bring the parasites back inside us
Research Blog | August 26, 2012
New connections are being made between inflammation in the womb and the occurrence of autism in offspring. My ears perk up, as I see how many Chinese herbs are used to treat various inflammatory conditions (or general ones) and some of those botanical sources are highly invasive species, who thrive in disturbed, adverse, declined, urban,…
Jasmine Becomes Contraband in China – NYTimes.com
Research Blog | May 10, 2011
Beginning in February, when anonymous calls for a Chinese “jasmine revolution” began circulating on the Internet, the Chinese characters for jasmine have been intermittently blocked in cellphone text messages while videos of President Hu Jintao singing “Mo Li Hua,” a Qing dynasty paean to the flower, have been plucked from the Web. Local officials, fearful…
Taproot
Research Blog | September 28, 2010
Been thinking a bit about taproots as a good model for stubborn ideas. A taproot is an enlarged somewhat straight to tapering plant root that grows vertically downward. It forms a center from which other roots sprout laterally.[1] The taproot of Carrots. Plants with taproots are difficult to transplant. The presence of a taproot is…
The relationship between supermarket chains and voracious species
Research Blog | August 19, 2009
From Self Sufficientish.com, the urban guide to almost self sufficiency (Urban Homesteading): Paul Kingsnorth likens this plant to a major supermarket in his book real England. The following paragraph beautifully sums up how both knotweed and Tescos behavior. “Just as Knotweed is all cloned from one single plant, so the big chains are all cloned…
Knotweed picking in springtime New York
Research Blog | August 19, 2009
Something to look forward to next spring! From culinate.com My friend Leda and I are partners in crime. We conspire to pick noxious weeds in a public park, which, technically, is against the law. I checked. The fine in New York City is $1,000 for removing plants from a park, although writing a ticket for…
Ribes sativum
Research Blog | July 27, 2009
These white currants are growing in my friends’ (Ruth & Oliver) compound on Cortes Island. They are an albino sport of the red currant, with lower acidity and a chalky seed. And they look like alien magic eggs.
A flower clock
Research Blog | June 17, 2009
NY Time’ guest columnist Leon Kreitzman writing for Olivia Judson’s The Wild Side, wrote in April about bees’ ability to tell the time of day and harvest pollen accordingly In “Philosophia Botanica” (1751), the great taxonomist Carl Linnaeus proposed that it should be possible to plant a floral clock. He noted that two species of…
Charismatic megafauna: you can’t live without ’em.
Research Blog | April 12, 2009
“Giant pandas are ‘charismatic megafauna,’ a category that includes whales and other sea mammals, salmon and other inspirational fish, eagles and other flashy raptors. In each instance, the creatures help spotlight the hundreds of humbler but equally endangered species: the black-spored quillwort, the longhorn fairy shrimp.” —”Birth and Rebirth,” USA Today, August 23, 1999 Usually…
15th century woodcuts of plants and other monsters
Research Blog | April 11, 2009
This, from a great collection in the Science and Society Picture Library: and this, too: