Back in Houston, a few relics of California flora too.

I'm finally back in Houston, after a bit of a misadventure during my last day in LA. Needless to say, the SIMS workshop was a great experience. I learned a lot about applications of SIMS (and even was wowed by some incredible images of cells collected by NanoSIMS), filled in some gaps in my knowledge concerning basic mass spectrometry stuff, met some great fellow grad students, and had a promising conversation with Mark Harrison at the end of it. Also learned a lot about the GENESIS and STARDUST missions, which sampled the solar wind and a cometary tail, respectively.

Anyway, just to share a few more photos of plants in the UCLA botanical gardens. Speaking of which, that mystery plant on the previous post is Dianella, in the family Phormiaceae. They are commonly called "Flax lilies." They're not native to the New World.

Now for some of my favorite flowers (that are native to the New World) - California poppies and the Channel Island Tree Poppy (so called because it grows as a small shrub). I took these photos of the California poppy early in the morning, when there was still dew on them. Good thing too, because by late afternoon, they had all closed up in the hot sun.






Channel Island Tree Poppy below:




And one last one.. California poppy again. I like how this one came out.



OK... that's a botanical overload for now.