morphology

A shrub called the Butcher’s Broom (Ruscus aculeatus oder Stechende Mäusedorn) has a very wide range spanning from Iran to the Meditteranean and a venerable history in traditional medicine, as the Presurfer informs.
Also called Kneeholm as it’s knee-high in the garden, one could be forgiven for overlooking this common and ornamental evergreen which seems less colourful than other holly bushes but it has an interesting adaptation that, like cactuses, called phylloclades that are essentially flattened stems that appear and function as leaves, and of all the trees that are in the wood, this holly bears its flowers and berries directly on the leaf. Part of the large asparagus family, its fresh shoots can be gathered and eaten the same way.

green fairy, ruby slippers

Nag on the Lake beckons to us to join her on the hunt for Italy’s answer to absinthe served up in a ruby red concoction called Tamango by a mysterious bar in Turin of the same name.
Just as one has to have reverence and respect for the Green Fairy, one also has to drink this signature cocktail very gingerly or face hallucinatory consequences. The travelogue is fraught with rather terrifying tales of patrons who failed to choose wisely. These poor souls could not straightaway click their heels together to go home. Cin cin!—but an abundance of caution is advised.

super nintendo chalmers

Though Ralph Wiggum may have had professional aspirations to be either a caterpillar or a principal when he grows up, some—nay, all—of the prodigy’s one-liners make are suitable and believable stump-speeches for a higher office. Dangerous Minds graces us with the collected quotations from one cartoon character put into the mouth of another.

insignia or fossil-fuelled

The Atlantic science correspondent Ed Yong unearths the intriguing stories behind the forty-three of the fifty American states that have designated a State Fossil, including polities where the subject of evolution is contentious and not to be mentioned in polite company, via Neatorama.
While most choose to enshrine a dinosaur whose fossil specimen was discovered locally, others were more esoteric in their selection—going for petrified tree bark or other mega fauna, a giant ground sloth and several states going for mammoths or mysteriously (for Connecticut) a track of footprint impressions left a couple hundred million years ago by an unknown hunter. I wonder if this this same dicey and political process is repeated for other national symbols.