Fruits and vegetables up close and personal

Here's some pretty neat images of young, immature, fruits and vegetables. See if  you can figure out what you're looking at. Oh, the strawberry does not show you the individual seeds, but the individual fruitlets on the fleshy receptacle, an accessory fruit that will clearly get much larger.  Warning: the images are flogging a book.

Research tidbits - AJB March 2015

The American Journal of Botany is a publication of the Botanical Society of America. Highlights of several interesting articles is a new feature of each month's volume; this is vol. 102 (3).  Mostly these are brief, non-technical descriptions of a study and they include a nice image. They give you some idea of the types of research, the diversity of scientific interests, and the kinds of questions that interest botanists these days.  You can also access the cover illustration and its legend from this link. Very much bragging rights to get the front cover.  Let TPP know if this is a feature you like or if there are any access problems.  

Lighten up people, we're just messin' with you!

Oh, those fun-loving GnOPes.  Thank Tom Tomorrow for letting us in on the joke. To think anyone ever took them seriously. Seriously.  

Corned beef tomorrow

It's just about time, no, not for St. Patrick's Day, which TPP missed, but for his annual corned beef brisket for which St. Patrick's Day is just an excuse. This year's brisket got started about 4 weeks ago when TPP happened upon a huge brisket and having determined that the necessary ingredients were on hand proceded to begin curing this brisket. It isn't really necessary to cure the brisket this long, but larger briskets do take longer, and this is not a process to be hurried. There is really no comparison between this home-cured brisket and what you buy in the stores, and the curing time is clearly one of the variables. Although it doesn't really need a lot of dressing up, a glaze is nice to finish the brisket during it's brief baking. Found a really nice sounding glaze made of orange marmalade, Irish whiskey, mustard, and nutmeg, however a field trip is necessary to get the marmalade. Also need some carrots for a veg on the side. For a nice change of pace a bottle of 2 Gingers Irish whiskey is on hand offering a considerable difference from the standard Irish whiskeys; it has a bit sweeter taste, a touch of tartness, and is somewhat lighter and smoother, and much to the liking of my Irish wife (their target market) in a not at all blind taste test. Hope Beam doesn't ruin Kilbeggan, but for now it seems OK.  Now to go and find some grasshoppers for the pie, although dessert is not TPP's responsibility.  Clearly a few friends will assist with the consumption of assorted foods and drinks.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Filberts

The filberts (aka hazel-nut, Corylus americana) are in flower in the upper midwest in March this year. Most people being quite plant blind don't even notice the catkins (3 shown here), the dangling inflorescences of pollen flowers some 3-4" long. So no one at all, including botany students, ever notice the brilliantly, dark red pistillate flowers. OK, they are pretty small, but they usually come in clusters of 2-3 flowers enclosed by bud scales (2 such clusters are in this image). Actually all you really see are the stigmas, the pollen receiving parts of the fruiting flowers, which are quite red. Such colorful stigmas are quite common among wind pollinated trees. It takes some pretty good powers of observation to notice the tiny red flowers when distracted by the big, conspicuous catkins at least in terms of size. Flowers adapted for wind pollination generally lack big conspicuous perianth parts because they have no need to attract pollinators. Now that you know, keep your eyes open. TPP is quite impressed with the camera in his new cell phone; that technology has come a long way fast.   

Schocking political news here in Lincolnland

Our state’s young congressman really likes to place fast and loose with money. The public was paying for all sorts of questionable travel, and he accepted an office remodeling job, a questionable gift of questionable taste, and has been involved in all sorts of real estate deals with political supporters, some real sweetheart deals all of us would like to be in on.  He has paid back the travel and paid for the remodeling, but only because he was caught and exposed by the press.  All of this smacks at the very least of poor judgement, and quite possibly questionable ethics, and certainly a disdain for the rules.  But what do you expect?  You give a 30-something guy a lot of power and money, and you expect them to behave? Maybe when he grows up. 

Zounds! Maybe not!  Yes, while this blog was being written our Schocking congressman resigned!  Wow!  That's close to a TPP exclusive!  But not even close; amazing how fast news travels on the internet! Of course it was also amazing how quickly one alleged misconduct was followed by the next. Boys and girls, let that be a lesson to you.   

Flaunt the green!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my readers, Irish or not. Whether you know this or not, ChiTown has a big Irish population and a correspondingly big St. Patrick's Day celebration and parade, although for most of the party animals, it's just one more excuse to start drinking early and often. One of the funnier things is that they dye the ChiTown River green for the occasion, which raises an interesting botanical question (answered previously). So here's a picture of a drum majorette from a recent ChiTown St. Patrick's Day parade, at least TPP thinks this was from ChiTown, and if not then maybe Rio?  But it sure looks Irish!  And if it's the wrong color, then just dunk it in the river for a color correction.

Pi Day - Something nerdy for you

Actually TPP missed it. Pi day was yesterday, but it's a special Pi day because it's 2015, so 3/14/15 gives you 2 more decimal places, 3.1415. This is very useful if you want to know the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference. Supposedly if you celebrated at a particular time, you got even more decimal places but it really doesn't matter all that much because supposedly they go on forever. There's a lot more nerdy Pi stuff at the link. As a kid it always bothered TPP that Pi didn't come out even when it seemed like it should; it was like someone had made a mistake with the universe. To heck with the math, how does somebody get the symbol for Pi in a blog anyways?

Best new plant species of 2014

Don't know how you rank the best new species of plant for a year, any year, but for 2014 it's a Dracaena from Thailand, a damned big, rare Dracaena. There are only about 2500 of them alive.  How does science miss something as big (40 feet or 12 m tall) as this for so long? First, it's not particularly easily accessible, which is often the case for new species finds, but in this case not small and insignificant. Second, the genus is not hard to recognize, and people who saw it probably did not realize it was so distinctive, something only an expert in the group would know. At the link above you'll find the rest of the top ten new species for 2014, but this is the only plant.  Molecular data has broken up the old massive lily family, so now this genus belongs in the Asparagus family, Asparagaceae.

SCOTUS to decide case: Partisan Hackery vs. Obvious Intent

Once again Tom Tomorrow depicts the USA's real exceptionalism, which isn't partisan politics above the best interests of citizens, but is actually the cartoon itself. The only thing that keeps TPP from despair is that cartoons like this are still allowed. Of course, stupidly, some of us thought the GnOPe can stoop no lower in its irrational partisan behavior toward the Obama administration. But nooo! The Iran letter from GnOPe senators intended to undercut nuclear negotiations lowers the bar so bloody far that it is only too obvious this political party cannot lead, cannot rule, cannot be trusted to have the best interests of the USA in mind. And our junior senator from Lincolnland is one of those fools.  So take notice Senator Kirk before you continue on where no one has gone before; you don't represent this citizen in any way, shape, or form. You put partisan politics ahead of the best interests of the USA.