Astronaut Don Pettit watches as a technician works on the Orion crew module inside the Operations and Checkout Building high bay at Kennedy Space Center on March 21, 2013. The last of eight reaction control system (RCS) pods for the first flight test of Orion has arrived at Kennedy Space Center's Operations and Checkout Building from the manufacturer, Aerojet, in Redmond, Wash. The pods will provide the critical maneuvers necessary for Orion's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere during Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), scheduled to launch in 2014. Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry humans farther into space than ever before. The spacecraft will provide emergency abort capability, sustain crews during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep-space return velocities.› Read more about OrionImage Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis

...and yet another thank you to frequent BPotD contributor Jim in San Francisco (aka J.G. in S.F.@Flickr) for submitting today's set of photographs (original image 1 | original image 2 | original image 3 | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool). As always, I'm grateful. I've been intrigued by this species both times I have visited the Montane Cloud Forest at UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley. Who wouldn't be curious about something known as the devil's hand tree or monkey's hand tree? Unfortunately, I've only visited this garden in early April, too early to see the "handedness" of this native of wet mixed oak-pine and deciduous mountain forests of Guatemala and Oaxaca, Mexico. All I was able to observe were last year's aging seed pods on the ground (for photograph, see the last image on this page). Chiranthodendron literally means "hand-flowering tree", while the epithet pentadactylon means "five-fingered" -- referring to the five prominent stamens that can be seen in these photographs. Pollinators attracted to the flowers include both bats and perching birds, particularly orioles and their relatives. Chuck B. of San Francisco writes about the sweet taste of the nectar produced by the flowers at the conclusion of his weblog post on Friday Night Botanical Garden. A French translation of the original 1805 Spanish-written description of Chiranthodendron pentadactylon is available online thanks to the Smithsonian Library's Digital Library: Description Botanique du Chiranthodendron by José Dionisio Larreátegui Two illustrative plates are included, linked from the bottom right-hand of this page. Ethnobotany resource link: The Gwich'in Ethnobotany Database was recently launched, containing information about 47 plants used for food, medicine, shelter and tools (with photographs, video and recipes). Thank you to Dr. David Brownstein for sending along the link.

Thank you once again to Marianne, for contributing a photograph to Botany Photo of the Day (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool). Always glad to have an image from a vascular plant family that hasn't yet been featured on BPotD! Butomus umbellatus is the sole member of the monotypic genus Butomus, itself in turn the sole member of the monotypic Butomaceae. The closest living relatives to this freshwater aquatic are species in the Hydrocharitaceae (a family that includes both freshwater and marine aquatics). Known as flowering rush (though it isn't a true rush), Butomus umbellatus has a distribution that spans much of Europe and western Asia. Introduction into North America (believed to be for use as a garden plant) has resulted in widespread dispersal through the north temperate parts of the continent, and it is considered an invasive species. The page on Butomus umbellatus from the Noxious Weeds of King County explains the difficulty in controlling this species once it has established, so preventing dispersal is paramount. For additional photographs, see the Flora of Israel's page on Butomus umbellatus or the Robert W. Freckmann Herbarium's page on Butomus umbellatus. On a technical BPotD note: a few people have noticed that BPotD images are failing to display completely on a consistent basis. I believe this is because of the IUCN Red List "Species of the Day" box that appears at the bottom of the daily posting. The "Species of the Day" is an embedded feed -- meaning that for it to display, the IUCN web server is contacted each time a BPotD daily page is loaded and then the IUCN web server supplies the graphic. I think that from time to time, the IUCN web server gets overloaded -- and this halts the loading of the BPotD page (and images) while your browser tries (and tries) to gather the information it needs from the IUCN server. Two possible solutions: 1) you can reload / refresh the page when this does occur (Ctrl-R on a PC with Firefox, or hit the reload button); or 2) I can remove the IUCN Red List Species of the Day box (which will be done anyway come Jan. 1). My preference is for option 1. Photography resource link: the landscape photography of Joel Truckenbrod, emphasizing the Upper Midwest of the USA.

Last May, there was a Supermoon in Washington, DC.  A supermoon is the name for those few times when a full moon happens at the same time that the moon is the closest to Earth.  When a supermoon happens, it looks bigger and brighter. I just looked this up and I learned that when the moon is closest to Earth, it looks about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when it's farthest away. This picture of the moon is taken over the U.S. Capitol building. This is where US Congress and Senate work, making laws for the United States.