New species of fuzzy daisy and other furry flora

I love when I get to do a NatGeo post somehow based on something I find in (or near) my own backyard.

It happened with "Singing Penis, Hearing Feet: Animals that Repurpose Body Parts," when my Chief Science Officer, Doug Rhodehamel, discovered a water scorpion in our friends' pool and he explained how they breathe through a syphon in their tail. And it happened recently with the story New species of daisy and other fuzzy flora.

That's the daisy in the upper left, discovered in the Venezuelan Andes very recently and a click on the story will give you the skinny on its environment and why it's so fuzzy (and also why it looks a little downcast. It's not. That's just the way the face faces, but it's actually quite a pretty reddish orange color, like a blazing sunset or a dark colored sunflower). The other flora in the story, fuzzy plants from all over the world, had a more domestic start.

On the right you'll see something I thought was a Halloween decoration belonging to my neighbor. I walked by it twice before taking a closer look at what I took to be fake spider legs sticking out of the flower pot but are actually very real rhizomes, sort-of above-ground roots of the Rabbit's Foot Fern, a plant people actually have in their homes without screaming every time they look at it.

Between the new discovery of the daisy for the whole world and the new discovery of the rabbit's foot fern for me it turned into a nice story covering lots of lovely and surprising flora.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Day at the Races

Image
       So - has anything especially fast, slow, theatrical, queeny, nostalgic, crowd-pleasing, hot, aerodynamic, silly or record-breaking ever happened in your bed? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it has. So the difference between you and this event is that your spectacle (probably) didn’t happen in front of a mob of drunks on as glorious an April day as you could order out of a goddamn Hallmark calendar.       This was the scene at the    Fairvilla Megastore   Conch Republic Red Ribbon Bed Race  down Duval Street in Key West, a benefit for AIDS Help, which took place this past Saturday. More than 20 businesses participated in this charity goodf allism, racing real beds which must be a certain size, have a mattress, four wheels that touch the ground, four runners pushing and be manned or womaned by one person.             Once you get past the rules the cool thing is outfitting your bed for maximum creativity – there was a coffin bed and a bong bed, and pirate
Read more

Say Ahhhhh: Drive-Thru Pap Smears in the COVID era

Image
        Listening to my friends talk about the COVID-19 test I thought it was going to feel like getting a lobotomy.      “They stick a swab so far up your nose, I felt like it was going into the back of my eye,” one said, but when free drive-through testing was offered in my little Florida beach town I went. I can pinch a penny until Lincoln starts crying and if something is free, I’m going to get one, even if it means being skewered like a corn dog.  The test was mildly irritating. You tilt your head back and they do, indeed, poke a swab up your snoot farther than you’d expect it to go. It felt like I’d been bike riding and got ladybug stuck up my nose, a sensation which lasted about 45 minutes after the actual sticking. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, but I’d anticipated getting my eyeballs yoinked out through my nostrils.  Anything else was emotional found money. What left a more lasting impression than the test was the joy of drive-through medical service. Si
Read more

Drumpf Scare: Why I Worry About the Drumpf Signs I DON'T See

Image
I have nerves like a chihuahua and since my traditional election night  vodka-and-Pepto has become too strong a beverage for me I just want  to be with like-minded people supporting Hillary Clinton. I asked a friend if he wanted to  join  me at a watch party.    “Can I wear my Trump undies?” he texted back. “Can I burn them in effigy? Not while you’re wearing them, of course,” I replied.  I was joking but the conversation gave me what I call Drumpf scare which is like a “jump scare,” the horror movie trope where a viewer jumps out of their seat in terror after being lulled into a false sense of calm. A Drumpf scares is when you realize someone you thought you knew might be a Drumpf supporter as I worried about my friend. It’s that same feeling as when you realize “The calls are coming from the inside of the house!” My guess is that there are a lot of dark Drumpfers out there, people who support someone I think of as the Hitlerian Cheeto, but who don’t want to be met
Read more