Category: Forensics

These flowers appeared in our garden one day. Each year the bloom with more flowers and more colors, but we never knew what they were until now. As you can see, the pollen is much more elongated than the others, and the largest we’ve seen so far.

These pictures are at the same magnification as the others, but look at the size difference compared to the 3 Cornered Garlic:

The flowers on our rosemary shrubs are drying up and falling off, so we decided to collect their pollen next. Local bees absolutely love these flowers, and when they bloom, there’s a constant stream of visitors collecting pollen. Fortunately they left us some to catalog. So far these are my favorite, because they look like a bunch of Eye’s of Sauron staring at me through the eyepiece.

Our garden has many mystery plants that have blown in over the years. I posted a picture of this one on twitter and my friends identified it as Allium triquetrum, a.k.a. three-cornered garlic. Apparently it is a big pest weed in Australia, though it looks nice in the garden.

The pollen grains are smaller and more rice-shaped than the daffodil pollen. I think my little forensic scientist could tell the difference if she found some during a case. Here they are, also at 10x magnification in transmitted and reflected light.