May 17, 2010
California poppies, near Bitter Creek - photo by Amanda Holland
Kathryn got stuck in traffic on Spur 408 Friday evening. She happily reported that a few bluebonnets remain, covered by now-taller grasses. We’re in the seventh week of our Texas wildflower panorama.
But Amanda Holland’s shot of California poppies in the wild hills near Bitter Creek caught my eye. Amanda’s out saving birds — the best photos of the wild almost always come while you’re on the way to do great stuff, I think. That’s a good reason to find a job that gets you out of doors, and into the wild.
Notice that, even in the wild, in near-wilderness, there are still signs of human actions. See the contrails?
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Art, Botany, History, Natural history, Natural resources, photography, Travel, Wildflowers | Tagged: Art, California, Poppies, Travel, Wildflowers | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
April 7, 2010
I’m stealing this one completely from P. Z. Myers’ Pharyngula. It’s just too good.
The daffodils are lovely — I recall when they’d bloom just about Easter in Utah, and Washington, D.C. Here in Dallas, our daffies depart before March 15, often not bothering to stick around until Easter.
But the real treat is the tree in the background. It’s just another tree early in the spring, not yet leafed out. But this one is special.
Caucasian Wingnut Tree (Pterocarya fraxinifolia ) and native daffodils in Warley place Nature reserve. © Copyright Glyn Baker and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Pterocarya fraxinifolia (tree in the background) – common name, “caucasian wingnut” – in the Warley Place Nature Preserve, in Essex, England. Photo by Glyn Baker.
Its common name is “caucasian wingnut.” You can’t make this stuff up. Reality is always much more entertaining than fiction.
Wikipedia’s entry is primed for comedy:
Species
There are six species of wingnut.
Another species from China, the Wheel Wingnut with similar foliage but an unusual circular wing right round the nut (instead of two wings at the sides), previously listed as Pterocarya paliurus, has now been transferred to a new genus, as Cyclocarya paliurus.
Uses
Wingnuts are very attractive, large and fast-growing trees, occasionally planted in parks and large gardens. The most common in general cultivation outside Asia is P. fraxinifolia, but the most attractive is probably P. rhoifolia. The hybrid P. x rehderiana, a cross between P. fraxinifolia and P. stenoptera, is even faster-growing and has occasionally been planted for timber production. The wood is of good quality, similar to walnut, though not quite so dense and strong.
Japanese wingnuts? Chinese wingnuts? Tonkin wingnuts (for all you Vietnam war historians out there)?
Wow. Just wow.
More, if you care:
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Posted by Ed Darrell
April 25, 2009
Are you out near Conroe on Sunday? April 26 is the third (and last) day of Texas Forest Expo 2009 at the Conroe Convention Center.
It’s free. It’s kid friendly ( a great place to take Cub Scouts or a group of Boy Scouts working on the Forestry merit badge). I’d be there if I could.
Get your name on the mailing list for notice for next year’s expo.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
December 16, 2008
ArborDay.org map showing changes in hardiness zones between 1990 and 2006, a map climate change denialists wish did not exist.
We need a new category of urban myth or urban legend. Jan Brunvand’s inventions and development of the study of folk stories that people claim to be true long enough that they become legends, needs to be updated to include internet stupidity that just won’t die. Especially, we need a good, two-word label for politically-motivated propaganda that should go away, but won’t.
Perhaps I digress.
One might be filled with hope at the prospect of the administration of President Obama. Science issues that have been ignored for too long may once again rise to due consideration. Friends in health care worry that it will take four or eight terms of diligent work to undo the damage done to medical science by neglect of spending and budgeting during the last eight years.
I take a little hope in this: Maybe we can get an update of the planting zones maps relied on by farmers, horticulturists, and backyard gardeners.
New maps were delayed through the Bush administration. The last serious update, officially, was 1990. Perhaps much has changed in climate in the last generation, and perhaps that is why the new maps were delayed, though they had been painstakingly prepared by the American Horticulture Society.
Why?
Plants cannot be fooled by newspaper reports. Plants are not partisan in political issues. Plants both respond to and clearly demonstrate climate change. To those who wished to suppress or deny climate change, suppressing the hardiness zone maps may have seemed like a good way to win a political debate.
Robust discussion based on the facts, a casualty of the past eight years, ready to be resurrected.
Resources:
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3 Comments | Botany, Climate change, denialism, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Global warming, History, Junk science, Maps, Science, trees, War on Science | Tagged: Agriculture, Botany, Climate change, geography, Global warming, Hardiness Zones, Horticulture, Junk science, Maps, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
December 13, 2008
Forecast is 70 degrees in Dallas on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Catherine Sherman has some photos of snow near Kansas City. Nice stuff. (I don’t have her permission to copy the photo here — go see her blog.)
I particularly like her photo of the river birch tree. It appeals to the botanist that still survives within me, plus it gives me hope about the proliferation of electronic cameras and the mass recording of things of interest to science.
Sherman writes that Kansas is the only state which has no native pines. Is that accurate? Does that count include Hawaii? (What are the native pines of Hawaii?)
In short, it’s really cool.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
October 16, 2008
You’ve seen it before — the letter saying toodle-oo to the red states, as the blue states muster the courage to let them go. Somebody passed it along, I forwarded it to a few people I thought hadn’t seen it.
A discussion broke out. Part of the discussion centered on Texas’s second secession from the U.S., and how nasty things can be in Texas (“It’s not the heat and humidity; it’s the hate and stupidity”).
A couple of exchanges in, I started to wince. God knows Texas has its problems. I haven’t even started in on the latest three months of lunacy at the State Board of Education where Creationist-in-Chief Don McLeroy is loosening his belt to drop his pants (figuratively, of course) and moon every kid in Texas before he eviscerates science education.
But — you know? — Texas has a couple of things going for it, reasons to smile while you’re stuck here.
Below the fold, the “So long, Red States” letter — but before that, a modest defense of Texas, as I wrote back:
I do regret that [y’all have] had such a difficult and unhappy time in Texas. Texas is far from my ideal place, especially for the weather and lack of mountains (I appear to be losing the retirement fight – I wanted Jackson Hole, Kathryn wants Kanab. Red rock wins with the family.)
And Yellowstone is a part of my soul, especially after we (probably illegally) scattered my brother’s ashes there in the last great family reunion before this past summer.
But, you know, Texas has some fine points that shouldn’t get overlooked. Especially, it doesn’t deserve to get every redneck.
Here are some of the great things about Texas:
- Big Bend National Park
- Dallas Symphony, and Jaap Van Zweden (the premiere of “August 4, 1964” last month was fantastic; Van Zweden has a magic wand instead of a baton); and the Meyerson Symphony Center, which is a vastly superior hall in my mind to Carnegie, Avery Fisher, or anything at the Kennedy Center.
- Dallas Museum of Art (King Tut is back!)
- Dinosaur Valley State Park (and the other 100 or so state parks)
- San Antonio
- Salado
- Houston Museum of Natural Science
- Kimbell Art Museum (the building itself is something to see – designed by Louis I Kahn)
- Bluebonnets; Lady Bird’s Wildflower Center (and all other Texas wildflowers)
- Dogwood Canyon
- Texas barbecue (no, it’s not like all the others; and most of the joy is in the journey to find it)
- LBJ Library
- Johnson Space Center
- John Henry Faulk
- San Marcos River
- Swimming holes along the (Texas) Colorado River
- DFW Airport (for access to the U.S., Canada and Mexico)
- Ann Richards
- Molly Ivins
- Monarch butterfly migration
- Birds and bird watching
- Pat Green
- Lyle Lovett
- Jerry Jeff Walker
- Tejano and Conjunto
- The Texas Observer
- It’s the origin of Walter Cronkite, Bob Schieffer, Jim Lehrer, and lots of others
- A dozen other things I’m forgetting for the moment
It’s been a rather miserable 21 years in Texas for us, for a lot of reasons. There are good things and good people in Texas. It ain’t all gloomy.
Wildflowers not only do blossom where they grow: They must blossom there.
Which reminds me, there are a dozen other wildflowers better than bluebonnets, and we haven’t even started on the magnificent grasses like big bluestem, little bluestem and side-oats grama.
(More humor below the fold.)
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2 Comments | Botany, Education, Fiesta de Tejas!, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Humor, Molly Ivins' Ghost, Museums, Politics, Science, Texas, Texas history, Texas Music, Travel | Tagged: Blue States, Camping, Humor, Museums, Music, Red States, Texas, Travel, Wildflowers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
September 19, 2008
A bit unexpectedly, I’m in the wilds of Wisconsin at the moment and on the road the next couple of days. Posting is likely to be sparse.
But the American open road is, as always, very interesting.
For example, according to the billboards, somewhere in Wisconsin there is a restaurant named Brisco’s (after Brisco County, Texas?), which claims to feature cuisine (a French word) of a “southwestern” flavor. What does that mean?
Their billboard features a Wyoming-style cowboy, a saguaro cactus (from 800 miles south of Wyoming) in front of Delicate Arch, the signature arch of Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah, (well out of cattle company and still at least 400 miles from saguaro country). Only on a billboard in Wisconsin . . .
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Posted by Ed Darrell
September 17, 2008
High school students weren’t alive when Yellowstone burned in 1988. Do you remember?
NASA infrared satellite photograph of Yellowstone fires in 1988
It was a conflagration that made hell look like good picnicking. 1988 was a particularly dry summer, and hot. Lightning and human carelessness ignited fires across western North America. Five huge fires raged out of control, and burned huge swaths out of forests in Yellowstone National Park that probably hadn’t seen fire in 80 years, maybe longer.
The Salt Lake Tribune featured several stories about the fires and Yellowstone’s recovery today, “Yellowstone: Back from the ashes,” how wildland firefighting changed, a great chart on fire succession stages, and another chart on the effects of the fire on larger animals in the Yellowstone system.
Old Faithfull erupts against background of smoke from 1988 fires - NPS photo by Deanna Marie Dulen
The 1988 fires made history in several ways; it was the first time so many fires had burned simultaneously. Ultimately some of the fires merged into even greater conflagrations. The fires forced the shutdown of tourism and other activities in the Park. Inadequacies in fire fighting equipment, staffing and policies were highlighted and displayed in newspapers and on television for weeks, forcing changes in policies by cities, states and the federal government.
Some good came out of the fires. Much undergrowth and dead wood had choked off plant diversity in some places in the Park. The fires opened new meadows and offered opportunities for some species to expand their ranges.
Scientifically, a lot of information came out of the fires. The mystery of when aspen would seed out was solved — new aspen seedlings appeared in areas where the fires had sterilized the ground with extremely high temperatures that seemed to trigger the seeds to germinate.
Our visits in 1989 offered a lot of opportunities to look at very bleak landscapes.
Yellowstone National Park in 1989, a year after the big fires - Copyright 1989 and 2008, Ed Darrell
Recover of the forested areas began rather quickly, but will take time to cover over all the scars of the fires.
Other resources:
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Posted by Ed Darrell
July 29, 2008
If your family has not been touched by a member with Alzheimer’s Disease, senile dementia, or some other form of memory-killing disease, you’re in a lucky minority.
A good friend told how her brother-in-law eased the pain of her mother’s slide into dementia, with little lies. The mother developed an invisible friend who had to accompany her on most outings. The problem was that the invisible friend was also invisible to the mother. The brother-in-law, frustrated at the mother’s refusal leave her room for an outing because the friend was not apparent to accompany them, finally told the mother that the friend was already in the car. Mom happily scooted to the car and forgot about the friend completely by the time they got to the car.
The friend was “already there” for much of the rest of the mother’s life. It was a lie, a falsehood, but it made things so much easier.
CBS Evening News tonight featured a story on a potential new treatment for dementia. In one segment, a husband was quizzing his dementia-affected wife, and she could not recall what he had told her just a few minutes before, how many years they had been married. Frustrating for the victim as well as the family.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
A British psychologist, Oliver James, has a new book out that suggests such quizzes do more damage, and are unnecessary. Help the victim along with cues, he says. It’s a trick he got from his own mother-in-law, Penny Garner, from her experience working with her mother.
In Dorothy’s case, Garner found that while she [Dorothy] had no idea what she had done moments before, she automatically tried to make sense of her situation by matching it to past experiences. Dorothy had always enjoyed travelling, and so if she was asked to sit with other people for any length of time, she assumed she was in the Heathrow departure lounge. By not challenging this assumption, Garner found that her mother would sit peacefully for long periods. If she did wander off, Garner found she could encourage her to return by reminding her of her former skill as a bridge-player, telling her that the other players were waiting for her. “Given a properly set up bridge table, my mother would spend hours happily looking at her cards and waiting to play,” she says.
People with dementia are often exhausting to care for because they forget what they are doing during routine activities. Garner found that she could enable her mother to remain relatively independent by providing cues. “If while getting ready for bed, I noticed she had lost track of whether she was buttoning up the cardigan ready to go out or taking it off to go to bed, I would fiddle with my buttons alongside her and say ‘Oh good! No more travelling for us today! Glad we’ve got a bed for the night!’ I found that this simple cue was all she needed. Without it, she was inclined to get half-way through undressing and then start getting dressed again.”
We all look for such cues in everyday life, and we use them to remind us of what we are doing, where we are going, and why. Why not make it easier for victims of dementia?
Who is president of the United States? Half the time I’d prefer to forget it’s George W. Bush. Don’t quiz me on it. Ask me if it isn’t great that we’re electing someone to replace him, this fall.
Smart human tricks.
Resources:
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4 Comments | Botany, Family, Health care, psychology, Science | Tagged: Alzheimer's Disease, Books, Dementia, Family, health, psychology, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
April 29, 2008
Not perfect — there is a brown spot on it; but beautiful, surpassingly rare, a creature of the serendipity of nature, it is a natural dogwood blossom in Dallas County, Texas:
What we came to see – the magical dogwood blossoms.
On April 5 Kathryn and I joined David Hurt and a jovial band of hikers for a trip into Dogwood Canyon in Cedar Hill, Texas. The physical formation of Cedar Hill upon which the city of the same name and several others stand, is one of the highest spots between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. It is an outcropping of chalk, a formation known as the Austin Chalk, that runs from Austin, north nearly to the Oklahoma border.
This rock formation creates a clear physical marker of the boundary between East and West. Dallas is east of the line, Fort Worth, Gateway to the Old West, is 30 miles farther west. On this outcropping is married the plains of the west with the oaks and forests of the east. Within a few miles of the line, the botanical landscape changes, cowboy prairie lands one way, forest lands the other.
On the chalk itself, the soil is thin and alkaline. The alkalinity is a function of the chemical composition of the chalk underneath it.
Dogwoods love the forests of East Texas with their acidic soils. Early spring produces fireworks-like bursts of white dogwood blossoms in the understory of East Texas forests. Dogwoods die out well east of Dallas as the soil changes acidity; driving from Dallas one can count on 30 to 60 miles before finding a dogwood.
Except in Dogwood Canyon. There, where entrepreneur David Hurt originally planned to build a family hideout and getaway, he found a stand of dogwoods defying botanists and the Department of Agriculture’s plant zone maps, blooming furiously in thin alkaline soil atop the Austin Chalk.
(continued below the fold)
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8 Comments | Biology, Botany, Environmental protection, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, geology, Science, Texas, Texas history, Travel, trees | Tagged: Audubon Society, Botany, Dogwood Canyon, Environmental protection, geography, Science, Texas, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 