Ibis Blooms and Pond Fish to Avoid

Here’s a lovely tree I bet everyone will want to have. Just look at the size of these beautiful red blooms!

Allright, allright, they are scarlet ibis nesting in a tree in the San Antonio Zoo. Yesterday I herded my own little pack of wild animals among exotic plants and creatures from all over the world. I had great intentions to go from the zoo over to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, but somehow the day slipped by and we were still at the zoo. By the time I realized that I wasn’t going to make it over to the gardens, I’d wished I’d taken more pictures of the beautiful plants that graced the zoo. Still, I did manage to get a few.

Like this banana plant. I hope they treat the apes and monkeys to these yummy treats when they are ripe enough!

This bamboo was gigantic enough to unfortunately invite some graffiti from zoo visitors. While I hate to see such careless destruction on the part of passersby, I found the bamboo an interesting setting for urban art and lettering.

I did find that the zoo was pretty good about labeling the various Texas native plants around the park, but the exotics weren’t so well labeled, at least not the ones I was particularly interested in, of course. Oh, I really liked this plant, whatever its name might be.

This is a very vibrant shrimp plant — I’m not sure of the variety. My young (and red) shrimp plants still aren’t blooming. I hope that they’ll be busy bloomers in their second year, if not this year.

The lion’s tail, also called lion’s mane, is very striking. This was the first time I’d seen one in person. 

The zoo has opened a butterfly center, which was delightful. Many different species of butterflies fluttered all around us, enjoying nectar and orange slices. The monarchs were quite willing to pose.

It was a zoo trip, so I can’t resist throwing in a couple of other animal pictures. Apparently I developed a rapport with some of the park residents. Like this komodo.

Lorikeets are great pollinators in their native region.

I really don’t know why the piranha kept looking at me like this. It was quite… unnerving. I can definitely say that I’m glad they aren’t in my pond!

On a similar note, back on the home front, I’m also glad that I chose NOT to put a killifish in my pond. I came home to discover that the killifish we had is the culprit behind my disappearing fish in my indoor aquarium — I found this out because it had my last neon tetra sticking out of his mouth (after it apparently devoured all the rest). Needless to say, he’s off to a new home with bigger bullies than he is, and the rest of my fish can be at peace. I had planned to add a local variety of killifish to my pond. HA! No more. I didn’t bother to take a picture of the killifish before I grabbed that net and got him out of there! Sorry! Look it up — and then don’t buy one!

On the plus side, we did get a bit of rain here in Austin. I did a little happy dance.

And I found a surprise little bloom in my pond. I really need to learn the name of this plant sometime. Now that it’s blooming, it doesn’t look like the plant(s) I thought it might be. Ah well, the bloom will be the identifier when I next visit the pond center. It’s a Pickerel Weed — thanks, Bob!