden, and saw these lichens on this wall.

Finally, these water lilies in the Doelengracht canal.