Posts tagged “Botany”
Please don’t actually take wolfsbane for migraine
Just in case it was not clear, I was joking in my post about wolfsbane for migraine. If you eat wolfsbane, you will die.
While you’re waiting for the bus
Why are so many women-in-science events actually about leaving science and having babies? Good science journalism can help scientists get their work done. The oldest pine cone ever found. The president of the World Bank editorializes about the need for climate change mitigation. The IEA tells us how to fix climate change, or at least […]
The poetry of leaves
A leaf is filled with chambers illuminated by gathered light. In these glowing rooms photons bump around and the leaf captures their energy, turning it into the sugar from which plants, animals, and civilizations are built. Chloroplasts, fed by sun, water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients, do the leaf’s work. They evolved about 1.6 billion years […]
Berry Go Round!
I bet you miss all the blogging I used to do about plants. Go get your fix at this month’s edition of the Berry Go Round botanical blog carnival. And here’s a picture of some adorable Western hemlock cones to help make up for all the plant blogging I haven’t done.
Berry Go Round #51
Now that the days are long and the sun is out again, I’ve been spending as much time as I can outside. This is my first spring in Epiphyte City and I’ve got a lot of new plants to learn. You wouldn’t know all the botanizing I’ve been doing by looking at my blog, but […]
Botany and Russian collide
I got a message yesterday addressed ‘Privet, …’ and spent a few minutes wondering what the sender thought I had in common with Ligustrum. Then I realized that ‘privet’ is just hello in Russian, transliterated – a much less cryptic greeting than ‘common evergreen shrub!’ Clearly, I am not studying hard enough if it takes […]
Thuja plicata
I’ve seen western redcedar a thousand times, and I never really gave it a second glance. But my opinion of this tree changed on a recent trip I took to the Pacific Northwest – I had no idea these trees got so large! I also decided that I really like the texture of this tree’s […]