Author Archives: dr.hypercube

Water Garden Tour

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Last Sunday, the Seacoast Water Garden Club hosted the first of it’s summer garden tours. Mr. Smith’s ponds are beautiful – he’s working with the features and plants already on his property and the result is a critter and plant paradise.

A map – I’ll refer to this when I indicate where my photos were taken.

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One of many big green inhabitants of the Frog Pond.

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The ponds were swarming with damsel and dragonflies. (Duck Pond)

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I saw 4 Northern Water Snakes basking in the Silt Trap Pond.

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I could live here.  (Water Works Pond)

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Near the Small Beaver Pond.

The Brotherhood of Leathery Wings goes to London

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We’ve got 5 (count ‘em) giant azhdarchid models (two of which are standing on the ground as the world’s first Haenamichnus-inspired parasagittal terrestrial azhdarchid models), 13 pterosaur busts representing a broad sweep of their diversity, a life-size Pteranodon to have your photograph taken alongside and more information on pterosaurs than you could shake a stick at.

Pterosaur.net Blog: The Brotherhood of Leathery Wings goes to London.

A Day at Black Jungle – Animals

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It’s always a gas to check out M and R’s dart frog collection; just as exciting and interesting: they are doing some bird breeding. There are Gouldian finches and an araçari named Lance in the store – other birds, too, but theses two enclosures (Lance especially) captivated me.

Dendrobates leucomelas Guyana Banded. Love these guys. Black Jungle’s banded leucs seem pretty bold – most others I’ve seen have been very shy.

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Dendrobates auratus. When I first got interested in dart frogs I was lukewarm on auratus. No longer.

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The tadpole room.

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M and R had the folks from The Creature Teachers down as well. They had some great critters with them.

Elliot the Umbrella Cockatoo. Elliot has more personality than some people I’ve met. He is an extrovert – within a couple minutes of him stepping onto my hand he and I were talking to each other, bobbing around and having a great time (at least I was – if Elliot wasn’t, he fakes it well).

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He thought that posing for photographs was pretty weak tea after our Soul Train session; the people looking at Sarracenia might want to have some fun, perhaps?

Skoochee the Coati, so named because he puts his front paws out through the door of his crate and Flintstones himself around the room. For folks who are unfamiliar with Coatis – they are cousins of the raccoon from Central and South America. Long canines, amazing double-jointed nose, inquisitive – a favorite creature of mine.

A Day at Black Jungle – Plants

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Today was Black Jungle‘s 16th anniversary Open House. A couple of other froggers and I made the trip down – it was a great day for a road trip (shout-out to S for doing the driving!). Black Jungle has an amazing selection of carnivorous plants and the Sarracenia are in tip-top shape at this time of year – flowers, new growth – wow.

A Sarracenia minor hybrid – the windows (fenestration) on the leaf is an S. minor characteristic.

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Sarracenia flava – the hood is perfectly shaped to channel rainwater away from the pitcher’s mouth.

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Sarracenia catesbaei – I’m mostly (but not dogmatically) a species guy, but for this beauty, I make an exception. It’s a naturally occurring (flava x purpurea) hybrid, named for a naturalist who should be better known: Mark Catesby.

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But it wasn’t all carnivorous, all the time – Calopogon tuberosus – a beautiful little bog orchid.

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And not all bog, either. A Hoya macgillivray‘s flowers getting ready to open. They are going to be huge – the buds, unopened, are larger around than a quarter.

Who was the Archigram of mammoth bones?

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The border between natural history and architectural design deserves far more exploration, beyond the odd science museum diorama. We have been living in buildings for more than 20,000 years, if Mithen’s book is to be believed, but nearly half of that period has seemingly been thrown outside the pale of architectural history.

Who was the Archigram of mammoth bones? … Geoff Manaugh | Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA).

Wordly Wise

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Derny (also spelled derney) – “a motorized bicycle for motor-paced track cycling events such as during six-day and Keirin racing) or motor-paced road races. It is driven by a 98cc Zurcher two-stroke engine and by being pedalled through a fixed gear, typically of 70 teeth on the front chainring and 11 on the sprocket on the back wheel [!!]. The combination allows for smooth acceleration and slowing, important when the rider taking pace is centimetres from the pacer’s shielded back wheel. A coupling between the motor and the back wheel ensures the machine will not stop dead if the motor seizes.[…]

The name derny is now applied to all such vehicles, regardless of manufacturer. It is used by the Larousse dictionary as a generic term for a small pacing motorcycle used in cycle races.” *

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Via Ride the Machine.

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Check out the front wheels/forks! The pizza plate chainwheel! Side note – at some point, it becomes easier to go to 2-stage gearing as seen on John Howard’s 152.2 mph bike.

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Via Ride the Machine/Andrew Ritchie.

To those of you who may, justifiably, wonder how this squares with my eschew the hydrocarbons/bike evangelism – I’ll quote Wally Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Seriously – though I love bicycles and am going to try to reduce my fossil fuel consumption, I do not intend to be a scold or to turn my back on gearheadish gnarlyness.

New Hampshire Media Makers Spoke Card 1

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Rewards drive behavior.

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As regular readers know, I’m trying to re-integrate bicycling into my life as an enjoyable, practical transportation option. Given the ongoing nightmare in the Gulf, I’m feeling pretty evangelical about biking, so I thought I’d see if I could encourage locals (or folks from a distance, if they’re up for a big ride) to come to this Sunday’s NHMM meetup via bicycle. I was inspired when I fell across spoke cards while looking at commuter bikes on Flickr – you can see the results of said inspiration above.

The first 8 people to ride to NHMM get a spoke card on the spot – if there are more riders than that, I’ll have more made up and make good on my offer within a week. If there are less than that, anyone from further away than, say, 20 miles can have one if they tell me that they’ve ridden a bike to and from the grocery store this week (6/6) – knowing my own problems with good intentions, it’s gotta be a completed ride.

A shoutout to the good folks at Infinite Imaging who did a bang-up job on printing and lamination.

Expert Recommends Killing Oil-Soaked Birds

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I’d been wondering a bit about this – the combination of stress, oil/dispersant toxicity and no great place to release the cleaned birds is, to say the least, problematic.

As I mentioned to a friend on the tweets last night, I hate to be pessimistic, but I think what we’re seeing is the death of the Eastern US Gulf Coast as we have known it.

Gulf of Mexico Spill: Expert Recommends Killing Oil-Soaked Birds – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

The Harvard Herbarium

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First, let me acknowledge peacay as undisputed champion of Internet cool-stuff-finding. Today’s Butterfly Album post is a multi-dimensional winner. First, there are the images. I’m particularly partial to a painting containing what I think is a Giant Water Bug:

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Then there’s the intriguing info on where the insects were collected:

The only other information known is that the butterflies and insects were collected from the Aralia (spikenard) and related Tetrapanax papyrifera (pith paper tree) plant species.

Followed by a link to the Harvard Herbarium for more info on the pith paper tree. The Herbarium rates a big marker pin on my mental map – it’s close, houses the Blaschka’s glass plant models and – most important for me – was the base of operations for Richard Evans Schultes (prev. posts here and here). I’ve wandered around the Herbarium website before, but today – thanks to peacay – I kicked around the Botany Library On-Line Exhibits (not sure I’ve ever happened upon this part of the site before). There’s a nice series on book covers/bindings:

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a section on the ‘other’ Amanita (phalloides)

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and then there’s this, from the Economic Botany Clipping File:

Dr. Schultes teaching in the Nash Lecture Hall

Painting by Hannah Barrett, November 1994

The caption in the tiles says, “Richard Evans Schultes, Director Emeritus, demonstrating the blowgun in the Nash Lecture Hall, the Botanical Museum, Harvard University, 15 November 1994.” Ethnobotanical explorer in lab coat? Check. Blowgun, darts and quiver? Check. Little potted cactus ($100 says Lophophora williamsii)? Check. More interesting details that I’ll leave for you, the reader? Check. I’m curious as to what molecule is diagrammed on the chalkboard…

One last picture to end the post – from the book Beata Ruris Otia Fungis Danicis Impensa. Enjoy!