Various Japanese plants (and fungi) spring to life in Omni/ScienceNet's "Action Plant" series of
time-lapse videos shot in Kōchi prefecture.
posted by gman
on Nov 9, 2010 -
3 comments
During the past 4 days, the
Cockrell Butterfly Center at the
Houston Museum of Natural Science has stayed open 24 hours to accommodate the
record crowds filing into the museum at all hours. Why? A rare
Amorphophallus titanium, aka
“Corpse Flower,” named
Lois is
finally about to bloom. Now, Lois is
not your average, run-of-the-mill
stinky plant.
Only 28 Corpse Flowers have bloomed in the US, so Lois has become a
local celebrity with
her own blog,
Flickr feed,
live webcam and
cupcakes. She even has
her own playlist, with songs such as “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynrd, “I’m Comin’ Out” by Diana Ross and the classic “Smelly Cat” by Phoebe from Friends. And like any trendy Corpse Flower, Lois also has
her own Twitter account. She's also a
bit of a diva. Yet despite predictions, Lois
still hasn't bloomed as of Wednesday morning. In response, Lois
makes excuses,
bad jokes,
complaints and
snarky comments.
posted by yeoja
on Jul 14, 2010 -
30 comments
Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at
The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jun 4, 2009 -
16 comments
The
Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as
Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th
national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the
Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts
the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the
Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the
Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the
Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the
Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of
Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the
Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist,
Tomitaro Makino, and the
Japanese Bees Image Database.
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 20, 2009 -
5 comments
"All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in
MBG’s electronic databases during the past 25 years are publicly available
here. This system has over one million scientific names and 3.5 million specimen records."
(Description from website.) Searchable by scientific or common name, the database includes brief
descriptions, images and
references (with some links to full text in
Botanicus), and
specimen and
distribution lists that are available in Google
Maps and
Earth. Quite a nice resource for anyone interested in botany.
[more inside]
posted by cog_nate
on Mar 20, 2009 -
3 comments
The UC Davis
corpse flower bloomed yesterday: "Amorphophallus titanum, also known as Titan Arum or the Corpse Flower because of its smell, takes up to 15 years to bloom and rarely does so in cultivation...The stink is astounding." (Another stinky flower previously discussed
here.)
posted by footnote
on May 8, 2007 -
43 comments
The Mathematical Lives of Plants "Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?"
posted by dhruva
on May 7, 2007 -
31 comments
Follow the blooming of the Corpseflower. The Titan opened about halfway during the course of the morning and afternoon yesterday, giving off stronger waves of odor as the day progressed. The peak odor and opening was in the early evening and by 10PM the pulses of odor became less strong. The daily progress of the Amorphophallus Titanum.
posted by jokeefe
on Jul 7, 2004 -
7 comments
Monsanto Wins Fight to Control Plant The Canadian Supreme court sets international precedent by ruling that since Monsanto holds a patent on a gene, it can control the use of the plant.
So does this mean that in the future that an engineered human gene could be patented, and therefore if you receive this gene you will have to make royalty payments? And if you renege on paying can they repo the gene?
posted by batboy
on May 21, 2004 -
34 comments
Lichens of North America 'This website grew out of the activities of Sylvia and Stephen Sharnoff, who did the photographic fieldwork for the book Lichens of North America, by Irwin M.Brodo and the Sharnoffs, published in November, 2001 by Yale University Press ... ' -
the human uses of lichens,
a lichen sampler,
lichen portraits (
'This lichen is used medicinally in India as a poultice to induce copious urination, as a linament and an incense for headaches, and also as a powder to help wounds heal.') ...
more lichen links.
Related interest :-
The Hidden Forest, photos of lichens, fungi, mosses and slime moulds of the New Zealand bush.
posted by plep
on Nov 20, 2003 -
21 comments
Plants in motion is a comprehensive archive of time-lapse movies (Quicktime format) of plants germinating and growing, flowers opening, tropic responses and circadian movements. Some of the video is quite eerie. The plants really seem...erm...alive... The site also has a guide to
making your own time-lapse film.
posted by Jimbob
on Oct 19, 2003 -
14 comments
Botanical Record-Breakers - learn about the world's most poisonous plants, the fastest growing, the most painful, the oldest, the ongoing debate about the largest, and much more. Also discussed is the rare
coconut pearl - botanical jewel, or hoax?
posted by Jimbob
on Oct 2, 2003 -
8 comments
Katinka Matson's scanned flower art : technology lets the flowers speak. "...imagine a painter who could, like Vermeer, capture the quality of light that a camera can, but with the color of paints. That is what a scanner gives you.... In her flowers one can see every microscopic dew drop, leaf vein, and particle of pollen—in satisfying rich pigmented color....." (scroll down for images)
posted by troutfishing
on Jun 24, 2003 -
16 comments
Paghat The Ratgirl (
google cache) is one of the more interesting people that I have encountered on the Internet. A frequent poster to the newsgroup rec.gardens, her
gardening site is an interesting mix of plant history and folklore, lovely images and a darn good place to get ideas on what to add to the yard next. She frequently posts to many other newsgroups as well and
a quick google search or
two turns up thousands of messages by paghat, her detractors and her fans. She even has a
gift shop.
posted by bargle
on Jun 12, 2003 -
7 comments
The Dancing Plant
-- Darwin was obsessed by it, although even he never trained his weedy Asian shrub to twitch its leaves to the sound of music. But in a small town in northern Thailand ...
[Some people may experience a time-delay ad]
posted by titboy
on Mar 12, 2003 -
13 comments
