Our gratitude to our peripatetic pal Memo of the Air for directing us to this updated re-post from TYWKIWDBI that we managed to miss earlier that gives a little more background on the backstory of a Stevie Nicks’ classic we’ve covered previously by way of contorted, cresting displays of growth in certain kinds of plants, included the celebrated saguaro of central and southwestern North America with wasps, bees and white-winged doves counted among their important daytime pollinators.
Sunday, 29 August 2021
Thursday, 24 September 2020
tweeblaarkanniedood
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
palm house and parterre or bulletin of miscellaneous information

catagories: ๐, ๐ฑ, ๐ณ, ๐ต, ๐, ๐งฌ, environment, libraries and museums
Wednesday, 13 March 2019
the creeping devil
A native of Baja California, we find ourselves acquainted with another succulent uniquely sessile in its motility. Colonies of the species Stenocereis Eruca grow recumbently and live up to their common nomenclature as they advance across the desert floor, growing from one terminus, up to a metre and a half per year, as the tail end dies, disintegrates and re-fertilises the sandy soil as it deposits a trail behind. Learn more about the cactus’ distinctive lifecycle at the link above.
Tuesday, 12 March 2019
rose of jericho
Via the always wonderful and inspiring Nag on the Lake we are introduced to a shrub called Selaginella lepidophylla—a type of resurrection plant—that can cope with the arid and punishing conditions of its native habitat, the deserts of Chihuahua, and survive unscathed near complete desiccation.
During periods of drought—and researchers are looking into how they might reactivate the same dormant genes in food crops to make them sturdier under dry conditions—the plant, also known as the (False) Rose of Jericho, curls up into a ball when dry and unfurls its fronds upon re-hydration and has evolved another clever trick as has its North African cousin—Anastatica hierochuntica, the (True) Rose of Jericho—and can form tumbleweeds to be whisked away to a more favourable location. Since ancient times, farmers (and hucksters) have recognised resurrection plants as vegetable hygrometer to predict oncoming rain. See a time-lapse of the thirsty plant getting a drink at the link above.
Monday, 17 July 2017
itsy, bitsy or swimsuit edition
Over at Weird Universe, they’ve posted a pair of newspaper clipping from 1939 and 1940 that show models sporting a sun dress and hula skirt (respectively as the term bikini was not coined until 1946 as a rather dark reference to the Bikini Atoll, a captured Nazi Pacific outpost—in German it was known formally as the Eschholtzinseln whereas bikini meant the place of coconuts in Marshallese—where the US, in Operation Cross-Roads, carried out its first peace-time nuclear test) that celebrate the bounty of the harvest and local vegetation.
The prickly cactus two-piece swimwear model apparently in fact made it into the annuls of contemporary German propaganda as an indictment against America for its lack of good taste and sophistication, although those associated with the shoot were more upset that the dateline was wrongly attributed to Florida rather than the desert southwest of Arizona where members of the sponsoring Sunshine Club gathered.
Monday, 3 July 2017
halophyte
To be able to adequately feed ourselves, conserve our biosphere and transition away from fossil-fuels and release carbon that albeit isn’t without consequence but was only not sequestered for millions of years and so have a zero-sum effect on the atmosphere, we are going to have to be willing to cede lands back to Nature and no longer encroach on wildness.
One solution, as รon magazine puts forward, is to expand into those brackish, liminal lands and coastal deserts and bring with us those few, little studied salt-water tolerant plant varieties to raise food crops or bio-fuels. Whereas most plant-species that we are familiar with a cultivated, agricultural sense wither and die in the presence of salt—sowing tracts of land with salt was from ancient times a way to discourage re-settlement, dying the death that’s on one level equivalent to the effects of carbon-monoxide poisoning for mammals. Interest is building slowly, but with limited fresh water supplies also creeping upwards in salinity, hopefully a new approach to farming could help prevent further injury to both flora and fauna.
catagories: ๐ช️, ๐ฑ, ๐ต, ๐งฌ, environment
Thursday, 1 December 2016
haber process
Informed by Super Punch, The Atlantic presents a primer in a geopolitical snarl that’s potentially more significant for humanity’s surviving and thriving than the cartel of petroleum producing countries and all the economic booms, bubbles and bursting of the past: the virtual phosphate monopoly held by Morocco and its contested territory of Western Sahara.
Back in 1918, chemist Fritz Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize for inventing the process that fixed atmospheric nitrogen to phosphate to synthesize ammonia for fertilizers and other applications that allowed the world population to climb to the billions through improved agriculture—and while nitrogen is essentially unlimited, phosphate is finite and there’s no substitute. Currently, Morocco—which is very sensitive on the subject of Western Sahara, akin to a One China Policy or Kurdish independence but the controversy has been successfully muted and the plight of the aboriginal Sahwari people is largely unknown—cannot leverage the rest of the world with its reserves but that could change any moment, with wealth-redistribution and climate change, and suddenly food-security might mean that the Earth can no longer sustain us in the lifestyle we’ve grown accustomed to.
catagories: ๐, ๐ฑ, ๐ต, ๐, ๐ฑ, environment, foreign policy
Wednesday, 27 July 2016
offworld colonies
Messy Nessy Chic transports us to the Mojave Desert where NASA and visionary artist and Andrea Zettler share the other worldly landscape for the elective and investigative outdoors activities.
While the space agency is field testing accom- modations for the Moon, Mars and beyond, Zettler is expanding on a dream to camp like alien with these fantastic self-contained pods that recede into their surroundings. Zettler’s science-fiction รฆsthetic is an exploration that certainly has the potential for cross-over into the realm of applied engineering and design, as well as the social needs of people living in isolation. Learn more about the Wagon Station Encampment in the deserts outside of Joshua Tree at the link up top.
Thursday, 25 September 2014
oasis or mรถbius-farm
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
cactus is our friend, he will point out the way

catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐ต, environment
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
orchestra baobab
There are a lot of traditional uses for the plant's seeds and produce, but the fruit apparently has an acquired taste and even local lore has it that the gods were so revolted by the taste that they cursed the tree to grow topsy-turvy, crooked and ratty.
catagories: ๐ต, environment, lifestyle
Sunday, 8 May 2011
blรผmchen
Sometimes they are called umbrella plants but I call it a big old mall tree, for the potted tropical vegetation one finds larger shopping galleries. They have no fragrance and these little grape-like clusters have just now bloomed but I will have to monitor them. It seems strange that such a lush plant has maybe anticlimactic blossoms, while a creeping, fuzzy desert plant would put forth such a performance.
catagories: ๐ต, environment, holidays and observances
Sunday, 2 May 2010
strange blooms
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
ersatz
Quite possibly it is acceptable, from time to time, to fool Mother Nature. Either manifested as these great fly-swatters in the desert or as a non-descript kiosk about the size of a bank of public toliets, environmental researchers are developing a pretend tree of sorts--one that can snatch and sequestir stray carbon in the atmosphere. It doesn't seem like a great improvement from the original design, at first, since trees rather just happen and one only has to take care not to cut them down. These synthetic trees, however, grab carbon dioxide from any source (though it's not as if real trees are discriminatory and insistent on taking carbon dioxide only exhaled from the lungs they gave oxygen to) year round (trees only breath-in for half a year) and inside of producing wood pulp or fruit, the carbon collected can be compressed and liquified for other uses.
In other ugly plant news: the EU has lifted a regulation governing the aesthetics of produce on grocery shelves. The headlines read praise all-around for lifting the almost 20 year ban on wonky fruit and veg. Apparently, there was a law stipulating that 26 varieties of fruits and vegetables ought to be show-bread material, defining roundness and uniformity standards, while perfectly edible knobby carrots and lumpy tomatoes were wasted. This is a good thing, to not associate nutrition with the ideal apple or pear. Maybe shoppers were just averse to finding suggestive plant bits in their shopping carts--a great phallic cucumber or hinder-shaped apricots like H and saw at the super market, yesterday, just hours after the ban was rescinded.
catagories: ๐ต