Happy Valentines from the whole Clare Florist Team!

Baseball Plant

It may not look very affectionate but just think about it, if he does something wrong it’s the perfect object to throw.

Welwitschia Mirabilis

It looks like a giant mess but if this was in your back garden you would never forget your loved one.

Titan Arum

Show how much you love them with the worlds biggest flower, being up to 3ft wide and 12 feet high it’s the prefect gesture of displaying your love. (It should be said it does smell of rotting flesh but that shouldn’t matter)

Venus Fly Trap

Venus fly trap will definitely keep the flys, bugs and beasties away a very sensible gift when you think about it.

Keeping Indoor Plants this Winter

With the first real frost rolling in this week and the start of those ever familiar sub zero temperatures its time to batten down the garden shed and put away those outdoor tools but that’s not a reason to give up on gardening. Here are some of our tips to keep your gardening hobby alive this winter with some of the best indoor plants to keep you active and brighten up your home………………………

Keep those flowers alive this winter

Having had our first frost this week of the winter what better tips to give than how you can keep your indoor and outdoor plants alive this winter. It’ll require a bit of work to keep your flowering friends alive but with some simple expert tips to help spring will come around and just as quickly as it went……………..

Where to place your flowers to maximise your happiness

We all are aware that have plants in the home helps lift our spirits, helps clean the air and all round just makes the home a happier and healthier place. Here are some tips for creating a flower empowered home to match your personal style and décor using findings from recent research from Harvard University.

Where to place your flowers for maximum happiness

• Place flowers in the entrance of your house………………………

With us being close to the end of the week, our brains are tired, were looking forward to the weekend and in need of some mental stimulation. Here are some facts, figures; challenges and general fun to keep us all occupied for one more day and this week it’s all to do with seeds.

The seeds from an orchid are incredibly small. It takes roughly 1.3 million seeds to tip the scales above 1g.

A single ragweed plant can release up to as many as a billion grains of pollen

A single drift seed from the Marys bean plant, found in very specific parts of the south Mexico and Central America rainforests was once found in Norway, that’s 15,000 miles away!

One of the world’s deadliest toxins comes the seeds of the castor bean. Ricin is 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide and 12,000 times more poisionous than rattlesnake venom. 0.000015g of ricin, that’s about the same as the weight of a seed head, is enough to kill a 160 pound person.

Seeds from certain berries are dispersed by mechanical dispersal, a forcible ejection of the seeds away from the plant. In Dwarf mistletoe there is enough hydrostatic pressure built up to fire the 3mm seeds up to 15m laterally with an initial speed of around 62 mph!

Riddle

On one side of the river, a farmer has a chicken, a fox, and a bag of seeds. He needs to get them to the other side of the river, but he can only take one at a time. The problem is, if he takes the fox and leaves the chicken with the seeds, the chicken will eat the seeds. If he takes the seeds and leave the animals alone, the fox will eat the chicken. So how does he get all three over intact?

(Highlight the text below to see the answer)

A:  First take over the chicken. Come back and take over the seeds, leave the seeds and take the chicken back. Now take the fox back to the seeds and finally go back across to bring the chicken!

Red and Green Kangaroo Paw

The floral emblem of Western Australia this strikingly odd plant is one that is endemic to the region. Found primarily in Southwest Australia in regions with white, yellow or grey sand this plant can have flower stalks that can grow up to 1.2m in height with the its striking flowers. These unique bird attracting flowers are tubular in shape and densely coated in tiny hairs which trigger an opening of the claw like structure that gives the flower its name.

Albany Bottlebrush

A shrub also found in similar conditions to the Kangaroo Paw, this pretty normal looking plant for the majority of the year produces bright red toilet brush like spikes between September and December.

Common Catspaw

Part of the same family as the Kangaroo paw this plant grows in similar conditions as well. It produces long strap like leaves at its base with a long stalk where the flowers appear at the terminus giving the plant an overall height of around 1m with Its flowers have a stunning blend of yellow orange and red and like the kangaroo.

Scarlet Banksia

Scarlet Banksia is the common name for the Banksia coccinea a quite unique looking shrub endemic to the south-western parts of Australia. Growing up to 8 metres tall (26ft) its red and white flowers are usually arranged in a spiral up the spike of the flower but look like they are arranged vertically due to gaps between the columns.

Wispy Spider Orchid

This just look really damn creepy.

His work is celebrated worldwide and today (25th January) get your self some haggis, neeps and tatties, pour yourself a wee dram and sing loud to celebrate a nations favourite.

Heres a classic Burns poem to get you in the mood

Address to a Haggis

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect sconner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit:
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!

1. A pineapple is a berry.

2. Americans eat more bananas than any other fruit: a total of 11 billion a year.

3. Almonds are the oldest, most widely cultivated and extensively used nuts in the world.

4. Bananas are actually herbs. Bananas die after fruiting, like all herbs do.

5. Ginger has been clinically demonstrated to work twice as well as Dramamine for fighting motion sickness, with no side effects.

6. Banana oil has nothing to do with bananas; it's made from petroleum.

7. One pound of tea can make 300 cups of the beverage.

Riddle

Q: Red, purple, orange, yellow, blue, and green - No one can touch me, not even a queen.

 (Highlight the text below to reveal the answer)

A: RAINBOW

Joke

This time it comes it the form of a animation

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/574717

Pretty funny!

The Bulbophyllum nocturnum orchid was discovered by Ed de Vogel during an expedition to New Britain, an island near Papua New Guinea. Upon taking the specimen back home he found that as the buds reached a size where they would normally bloom he would find the next day they had withered. He soon discovered that the flowers opened for a single night only shortly after sun down and closed and withered just after sunrise.

Even though there are species of orchid that are known to attract nighttime pollinators the B. nocturnum orchid is the first to flower exclusively at night. The reason behind this behaviour remains a mystery until further field studies but one proposed explanation is that the orchid are mimicking fungi with the orchid releasing a scent humans cant detect which attracts flies and other pollinators.

Bizare, but i have to say its not the prettiest of orchids !!