Category Archives: Plants

Why read about plants?

Who in their right mind would ever take time from their very short lives to read about green organisms that can’t walk, talk or do cool tricks? Well, you did when you came here but should you read on?

Yes.

Here is something to think about: As I write this I am in the middle of drinking a can of plant (wheat, hops,barley) to wash down the bowl of plant (lettuce, wheat, potato and more). I am wearing a shirt made from 80% recently deceased plant with 20% coming from plants whose lives ended a few hundred million years ago. The same ancient plants get me to work and make the electricity that powers my computer…

You see, we interact with plants all the time and never even notice it! Everything you do can be traced back to a plant from your first breath of air to your last.

That’s not enough to convince you to read on? Oh, hung up on the cool tricks thing… right..

Actually plants do a lot of wicked sweet stuff.

This sundew has uses bio potentials (nerve-like impulses) to sense when insects get trapped in the goo laden hairs of their leaves.

This Dodder plant can “smell” another plant and latch onto another plant like a vampire, sucking the sweet, sweet plant juices out for it’s own use.

How about this sweet robotically enhanced ficus created by Japanese researchers? They made a plant cyborg by hooking the plant to actuators, causing it respond to touch.

If that doesn’t convince you that plants are worth another look, I don’t know what else to tell you…

Sorry to pull you away from Honey Boo Boo and whatever.

Coming up in future blogs I’ll be showing that plants are everywhere and have been an inextricable part of our lives through the entire journey from Savannah to suburb. Also, I plan on demonstrating how people are finding new uses for plants, new ways of interacting with plants as well as how plants are being used in some amazing works of art.

Plants kick ass. I hope you will want to know more about them and that you’ll be back here in the future.

Plant FYI #1 Prickly Ash

Prickly Ash

Prickly Ash

Common Prickly Ash (Xanthoxylum americanum) has “Ash” in the name but is more closely related to a lemon or orange than the ash tree that we plant on boulevards or in landscapes. Natives and early settlers would chew the bark of this stout shrubby tree to cure toothaches because of the numbing effect of the chemicals found in it’s cambium. How to identify this plant: Once you have entered a wooded area in the central/eastern US you will notice that your clothes are ripped and blood is beginning to soak through them. Turn around. If you see a thicket of 1-2.5 m tall shrubby trees that have ½ to 1 cm long prickles and ash-like compound leaves – that, my friend, is Prickly Ash.