Botanical Lies
A short, mid-week bonus post - just for fun. And a fox, because we like foxes.
I had never been a member of Twitter, but back at the start of the year reading about what Musk had done, and continues to do, I chose to investigate the X/Twitter opposition on Mastodon. Just out of curiosity. Surprisingly, I found it to be a jolly interesting place to occasionally visit. I discovered this week that … a member of the Mastodon Herd ( one Climate Jenny 2.0) had “tooted” the following challenge.
Help me list the top 10 botanical lies. I'll go first:
"Once one becomes familiar with the specialized parts of the grass inflorescence, these plants are no more difficult than others to identify. "
"I'll just take good pictures and ID this plant when I get home."
"I'll just take a specimen and identify it when I get home."
"We can key this out."
Needless to say, there were botanists out there in the Fediverse (look it up) who jumped all over the idea … and the list started to grow:
"It is possible to learn to distinguish the small white asters."
"Another good reason to learn the scientific names is that they are stable, unlike common names."
"This plant is deer-resistant."
"Native plants are easier to grow."
"To get more butterflies in your garden, plant lots of flowers." (Omitting larval hosts.)
The natural state of the East Coast of the U.S. is woodland. "The southeastern United States at the time of European ]settlement was a dense, forested landscape with 'trees so thick a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without touching the ground."
Sedges have edges, rushes are round and grasses have joints when the cops aren’t around
“I will get a lot of exercise while I am out here botanising” … “Oh no you won’t You’ll never get more than 100 feet from the car park, and you know it.”
"I promise, the marsh isn't as wet as it looks, your shoes will be fine."
"It won't kill you... and it tastes really quite good!"
Here's another botanical lie, often seen in commercial nurseries on tags: "Wildflower".
A Fox on Victoria
Walking back from the library a day or two ago, I spotted ‘something’ in the road far ahead. From a distance I thought “that’s a very large squirrel” and then I got closer and thought “large cat” … closer still and I saw that it was a fox, curled up in the road having a nap. Nose well tucked in. I approached slowly and made sure he/she knew I was there and had an escape route. It slowly stood up and stared at me. I got closer and it kept staring - clearly this was his road and I was the intruder. he stood his ground and gave me a ‘hard stare’, allowing me to pass maybe six feet away. I was watched for a minute and then he ambled away without a care in the world. This is not the normal relationship between foxes and humans but he looked healthy enough - just pretty relaxed about life.
Apparently, someone else out there enjoys plain, basic wild asters too …