Comments on: Endangered seeds

Endangered seeds

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:58:28 -0800

These strange alien structures are among the seeds and pollen conserved at the Kew Millennium Seed Bank

By: DU

DU — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:09:44 -0800

kew-kew! This has been a long-standing question with me, so I'm glad to see it answered: How long can seeds live? ...Extrapolation (often a risky procedure) to viability loss under more favourable storage conditions suggests that, for instance, Mung Beans might live for nearly 24,000 years, and the African grass, Teff (Eragrostis tef), could live for 15,000 years. Wow. Goes on to describe many long time-span experiments, which also brings to mind the clock of the long now. ISTR (but can't find now) a branch of theirs dedicated to caretaking scientific studies that span centuries.

By: device55

device55 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:31:24 -0800

achoo!

By: ErWenn

ErWenn — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:41:30 -0800

Sand Milkwort looks (and sounds) like a muppet.

By: nowonmai

nowonmai — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:30:56 -0800

I don't want this to sound like snark, but I'd love to also see these without the fake colouring-in. Not enough to do the screen-grabs and desaturation myself, mind you.

By: device55

device55 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:33:02 -0800

False color images show more detail than greyscale images: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/1132/False-Color-Photography.html

By: nowonmai

nowonmai — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:48:34 -0800

Yeah but think that this is not so much false colour photography as described in your article, where detail in wavelengths not normally visible to the human eye is revealed, as a case of somebody taking a greyscale image into Photoshop and colouring it in for artistic or illustrative effect. Fake colour as opposed to false colour. And fugly, in my opinion, in some of these shots.

By: jeffmik

jeffmik — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:49:26 -0800

Those spikes - no wonder they can cause so much grief to allergy sufferers!

By: sour cream

sour cream — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:05:27 -0800

Alien? In what sense are they alien? Did they pollinate us, so to say, from outer space?

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:51:43 -0800

Thanks for the reminder to stock up on anti-histamines.