The botany category includes the posts I write about plants themselves. Since I am passionate about wildflowers, many of my posts celebrate them in some way. It can be individual flowers, like iris, fireweed, goldenrod, and yarrow; families of flowers, like the Asteraceae; a genus of beautiful vampires, the Castilleja. I write about rare plants, sometimes in extreme conditions. There are posts on the magic of photosynthesis, 0n why lichen is saving the world, and why there’s such a wild abundance of plant diversity. For Halloween, I’ve explored why there are so many ghostly white flowers and celebrated slightly ominous orange flowers. I have fun with the idea of spruce family planning, with comparing cactus flowers to filmy lingerie. And there’s a post on the seedheads I love so much. Many of these essays are also about the ecology of the plants and their habitat.
The galleries don’t get categories, but most would fall under botany: wildflowers from Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho, and Missouri. There are galleries for grasslands in Colorado and two prairies in Kansas, one a ranch, one a remnant tallgrass prairie. There’s one for white flowers, one for cactus flowers, and one for seedheads. Enjoy!
These gorgeous seeds and their vast number of relations are the foundation of life. For the plants that grow from them and for the entire animal kingdom, which is completely dependent on them for food. Herbivores eat their plants and the seeds themselves. Carnivores eat animals that eat plants. We human animals have a special […]
The brilliance of seeds Read More »
To love plants is to be in awe of photosynthesis. Even when you know how it works, it’s still a miracle. And a crucial, we-wouldn’t-be-here-without-it miracle. Its ramifications are so vast that once it showed up, it dictated all the evolution that followed. It’s also complicated. There is, for example, a catalyzing enzyme involved called
Living light: the crucial miracle of photosynthesis Read More »
For 150 years lichen has been known to be a combination of two life forms. The outside is a fungal matrix, rather like the crust of a baguette, which gives structure and protection to the softer, more filamentous inside, formed by one of the algae family, or occasionally a cyanobacteria. These latter two provide nutrients
Pursuing mystery: how we found out lichen has a third partner and is saving the earth Read More »
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world These words, from Rainer Maria Rilke’s exquisite Book of Hours, are slightly paradoxical because this year we traveled less than any of the other years since we set off on our journey in 2011. My partner George’s health isn’t up to life
Songlines 2017: widening circles Read More »
One of the blessings of a visit to New York late last summer was seeing something I miss in California: a world awash in goldenrod. A member of the vast and happy Asteraceae family, Solidago canadensis, one of a hundred species of native goldenrods in the US, overflowed fields and banked roadsides near my sister’s
The gold rush: the joyful power of goldenrod Read More »
When I first thought of the title for this Halloween post, I had fun in mind: white flowers with ghostly or skeletal effects. There are those, like the cotton grass above and the trillium and others below. But the more I thought about white flowers, the more questions I had. How did they become white?
Ghosts in the landscape Read More »
I took the picture above six years ago this month, standing in a field of sunflowers on Cape Breton Island on the east coast of Canada. It was the first place we went when we started the journey that has taken us to so many wonderful places. I’ve never forgotten the joy of standing in
One big, happy family: the Asteraceae Read More »
I am standing on the rocky ledge that is Ring Mountain on a spring day. Within sight are San Francisco and bustling, built-up Marin County. Houses, cars, people, and roads — all the trappings of “civilization” — are everywhere. And yet, I am surrounded by a staggering variety of life. The plant diversity alone is
Wild abandon: the mystery and glory of plant diversity Read More »
When I first saw the picture of the trollius above, I was struck by how ferocious it looked, though the trollius itself didn’t inspire that thought when I took it. It was the only time I’d ever associated the word ‘ominous’ with a flower. I was reminded of it this fall, as I took pictures
Happy Halloween: slightly ominous, very orange Read More »
I first saw a paintbrush, a member of the Castilleja genus, in Idaho. Then again in Southern California, and then Northern. Then Colorado and Utah, British Columbia and Alberta, and then Alaska. I haven’t yet seen them in Wyoming, but it’s the state flower, so I know they’re there. If you’re west of the Mississippi,
Beautiful vampires: the castilleja genus Read More »