Kind of Curious

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

2012-01-08T19:13:00.023-05:00

When I picked up The Man Who Loved Books Too Much off the shelf at Borders, I thought it was about me. But no, apparently there is another bibliophilic obsession besides staying up too late at night reading. This book is the true story of a man who is addicted to stealing rare books.

As the thief, John Gilkey, is pursued by Ken Sanders, security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, we are treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of the rare book business. Both men are motivated by their love of books rather than by money – Gilkey keeps most of the books for himself instead of fencing them, and Sanders’ position as security chair is a volunteer post. Gilkey is also motivated by the prestige that comes from owning these works of art. As the author, Allison Bartlett, interviews Gilkey, she walks a fine line between being a journalist and inadvertently giving Gilkey the prestige he craves.

This makes their story just as much about the psychology of obsession and addiction as the world of rare books. As someone who loves books too much myself, but in the less pathological sense, I was more interested in the “books” part of the book.

Most of what Gilkey “collected” was first editions – the first print run of a book. If a book or author later becomes popular, their early first editions can become very valuable. First editions are sometimes sold very cheaply at garage sales or estate sales, by unknowing owners or their relatives. Book collectors who pick up these gems can turn a quick profit, or build a collection of their own inexpensively.

Most anyone would recognize that an ancient, hand-copied and illuminated vellum manuscript was a thing of value. But few people would likely recognize the difference in value (or any difference at all) between a first edition Harry Potter and a subsequent edition. A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is presently worth about $50,000! Only 500 were printed – no one suspected the remarkable success the series would become.

A type of rare book that Bartlett only describes briefly, but which I thought was fascinating, was books with disappearing fore-edge paintings. The fore-edge of a book is the edge opposite the spine. When a book with a fore-edge painting is “fanned”, the painting appears. When the pages are returned to their normal, closed position the painting disappears, hidden by the gold gilt edge.

Disappearing fore-edge painting is believed to have originated in the 17th century, but did not become popular until the 19th century. The more valuable ones are those that were painted when the book was originally bound, and which reflect the content of the book (the characters, theme, setting, etc.). Less valuable ones have paintings that were added later, sometimes images from popular culture that are unrelated to the book, added to boost the sales of languishing titles.

When a fore-edge painting is being applied by the artist, the pages are clamped tightly in the fanned position to reduce bleeding of the paint between the pages. Watercolor paints are used, to prevent the pages from sticking together. As little water as possible is used, and the pages are sometimes treated to minimize water absorption. Finally, the pages are lined up again and gold gilt is applied to cover the paint on the edge. (The image is on the outside of the margin of each page rather than on the actual edge of the page).

Here is a fore-edge painting entitled “Alexander Pope’s Residence 2”, from The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope published in 1863. It is from the Albert H. Wiggin Collection of fore-edge paintings at the Boston Public Library, the largest public collection in the United States.

Many variations of this art form have developed over the years. This is an example of a “split double” containing two fore-edge paintings. (A “two-way double” would also have two paintings, one that appears when the pages are fanned in one direction, and one that appears when they are fanned in the other direction. A “two-way split double” combines these techniques for a total of four paintings on one book.) This photo is from the website of Martin Frost, an artist practicing this ancient craft today.

The Obelisks of the Circus Maximus

2011-12-26T23:42:00.010-05:00

The city of Rome is home to more obelisks than any other city in the world. This is the story of two of those obelisks, that once stood in the Circus Maximus.

Rome went through two periods of obsession with Egypt. The first was when the growing Roman Empire required huge amounts of grain to feed its population. No doubt Caesar fell in love with the beautiful and charming Cleopatra, but he first fell in love with the fertile Nile Delta.

As was the custom when conquering foreign lands, the Romans dragged several obelisks from Egypt back to Rome, just to prove how powerful they were. Actually, the dragging was the shorter part of the trip. To get across the Mediterranean, the Romans built some of the biggest ships of the ancient world – “obelisk ships” specially designed for this purpose.

For the largest obelisks, such as these destined for the Circus Maximus, they actually used 3 ships working together – two ships connected side-by-side with the obelisk suspended from them under water, and a third ship out front like a tug boat.

The smaller of the two obelisks in the spina (the central “median strip”) in the drawing above was taken from the Egyptian city of Heliopolis, in 10 BC. The larger one was taken much later, in 357 AD, from the temple of the chief Egyptian god Amun in the city of Thebes. Until 550 AD, these obelisks witnessed a lot of action.

Sometime after the sack of Rome by the barbarians, the obelisks in the Circus Maximus were either torn down or fell down due to an earthquake. No one seems to be sure, and the details are lost in the fog of the Middle Ages. The stadium was located in a flood plain, and with no one maintaining it, over the years the fallen obelisks became buried in the mud.

This is what the Circus Maximus looked like on our recent trip to Italy. The tall tree in the middle is where the obelisks would have been.

During the Renaissance, Rome tried to rebuild some of its former glory, including the spoils of its battles with Egypt. Pope Sixtus V had the obelisks excavated from the old stadium in 1587. Both of them were broken. He had the larger one repaired, topped with a Christian cross, and erected in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano. Here it is today, the largest obelisk surviving from antiquity. It is now known as the Lateran obelisk.

And here is the other obelisk from the Circus Maximus, also repaired and topped with a cross, this one installed in the Piazza del Popolo. It is known as the Flaminian obelisk, after the ancient Via Flaminia which began here at the Porta Flaminia (Flaminian Gate) in the ancient wall and ran to the north of Rome.

Museum at the Chemical Heritage Foundation

2011-12-11T21:22:00.013-05:00

Who would have thought that my childhood chemistry set would wind up in a museum? And not 100 feet from a famous “chymistry” book by the father of modern chemistry Robert Boyle!

These wonders and more can be found at the Museum at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. That’s right, a museum about the history of chemistry!

If you ever find yourself in downtown Philly, as I did a few weeks ago, please stop by this museum. It’s only a few steps from Independence Hall, and some of the stuff here is a lot older than the Liberty Bell (book = 1668, Liberty Bell = 1752). Not to mention more interesting, depending on your inclinations.

And yes, I did actually have a Mr. Wizard Chemistry Set. The one in the museum is from 1973, which is right around my time. It was surreal to see something from my childhood mounted in a climate-controlled display case. I wanted to rip open the box, fire up that old alcohol burner, and start some chemicals fuming! Sort of like this guy, who looks a lot like me experimenting in my parent’s basement. Actually it’s Explosion in the Alchemist’s Laboratory, by Justus Gustav van Bentum (1670 – 1722).

But everything worked out OK with Mr. Wizard, and now I make a living as a safety engineer specializing in chemical safety. That prominent WARNING on the front of the Mr. Wizard box must have made a big impression on me as a child.

Here are a few more of my favorite things at this museum:

One of the first desktop electron microscopes – something I use today when I send asbestos samples to the lab for analysis. It looks like the RCA engineers cobbled this one together with mixing bowls from the company cafeteria.

And a couple of fun old advertisements that put the lie to “better living through chemistry”. Both of these chemicals were later banned – tetraethyl lead in gasoline, and “butter yellow” food dye. Of course when you are kneeling backwards in the rumble seat of an old jalopy with no seat belts, breathing lead fumes is the least of your worries. (1933)

At the time, it was illegal for margarine manufacturers to add yellow dye to their product, because the Congressional butter lobbyists didn’t want anyone confusing margarine and butter. Mom looks delighted to help pull one over on the family. (1947)

So get yourself over to this museum!

Dry Storeroom No. 1

2011-11-27T23:47:00.016-05:00

I recently read Dry Storeroom No. 1 by Richard Fortey. A strange title, but the subtitle tells you what it is about – The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum. The Natural History Museum in question is the one in London. This museum has been busy collecting stuff since 1753, when it was part of the venerable British Museum. It outgrew its “mother institution” and went off on its own in 1883.

I love old museums, so the only thing better than a book about an old museum would be one that brings you behind the scenes. Fortey narrates a fun trip through the offices and labs of quirky scientists, and storerooms full of dried, pickled and fossilized specimens from around the world. The only thing drier than the mounted insects is Fortey’s sense of humor, which I suppose is a requirement for someone who spent his working life in this museum studying trilobites.

One of the primary missions of any natural history museum is taxonomy, that is, helping to name the millions of extant and extinct species of animals, vegetables and minerals here on earth and in the cosmos. Naming things might not seem like the most interesting part of science, but it is the critical first step to studying and understanding nature. Tens of thousands of new species are discovered every year. Many of these are now identified through “shotgun sequencing” of the DNA of millions of microbes scooped up in soil or seawater, but many new insects and even larger animals are still discovered. Discovering and naming something new, no matter how small its physical dimensions, is always exciting.

Having worked at the Natural History Museum for 35 years, Fortey saw many changes in museum life. One of the biggest was surely technology. Scientists have moved from a reliance on the visible differences between species (“counting hairs on legs” as he puts it), to an analysis of the differences between their DNA. Giving names to new species now seems like an antiquated formality – what matters is the species’ “DNA barcode”. This is published along with the physical description, so that other researchers can compare the DNA sequence of an unknown species to the database of barcodes to make an identification.

Fortey prefers to be “Sepia Man with his microscope and library” rather than “Barcode Man with his primers and his white coat”, but he acknowledges that both are needed. One change where he does not see an upside is the decreasing support for basic research. Preference is given to new projects and grant proposals with known practical applications. The future applications of basic research may be unknown, but often turn out to be just as practical.

Fortey tells the story of one researcher at the museum who was a cryptogamist – a specialist in cryptogams. Cryptogam comes from the Greek for “hidden marriage”, and it refers to plants that reproduce via spores (whose function was “hidden” from scientists until they discovered it under the microscope). This man devoted his life to studying seaweed, a type of cryptogam.

When World War II broke out, the draft board assigned the museum’s specialist in cryptogams to the intelligence agency responsible for decoding Nazi cryptograms. Although only one letter different, cryptogram is from the Greek for “hidden writing”. So the seaweed expert was assigned to break codes.

Fortunately, the importance of basic research was proven again, when a captured German U-boat was found to contain vital code books. Although our hero didn’t know much about breaking codes, he knew a lot about preserving organic matter that has been pulled from the sea. The rescued code books helped break a highly secure version of the Enigma Code being used by the U-boat fleet, allowing Allied supply ships to avoid torpedo attacks and ensuring victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Galileo's Tomb

2011-11-13T23:13:00.008-05:00

Welcome back to Kind of Curious! I hate to say, but it’s been almost a year since I last posted. So I have quite a backlog of curious things to write about.

One of the things I did during 2011 was to visit Italy with my wife. This was the first time either of us had been to Europe, so we were completely in awe of this entirely different environment and way of life. Of course we knew that a whole “old world” was out there, which had brought both of our families to the new world. But until we experienced it ourselves, no book or movie could explain it to us (although maybe a blog could) …

A great place to begin describing the wonderful things we saw in Italy is Santa Croce Basilica in Florence. There seems to be a church on every street corner in Italy (sometimes 3 or 4 on a corner), each with priceless art or religious relics of the kind that in the US can only be found in museums.

What is unique about Santa Croce is that it has become a monument to the famous sons and daughters of Italy. Because of this, it is sometimes called the “Pantheon of Italian Glories” (“pantheon” being Greek for “temple of the gods”). That’s sort of a sacrilegious nickname for a church, but not the only inconsistent thing going on here as you will see.

A church has been at this site since 1210. The caption for the above drawing on Santa Croce’s website begins “around 1252 it was felt necessary to construct a church that was larger…”. I would have to agree with that. The priests look a little worried about where the congregation is going to sit.

The present church began construction in 1294 and was mostly completed by 1442. We get excited in the US when we see something from the 1700’s! The marble façade that gives the church the look it has today was not completed until 1863. Who in the US would embark on a construction project that would take over 500 years to complete?

Santa Croce’s journey to become the “Pantheon of Italian Glories” began in 1570, when they decided to build a tomb for Renaissance artist Michelangelo, who lived much of his life in Florence.

Since that time they have added many more tombs of the rich and famous, including that of the “father of modern science” Galileo, which was completed in 1737. Renaissance author Machiavelli is also buried here. If you deceive and manipulate others for your personal gain you are “Machiavellian”, like the advice given to the title character in Machiavelli’s book The Prince.

Galileo’s tomb is shown at the beginning of this post. It is ironic that Galileo is buried here, considering his rocky relationship with the Catholic church. Galileo was placed under house arrest by the Inquisition in 1633 for his support of Copernicus’ heretical observation that the earth revolved around the sun (rather than the earth being the center of the universe as described in the bible). Galileo died in 1642.

The church allowed some of Galileo’s works to be reprinted in 1718, which would explain why a monument in his honor would be allowed in Santa Croce in 1737. But his book that was at the center of this controversy, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was not allowed to be reprinted in its uncensored version until 1835. And it wasn’t until 1992 that Pope John Paul II finally admitted that the church had made a mistake in condemning Galileo!

Incidentally, Machiavelli’s book The Prince was also banned by the Catholic church. But this was not until after his death, and he was not accused of heresy. Although his Machiavellian ideas do not seem Christ-like, the book was actually banned because French leaders who were following its advice were being accused of corruption.

Here is the exterior of the church. Note that the marble is only on the front. There was no word as to whether they are planning on finishing the sides and back with marble as well. Give them time, it’s only been 700 years. And note the blue Star of David just below the peak of the top roof. The architect for the façade was Jewish, and in an inspiring act of interfaith cooperation was allowed to include the Star of David. He is even buried on the church grounds.

Thomas Edison and the Dragon's Blood

2010-12-31T17:08:00.018-05:00

Happy New Year!

No, this post (Thomas Edison and the Dragon's Blood) is not the newest installment of Harry Potter. As I promised in my previous post, I have tirelessly researched the question that was raised (by me) during my recent visit to Thomas Edison's laboratories - why the heck did Edison have a bottle of Dragon's Blood in his chemistry lab?

I emailed the National Park Service, and was pleasantly surprised to receive a reply. As I noted in my prior post, our tour guide was less than forthcoming about this odd possession of our country's most prolific inventor. I was prepared to file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what the Park Service was hiding. Happily I did not need to play hard ball.

Karen Sloat-Olsen, Chief of Interpretation and Education at Edison's labs, was kind enough to pose my question to the lab's Archivist, Sound Recording Curator and Collection Manager. The Archivist reported that he had not run across any references to Dragon's Blood in Edison's lab notebooks. That was not encouraging, because Edison was known to keep very detailed notebooks.

She then checked with the Sound Recording Curator to see if there had been any reference to Dragon's Blood in the production of Edison's phonograph records, as Dragon's Blood can be used to make a resin. No luck there either.

Next, she turned to the Collection Manager. The Collection Manager checked to see if Edison had Dragon's Blood on his desk, since another use for the plant is for stomach ailments. Edison did have Listerine and some Soda Mint pills for his stomach, but no Dragon's Blood. I found this almost as interesting as the Dragon's Blood question - the fact that our government has a record of the contents of Edison's desk the day he passed away. Better be careful what you keep on your desk!

The Listerine is noteworthy - Edison was known to take short catnaps throughout the day, rather than sleeping for a full 8 hours at night. He would probably take a swig of the Listerine to get rid of that morning breath after waking up. And in case you were wondering, Soda Mint is a common name for sodium bicarbonate, the active ingredient in Alka-Seltzer and similar antacids.

Finally, the Collection Manager came through, by locating a reference to Dragon's Blood Gum in the Pattern Shop. The Pattern Shop is essentially a woodworking shop, which was used for making patterns for shaping sheet metal as well as prototype wood cases for Edison's phonographs. Since Dragon's Blood can be used to make varnish and wood stain, it makes sense it would be found in a wood shop (although why someone moved it to the chemistry lab is still a mystery). Believe it or not, this is one of the reasons I had suggested in my prior post for why Edison might have the Dragon's Blood. Boy, I love this stuff! I should have been a curator!

To end your year, here are a couple of photos of Edison's Pattern Shop. Have a great 2011!

Thomas Edison the Botanist

2010-11-29T20:57:00.017-05:00

This weekend we visited the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey. I used to love visiting there as a kid, and I hadn't been there in many years. They recently completed an extensive renovation of the laboratories, so I was anxious to see it again.

Edison built this lab later in his life. It was in this lab that he perfected the phonograph which he had previously invented, and invented the motion picture camera and the alkaline storage battery. He also built factories around the laboratories, to manufacture his various inventions.

Much of the equipment displayed in the Chemistry Laboratory is what Edison was using on his last project, which was incomplete at the time of his death. Edison was asked by his close friend Henry Ford to help find a plant that could be grown in the United States that could provide latex to make rubber. The plant that is commonly used to make natural rubber, the Para Rubber Tree, only grows in tropical climates. Ford needed a stable, inexpensive source of rubber to make tires for his growing automobile business.

Latex is a material produced by about 10% of flowering plant species, and it is believed to serve as a defense against insect infestation. The latex is stored in cells just underneath the outer layer of each part of the plant. If you have ever picked a dandelion and seen the milky white substance "bleeding" from the stem, that is latex. Tiny particles of a natural rubber polymer (polyisoprene) are suspended in this latex.

Edison tested thousands of different species of plants to try to find the ones that made the best quality rubber. He finally settled on a particular species of goldenrod, which he then cultivated to grow taller and with a greater rubber yield. This goldenrod was later named after him, Solidago edisoniana. The photo above is from the National Park Service collection showing Edison (on the left) with his namesake goldenrod.

And here is a piece of machinery in the Chemistry Lab that Edison used to crush the various plant fibers during his experiments and extract their latex.

This is what "crude" goldenrod rubber looks like after the polymer particles have been coagulated and separated out of the latex, which is mostly water.

This sample is dated 1933, which was two years after Edison's death. Edison's wife and employees continued the search for a while, but finally abandoned it when it became clear that synthetic rubber based on petroleum was going to be the material of choice for automobile tires.

Here is a strip of goldenrod rubber, compounded with carbon particles for strength, ready to be formed into a tire.

One of the most intriguing things our tour guide pointed out in the Chemistry Lab was this bottle on one of the shelves.

Here is a closeup of the label.

In case you have trouble reading it, it says "Sanguin Dragonis / Dragons Blood". The tour guide told us they didn't know what "Dragon's Blood" was, and we joked that maybe Edison was a Harry Potter fan. But when I got home I found out pretty quickly on Google that Dragon's Blood is the common name for the red resin produced from several different species of plants.

Maybe Edison had collected this Dragon's Blood to see if he could make rubber from it. Dragon's Blood has been put to various uses over the years, including a varnish and a wood stain. Many of Edison's phonographs came in beautiful wood cases, so this use would make sense as well. Dragon's Blood has also been used as an herbal cure for many ailments including stomach ailments, which Edison suffered from. Maybe someone gave this to him to take as a medicine.

Or maybe Edison just couldn't resist having a bottle of something called Dragon's Blood. He prided himself on having his stockroom filled with every type of material and substance that might possibly be needed for his far flung investigations. Dragon's Blood must surely have been useful for something.

You will be happy to know that I am kind of curious about this, and have emailed the National Park Service to find out. Either the NPS historians do not check Google when doing their research, or maybe our tour guide missed the memo. But I will get to the bottom of this and report back to you!

Gross Stuff in the Hoh Rain Forest

2010-11-18T23:55:00.011-05:00

As you can imagine, the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington State is a pretty wet place. This encourages the growth of some pretty nasty looking stuff. Actually, I could have named this post "Fungi of the Hoh Rain Forest", but I couldn't resist throwing in this other gross picture, of a Banana Slug. Check out that nostril!

The field guides say that this slug got its name because it is yellow with black spots, but I think the fact that it is almost as big as a banana was part of it too. The Banana Slug is the second largest slug in the world. Pretty impressive. But what really makes the Banana Slug gross is its sexual habits.

Banana Slugs are hermaphrodites, meaning that each individual has the sexual organs of both a male and a female. They also have very long penises compared to their overall body size. When two animals with long penises get together, things sometimes get out of control, and get wrapped up and stuck where they shouldn't be. The slug's solution is to chew off the stuck penis. Scientists refer to this as "apophallation".

Now that you are completely sick to your stomach, here is something a little more fun - the Banana Slug is the official mascot of UC Santa Cruz. Click here to see him/her in action.

Now, on to the fungi.

As far as I can tell with my limited fungus identification skills, this is an Artist's Conk (Ganoderma applanatum). Here are some older ones, a little higher up on the same tree. As they get old, their bottoms get brown and shriveled, just like humans.

The white, bottom part of these fungi bruise easily, turning brown when you touch them. Some people have made a hobby out of etching pictures on these fungi, hence the name Artist's Conk ("conk" is the term for the fruiting body of a shelf fungus). Here is the website of a prolific creator of "Ganoderma Art".

This revolting mess sort of looks like an Artist's Conk as well, maybe one that is not very healthy.

Here is something a little more colorful. Again showing my limited grasp of mycology, my best guess is that this is a Ling Chih, also known as a Reishi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum).

The ancient Chinese used these mushrooms to treat many kinds of ailments. It apparently worked so well they called it "the mushroom of immortality". You can buy it in Chinese markets in the form of candy or tea. Modern scientists are starting to study it with promising results, relearning the secrets of the ancients.

Finally, here is some gross junk that I have no idea what it is. But the two Crane Flies in the bottom of the photo seem to like it. (It is never a good sign when flies are attracted to something.) In the event that I have discovered some exotic and unknown organism, let it be known that I have dubbed it "burned marshmallow fungus", because it looks like something someone flung off their marshmallow roasting stick.

The Madrone Tree

2010-10-31T21:33:00.011-04:00

This is a Madrone Tree, one of the prettiest trees around because of its reddish bark that peels to reveal a light green layer underneath. This photo was taken in the summer, so it was not flowering, but in spring the red and green bark make a beautiful background to white flowers and red berries. Madrone comes from the Spanish word for strawberry. You can imagine that a tree covered with what looks like strawberries would be beautiful.

Here is a close-up of the red and green bark, with an ant coming for a visit.

I took these photos during a kayak trip off San Juan Island in Washington State. We stopped for lunch in Deadman Bay near Lime Kiln State Park. We had started the trip in the morning from Smallpox Bay. Fortunately there was no bad karma on our trip from these two bays with sad histories.

Without getting too much into the gory details, Deadman Bay got its name because the bodies of illegal Chinese immigrants would wash up here after being thrown overboard by smugglers trying to escape US Customs agents. Smallpox Bay was named after the Native Americans who tried to treat their smallpox fevers by bathing in the cold waters of the bay. They contracted smallpox, which they had no immunity to, through contact with European settlers.

Although the Madrone Tree was of no help in treating smallpox, Native Americans did use its leaves and bark to treat a variety of other illnesses including stomach ailments, skin problems, sore throats and colds. They also ate its berries. A Native American legend explains that the reason Madrone Trees are often found on rocky coastlines like Deadmay Bay is that it is the Madrone's job to hold the earth together with its roots.

Today's less romantic explanation for why Madrones thrive on rocky coastlines is that they are broadleaf evergreens, in the same family as the Rhododendron. Their large leaves are active year-round, compensating for the poor soil conditions. Madrones are well suited for the relatively mild winters of San Juan Island. Evergreens in areas with colder winters generally have needles rather than broad leaves.

Here is a Madrone in bloom from Wikimedia:

Woolly Aphids

2010-10-26T22:31:00.012-04:00

Here are some really revolting insects I recently found feasting on an elm tree. They are called Woolly Aphids. Their "wool" is actually a waxy secretion it is believed they use for protection.

Most of these aphids were bunched up together, like the ones on the bottom of this branch, rather than loners like the ones on the top of the branch or in the first photo. Their wool was billowing back and forth together in the breezes. If I were looking for an easy meal, I would not want to pick through all that wool. Who knows, there could be a sheep under there!

Most aphids, including Woolly Aphids, have a complex life cycle that includes two different host plants, winged and wingless generations, and generations that reproduce sexually and asexually. For Woolly Aphids, their two hosts are trees in the Elm Family and the Rose Family (often apple trees, but sometimes pear, quince, sugarplum, hawthorn or mountain ash).

The first generation of aphids that appear in the spring are all wingless females, which reproduce asexually. For Woolly Aphids, this cycle starts in elm trees. A few more generations of wingless females are born asexually (aphids multiply faster than rabbits!) until sometime in the summer, when a generation of winged females are born.

These females fly to nearby trees of the second host species, and asexually produce more generations of wingless females. Late in the summer, another generation of winged females is born and flies back to the first species of trees. More wingless females are born asexually until sometime in the fall, when (FINALLY!) some males are born and also some females that reproduce sexually.

It's party time in aphid town, until the eggs are laid, winter comes, and all the adults die. The eggs hang out over the winter, and start the cycle again in the spring.

The other strange thing that aphids are known for is producing "honeydew". Since it comes out of their anus, I can think of a better term for it, but apparently it contains a lot of sugar and other insects love to eat it. Some species of ants even have symbiotic relationships with certain species of aphids, where the ants protect and "milk" the aphids like a herd of cows. Some bees eat honeydew, and then produce a type of honey that is darker and stronger tasting than honey made from flower nectar.

Unfortunately, when you get thousands of aphids together secreting honeydew from their anuses, it can seem like it is raining. My hands and my camera were covered with drops of honeydew. I had to stop taking pictures because my lens was getting blurry. I hope that little detail will make you appreciate the above photos even more. Ah, the lengths I go to for my art!

Amico Island Park

2010-10-22T22:33:00.010-04:00

It's not often that you see an insect that so beautifully compliments the plant it has alighted on. Sure, you could say this insect has evolved camouflage specific to this plant that is a critical part of its life cycle. But with these bold colors, I think this goes beyond camouflage.

This is a Locust Borer, which gets its name because its larvae bore into Black Locust trees. A large infestation of Locust Borer larvae can kill a tree. Adults feed on pollen, commonly from Goldenrod like in this photo. Hence the yellow color of the insect.

I took this photo in Amico Island Park in Delran, NJ. Here is another from that day. This is a Common Buckeye. Using the opposite of camouflage, the Buckeye's colors make it stand out rather than blend in. The idea is to stand out so much that it scares away predators, who think those spots are the eyes of some much larger creature.

Amico Island Park is located where the Rancocas River empties into the Delaware River, across from Philadelphia. If you turn around, you see the city skyline and the Tacony-Palmyra bridge across the Delaware (but then you turn your back on this beautiful wildlife!).

At one point, this huge ship turned in from the Delaware and up the Rancocas. Its name is Karaweik, and it is bulk carrier owned by a Japanese shipping company. That little white triangle to the right is a sailboat, out for a leisurely Sunday jaunt when it came across this behemoth.

This ship really gets around - I found photos of it on the web in Japan, Washington State, Panama and Greece. Just 3 days ago it passed westbound through the Panama Canal and is now somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Festival of the Trees #52

2010-10-01T14:34:00.026-04:00

Welcome to Festival of the Trees #52! This is the first time I have hosted FOTT, so I was very surprised by the number and range of posts that were submitted. I have to say, no other blog carnival I have participated in has come close! I received over 30 posts from around the world, ranging from poems, to photos, to videos, to prose, to naturalist observations. My own blog tends toward observations and the scientific side of nature, so I was glad to “branch out” into the more artistic side.

Maybe the large turnout was due to my picking an “open” theme. Or maybe the milder weather lately has encouraged us all to amble about and appreciate our arboreal amigos. Whatever the reason, I’m happy about it! I have tried to mix up the different types of posts here to keep you on your toes. Enjoy!

I will start with a poem, but for the benefit of the poetically impaired like myself, I will start with one that is presented in an easy-to-digest manner. Poet and jazz broadcaster Jason Crane, at his self-named blog JasonCrane, first brings us on a photo tour of the Pine Hollow Arboretum in Slingerlands, NY. Then he shares a video of poet Walt Franklin reading an excerpt of his poem “Red Oak”. Hearing the intonation intended by the author, along with his expressive hand motions, adds to our enjoyment of his work.

Over at the blog Rebecca in the Woods, Rebecca gives us some superb photos and descriptions of an ancient Live Oak on Jekyll Island, Georgia and the ecosystem it supports.

Corey Finger at 10,000 Birds describes the loss of the tree in front of his apartment building in Forest Hills, Queens (NY) during a recent violent storm. The weather that created this storm also passed through New Jersey where I live, so this story hit close to home. My sister and brother-in-law used to live in Forest Hills, so I know how precious the trees are there.

I love the name of Johnny Nutcase's blog - “Count Your Chicken! We’re Taking Over!”. Johnny sends along some gorgeous photos from the White Mountains of California. I especially love the gnarled Bristlecone Pines.

Ashley Peace at the appropriately named Treeblog treats us to a walk around Worsbrough Reservoir in England. He comes across some interesting trees, and even more interesting things growing on those trees. My favorite is the fungus that looks like a woolly egg.

Poet Dorothee Lang from Germany blogs at Virtual Notes. She offers her poem “Cutback/Backcut”, which like its title has both a left and a right side. Be sure to appreciate both sides!

Over at Nature's Whispers, Jasmine brings us on a tour of Lligwy Cromlech, Din Lligwy and Hen Capel Lligwy. These are three ancient sites in the Lligwy region of Wales, dating from the Neolithic, Roman Occupation, and Medieval periods respectively. She explains the fascinating history of these sites, and also identifies what may be an ancient Hawthorn tree at Hen Capel Lligwy. She provides interesting information from The Woodland Trust on how to estimate the age of trees by hugging them. Even if the hug doesn’t give you a definitive answer, at least you will feel more at peace!

Speaking of The Woodlands Trust, Jasmine also tells us about the Trust’s “Woods on Your Doorstep” campaign to plant trees across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Jasmine has applied for a pack of trees to create a community woodland in her hometown of Anglesey, Wales. We wish her luck! Jasmine then shows us a beautiful but damaged apple tree and wonders if there is anything she can do to help heal it. If you know, please pass along your thoughts.

Arati at the Trees, Plants & More blog brings us on a photographic tour of Cubbon Park in Bangalore, India. Of course I enjoyed the many photos of the trees in the park, but I really loved seeing the unique style of Indian architecture.

Carolyn Guinzio sent along a series of what I would call “phenological” photos of a group of trees. Phenology is the study of periodic life cycles in nature, such as the changing of leaves with the seasons. Carolyn reports that due to the dry, hot weather this year in Fayetteville, Arkansas, these trees have not yet shown their autumn colors. Carolyn does not have a blog, but why should that prevent us from enjoying her beautiful photos? I have copied them throughout this festival to give you some visual breaks, starting with winter. Hopefully Carolyn will start up a blog in time for us to see the fall foliage in Fayetteville!

Next we visit the blog Very Like a Whale, where Nic Sebastian presents her poem “The Forestry Student”. Our world-traveling student recalls the trees of home while learning about new ones in the high country of Colorado.

Over at the Marianv Blog, Marian Veverka relates a sad story of the effects of a dry year and an onslaught of McMansions on her local forest in Ohio.

One of the coordinators of Festival of the Trees, Dave Bonta, blogs at Via Negativa. First, Dave brings us on a hike along the Black Gum Trail in his home town of Plummer’s Hollow, PA. The photos are fantastic, and I definitely did not know that the leaves of Black Gum trees start turning a month or more before other trees. Then, find out in this funny story why Dave has put a fence around a dead tree in his yard.

At the e-zine Elimae, Eric Burke's poem “Redundant” has been published. See what you think is redundant about the forest scene Eric describes. (I had to check the dictionary for some different nuances of meaning for this word.) You may need more than a dictionary to appreciate the title of Eric’s other poem published in Elimae, “Zeno’s Paradox”. If you sold your philosophy textbook back to the bookstore, you can get a general idea of the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea by checking Wikipedia. That is what is wonderful about poetry - there is so much meaning packed into so few words.

Nancy Devine writes at her eponymous blog (you can look that one up while you have the dictionary out), where she gives us two photos and a beautiful description of the ornamental crab trees in her backyard in North Dakota.

How could we pass up a blog called Saving Our Trees? Here, Jacqueline Yetzotis brings us on a tour of St. Peters Cooks River Church in Sydney, Australia, with a focus on its trees. I found it fascinating that the pillars that support the vaulted ceiling of the church are made from several intact trunks of Ironbark trees. Jacqueline needs assistance identifying a tree on the grounds that is from South Africa, so drop her a line if you know.

Speaking of great names for blogs, how about Living ?s - A Dedicated Space for Curiosity. Since I blog at Kind of Curious, I can really appreciate that. At Living ?s, Karyn Eisler gives us a short video of the forest, bursting with bird song, outside her room in the Hungarian spa town of Hévíz.

Did I mention that I blog at Kind of Curious? Here you can see my series of photos of “nurse logs” in the Hoh Rain Forest of Olympic National Park in Washington state, showing the various stages of their “life after death“. While you are there (here?) why don't you check out some photos of Monterey Cypress trees at Pebble Beach, California, along with some interesting facts about their odd shapes and the famous Lone Cypress. And here I discuss how the exquisite sound of Stradivarius violins may be due to the climatic conditions present when the trees they were made from were growing.

Well, Spring has sprung in Fayetteville, so let's check out our trees:

Roberta Gibson at the Growing With Science Blog gives us a brief lesson on apples. Her blog is subtitled “Putting the Fun Back into Scientific Exploration”, and she does not disappoint. She even follows in David Letterman’s footsteps and tries the “Will it Float?“ game on some apples. If you have ever bobbed for apples you can probably guess that one correctly, but how about pumpkins? Click here to find out!

Next we visit poet Daniela Elza at her blog Strange Places. Daniela offers us her thoughts on trees, including her elegant poem “Inhabitions”.

Heidi Greco is Out on the Big Limb (that's the name of her blog), where she laments a tree downed by a storm in her neighborhood in British Columbia. Hmm ..... trees downed by storms in both New York and British Columbia? What’s going on here? I think Heidi is onto the theme, because then she describes trees downed by chain saws, just like those we read about in Ohio. This is getting scary. Heidi also sends along an interesting photo of a bird’s nest that fell from a tree, showing the range of “found” materials that birds utilize.

The provocatively named Sand_Shadow points us to PBase to enjoy his photo of a tree and a full moon, with an industrial element thrown in to keep us off balance. You’ll have to see it to understand what I mean.

Scott McCrae at Christian Naturalist offers a series of posts about Box Elder Maples, including some great close-ups that help with identifying these trees. If you know what causes the red staining of wood infected with heart rot, let us know by leaving a comment on Scott‘s blog.

Over at Musings From Aotearoa, Robb Kloss was inspired by an ancient tree next to a river in the Ruahine Range, in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The result is his elegant poem "Observation on the River".

Rebecca at A Year With the Trees has a great idea, of visiting a tree each day throughout 2010, once per season, to be inspired and write about it. On September 17th she visited the Chestnut Oak outside her window in North Carolina, along with the Wheel Bugs hunting on one of its twigs. Let’s hope Rebecca continues into A Second Year With the Trees!

Black Walnut trees are the focus at Anybody Seen My Focus?. JSK starts us thinking about the different ways that animals get through the hard outer shells of the walnuts. The last photo of a squirrel caught in the act is hilarious.

Meanwhile, back in Fayetteville, the heat has set in. The leaves are a noticeably darker shade of green, and the grass has dried up:

Well it's almost time to wrap up another Festival of the Trees. Before we go, please remember to send in your writing and photos for next month's festival. Our host will be Arati at Trees, Plants and More. Please email your links to Arati - ringsofsilver09 (at) gmail (dot) com. The theme is Open, and submissions are due October 29th (by midnight in your local time zone).

Thank you to everyone who participated in this Festival of the Trees, and a special thank you to those who read and viewed our work. I will end with this beautiful piece sent in by Jessica Swafford. Jessica does not have a blog, so I have copied the piece below:

Trees

I've always had a preoccupation with trees. I cannot name them, cannot distinguish one kind from another. I even dream of trees. I've never known why or how the fascination began.

Liking the trees so much always struck me as extremely funny because my maternal grandfather owned a sawmill for many years. I never knew my grandfather nor have I been close to anyone on my mother's side of the family.

What few stories I can get from my mother all have an element of the sawmill in them. Her favorite memory is her father coloring Easter eggs with the red and blue wax pencils normally used to mark lengths of board. A painful story I've never heard in its entirety is how one of her brothers was driving the log truck on a winding road where there was something ahead of him blocking the way. He slowed down but the car behind him did not. Four individuals were wounded and would die of their injuries. Her brother held a man in his arms until the man died.

My mother was very little then and remembers the utter shock of seeing her brother's white t-shirt and dress pants completely red with blood. She remembers the fear that she wouldn't see him again because he could have been sent away for 'killing' those people even though it was just a tragic accident.

I realized recently that I breathe like a tree. Taking in a deep, sound breath is the trunk and the roots. Breathing out is the leaves rustling in spring. Then it hit me. I AM the tree. I have always been the tree.

When my grandfather had the sawmill, everything was about the destruction of the tree. It was cut down, marked up. It's layers were ripped apart according to their potential function - bark to burn, hard center for flooring - to be stomped on, walked all over. When he lost the sawmill later in a bad investment deal, it was nothing, didn't even exist.

If I have been the tree the whole time, then all those things were done to me. I have been cut to my core, burned, divided, stomped. I have been non-existent at times.

My most important relationship is with my father. He never worked wood, was never employed at the mill, never knew my grandfather, never even whittled on the porch. His job has always been with tires, but the rubber does come from trees, doesn't it?

My father wants to get a tattoo now suddenly after only having a doodle from 40 years ago. He wants a cottonwood tree with a tire swing and one fairly large and significant branch broken and off to the side. The tree and its branches are suppose to be life itself and the important people. The tire is my dad. The broken branch is my dead brother.

I guess I'd have to be the rope. I'm holding on, grasping tightly. I'm not exactly a part of the whole, but I can climb my way up. I can find out how solid some of the limbs are and rip away some of the twigs that serve no purpose.

I will make my way back to being the tree.

I, however, will not be the one destined to be hard wood flooring or ash. I will be the willow that seems to mark time into eternity and memory. I will not be the Giving Tree that gives until there is nothing left. I will not become driftwood, either.

I will be the Redwood that refuses to come down, the one in souvenir pictures where a literal roadway has been cut through the tree. You can peek within, but you cannot destroy.

I am the tree house that brings childhood fantasy back to life. I am the cherry dresser admired and passed down generations. I am the wooden cross that marks the grave of your favorite dog. I am the pencil that links the heart's memory to the page. I am the page that holds the story. I am the pulp of all being.

The Life of a Nurse Log

2010-09-28T18:42:00.026-04:00

Do you see anything unusual about the trees in the photo above? If you noticed that they are growing in what looks like an unnaturally straight row, and that their roots seem to extend rather high up their trunks, you are on the right track.

This is known as a "colonnade" (a row of columns) that has grown from a "nurse log". These are common in temperate rain forests like the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park, where I took this photo. These are Western Hemlocks and Sitka Spruces, which are the most common trees in the Hoh Rain Forest.

As we walked through the forest that day we came across many other nurse logs. I thought it would be interesting to put these photos in order of their stages of growth, so you can see the full life cycle of a nurse log.

Sometime after a tree dies, it will come crashing to the forest floor. Unless it is a relatively young and small tree, it is probably not going to fall from the same force that caused it to die (for instance, a lightning strike or a storm). More than likely it will die from a number of factors acting on it over the years, and it will probably remain standing as a "snag" for many years after it is completely dead. During this time, it will likely host many small mammals, birds and insects. But when its roots finally decay to the point where they can no longer support the tree ... CRASH!

As the tree dies and falls, it opens up an area of sunlight in the forest. The leaves of the tree itself no longer block sunlight from reaching the forest floor, plus smaller trees and some branches of other large trees are smashed on the way down.

After a few years, the fallen tree will be decayed by fungus, microbes and insects to the point where its surface resembles soil (humus). Now all we need are some seeds to fall on the log. They have a perfect place to grow - rich organic soil, a newly created patch of sunlight, and a platform to raise them above the undergrowth they would otherwise be competing with.

Here we are a little while later, with a top view of a log that has really started growing.

And here is a young tree that has clearly taken hold and will be the dominant "nursling" on this part of the log.

Fast forward a few years, and here is a well established tree. At the front of the nurse log, you can see some of the roots the new tree has sent to the deeper soil under the log.

And several more years after that ...

Eventually the new trees start getting bigger than the nurse log, and the nurse log decays to the point where it loses its definition.

Finally the nurse log is completely gone, nothing more than a "ghost log" of twisted roots that were once around and through the nurse log.

And here is what can happen if a tree falls and leaves its stump in the ground, such as from a lightning strike or a chain saw. I guess you would call this a "ghost stump".

The roots of some trees eventually grow in a way that makes them look like they are on stilts, in bizarre shapes with large open areas where their nurse logs once were.

As you can probably guess, after these trees live a long and full life, they will someday become nurse logs themselves for a new generation of trees. This is a very long cycle. Western Hemlocks and Sitka Spruces can live over 500 years, not counting their "second life" as a snag and then a nurse log. Some of the oldest trees in this forest were "nursing" at the same time Christopher Columbus was nursing!

Uncompahgre Fritillary

2010-09-22T23:34:00.010-04:00

I recently read Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik. It is about a balding, overweight dad trying to achieve a mid-life goal. Not that I would know anything about that. I would consider myself closer to bald than balding. And although Obmascik refers to himself as overweight many times, my guess is that the photo on the cover flap was taken after he achieved his goal - of climbing all 54 of Colorado’s 14,000 foot mountains within one year. That makes my goal of becoming rich and famous seem easy!

As Obmascik progresses - some climbs easy, some hard, some exposing his insanity - he tells stories about himself and the mountains. One of my favorite stories was about the Uncompahgre Fritillary. This small, orange and brown butterfly was named after Uncompahgre Peak, where it was first discovered by modern scientists in 1978.

The Uncompahgre Fritillary has one the smallest ranges of any North American butterfly. It is found only on northeast-facing slopes of the San Juan Mountain range in Colorado, at elevations above 12,500 feet, near the snow willow plants that their caterpillars eat. It is an endangered species, with only 11 known populations containing a total of a few thousand individuals.

Obmascik doesn’t admit to actually seeing any of these rare insects himself, only to coming across a grad student who was out looking for them. They were both making a hasty retreat from a violent thunderstorm on Redcloud Peak, home of the largest population of Uncompahgres. The grad student was carrying some type of recording or communication device with a tall metal antenna, so Obmascik was happy to have him draw the lighting away from him.

The Uncompahgre is believed to be a holdout from the last Ice Age, when they and their favored habitat were much more abundant than today. As the glaciers retreated, the butterfly's range shrunk and moved upward in elevation. Global warming is one of the many stresses affecting this butterfly's survival. At this point, they only have about 2000 ft more to move up before they run out of mountain. Let's hope that this creature which has survived since the Ice Age, and was only discovered in 1978, does not get forced into extinction.

Sorry for the blurry photo, that's the best one I could find in the public domain (from the US Fish & Wildlife Service).

Post Office Advances Marine Science

2010-09-18T19:33:00.015-04:00

This cool old map was drawn up by the Post Office in their never-ending effort to deliver our mail through snow and rain and heat and gloom of night. It is the first known map of the Gulf Stream current, and it was created by Benjamin Franklin, then Deputy Postmaster General of North America.

The problem that prompted Franklin to make this map was complaints of poor postal service (some things never change). Postal customers in England found that letters they sent to the colonies took much longer to arrive than letters sent the other direction. Even when two ships, a postal ship (called a "packet ship") and a merchant ship, left England at the same time, the merchant ship always arrived first. Surely the letter carriers were lollygagging?

Franklin looked into this customer complaint with his usual scientific curiosity. Having crossed the pond himself before, he knew that certain parts of it contained "gulph weed", a type of seaweed that grows in tropical waters. He had also noticed the eastward flow of this current, and called it the "gulph stream".

Franklin suspected that this "gulph stream" was the reason for his postal problems. But first he consulted with an expert, his cousin Timothy Folger who was captain of a whaling ship. Folger explained that whaling ships often followed the gulph stream, because whales liked to eat the plankton that flourished in it. And he could attest to the fact that the gulph stream moved like a river within the ocean, noticeably quicker than the water on either side.

With Folger's assistance, Franklin drew the first map of the Gulf Stream. On later trips across the Atlantic, as full Postmaster General, Franklin measured the temperature of the water. He found the water to be warmer within the Gulf Stream, and noticed that it did not sparkle at night like the colder water on either side.

Before Franklin's map, some mariners knew about the Gulf Stream and others didn't. This knowledge was a valuable competitive advantage, not something to share with the world like Franklin the scientist wanted to do. But even Franklin eventually realized the value of this information, and stopped distributing the map in England during the Revolution. He instead made sure it got into the hands of the French sea captains who were supplying the Americans.

I learned about this interesting intersection of science, commerce and war in the book The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. This book is about Joseph Priestley, and includes a lot about his close friend and mentor Ben Franklin. Priestley later replicated Franklin's measurements of the Gulf Stream.

Now, if the Post Office could just do something about those long lines to ship a package ...

The Evolution of Air

2010-09-13T19:54:00.021-04:00

I recently read The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. It is about Joseph Priestley and the Enlightenment movement that he was part of in England and America.

Joseph Priestley is the man who is commonly credited with discovering oxygen. Unfortunately Priestley was neither the first to isolate oxygen (that was Carl Scheele), the first to understand its true nature (Antoine Lavoisier), nor the one to give it the name we use today (Lavoisier again). Priestley was the first to publish the fact that he had isolated oxygen, and he was already well known for other pursuits, so his is the name we usually associate with oxygen.

But what I really want to know is - what the heck does the title of the book mean?

Obviously, no one including our hero Priestley "invented" air. The title must be a metaphor. I went to engineering school, so I won't be much help with the metaphors.

According to one of the reviewers quoted at the front of the book, who was clearly a literature major, the "invention of air" refers to "how groups of scientists, natural philosophers, religious leaders, and politicians served as cultural petri dishes in which ideas were discussed, experimented with, discarded, or accepted".

This is definitely one of the themes of the book. But using the K.I.S.S. principle of metaphor interpretation, I noticed that the few times the author actually used the word "invent" in the book, he was referring to evolution - as in 'Mother Nature invented this', or 'plants invented that'.

Supporting my simplistic decoding of the title is the fact that the author stresses the one thing Priestley unequivocally did discover - that whatever it was plants breathed out, animals breathed in. Priestley was the father of ecosystem science. For this he received the Copley Medal, the Nobel Prize of his day. The presenter of this award in 1773 could have been making a presentation today on "ecosystem services":

From these discoveries we are assured, that no vegetable grows in vain, but that from the oak of the forest to the grass of the field, every individual plant is serviceable to mankind.

So where does evolution come in? The author explains that when our Earth came into being, its atmosphere did not contain any oxygen. Some of the earliest life forms, cyanobacteria, evolved to use what they had available to them - water, sunlight and carbon dioxide. Their waste product, oxygen, was deadly to the other (anaerobic) microorganisms they were battling for world dominance. Great plan!

It would be millions of years before plants evolved that could make use of some of this waste oxygen, along with the water, sunlight and carbon dioxide, and produce even more waste oxygen. (Yes, plants do use oxygen for respiration. But since they produce more oxygen through photosynthesis than they use for respiration, we don't think of them as using oxygen too.)

It would be millions more years before animals evolved that would finally use up some of this waste oxygen. Before atmospheric oxygen levels settled into equilibrium at today's 21%, they climbed as high as 35%. This created some huge plants and animals in the Carboniferous period - mosses 130 feet tall, dragonflies with a wingspan of 2 1/2 feet, and millipedes 8 feet long.

Here's the 8 foot millipede (Arthropleura), advertising BBC's show Walking With Monsters. I'm sure glad I missed the Carboniferous.

John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge

2010-08-31T22:00:00.010-04:00

I found this Painted Turtle basking in the sun at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia. That's right, Philadelphia! This is actually the largest remaining freshwater tidal marsh in the entire state of Pennsylvania, and it is located in the City of Philadelphia.

At one time, this marsh extended over 5700 acres. As the city grew, the marsh was drained and filled. It was finally saved from complete destruction in 1972, with only 200 acres left. Today, these 200 acres are home to many Painted Turtles (and other creatures).

An interesting thing I learned about Painted Turtles is that when they hibernate for the winter, they bury themselves up to 3 feet deep in the mud at the bottom of a pond or stream. This keeps them just above freezing temperature, but of course does not allow them to breathe air. Painted Turtles have evolved the amazing ability to survive for up to 4 months with no oxygen!

The trick to "holding your breath" for so long is to avoid the buildup of toxic lactic acid in your blood. Since the Painted Turtle is hibernating, its production of lactic acid is very low to begin with.

But then something very interesting happens - the turtle releases calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate from its shell into its blood stream, to buffer the lactic acid. It also takes up lactic acid from its blood into its shell with the same effect. Voila, he can hold his breath for 4 months!

We saw various other animals at the refuge including deer, fish, frogs, birds and insects. The only other halfway decent photo I got was this one of an oddly colored dragonfly. It is known as a Low-flying Amber-wing.

If you are ever in Philly, check out the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. It is nearby Fort Mifflin which I previously posted about.

Mt. Rainier Wildflowers

2010-08-29T20:44:00.029-04:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, my two favorite things from our recent trip to Washington state were the tide pools of Rialto Beach and the wildflowers of Mt. Rainier. I now present the latter for your enjoyment.

As you walk through the meadows around Mt. Rainier, you feel as if you have been transported to the opening credits of The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews dancing through wildflowers and the Alps as a backdrop. "The hills are alive ....."

My choice for prettiest wildflower, although it is on the small side, is Pink Mountain Heather (Phyllodoce empetriformis):

Tied for second place for prettiest, but definitely in first place for best name, is Mountain Monkeyflower (Mimulus tilingii). Apparently some species of monkeyflowers look like a monkey's face, but I don't think this one does.

And here is the other flower tied for second place for prettiest, Magenta Paintbrush (Castilleja parviflora):

Paintbrushes come in many other colors, and another common one around Mt. Rainier is the Scarlet Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata):

Here is one that is attractive not for its bright color but for its delicate structure, the seedhead of the Pasqueflower (Anemone occidentalis):

And another blandly colored but delicate flower, Sitka Valarian (Valeriana sitchensis):

Here is another that proves that white flowers can be beautiful too. This is Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) just starting to open up:

Here's one a little later in its life:

And some in full bloom:

OK, enough with trying to make white flowers sound pretty, here's another bright and beautiful one. This is Fan-leaf Cinquefoil (Potentilla flabellifolia):

And another yellow beauty, Arrowleaf Groundsel (Senecio triangularis):

Here was the most common flower, at least at the time of year we were visiting. This is Broadleaf Lupine (Lupinus latifolius):

Time to throw in a boring one, although I do have to say that you usually don't see too many green flowers. This is False Hellebore (Veratrum viride):

Here's one with a beautiful contrast of colors, Subalpine Daisy (Erigeron peregrinus):

And a smaller one with the same color scheme, Spreading Phlox (Phlox diffusa):

Here's one that looks like the Hostess Sno Balls we used to eat as kids - round cakes covered with pink marshmallow and shredded coconut. It's called Rosy Spirea (Spiraea densiflora):

And now for something completely different.....

Yes, this picture was taken in August; and no, we were not hiking on a glacier. This snow was across the "regular" trail at Mt. Rainier (for those without crampons and ice axes). This part of the trail is snow-free for only a short time each summer.

Tide Pools at Rialto Beach

2010-08-26T20:41:00.023-04:00

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Washington state. We visited lots of beautiful places, which have given me plenty of ideas for blog posts!

I couldn't decide which was the best, the wildflowers of Mt. Rainier or the tide pools of Rialto Beach. I flipped a coin and Rialto won, so presented for your enjoyment are some of the creatures lurking in its tide pools.

Rialto Beach is in the northwest corner of Washington, in Olympic National Park near the town of La Push. We hiked to the northern end of the beach, to a spot called "Hole-in-the-Wall". Here is how it gets its name (note the hole at the left end of the wall):

Winning in the bright color category is the Ochre Sea Star:

Although ochre is a sort of orangey-brown color, this sea star also appears in purple:

I was curious as to what caused these different colors in the same species, some of which were right next to each other:

The best answer is "nobody really knows". But another curious blogger has looked into this pretty closely, and their diet seems to be a likely factor. Eating mussels seems to make the sea stars orange, and barnacles seem to make them purple. Hole-in-the-Wall has an abundance of both, in fact there are barnacles growing on mussels:

So the color of each sea star may be determined by what it prefers to eat. Check out this interesting article for more details.

Here is a cool close-up of some Thatched Barnacles. I believe the green part is algae.

And some very weird looking things which I found out are Goose Barnacles:

Here are some Whelks at a barnacle buffet. You can see the empty shells of the ones they have already eaten.

Here is the only type of fish we saw, a Tidepool Sculpin:

Let's finish with some prettier creatures. These are two types of anemone, a Giant Green Anemone (guess which one that is) and an Aggregating Anemone (that's the other one). The Giant Green is pulling a mussel from its shell. The pink stuff across the top is Coralline Algae, with three Limpets munching on it. In the bottom left is some Red Algae.

Cattails in Philadelphia

2010-08-14T22:29:00.010-04:00

This picture was taken in Philadelphia. Not Philadelphia, Mississippi, where you might expect to find cattails, but Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More unusual, these cattails are growing in a moat around a fort.

I took this picture at Fort Mifflin. If you have flown into the Philadelphia airport and headed toward I-95 North, you may have seen a sign for Fort Mifflin. I have driven past this sign many times and wondered what was inside. My wife and I recently drove in to find out.

Fort Mifflin has been around for a long time. It was originally built by the British in 1771, and was used continuously by the military until 1952. It served a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War. It was occupied by Americans who held off the British Navy, so Washington and his troops could safely make their way to their winter encampment at Valley Forge. It was a prison for Confederate soldiers captured during the Civil War, and a munitions depot in World Wars I and II.

But back to that moat. It doesn't seem like much, only about 50 feet wide and a few feet deep. But I guess back in the day, that was enough to slow down an advancing army and buy you some time.

Today, the moat is home to all kinds of plants and animals. The cattails caught my eye because of an interpretive sign about their use by Native Americans. I knew that the fluffy seeds could be used as padding - we had played with these many times as kids. But I found out that the brown cylinder (the female part of the flower) could be eaten like corn-on-the-cob. In fact, every part of the plant including the roots and the pollen are edible. Who knew? And people still eat cattails - Google "cattail recipes" and see what you find.

If you are wondering what the fort looks like, here you go:

The unusual flag is a replica of the one flown during the Revolutionary War battle. It is one of the early flags of the Continental Navy or the Pennsylvania Navy (nobody seems to be sure). The photo above is one of the more flattering views of the fort. Much of it has fallen into decay over the years, like this cannon wheel:

But a dedicated group of volunteers is doing a great job bringing this key part of our American history back to life. Check out their website or visit the fort.

UnIdentified Marine Invertebrate

2010-07-31T19:45:00.012-04:00

I found this interesting blob on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida. It was attached to the outside surface of a broken sea shell, so my guess is that it did not at one time live inside the shell. The ridges on the shell make it look sort of like a scallop, although it doesn't have the "wings" on the hinged side of the shell that you normally associate with a scallop.

The thought did cross my mind that the blob was one time the adductor muscle of a scallop (the part we eat). If you sliced it up, each section would be a disk that looked like a scallop on your dinner plate. But if someone or something opened up the scallop shell and pulled out the adductor muscle, how would it then re-attach itself to the outside of its old shell?

I'm thinking that this blob is some type of creature independent from the shell, which attached itself to the shell when they were both living in deeper waters. When the shell washed up on shore, its hitchhiker came with it. The hole in the shell at the bottom of the photo is also odd - I'm wondering if that is how the inhabitant of this shell met his end.

Here is a better view of the "foot" of this creature, with its "toes" securely attached to the shell. Or maybe it is the "mouth", and it was busy eating microorganisms off the shell?

Here is the other side.

And here is the end.

This whole animal was about 3 inches long and 2 inches in diameter, although it was longer and skinnier when I first approached it. As it "sensed" I was taking its picture, it got shorter and fatter, as if it were tensing up from stress. About the only other thing I can tell you is that I found this in salt water (i.e. on the ocean side, not the bay side).

If anyone has any ideas as to what this might be, please leave them in the comments!

UPDATE 8/31/10: Thank you to Anonymous, who identified this creature for me in the Comments below. I have to agree, it does appear to be an anemone with its tentacles withdrawn. I had never seen anything like this before, but after seeing many anemones in Washington state recently, I saw quite a few with their tentacles retracted. The ones I saw had more of a "puckered up" look to them, but I definitely see the resemblance. The mystery is solved!

Tour of the Matanzas River

2010-07-28T23:49:00.010-04:00

Here is something you don't see every day - a bunch of Roseate Spoonbills roosting together in a tree. It was almost comical to see. Usually you see big birds like this gracefully wading around in the water looking for fish. They are too big to gracefully perch in trees.

There are 7 spoonbills here - the pink blob at the right end is actually two spoonbills. The bird in the water toward the left is a Tri-Colored Heron (aka Louisiana Heron). You can see his main color of gray and his white belly in this photo, but he is too far away to see the third color, which is a reddish patch at the top of his throat.

We saw this very cool sight in St. Augustine, Florida, on a pontoon boat tour on the Matanzas River. Along with these and many other birds, we also saw lots of dolphins. The boat had a hydrophone, so we could hear the clicks of the dolphins along with those of "snapping shrimp".

Snapping shrimp (aka pistol shrimp) have the amazing ability to snap their claws so quickly that they produce a bubble that makes a loud snap when it pops. This snap is loud enough to stun small fish that swim by, which the shrimp then grabs and eats. It is as if the shrimp is shooting the fish, hence the name pistol shrimp.

Other highlights of the trip were the mullet fish jumping out of the water all around us, and the beds of "spitting" oysters. No one seems to know for sure why mullet jump so much. A couple of theories are to increase their oxygen intake, or to escape from larger fish who are trying to catch them.

As for the oysters, they spit as part of their feeding process. They take in a "mouth" full of water, filter out the nutrients, and loudly spit out the water high into the air. Besides putting on a fun show, they are also serving an important purpose by cleaning the water.

Real Life Cabinet of Curiosity

2010-07-25T23:19:00.014-04:00

Earlier this month, our family took a vacation to Florida. One of the places we visited was the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine. Otto Lightner was a "collector of collections", especially collections of items from America's Gilded Age in the late 1800's.

The scene above is what greets you when you walk into the Science & Industry room. This is enough to surprise anyone, but especially me, since it was as if my blog had come to life! A while back I wrote a post on "cabinets of curiosities", and I included an old engraving of one these proto-museums:

You can't help but notice the similarity between these two pictures (hint: it is the alligator hanging from the ceiling).

I knew this could not be a coincidence. Since Mr. Lightner had passed away in 1950, I guessed he had not gotten the alligator idea from reading my blog. Maybe the present curators of the museum had read my blog and thought, "What a great idea - let's get that old stuffed alligator out of the basement and hang him on the ceiling". I knew I should have copyrighted my blog!

The truth was finally revealed when I found a copy of the above engraving on the wall of the Science & Industry room. Apparently Mr. Lightner had seen this engraving before I had, and decided to recreate it in his museum. Many of the items in this room, and even the beautiful woodworking of the display cases, was typical of cabinets of curiosities.

This got me wondering - how many other museums around the world also have stuffed alligators hanging from the ceiling? If you know of any, please tell me.

If you are ever in St. Augustine, be sure to visit the Lightner Museum. You will not be disappointed.

Here is my favorite item from Mr. Lightner's collection. What American home in the Gilded Age would be complete without a colorful ceramic mandrill?

Scientia Pro Publica #35

2010-07-19T23:45:00.009-04:00

Welcome to the 35th edition of Scientia Pro Publica, a bi-monthly blog carnival covering science, medicine, the environment and technology. I am pleased to host Scientia here at Kind of Curious.

For this edition, I decided to organize the blog posts according to the Logic Complexity Pyramid presented by Prakhar in his blog Subterranean Homesick Alien. This pyramid places the most logical science of all, mathematics, at the top of the pyramid, the “hard sciences” such as physics which can be derived from mathematics next, then the social sciences, and finally the most complex of all, philosophy, at the base of the pyramid.

I planned to explore the question posed by Prakhar, of whether you can pass up and down the Logic Complexity Pyramid in either direction, deriving each field of science from the ones above or below it. I would organize the Scientia carnival the way science itself is organized, using logic!

After thinking about this for a while, my head started to hurt. So I decided to just organize the blog posts alphabetically. In fact, since Subterranean Homesick Alien happens to be last in this alphabetical order, and I have already discussed it, why don’t we go with REVERSE alphabetical order?

That would make Southern Fried Science next. Join David as he takes a fascinating look at the history of early American marine biology, focusing on Louis Agassiz. Agassiz was a Swiss scientist who emigrated to the US in 1846, where he continued the prolific career he had begun in Europe. Agassiz is best known for founding the famous Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Bec at Save Your Breath for Running Ponies presents some interesting zoology of her own, concerning the Black Lace Weaver spider. Skip this if you are faint of heart. These spiders eat the eggs of their siblings, and then proceed to committing matriphage (eating their mother). Kids these days have no respect for their elders!

Next, Bob O’Hara sends along a link to a post by Chris at Prerogative of Harlots. This interesting piece looks at the thought process of developing a museum exhibit. What is the best way to explain to the public that despite “global warming“, it is actually much colder now than it was at the time of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55 million years ago? Most importantly, the high temperatures back then were also the result of greenhouse gases. Although some animals evolved to live in both extremes of temperature, there is no guarantee that humans will be one of those animals.

Isis the Scientist contributes an inspiring story on her blog On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess… She was definitely a laboratory goddess this day, as she made the light bulb come on over the head of a student. If you are like me and would not be able to tell the difference between an artery and a vein, check out her easy-to-understand explanation.

Over at Ninjameys, Thonoir continues his alternative listing of Endangered Species. Thonoir’s list is based on how critically endangered the species actually is, rather than some other lists that seem to be based more on the cute and cuddly factor. This list is Arthropods Part 1 - Arachnids, Crustaceans and Millipedes. I’m glad that someone cares that there are millipedes going extinct.

Speaking of extinction, Mike The Mad Biologist brings us the disturbing news that one of the finch species studied by Darwin appears to be on the brink of extinction. It is already gone from 2 of the 3 islands that Darwin studied it on. The last island has only 2 separated populations, one with less than 100 individuals, and the other with only 5 to 10.

Possibly the only creature closer to extinction is the student that actually reads the scientific papers that their professor has assigned. Grrl Scientist, at Living the Scientific Life, describes a method for motivating students to actually read these papers. Interestingly, it is similar to the model/rival technique that was used to train Alex, the famous African Grey Parrot with a vocabulary of 150 words.

OK, no more extinction jokes. Next we hear from Lab Rat, about a bacteria that has been genetically engineered to remove atrazine (an herbicide pollutant) from the environment. More importantly, these bacteria actually MIGRATE TOWARD the atrazine. This feat was accomplished by selecting bacteria based on the function of their CheZ genes, which control motility.

Moving from artificial selection to natural selection, John at Kind of Curious (that’s me!) explains how the Haleakala Silversword plant has adapted to its harsh environment on top of Mount Haleakala in Maui.

Greg Laden at Greg Laden’s blog has finally put the nature/nurture debate to rest - at least as it relates to the oyster-catching abilities of Oystercatcher birds. Catching oysters can be deadly work, with the ever present danger of drowning. Conveniently, the beaks of Oystercatchers do not mature to a point where they can use them for catching oysters, until the birds are old enough to have learned the proper methods by observing their mothers. Nature and nurture, working together for the benefit of the Oystercatcher!

From bird’s beaks to bird’s feet, we have them all covered in this carnival. Arvind Pillai at Fins to Feet explains (with the help of some great diagrams) how dinosaur feet have evolved into bird’s feet.

Continuing the evolution trend, Bob O’Hara sends us a link to a post by Henry McGee at The End of the Pier Show. Henry reports on a session at Euro Evo Devo on the origin of segmentation in the bodies of various organisms. (For the uninitiated like myself, Euro Evo Devo is the conference of the European Society for Evolutionary Development.)

Over at the Dr. Shock website, Walter van den Broek describes a study of the calming effects of chocolate. Study subjects who were given chocolate with an increased amount of the naturally occurring ingredient y-aminobutyric acid (GABA) showed reduced stress levels while taking a math test. GABA is known to affect neurotransmission in humans.

Grrl Scientist sends along a link to Blogging the PhD, by Erika Cule. Erica explains a study in which students performed better on reading comprehension tests when the photos accompanying the text were of professionals of the same gender as the student. When both males and females were shown in the photos, the performance differences disappeared.

Brendan Locke at The BioNode describes a recent hike in the Ma-le’l Dunes of Humbolt Bay, CA. He shows the difference between the biodiversity of dunes where invasive species have been removed vs dunes that are dominated by invasives. He provides links to information on how you can help combat invasive species in your area.

Julia at Bioluminescence explains the science behind her attempts as a PhD candidate to marry population genetics and skeletal morphology.

At “Are You SciCurious?”, SciCurious describes the role of the p53 protein in creating the types of tumors that increase in frequency with age. The functioning of p53 decreases with age, so the ability of a cell to respond to a stressor such as radiation also decreases with age.

At the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, Jeremy Cherfas and Luigi Guarino explain that a certain variety of cassava known as “bitter cassava” has high levels of cyanide which must be removed through post-harvest processing. Although scientists know how to create “sweet cassava” without high levels of cyanide, these varieties are more susceptible to insect pests and to theft. The moral of the story is that “modern science” needs to take into account the needs of the local community when it comes to tinkering with their food supply.

Finally, Andrew Bernardin at the 360 Degree Skeptic provides 2 posts. The first compares the sensationalistic headline of a science news story to the more prosaic statistics contained in the body of the article. Andrew uses this as an example of how science writers need to present science as an ongoing search for truth, rather than “dumbing down” science to be a creator of truths and facts.

Andrew’s second post is a tongue-in-cheek look at a recent study claiming that inactivity may not necessarily result in obesity - possibly it may be the other way around. At some point the correlation/causation debate needs to give way to common sense.

Well, that's it for Scientia Pro Publica #35. Scientia #36 will appear at The Allotrope on August 2nd. Please send your submissions to The Allotrope or via the Scientia Pro Publica blog site.

Also, please consider hosting Scientia Pro Publica on your blog site. Hosting dates are available from September 13th to the end of the year. See the hosting calendar here. If you would like to host, please send an email via the Scientia Pro Publica blog site.

Finally, don't forget to visit the Scientia Twitter site and the SciNat Blog Carnival Twitter Site.

Circus of the Spineless #52

2010-06-30T23:55:00.020-04:00

Welcome to the 52nd edition of Circus of the Spineless!

Hey you in the back - yeah, you - the one with the spine - get outta here! This circus is only for the spineless!

Since it's only us invertebrate lovers here, I know I can be honest with you - one of the reasons I think the spineless are so cool is that they can sometimes be very gross. You know what I mean - laying their eggs inside of other animals, eating them alive, etc., etc. So I thought that a nifty way to arrange this month's posts would be in order of grossness.

Since beauty (and grossness) are in the eye of the beholder, you may not agree with my arrangement. You may even be offended. That's OK, I don't mind, I have thick skin (actually sort of an exoskeleton).

Why don't we start at the beautiful end of the scale and work our way to the beastly end:

Zen Faulkes at NeuroDojo writes about the correlation between coloration and toxicity of sea slugs. In a post about coloration, how could you not have some really beautiful photos? Zen does not disappoint!

As glorious as the photos in Zen's post are the words in the poem submitted by Elaine Medline. Elaine writes about seeing the world through a dragonfly's eyes in her blog Memorizing Nature.

Many creatures inhabit the middle world between beauty and beast. Amber Coakley at Birder's Lounge writes about the sawfly, which starts its life as a somewhat attractive larvae and ends up a scary looking adult.

Or how about an insect that is graceful when observed from afar, but gets a little ugly if you get too close? JSK at Anybody Seen My Focus demonstrates this in a series of photos of a Great Blue Skimmer dragonfly, with very bugged-out eyes.

Marine invertebrates can be that way as well, beautiful from a distance but like slimy phlegm up close. Check out the sponges and other creatures discovered by Susannah's grand-daughter at Wanderin' Weeta.

Over at Wild About Ants, the "Consult-Ant" Roberta Gibson answers a question about ant pheromones. Ants are fascinating social insects and generally not too gross. A very interesting post!

Back to Zen Faulkes at NeuroDojo, this time for a review of a field study of a cricket population. This was an amazingly comprehensive study by some very patient researchers. They even tagged the crickets, which makes for a pretty funny photo.

We are now about halfway through our spectrum of grossness, so we are starting to tilt to the gross end. The Dragonfly Woman at her eponymous blog writes about aquatic insects being used as biological indicators of water quality. The Santa Cruz River in Tucson is 100% effluent (wastewater) and is filled with bloodworms. Need I say more?

Next we visit the blog of yours truly, John at Kind of Curious, where we find a moth that disguises itself as a bird dropping. Or, as one of the commenters noted, a shelf fungus.

Adrian Thysse, also known as The Bug Whisperer, provides a series of fascinating photos of an Ichneumon Wasp finding a larvae inside a log by echolocation, and then depositing its egg in the larvae. Now this is the kind of truly gross stuff I am talking about!

It is no coincidence that the revolting end of this spectrum of grossness is heavily populated by arachnids. David Winter writes about conservation of the Katipo Spider at The Atavism. Maybe it's just me, but I think most people would run from this spider.

Ted MacRae at Beetles in the Bush addresses the beauty/beast issue head on - he argues that jumping spiders are actually cute and cuddly! I'm not buying it, but he does provide some excellent close-up photos.

As we near the end of the grossness scale, our more fair readers may wish to avert their eyes. Michael Bok at Arthropoda provides an in-depth discussion (with photos!) of Camel Spiders, which are actually not true spiders but their own order within the arachnids.

What could be more gross than a spider? How about a wasp dragging a spider back to her nest to lay her eggs it its body? David Winter provides some great shots of this at The Atavism.

Finally, the post I have nominated as the most revolting, nauseating and disturbing of the bunch. Unfortunately, this one demonstrates the greed of humans, the short-sighted disregard of multiple procedures intended to protect other humans and our life-giving ecosystem. I am referring to the BP oil spill. Kevin Zelnio, administrator of Circus of the Spineless, submitted a post by Dr. Chris Mah on the Ocean Portal Blog of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Dr. Mah's post describes the impact of the BP oil spill on invertebrates in the Gulf, which may be an even greater disaster than the impact on the more photogenic vertebrates we see on television.

Well, that's a wrap for Circus of the Spineless #52. I hope nobody was offended if I called your favorite invertebrate "gross". It was all in fun.

Next month, the spineless will converge at Birder's Lounge (I hope no one gets eaten!). Send your submissions to acoakley at birderslounge dot com.