Lean On Me, Dear Pine Tree
COOL TREE ALERT, COOL TREE ALERT!
Have you ever heard of Cook pines? While native to New Caledonia, these trees are now planted pretty much everywhere. One thing of interest about them is that they tend to have tilted trunks. I guess no one really thought too much about this until fairly recently (2017) when it was discovered that the tilt was actually rather specific. Namely, the trees tend to tilt towards the equator, leaning south in the northern hemisphere and leaning north in the southern hemisphere.
According to data collected by Dr. Matthew Ritter, a professor at California Polytechnic State University, the trees have an estimated average tilt of 8.55 degrees, which is approximately double the tilt of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
That’s a steep tilt.
And it gets steeper the further away the trees are from the equator.
While other vegetation exhibits this tilting (such as cacti tilting towards the sun or flowers of Joshua trees pointing south, this is apparently the first documented case of an entire tree actively tilting. Some think it’s an adaptation for the trees to catch more sunlight at those more extreme latitudes (like the Joshua tree flowers).
Pretty cool, huh? Picture:
(Source)
TWSB: Nature’s Bling
Ever wonder what the shiniest living material in the world is?
(Me neither, but aren’t you curious now?)
Well, apparently it’s this type of fruit that grows in the forests of central Africa. The plant, Pollia condensate, produces these iridescent berry-sized fruits in little clusters. And while iridescence is not too hard to find in the animal kingdom (jewel beetles, butterfly wings, the wings of some birds), its much rarer in the world of plants.
Investigation of the fruit at a microscopic level reveals that the outer part of it contains layers of thick-walled cells, each of which contains even more layers of cells and fibers. It is the distance between these layers combined with the angles of the fibers that amplify beams of light and create super strong colors. The technical term for this is “multilayer interface.”
But the coolest part of this whole thing is WHY scientists think these plants have such ostentatious fruit.
The fruit of the Pollia is of practically no nourishment—they’re dry, seed-filled husks. Thus, animals don’t naturally want to eat them. But Pollia tend to grow in the same region as the Psychotria peduncularis—a plant that also produces blue berries but whose berries ARE edible and ARE desirable by animals. So scientists who study the plants think that the Pollia evolved fruit that would imitate the look of the more desirable plant, thus tricking animals into eating them and thus spreading their seed around.
How freaking cool is that?
Parking Lot Adventures: Nature Edition!
I got owned by a dust devil this afternoon.
I left work around 1 PM today. Since it’s summer session at PCC and no one ever comes in on Friday anyway, I was lucky enough to park not only in the main lot but also in a nice shady spot under a tree.
So I’m walking across the parking lot and everything’s fine…it’s not windy at all (surprisingly) and even though it’s like 105 degrees, it felt good after sitting under a blasting air conditioner all morning.
I unlock the car and open up the back driver’s side door so I can throw my backpack back there. I’ve got the upper half of my body in the car (I was trying to bury my backpack under a bunch of stuff so my USBs/iPod/phone/etc. weren’t in the direct sun on the drive home) and my butt sticking out of the door.
As I’m screwing around back there I feel this fairly strong gust of wind hit my back. I didn’t want to stand up and mess up my hair in the wind (I’m vain like that), so I just kind of hung out in the back of the car for a second, bent over with my butt still sticking out.
Then this HUGE gust of wind just slams me in the back, KNOCKING ME INTO THE CAR along with a small forest’s equivalent of tree particulate, dust, and sand. The door slams behind me and I look up just in time to see the tail end of a dust devil go spinning wildly past the car. And all is calm once more.
So now the entire back seat of the car, the front passenger seat, the floor in the back, and all the stuff we had on the back seat (cloth grocery bags, my coat, miscellaneous journals and boxes and whatnot) are covered with tree debris. I got a good shot of it down the back of my shirt, too.
Haha, sorry if this blog seems obvious to you (“dust devils involve wind? DO TELL”) but that was my first up-close-and-personal experience with one. I think they look deceptively weak.
Mother nature: 1
Claudia: 0
Hey you rowdy kids, get off my lawn!
And by “lawn” I mean “balcony.”
And by “kids” I mean “pigeons.”
And by “rowdy” I mean “horny.”
12:15 PM:
Lady Pigeon lands on balcony railing, surveys the pleasant cool night.
12:16 PM:
Male Pigeon A lands next to her with obvious sexual intent.
12:16:30 PM:
Male Pigeon B lands on other side of female with same intent as Male Pigeon A.
12:16:31 PM:
Male Pigeon A disapproves of Male Pigeon B and puffs out his chest dramatically.
12:17 PM – 12:20 PM:
[Incessant angry cooing]
12:21 PM:
Male Pigeon A has had enough and flies over to Male Pigeon B’s side of Lady Pigeon.
12: 21 PM – 12:30 PM:
Male Pigeons A and B proceed to peck the crap out of each other.
12:31 PM:
Pigeon B has had enough of this nonsense and flies away, defeated.
12:31:30 PM:
Pigeon A does victory prance along metal railing.
12:32 PM – 12:40 PM
BOW-CHICKA-WOW-WOW!
Eight minutes of glorious, noisy, feathery pigeon sex.
The worst part is that I had my balcony door wide open for all of this; I didn’t want to close it for fear of interrupting them, ‘cause they might have been just startled enough to panic and fly in here. Angry sex-interrupted pigeons are probably the last things I need right now. I also would have shouted at them to get a room, but that’d probably cause them to fly in here, too. “Screw you, lady, I just pigeon-pecked the hell out of that other dude, now I’m GETTIN’ IT ON!!!”
I’ve never seen pigeons out so late. I guess horniness knows no time.
I also saw two squirrels getting down in a trash can this afternoon.
Spring has arrived in Vancouver.
Today’s song: Wavin’ Flag by K’naan
GIANT LEAF
HOLY FREAKING CRAP this is the biggest leaf I’ve ever seen. It was draped over a fire hydrant and startled the crap out of me because I thought it was an injured bat when I first looked at it.
Fun fact: It was really hard to fit it in the range of the lense while holding my other hand down to it for size comparison.
BLOGS ARE SHORT BECAUSE LIFE SUCKS RIGHT NOW
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32968917/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Huh…never even knew the colors were different.
Bad Senator! No Biscuit!
First, a sincere “thank you” to all who are serving or who have served; it is Memorial Day, of course. Though I’m not sure if the annual service in East City Park actually happened this year or not…you’d think a newspaper would mention that upcoming, wouldn’t you?
Well, it is Moscow, so what’s to be expected?
So Rob and I drove out to this completely random park called Rotary Park today out by (“by” is a relative term, we drove around for like 15 minutes to find the freaking place) the Plant Science Farm on the highway leading to Troy. It has a swing set, a volleyball court, and a trail that, in its process of looping back to the same freaking place it starts from, leads one through the 9 levels of hell for trees. This is what we gathered the punishments for each level were (note: all punishments, save level 7, occur in tidy little piles):
Level 1: dead and burnt trees
Level 2: dead and burnt trees
Level 3: dead and burnt trees and some rocks
Level 4: dead and burnt trees and some more rocks
Level 5: dead and burnt trees
Level 6: dead and burnt trees
Level 7: pretty flowers
Level 8: dead and burnt trees
Level 9: dead and burnt trees
Oh, and when I die, I want the inscription “She Sucked It Up and Died” on my tombstone.
Long story.
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