tjrowdy

[tjrowdy]

Weirdly anti-millennial articles have scraped the bottom of the barrel so hard that they are now two feet down into the topsoil

[tjrowdy]

succulents

まだ　植え替えを　待つヒト　多数、、、。

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

For when I have no clue what color to use

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

please like/reblog if you save or use it!

[tjrowdy]

please like/reblog if you save or use it!

[tjrowdy]

I’m so excited to share with you the final version of the snake poster I provided illustrations for. The Roger Williams Zoo is working to help educate the public about these common mistaken identities between venomous and non-venomous snakes in the Northeast. I am happy that I could be a part of this project! 

[tjrowdy]

Lions, ground sloths, and mastodons, OH MY! In what is relatively speaking only a blink of an eye, the megafauna that once dominated North America have mostly vanished. Up until about 13,000 years ago, many large bodied mammals ruled this continent during what is referred to as the Pleistocene, which lasted for a few million years. During that time, many of the plant species we know and love today were well established. They lived side by side with the mammoths and saber toothed tigers. Just as plants have co-evolutionary histories with extant animals species, there is a growing school of thought that  some of the plant species still living have co-evolutionary adaptations that can only be explained in the context of the Pleistocene megafauna. One such adaptation can be seen in the pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba). Pawpaw is the most northerly representative of a predominantly tropical plant family, the custard apples. As you can guess by the name, this family produces large fruits. Indeed, for anyone who knows pawpaw, the fruits are rather characteristic of this species. They kind of resemble a banana but the insides are more custardy and there are a handful of large, slightly toxic seeds embedded inside. The interesting thing about pawpaw fruits is there is no animal big enough living today that can effectively distribute the seeds. Most of the time they either fall off the tree and rot or they are mutilated by an opossum or raccoon. Why would pawpaw go through so much trouble to produce fruits that no one can effectively utilize? The growing opinion is that these fruits are anachronisms, throwbacks to a time long gone. It is believed some species of large mammal (or mammals) that lived during the Pleistocene functioned as the seed dispersers by consuming the fruit whole and passing the seed in their droppings. Since the Pleistocene megafauna only went extinct a mere 13,000 years ago, there has not been enough time to evolve away from a missing seed disperser. So why hasn’t pawpaw gone extinct? Well, for starters, pawpaw can reproduce clonally. Pawpaw patches are mostly genetic clones of a single individual. Also, the edible nature and size of pawpaw fruits did not go unnoticed by natives and settlers. There is evidence of pawpaw cultivation throughout its range. I love pawpaw. It is such a neat tree. It’s coolness is magnified by the fact that the tree just may allow you a window back in time. If you have the chance to try pawpaw fruit, make sure to take it. I am very jealous of my southern friends as I live in the northern extreme of its native range and coming across any in the wild is not common.

-indefenseofplants

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

from now on I’m going to convey sarcasm over the internet by typing like this

oh wow look how sarcastic that looks

[tjrowdy]

[tjrowdy]

I have been searching for this exact post for weeks!

When to start plants indoors

There are different ideas about this out there. Some gardeners like to start very early. For most plants it’s written on the package when to start them. I am not very patient when it comes to planting, but every year I start a bit later because it does not help much to start plants to early. Here is a great schedule from the All New Square Foot Gardening book. I start the peppers a bit earlier then he suggests, along with the ground cherries. But in overall it is a great chart. The dates are our dates, yours might be different.

[tjrowdy]

It's my bday. I do what I want! #octoberfest #samadams

#octoberfest #samadams