dailybotany

[dailybotany]

Wildflowers in bloom. Mount Rainier National Park.

[dailybotany]

Baek Duri - Jari 11, 2024 - Acrylic on canvas

[dailybotany]

[dailybotany]

Plants actually move around a lot in 24 hours, they just do it very slowly | source

[dailybotany]

Spring Cactus/ Rhsalidopsis gaertneri

[dailybotany]

Girls will be like “oh I’m just running quick some errands” and then spend all day in the wetlands appreciating the unique flora and fauna

[dailybotany]

Brief Book Review - Crossings by Ben Goldfarb

April 22 2024

Excellent read but hard to get through. Worth it.

This book is a lot of things. Beautifully written, endless stories and research and interviews with interesting people, there's some hope and many people working hard for good things, but damn is it also extremely upsetting for those of us with soft hearts. Radicalizing.

You're going to read/hear a lot about animal death in this book, about all the different ways that beautiful animals all across the planet are dying due to roads. From vehicles killing them outright, to animals refusing to cross the roads due to the perceived danger and then starving to death or dying out b/c of lack of access to mates, to pollution from cars/road salt, to poorly designed culverts preventing fish migrations, to how human health and lifespans are negatively impacted and how redlining in US cities hurt black communities.

This is a hard read and I wept, but I'm glad I managed to get through it. There's a lot of solid history/info in here about roads and how people first reacted to cars in the US, how cars brought travel to the middle classes and not just the rich, how much the US forest service was in bed with the logging industry and why the national forests are waayyyyy more fucked and damaged than one might think, how animal rehabbers in Tazmania work so hard to save animals, the dramatic road expansions going on in Brasil, from Alaska to Oakland CA to Minnesota to Florida to the UK a lot of terrain and a lot of animals are covered here.

And basically the issue is that different kinds of animals have different needs, so the best ways to help them survive being near roads vary and tend to be expensive, in an area of gov't that doesn't have much public attention or a big budget and generally has been deferring basic maintenance due to that (and therefore isn't really open to things like wildlife crossings - but well designed they save TONS of animal lives).

The mere existence of a road decreases the chances of individual and species survival. Roads decrease biodiversity and can lead species to extinction. The best thing we can do is actually to stop building them, but since that isn't realistic, the second best thing we can do is to pay attention to road ecologists and indigenous peoples to help design infrastructure that will better help the animals survive the onslaught of death that roads bring.

(this is as brief as I can make it! this book covers a LOT of territory)

#to read

[dailybotany]

i asked an angel what the deal with lichen was and they got really skittish and told me they could give me the answer to anything in the universe but to please not ask them about the lichen

[dailybotany]

this tree was so pretty i started sobbing

[dailybotany]

Cowslip/gullviva. Värmland, Sweden (April 22, 2016).

[dailybotany]

[dailybotany]

Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington

North Cascades

November, 2023

[dailybotany]

not to be the guy who stops and admires the flowers but when I go outside. they do draw me in fr fr

[dailybotany]

[dailybotany]

The lilacs are starting!

[dailybotany]

Personal favourites from today's bonsai show

[dailybotany]