A Flat White! Yes, please!

Flat whites have come to the USA and that is such good news. TPP has spent a lot of time down under and has learned that one of the best coffees is a flat white. TPP would explain the difference between a flat white and a latte if he knew; he just likes one better than the other. The downside is that flat whites are only found, so far, in that dastardly coffeeshop chain from Seattle, establishments that are only frequented when no alternatives can be found. Any place that doesn't know what to call a large, medium, or small coffees is just being pretentious, not a great crime. And TPP will admit that they treated one of his students well who worked pushing coffee to make ends meet, so maybe not all bad. It will be interesting to see how long it takes TPP's local coffee shoppe to figure out how to make a flat white. They like to think they are cutting edge, but this is the midwest, so, you know, new trends are old hat by the time they get here. Sort of by coincidence, one of the Phactors' favorite wines of yore was Tyrrell's Long Flat Red. Flat red, flat white, what next one wonders?

Botanical Art

Plants have always been good subjects for art because pattern (genetics) combined with variation (environment) yields design.  And of course prior to photography, and for many reasons still superior, botanical illustration was quite significant and a bridge between science and art.  For reasons still unclear in his mind TPP minored in art, which was somewhat unusual for a biology major, but having limited artistic talent, this interest was turned toward acquiring whatever art attracted my attention.  Funny, TPP never set out to be an art "collector", but after awhile it sort of accumulates and why before you know it you have a collection, a big collection, and yes, a great many have a botanical theme.  Of the many things TPP likes about his second home Australia, one is that they have a great tradition of natural history art.  One of TPP's prized possessions is a print by Leslie van der Sluys (google him to see examples of his work), and since his untimely and recent death his prints are getting harder to find and pricier.  They are stunning B&W prints each hand colored.  So naturally it came as no surprise to find that an online clearing house for botanical art had Australia as its base although botanical art from many countries is represented.  This water color of lotus so brazenly displayed here is the work of another Australian artist, Jenny Phillips, whose work TPP saw at a recent botanical congress in Melbourne.  Yes, TPP is tempted to buy this piece, but his art allowance has been sort of depleted of late. 

Mad Hatter Highlights

There are very few material things the Phactor covets, but then there are hats, especially with broad brims and low crowns. What this means is that some or later when in Australia the Akubras beckon. What wonderful hats, and the Phactor has worn them for over 30 years. The demise of an old friend and the shrinkage of a well used Stetson has left the hat stable a bit thin, not that any excuse was needed. So despite the fact that hats are not easy to travel with, and as soon as you nestle one kindly into an airplane overhead bin, some lady inexplicably carrying several bowling balls in a gigantic carryon bag will sling it into the bin with never a mind for what might already resides therein. But this is an opportunity that cannot be passed up as it has been 8 years since my last visit, and now that the Akubra purchased on that occasion is getting decently broken in, it becomes a possible to get a new one. Here's the model except for the silly feathers. What do they think me? A gallah?

Blue sky alert! Blue something alert!

Not a cloud in the sky this AM which figures because today the Phactor departs of Melbourne. Several activities got rained out, but over by Darling Harbour, or actually partially in the harbour, is Sydney's sea aquarium, which features indigenous aquatic fauna, but by any standards this is a wonderful aquarium for a dry afternoon. The sky isn't the only thing blue. This is not one of the more exotic or unusal creatures, but still a favorite, and you are thinking, it's just a crayfish. Wrong. Over here a "cray" is a large lobster like marine crustacean. This is a fresh water crustacean called the eastern blue yabbie. Cute! But if it's so cute, then why is it named Cherax destructor? Apparently it's burrows destroy earthen dams critical to holding rain water for live stock. So until the Phactor can get some plant pictures out of his camera and onto his PC, you'll have to make do with this, but it's a promise, some good flora from Oz is on the way.

Down under preview

In sort of a crazy juxtaposition, one of the Phactor's best friends returned from Australia just a couple of days ago. Last time the Phactor traveled to Australia, we were in perfect sync; this time, well, one of us got anxious. He sent along a nice image of an iconic plant, a Banksia (B. ornata), a genus named after the great English botanist Sir Joseph Banks. The columnar inflorescence is quite an ornamental display and in case you don't know your Australian lore, as the fruits mature they become very evil.

On the road some more - Heading down under

While not even recovered from the botanical meetings here in North America, the Phactor & phamily are off in a day or two to Australia for the international botanical congress in Melbourne. An international congress occurs every six years, and the Phactor has attended them in Berlin, Sydney, Vienna, St. Louis (yawn), while having missed Moscow and Tokyo. This is one of those things where the actual travel is brutal, but after you get there it's fun. From 1980 to 1990 the Phactor spent more than 1/10th of his time in Queensland doing research in the wet tropical forest. Unfortunately the congress is way down south and we like going way up north, so this will be like arriving in Washington DC, going to Boston, and then going to Miami. Who knows how many blogs from down under can be posted; depends upon when and where connections are available, and frankly it's one of those things that wasn't critical in booking that beach house. But we'll go looking for some great plants, and maybe we'll see some platypus or cassowary or bush tailed possums. One is actually probably, one is a maybe, and one would take both effort and luck. Maybe you can guess.

Barbie - Australian for Barbecue

Some of my best times, best friends, and best field research have taken place in Australia, so while quite fond of the people and place, one item does divide us. Barbecue. In Australia a "barbie" is a device for cooking, not actually a grill, in our sense, but more of a hot plate or griddle. Otherwise barbecue is used as a verb down under, something that you do to cook food. Until the Phactor got this figured out it caused some confusion because as all right thinking people know barbecue is something that you eat. Without arguing about all the various types of barbecue, Australia just never got this part of speech right. It was very difficult to attempt to set those in my acquaintance right. You had to get a butcher to get you the right cut of meat. And then you had to get the makings for a decent rub, and as Australian food runs to the milder end of the spectrum, this was no where as easy as in the USA. Then it was necessary to concoct a replica of a BBQ sauce for the full effect, and in this case leaning toward the vinegary North Carolina type. Quite a bit of modification to a "barbie" was required to get a couple of slabs of ribs cooked properly, and while not perfect, they were acceptable. While they didn't like the BBQ ribs at all, somehow it all got eaten. As for corn bread and beans, let's not go there.

Weirdest, rarest orchid ever

Orchids do a lot of stange things, but to live completely underground! That's really weird, and wonderful, and it's the greatest picture of the flowers too. What a thrill to find something so rare, really rare, as in endangered rare, but it's hard to census underground organisms! Jennifer at the Artful Amoeba also explains why parasitic plants are losing some but not all of their chloroplast genes. Not only is the pollinator unknown, but how are the seed dispersed? Ants maybe.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Banksia

To get a Friday Fabulous Flower the Phytophactor had to reach far afield, half way around the world into the southern hemisphere. Although widely refered to as Banksia "flowers" , a name honoring the botanist Joseph Banks, this is actually a whole inflorescence of tiny flowers borne closely together in pairs. Pollination is accomplished by the pollinator crawling over the surface of this "bottle brush" going flower to flower or sort of poking into the "brush". Since they are a rich source of nectar the pollinator could be a bird, a small possumy mammal, or a bat, or some combination thereof, and because the latter two are largely nocturnal the flowers are often fragrant at night. Above the flowers and oriented sideways is one of last season's infructescences. The individual fruits are quite hard and often do not open until they have been heated, an adaptation to fire ecology. And of course these are the stuff of Australian children's tales, the evil banksia men who are always on the outlook for unsuspecting gumnut babies.

Botanical questions - grass trees

grass trees living tissues inside them, what is this purpose?? and how are they adapted to fire??

Here’s a recent question (10/27 via comments) submitted to the Phactor, and this is my best effort to answer what seems to be asked. Grass trees are the common name for some yucca-like plants in the genus Xanthorrhoea native to Australia. They grow slowly and can live for 200-500 years. They start out looking like a grassy/yucca-like tuft of stiff-leaves and with time they develop a trunk largely composed of compacted leaf bases, which is very resistant to fire, so they do not burn, although they develop a good black scorching, but insulate the living tissues within from the heat of brush fires. Their habitat is generally open savanna like forests or chapparel, areas subject to occasional or even seasonal burning. The trunk is hollow and the living portions within are adventitious roots that connect the live top to ground (nice picture here). Dead leaves can form a considerable mantle around the stem if the plant has not been subjected to fire. While the outer leaves of the crown get burned the dense whorl protects the growing apex within. They are a great looking plant, and so subject to landscape exploitation much like cacti in the SW USA. My CSIRO colleagues said they did not transplant easily or well. They produce a really distinctive terminal flowering stalk and tough fire-resistant fruits. Fire seems to stimulate seed dispersal and germination.

Friday Fabulous Flower from Far Afield - Mistletoe

After thinking about parasitic plants all week, it only seemed natural to display one for as the FFF. Mostly you don't think about mistletoes as having very showy flowers, but that's because many of us are more familiar with mistletoes in the Viscaceae. In Australia mistletoes are members of the Loranthaceae, and they often have a striking display of colorful flowers that attract nectar feeding mistletoe birds and
honeyeaters, there being no hummingbirds. In the second image a large mistletoe is seen growing upon a gum tree (Eucalyptus). Sorry, the species of mistletoe is unknown to me, perhaps an Amyema.

Relief from winter doldrums: 1. Tropical beaches

Having spent a considerable amount of time in the wet tropics "down under", the Phytophactor has a great affection for citizens of "Oz". So it irritates me to no end when an ugly American, referring to any USA citizen who engages in loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless and ethnocentric behavior when abroad, demeans this fine country and its people, to wit, criticizing the attire, or lack thereof, of women in the tropics. On my first visit to Queensland's tropics, the plane landed at what amounted to a car port, and a sarong clad young woman appeared and draped a floral lei around my neck. Loved the place ever since. So what of this fine moral young Marine? Clearly he's a wanker.
Oh,yes, this story definitely needs a picture, and this one is sort of appropriate, one Peaches Geldof showing some minimalist tropical beach attire, an image from the UK's Daily Mail, who applied the unnecessary black out, an image sent in response to a blog the Phactor did some weeks ago on botanical tattoos.

Miss Peaches, a very botanical moniker, sports a stylized daisy chain being nibbled by a unicorn, a tattoo of little botanical value, although there was an age, decades ago, when the canvas would have been of some greater interest than the art, but certainly nothing offensive to my delicate sensibilities is evident. One does worry about such young women with such a name though who are these unfortunate pseudocelebrities due to the fame and fortune of their family, and my guess is that Peaches' intellectual development is sagging a bit behind.

See how that banishes winter for a few brief moments?