Blooming Succulents! (Part 2)

I would say that I post this at the risk of seeming succulent obsessed, but....  let's be honest, I AM succulent obsessed!  Maybe you remember my last post about blooming succulents (here it is, if you would like to refresh your memory).  We had a few succulents that held promise of blooms, what they would look like, heaven only knew:

Our Aeonium with the "hat":

Our gift Echeveria with a tiny bloom stalk:

Well, this has certainly been the season of yellow for my garden.  Starting with the Aeonium, it has turned into quite the long-lasting pretty yellow "hat".  I had wondered if the Aeonium was truly "monocarpic," meaning a plant that flowers, makes seeds, and then dies, rather than re-flowering.

As you can tell, it is -- pretty much all that is left of the plant below the flower is dead leaves.  But the lovely little blooms are a nice gift.  As you can see, the other stalk has grown a side stalk too, so we will see what happens from there.

As for the Echeveria, it too has made some progress.  

This picture shows three bloom stalks, but on my visit to this little plant in my garden, it now has even one more stalk.  Blooming like crazy!

They too are long-lasting yellow flowers, little bells.  They have been blooming slowly, in the pattern of so many stalks of flowers where the most proximal flowers blooms first and then die while buds at the tip have yet to be opened.

The last focal point of interest is gross but fascinating.  If you know me in the context of my garden, you know that I absolutely hate aphids.  (Aphids and green worms... don't even get me started...)  But this is interesting -- look closely:

They're yellow!  What??  I had to investigate.  So it turns out that pea aphids come in several different colors (red, green, pink, yellow...).  Their color comes from carotenoids (like the beta-carotene in carrots that makes them orange).  Interestingly enough, generally animals don't make carotenoids but pea aphids are an exception -- they have the genes to make carotenoids and therefore different colors, the first known to do so, in fact.  An even more interestingly, they appear to have gained that ability by "stealing" the gene from fungi that they eat, via lateral gene transfer.  Color is important to pea aphids because it affects which predators eat them (ladybugs eat red aphids, wasps attack green ones).  The red and green colors originate from these genes, and yellow appears to be a mutation.  If you're interested, here is a story on NPR and another more in depth story on Science Daily.

Who knew my little enemies could be so interesting.  If you listen to the NPR article, the lady studying them actually describes them as "cute"... that's a stretch.

I hope you are staying dry in our LA monsoon.  This week, I have been feeling good, and I leave you with this song that I am currently loving which will leave you feeling good too:  Pharrell "Happy".  May you have a week full of happiness!