Botany in movies and on TV is usually absolute and utter crap, and it ruins it for me. Plants frequently are a give away that the filming was done in a location distant from where the action was supposed to take place. Even pure escapist garbage gets really annoying like a recently viewed "Librarian" episode where the hero finds quaking aspen is a Louisiana bayou and it's supposed to be part of some Christian legend which of course would have been set in the Eastern Mediterranean. CSI is ever rediculous in their pin-point plant identifications from a single trichome recovered at a crime scene. Except I did see one of my mentors ID a plant from just a trichome once. So imagine my surprise to learn that even when it doesn't matter, i.e., purely science fiction, the makers of Avatar consulted a botanist! Wow! It happens so seldom, but of course we are are the only ones who know because no one else notices. At least this gives me a reason to see the film.
As an added bonus, my colleague recommends some "other-wordly" plants you can grow in your garden. Enjoy!
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3 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
2 comments:
Didn't I read that they only consulted the botanist after they designed the plants, just to make up explanations of ecology and fill in the computer game. Sorry, I am an incorrigible cynic. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/12/extra-terrestrial-botany.php
Well, Pat, that just scrolls my nerd! But of course that is how everybody does business, only seek expert knowledge after the fact. No problem with being cynical when that's what happens.
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