Your garden tells you the time.

Do you know that your garden can tell you the time of the day?

This reminds me of a technique that my husband taught me to know the approximate time of the day. (yes, not the night). By using a ruling scale against the sun cast shadows, he will, guess the approximate time.

Now, regarding the garden as your clock, it was discovered by a genius naturalist from Sweden, Carolus Linnaeus ( looks a bit a Roman-right?) He observed that some plants' flowers open and close at a particular time of the day.

This called as photoperiodism by contemporary scientists.

Carolus noticed one early morning in 1749. that a wild flower called hawk's beard opened its flower at 6.30 AM while a similar flower that also belong to family called hawkbit opened at 7.00 AM.

He then painfully cataloged 41 different species of flowers and recorded their flowering time. This flower clock revealed that Uppasla flower bloomed at 3.00 AM regularly and the ice plant at 11.00 AM only. (very lazy!)

Carolus Linnaeus must have been unpopular among Swedish watch makers!
Ice Plant image by Google.