Two nice blossoms to brighten up a winter day.
Paphiopedilum venestum
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Paphiopedilum ‘Impulse’
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The ‘studio’.
Category Archives: plants
Mangrove and tadpole update
The mangrove project has a brief update here.
The A. bassleri tadpoles continue to grow. They are eating well (understatement); I’m feeding Frogbites and Cyclopeeze. My hope is that the Cyclopeeze will provide enough xanthins to allow good coloration – fingers crossed. The older ones have yellow moustaches, but no sign of hind legs yet.
The Glass Flowers
Created in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Leopold (father) and Rudolph (son) Blaschka. They are amazingly realistic and beautiful pieces of work. I hesitate to call them art, only because they are intended to be neutral – an as accurate as possible representation of the subject – but they are certainly and example of craftsmanship of the first water.
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Again – apologies for the quality of some of the pictures. Next time I visit the museum I’ll do a better job, I promise (Brian – thanks for the suggestion).
Teaser
I’m tired – too tired to write coherently – and I have many photos I need to upload and tag first. A preview of coming attractions:
Shit Knife
Wade Davis – student of Richard Evans Schultes – on disappearing indigenous culture.
I don’t remember how I found this (blog? twitter?), but thanks, someone!
Update – the TED talk originally embedded has fallen off the internet – I’ve substituted a different Youtube clip with Mr. Davis telling the same story.
Richard Evans Schultes photos
Fungus walk
I took a camera with me this morning when I ran the dogs. We’ve had three weeks of very wet weather (a flash flood killed a girl a few days ago and a tornado killed a lady up the road in Northwood a week and a half ago) – if it’s not pouring all day, there’s almost always thunderstorms in the afternoon. I figured the wet ought to encourage fungi to fruit – turned out to be a good guess. I’ve pulled Toads and Toadstools
The Oyster River in August is normally low enough to walk across using stepping stones without getting your feet wet – this is obviously not a normal year.
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I think one of the local bruins ate too many green apples and gave himself an upset stomach.
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The Sun God. It’s not hard to see why toadstools are so important to old religions and folkways. You’ve got solar discs and phalluses emerging spontaneously from Mom Earth – let the myth making proceed!
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The big guy – Amanita. I still like Wasson’s soma theory, even if there are other equally good candidates – its a rippin’ idea.
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Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
A big nod to Lord Whimsy for the proximate stimulus and to the Querencistas, where fungoblogging is a tradition.
Mangrove project
Mangrove setup pictures
Click here or on the picture below to see more.
Mangrove project
New project page
I just put up a new project page to document some work on a brackish water Southeast Asian mangrove biotope-ish aquarium. It’ll always be available from the ‘Pages’ section in the right margin (way down). Not sure how I’ll indicate updates – maybe just more miniposts like this…
Utricularia nelumbifolia
One of my epiphytic utrics is blooming:
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Just opening in the morning light.
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The reason for the species name (nelumbifolia).
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Utrics (bladderworts) are fascinating plants – adaptable (alpine to tropical, aquatic, terrestrial, epiphytes, lithophytes), active carnivores with beautiful flowers. I have two epiphytes – nelumbifolia and humboldtii. The humboldtii is growing like mad; I’m hoping I can get a large division to trade for another epiphyte I covet – U. jamesoniana (picture of flower here). Here’s the U. humboldtii:
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Keep your fingers crossed for me – maybe I can even get a flower out of it…