Turtle goes green

I'm still fuming over being told that alligators have moss growing on their backs, and we know that it isn't pondweed because 'pondweed is not hairy, moss is hairy' (full story here).

So I am pleased to present a turtle with HAIRY PONDWEED growing on its back courtesy of a tweet by Chris Van Wyk.

Kapok blowing in the wind over San Juan Capistrano.

The area near the Mission has several kapok trees as part of the standard landscaping. These trees are peculiar in that they are spiny when young, so their trunks look like wooden durians.  Once they hit twenty or so, they start to fruit. A large, heavy husk like a wood avocado opens up to reveal light fluff containing seeds. The fluff blows away.

When I was little, kapok was the common stuffing for plush toys. Natural, renewable, biodegradable - now kapok just blows away in the wind and we use polyester batting made from oil in our toys instead. 

Kapok blowing in the Santa Ana wind over San Juan Capistrano. 


Their latin name is Ceiba pentandra and they are originally from Mexico. Known as Ya'axche, they were sacred world trees to the Maya.

Here's most mature tree, at the foot of the hill by Las Brisas:

And here's a close up of the thorny bark (starting to lose its thorns
now it's mature) and random kapok:

Dragonfly

This girl dropped in on us yesterday.





Shame she thought the (chlorinated) pool was a better place to lay her eggs than the actual 3' by 2.5' pond, though.

I can well believe in the days when these things were two feet long.

National Unreachable Wilderness Area

The term National Unreachable Wilderness Area is a joke from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, who went on vacation there in about 1971 and had hilarious stoner adventures. I've used it ever since to describe US National Parkland, and by some twist of fate that I won't get into, I actually work inside one, in Southern California. It's only actually unreachable about three days a year when the road washes out, but it's certainly unreachable then.

This is the view from outside one of our buildings: So Cal sunset on the mountains.

We have all kinds of wildlife, mostly inimical and retiring, like our rattlesnakes. (Rattlesnakes not shown.)

Some of the wildlife is the ubiquitous fluffy bunny.

Some of it couldn't give a toss about humans, although I think this little critter was beginning to resent me after I took a few too many photos.

...at least judging by the way he was 'smiling' at me.

Some of the W.L. picks up the pieces after the inimical ones do their killing. (Actually, it's probably the main road in the valley that does most of the fluffy bunny and raccoon killing.)

We have a lot of vultures.

No, I mean really a *lot* of vultures.

Like that. And that's just one tree.

And I guess we have a lot of mistletoe too. As in the photo above, it really shows up in the winter, when it's green and leafy and the sycamores aren't. It's a hemiparasite. When the sap rises in spring and the sycamore leaves grow to shade it, it's parasitic. In winter it stays green and makes its own food.

Beware of the Flowers

On Saturday we went to the local National Unreachable Wilderness area on a photographers' guided ramble. I bought a digital SLR camera last July and have barely used it since. STB, who calls himself a Conceptual Photographer (meaning he knows all about it but hates photographs) decided a trip with other photographers might do me some good. It was described as a 3 mile hike with a 25 foot elevation taking place on Sunday the 29th May. Date straightened out, we booked on it.

In the morning I got a thorough grounding in the theory ("'...depth of field' is often misnamed 'depth of focus'." "Yes, I know...") and three practice photographs and then in the afternoon it was off to shoot me some flowers. It was a hot Southern California day and I was woozy with heat before we even set off on the trail. Two very enthusiastic volunteer docents took us out, one leading and one bringing up the rear so that the laggards could not be picked off by the man-eating mastodons of Laguna Canyon. Every now and again we'd stop for water, a quotation about photography by Walt Whitman or Ansel Adams, and then we'd go off again. After we'd climbed about 400 feet I was feeling woozier still. Apparently the date was not the only error in the ad for the hike.

Although only one person had brought a professional-looking camera (the others having point and shoots), I still didn't feel like displaying any lack of skill so I didn't actually take any photos until the guide told us we were facing a horehound bush - it was an omen! Jack Himself had planted a bush for me to photograph! When I leaned in closely, it didn't look like horehound, but I snapped it anyway. Looking at the photograph today, it plainly isn't horehound, unless that's a local term. Both Marrubium and Ballota horehound look like herbs - they have that basil/mint/dead nettle look to them, which is not surprising as they are all in the family Lamiaceae together.


I had to ask what this was and was told hemlock. Of course - it grows all over England. I should have known that. This one looks like a hogweed rather than hemlock to me, but I guess it's the same thing. Hey, I took a photograph!

Anyway, the ice was broken and I subsequently took many ill-focused and hastily-composed pictures of flars. STB borrowed the camera and took a few shots of things which illustrated that I'm not very good at it and he is. (We looked at them all as a debriefing today.) I noted that he did not take pictures of flowers, which are not intrinsically very interesting, unless you put them into Photoshop and change the colors around a bit. I will bear this in mind for the next trip, which will be to a multi-story parking structure or something else with a bit of an edge to it.


This is a local cucurbit called something like Spiny Cucumber. One member of the party described them as looking like kiwi fruit with issues. Pretty leaves.

I did learn the names of many of the local plants I see every day. A magnificent flowering Dudleya, the parasitic Dodder (I'd always wondered what this explosion of red hair over other plants was), Monkey Flower, and a big soft plant like a floppy-eared rabbit's ear, which is a Lamb's Ear. I can now tell a coastal sage from a white sage. And I had no idea that pack rats build those huge nests - six feet or more long - you occasionally see at the foot of trees. (Apparently males build them up in the trees and females at the foot of the trees.)


I didn't take this on the trip - this was taken a few weeks ago, under the eaves of my house where there are several hummingbirds' nests. The tree leaves look unnatural, and that's not actually due to amateur photography problems. It's a plastic tree. Trees don't grow in the shade so I have the World's Largest Gallery of Artificial Plants under there.

Power and Glory

One way to defeat global warming is to have a good eruption from Krakatoa. Krakatoa is threatening to do it again this year, but no one knows if it will actually blow. If it does, it will devastate thousands of square miles and cool the world for years.

The photos of Krakatoa's baby, Anak Krakatoa, on this page are amazing. Photos by Marco Fulle.

Just a little taste of the power and beauty of our planet.

Where are they now?

A special "where are they now?" shout out to the landscape that appears on millions of computers around the world - the XP desktop theme called Bliss. Never could stand it myself, as it looked barren and artificial.

In this article in Serial Consign I learned why. It was originally a vineyard, but after an attack of Phylloxera, the vines were uprooted and the hill reverted to grass. The article has before and after pictures.




















Edit 06/26/2013 - link restored by virtue of the Wayback Machine.
Edit 07/18/2017 to restore Botophucket's broken link.

Barry the Sea Worm

Workers found a giant sea worm at a Newquay aquarium in the UK. Something was slicing the coral in two and attacking the fish. They set traps, but the creature ate the traps. Eventually, they took the coral reef apart to find a four-foot long poisonous worm, which, of course, they called Barry. Barry now has his own aquarium. They didn't say what they feed him. Probably unruly children.

Picture from the Daily Mail

Story in the Daily Mail.

Resurrect Your Own Osiris For Spring

It's almost spring, the time when the dead ground brings forth new life. That means it's almost Easter. At that time, the Christian God is resurrected. For the rest of us most modern rituals at this time of year involve things like coloring rabbits' eggs and putting Peeps into baskets of excelsior.



Osiris



In olden days, the new life was considered to be part of a cycle. The new shoots were cause for celebration, but the death of the old plants was a cause for celebration too - you grew them to make beer and bread, after all, so their death was your life. There's a British figure that corresponds to Osiris in this way, called John Barleycorn.

Robert Burns describes his life and death. And the beer.

They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all.

If the peeps and rabbit eggs aren't doing it for you, it may be time to resurrect a god yourself. How about Osiris?

The ancient Egyptians used to resurrect Osiris using a simple technique. In Tutankhamun's tomb, in the room called the Treasury, was found a wooden frame filled with Nile silt. It had been planted with wheat seeds and watered, germinating in the tomb to symbolize the resurrection of both the god and the deceased.

In her classic book on Tutankhamun, Tutankhamen (Penguin books, 1965) Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt says:

In the south-west corner of the room, beneath several of the black chests, was a long narrow box containing a frame outlining the mummiform silhouette of the god Osiris. It contained alluvial Nile mud sown with corn. The grains had germinated in the darkness of the tomb, and had thus recreated a sprouting and new-born outline of Osiris, symbol of resurrection. Of human size, it had been wrapped in linen like a mummy.

Later she explains:

To assist the deceased to reconstitute himself and be reborn, the great silhouette of Osiris, laid flat in a coffer at the bottom of the tomb, was covered with grain which was watered. The corn soon germinated, its tender young shoots giving promise of a harvest. This magical mechanism was intended to recreate the process leading to resurrection.

Here's the original from Tutankhamun's tomb. It's a bit faded but it is several thousand years old.




To do this yourself, you need an outline of Osiris (here's one as an Excel file), some paper, some earth, and some wheat seeds, or failing that, grass seeds. You'll also need water and patience.

Print the outline and cut out the seedbed center



Put the outline on earth and sow the seeds on it. Sprinkle some more earth on top of them and water. Here the paper is held down by stones. I've laminated the paper to help it last for two weeks while being watered.



A week later, the seeds have sprouted



In less than two weeks, you have a living Osiris!



The first day of spring this year is March 20th. Easter Sunday is on April 12th.
In a city, you can get wheat and barley seeds from a beermaker's supply shop - plus ca change there.

Aquatic Wonders Part 94

Fish With Human Faces Found In Korea




It's rather cute. Shame both known fish are females - I sense a new pet phenomenon if they could be bred.


Dalek Head Found in British Pond



A team was clearing weeds from the pond.

The 42-year-old said: "I'd just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface. "I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up right in front of me."

They would have had to bring out the smelling salts for me.

Don't ask me why I'm reading the Torygraph. They just came up on the news, that's all.

More aquatic news from Oceangal - the drunk-with-lost-keys fish, the transparent-headed fish and the vandalous octopus.

Pink Dolphin

Yes, it's a pink dolphin. Apparently, according to this article in the Daily Telegraph it is an albino, so the color of its blood is showing through its skin. It's so striking that tourists are being asked to keep away so it is not frightened or injured by the crowds.

Giant Squid Cake

It's too cold, I've been diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency (apparently vast tracts of humanity are deficient - more on this later) and I have a terrible cold. Apart from that, everything's fine. At least I'm not trapped in an ice-world like one of my friends.

Another friend sent me this Boing Boing piece on a Giant Squid Cake. Two of my favorite things in one cakey package!

Jimmy Carter and the Killer Rabbit

I didn't live in the US in 1979, and my knowledge of the doings of presidents was limited. One thing I did know, however, was that President Jimmy Carter was attacked by an aquatic Killer Rabbit. This has always impressed me mightily. I'm a glass-half-full sort of a person, and rather than thinking that Carter was the sort of person rabbits picked on, I got the impression of a man of so large a stature that killer rabbits flocked to try to take him down.

I hadn't thought about it too much recently, but STB sent me a link to a Freepers article about the incident.

Here's a picture of the bunny in question, and I am not making this up.




Picture courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Library.

There is a large photo of Jimmy Carter and the rabbit at the Freepers page above.

Cecil Adams' Straight Dope says:

The rabbit incident happened on April 20 while Carter was taking a few days off in Plains, Georgia. He was fishing from a canoe in a pond when he spotted the fateful rabbit swimming toward him. It was never precisely determined what the rabbit's problem was. Carter, always trying to look at things from the other guy's point of view, later speculated that it was fleeing a predator. Whatever the case, it was definitely a troubled rabbit. "It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president," a press account said.

The Secret Service having been caught flatfooted--I'll grant you an amphibious rabbit assault is a tough thing to defend against--the president did what he could to protect himself. Initially it was reported that he had hit the rabbit with his paddle. Realizing this would not play well with the Rabbit Lovers Guild, Carter later clarified that he had merely splashed water at the rabbit, which then swam off toward shore. A White House photographer, ever alert to history's pivotal moments, snapped a picture of the encounter for posterity.

Apparently it is a swamp rabbit. I have no idea if that makes this more freaky or less freaky.

Octopus news

Dana Point Institute's 2-spot octopus has had 300 babies! Four mm long, they are currently eating brine shrimp. Apparently they'll graduate to eating crabs later. The Institute is hoping that around 30 of them will survive.




Cute!

The LA Times reports:

Their mother -- unnamed, as are all the animals at the institute -- tended the eggs faithfully, cleaning and aerating them, without stopping to feed herself, Steers said.And she didn't have time for her usual entertainment: unscrewing jars to find treats, dismantling Mrs. Potato Head toys and taking apart Legos.

One wonders what octopuses do for lulz in the wild, since they seem so keen on Mr and Mrs Potato Head in aquaria.

Photosynthetic synchronicity

While I was writing the post yesterday about the ubiquity of photosynthetic pigments, news came in of a new mechanism for energy capture by a pigment. Fungi containing the pigment melanin appear to be able to use ionizing radiation to give themselves an energy boost.

News-Medical Net reports: [T]wo types of fungi--one that was induced to make melanin (Crytococcus neoformans) and another that naturally contains it (Wangiella dermatitidis), were exposed to levels of ionizing radiation approximately 500 times higher than background levels. Both species grew significantly faster (as measured by the number of colony forming units and dry weight) than when exposed to standard background radiation.

Fungi were found living inside the reactor building at Chernobyl. The article speculates that human skin melanin may be able to use radiation the same way, though I suspect that the body behind the pigment may not be happy to receive the stray radiation the melanin doesn't catch.

Dr. Casadevall notes that the melanin in fungi is no different chemically from the melanin in our skin. "It's pure speculation but not outside the realm of possibility that melanin could be providing energy to skin cells," he says. "While it wouldn't be enough energy to fuel a run on the beach, maybe it could help you to open an eyelid."