KVARESTO8
Walking Projects
Fairfax Cross County Trail, 41 miles: completed 2 July 2010.
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Category Archives: Natural Sciences
Put down that pickle
Daniel Mosquin features one of my favorite creepy plants, the parasitic dodders. Newly described is Coastal Salt-marsh Dodder (Cuscuta pacifica), which is “especially” parasitic on the pickleweeds, Salicornia spp.
Some links: 58
One of my projects for the holiday break was to assemble my notes from several classes and workshops, along with info from the field guides on my shelf, into a composite table of plant families of the mid-Atlantic. It’s a work in progress, a page of my one-man wiki.
Urban extremophile
Daniel Mosquin points to an exceptionally well-written piece by Adam Rogers for Wired: it tells the story of James Scott and a mysterious black mold that beset the neighborhood around a distillery. The fungus, a barrel-shaped beastie now named Baudoinia compniacensis has been known to science since the 19th century, but much of Scott’s task was isolating and culturing the organism and giving it a proper scientific name. Props to Rogers for explaining how binomial nomenclature works.
Winter weeds at Woodend
Five nature fun facts from today’s winter weeds workshop with Stephanie Mason:
- The generic name for the tickseed sunflowers, Bidens (two-toothed), describes the two-barbed achenes that are typical fruit of the various species.
- Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis) is also known as Bead Fern. Look at the spore cases along the fronds in winter to see why.
- The slender seed pod of Dogbane (Apocynum sp.) looks like a mustard’s silique, but it’s actually a follicle that splits open on one side.
- Broom Sedge (Andropogon virginicus) is not a sedge, but a grass, and it rather resembles Little Bluestem.
- A little while ago, I had tumbled to the nomenclatural connection between Cardueline finches and Carduus thistles. But what I didn’t know, as Stephanie explained, is that goldfinches delay breeding into the summer, when thistles are about to set seed. Rather than feeding nestlings insects, as is the norm with songbirds, the parents regurgitate “thistle milk” for their young.
Some links: 57
Making connections: a roundup of nature stories that have caught my eye recently:
- GrrlScientist recaps a recent paper by Dan Strickland et al. that looks at the dependency between Gray Jays (Perisoreus canadensis) and conifers like Black Spruce (Picea mariana). The jays cache perishable food items like berries and mealworms, wedging the morsels into cracks in the bark of trees. Spruces supply a natural preservative, retaining the moisture of the stored snacks, that other northern tree species (birches, maples) don’t provide.
- Rick Wright rereads Ludlow Griscom’s (1890-1959) master’s thesis, revised and enlarged for publication in The Auk in 1922-23 (part 1, part 2). The paper presents a field identification key to ducks of the east coast. In his emphasis on flight characteristics for distinguishing birds at middle- to long-distance, Griscom anticipates the current emphasis on jizz.
- Sharon Levy summarizes recent research on the relationships between crop-pollinating bees like Apis mellifera and flowering plants in proximity to crop land: hedgerows of trees, introduced weeds, what have you. What may be the key to the bees’ success is the degree of plant diversity, be it native or alien.
- Maria Dolan reports on the habitat threat to of Vaux’s Swifts (Chaetura vauxi). These west coast birds, like their eastern congeners, Chimney Swifts (C. pelagica), are dependent on old brick chimneys for roosting (historically, they used hollow trees, which have also become scarce as old-growth forest declines). But rickety brick piles, especially those in earthquake zones, are prime candidates for demolition.
Bored
Nicholas D. Higgs et al. report evidence from a 3 million-year-old fossilized whale skeleton of tracks similar to modern Osedax, a bone-devouring annelid worm that is one of those icky critters I find fascinating.
Methuselah lived more than 900 years
Great photographs by Domingo Milella of a grove of Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) in California’s White Mountains.
“Is this an innovative approach?”
Virginia Gewin provides some pointers for rookie reviewers of papers submitted to technical journals. With career-hungry postdocs doing much of the refereeing, there’s little room for the purported conspiracies that cover up inconvenient research results.
Astronomy journals are generally comfortable with papers being revised several times, says Chris Sneden, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin and editor of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “It’s rare, but a paper can go through five or six review rounds if it starts out as a disaster,” he says. “But the sociology of the field is happy with a lot of back and forth with the author during the process.”
Own closest relative
Via Leta, Carl Zimmer reviews a lot of recent research on slime molds (myxomycetes). Eye-popping photographs by Steven L. Stephenson, especially the shiny black knobby bundles of Metatrichia vesparia.
Zombie tree
It’s not quite as tall as it was in June, but the Paulownia tomentosa that I cut down to a one-inch stump has sprouted up again. Looks like I’ll have to dig up the roots to get rid of the damn thing.
And I need to take Leta somewhere other than the side yard for photo ops.
Sign me up
Via Botany Photo of the Day, WinterRoot’s Wildflowers of Detroit project induced me to join Kickstarter.
Virginia earthquake 23 August 2011
At home, the quake left a little evidence of its passing. In the basement, some coffee cans of picture framing hardware spilled from the top of a high shelf, and a clock likewise fell.
Upstairs in the back bedroom a lamp tipped over and a lava lamp hit the deck. I am very grateful it fell on carpet and did not smash. Everything else looks just like I left it this morning. The various cracks in the walls, the result of the house’s settling ever since I started loading my belongings into it twenty years ago, are no worse than before.
Some links: 55
- I was looking for packing material at my cousin’s place and came across a Saturday edition obit for Jerry Ragovoy; otherwise I would have missed it altogether. Ragovoy co-wrote “Piece of My Heart,” which was recorded in a wrenching live performance by Janis Joplin and later, more regrettably, by a country pop singer.
- Linda Himelstein reports on research that looks at how dyslexics master syllable-based writing systems (and their languages) as opposed to character-based system.
- Alan Feuer filed a fine report on the natural areas of Jamaica Bay, still the only National Wildlife Refuge that you can get to via subway. Mylan Cannon adds a great photograph of conservationist Don Riepe, an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) on a ground-level nest, and a passenger jet in the background.
Jamaica Bay’s conservationists — fishermen and firefighters, limousine drivers and owners of small boats — are not your typical tree-hugging types, not “Upper West Side, Park Slope, brownstone Brooklyn people,” as Mr. Riepe put it. They are people like Mr. Lewandowski from the canoe club, a transit official…
Most foul
Via Botany Photo of the Day, Basilio Aristidis Kotsias makes the case that Claudius could indeed have poisoned King Hamlet by instilling henbane into his ear. And yet,
There are other explanations that fit the crime in question….. Finally, there exists the possibility that everything related to the apparition of the ghost on the platform before the castle of Elsinore was a product of Shakespeare’s fantasy, as well as the death of the melancholic prince, wounded by the poisoned sword (with what venom?) that Laertes held. If this were true, our interpretation would result in pure fiction.
At the sidewalk edge
Wednesday’s rains brought out this myxomycete (slime mold), spotted on my Thursday morning walk down to the bus stop.
