This is Salvia koyamae, not Chinese Lanterns!
Have you seen those bright orange Chinese Lanterns for sale in florists' shops this time of year? I have seen them and purchased them, but I had no idea that they started out as little yellow flowers. I love the mosaic of the leaves with the flowers held high. It is native to not only Japan, but also southern Asia and Europe. The orange lanterns are formed with the calyx matures into a papery seed cover. This plant is easy to grow and can even be invasive.
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I love Physalis. In November, the Physalis husk ends a journey and the fruit, scattered by the wind, begins one. Thanks for the genuine photos.
I was a tad surprised to learn -- from a thorough study of the butterflies of Clark County, Nevada published the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera -- that some butterflies come to the flowers of Physalis crassifolia, a Mojave desert species.
The top and bottom photographs are of a yellow-flowered sage (Salvia species). Physalis alkekengi has alternate leaves with entire or wavy margins and solitary rotate white flowers borne in the axils. In the bottom photograph, the plant has opposite leaves with serrate margins and the flowers are pale yellow, personate, and borne in terminal racemes or spikes. Physalis alkekengi is now Alkekengi officinarum. See Whitson, M. and P.S. Manos. 2005. Untangling Physalis (Solanaceae) from the physaloids: a two-gene phylogeny of the Physalinae. Systematic Botany 30(1): 216–230. It turns out that the Old World Physalis alkekengi is not closely related to the New World Physalis and it evolved an enlarged, papery calyx independently of the New World Physalis.
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