Sites of Interest

I haven't done one of these posts in a really long time, which makes me feel guilty. I occasionally mean to, but then I think, well, maybe I should wait a few months to see if they're going to keep blogging, 'cause I don't want to be sending people to a dead blog, plus it's a lot of reading for me to do if I'm going to try to figure out what the typical topics are, so I procrastinate, and then I never wind up doing it, because those things never actually stop being problems. I could stand to be more organized about the blog referrals, I guess is what I'm saying.

Anyway. Here we go.

Farmscape Gardens
Writer(s): Daniel Allen, Jesse DuBois, Julia Hejl, Sean Williams.
Location: Claremont, CA and vicinity.
Main topics of interest: Urban food gardening / edible landscaping, food politics, recipes, environment.
I found the blog via: e-mail from Sean.

Plantgasm
Writer(s): Derek Powazek.
Location: San Francisco, CA.
Main topics of interest: Houseplants (succulent and tropical), photography, vertical gardening, botany, some outdoor gardening, container gardening.
I found the blog via: StatCounter, following a post at Plantgasm in which PATSP was mentioned, followed closely by an e-mail.

Garden Adventures
Writer(s): Grower Jim.
Location: Central Florida (zone 9B).
Main topics of interest: Outdoor gardening generally, edible tropicals, bromeliads, photography. Also sells a few plants and seeds through PayPal.
I found the blog via: PATSP comments, probably, though Blotanical is also possible. I don't remember.

Bug Girl's Blog
Writer(s): Bug Girl, duh.
Location: "A University in the Midwest."
Main topics of interest: Academia, a wide assortment of insects and other arthropods, feminism, skepticism, the environment, occasionally gardening.
I found the blog via: BoingBoing.net did a post about a picture of "aphids," which got their commenters all riled up because they're not aphids OMG, which resulted in a brief but spirited taxonomy argument about whether or not springtails are insects. Commenter #9 linked to this page at myrmecos.net, which attempts to quantify the stupidity of mistaking one organism for another, and which included a link to Bug Girl's Blog about snopes.com insisting in a post about cochineal that scale insects are beetles even though they're obviously not beetles. Except that Snopes has apparently changed this since the Bug Girl's Blog post in question was written. I don't normally provide this much detail in how I happen upon interesting websites (and aren't you grateful?), but in this case I remember it really well because it was yesterday afternoon.

A Digital Botanical Garden
Writer(s): Phil Gates.
Location: County Durham, UK.
Main topics of interest: Botany, photography, plant-related trivia. Posts focus on a single species at a time but may be about almost any plant. Has another blog devoted to microscopy, some of which is botanically-oriented and frequently very cool.
I found the blog via: I have no idea. I suspect Google.

Floradora
Writer(s): Kelly Kilpatrick.
Location: Oakland, CA.
Main topics of interest: Garden design, photography.
I found the blog via: no idea.

Dyckia Brazil
Writer(s): Constantino.
Location: Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Main topics of interest: Dyckias, photos of Dyckias, thoughts about Dyckias, Dyckia-related botany and taxonomy. Also there are sometimes Dyckias.
I found the blog via: I don't actually remember, but it seems like a fairly safe bet that I found it by Googling "Dyckia" at some point.

Plant Chaser
Writer(s): Bom.
Location: Philippines.
Main topics of interest: Public garden displays, photography, tropical outdoor gardening, Tillandsias, cycads.
I found the blog via: comments left on PATSP, I'm pretty sure.

ZOMG WANT.

Those who don't follow Plant Daddy should head over there and check out this new Aglaonema, which he says will probably never be named and sold. To die for. If the slow winter growth truly is the only problem the plant has (it's the only problem he mentions, anyway), it would be tragic for them not to mass-produce them.

I don't know what they should name it. Give me time; I'll come up with something.

Also while you're there, check out the recent archives for pothos (Epipremnum aureum) flowering, seed-collecting, seeds, and seedling plants. It doesn't happen very often, so this may be the only way you're ever going to see it.

And if that wasn't enough reading for you,

PATSP participated in the blog carnival "Berry-Go-Round" #30, which is hosted by Brain Ripples and can be found here. PATSP's contribution, Part I of the Phalaenopsis profile, will already be familiar to regular readers, but there are other people there, with new, primarily science-themed, posts. Some of these are people you (ought to) know, like Rock Paper Lizard, The Phytophactor, and Watching the World Wake Up; others are new to me but will probably be showing up on the blogroll whenever I get around to updating the blogroll again.

Particularly recommended to PATSP readers: "19 Basic Botanical Terms," at Learn Plants Now. I really need to do a post like that, so I figure out some of these terms myself.

More Sites of Interest

It's been too long since I've done this, and I'm sorry. I'm even more sorry that I'm not going to be as thorough about it as I would like. My time is limited, like usual, so I will wind up not including some blogs which are perfectly worthy. I have a whole list of people I intend to check up on, who I hope to add to my blogroll at some point, so just so that we're all clear: I might still be aware of your blog (especially if you've commented here before, but even if you've just linked to PATSP), even if you're not on the blogroll.

Which actually is another reason why I haven't done one of these in a while: I feel like I have to apologize to all the people I leave off.

Anyway. So for this round:

Hort Log has been around for a long time (since 2007), and is written by Zog Zog and Hort Log, who may be the same person. I can't determine a location for sure, but it appears to be based somewhere in Southeast Asia (Singapore?). Particular interests are rare / weird tropicals, particularly orchids, carnivores, begonias, and gesneriads: it's a really good place to look at plants you've never seen before (and probably will never see in person, alas). I knew of Hort Log for a long time before I thought to add it to my feed reader, so I no longer have any idea how I became aware of it. Probably either Blotanical or Houseplants.

My Northern Garden is written by Mary Schier, who lives in Minnesota and writes about outdoor and edible gardening in Minnesota, as one would expect, with occasional forays into container and indoor gardening. I first became aware of MNG during the Robin Ripley stuff a few months ago.

I am somewhat embarrassed that I haven't gotten around to mentioning Steve Asbell's The Rainforest Garden before now. It's not that I wasn't aware of it -- it seems like I heard about it a long time ago, possibly through Blotanical? -- but for some reason, you know. Possibly I was jealous of the blog design. (It's very nice.) I don't know. In any case, I'm rectifying this now. Steve and I grow a lot of the same plants, but all mine are indoors, and his are mostly outdoors. Special interests appear to be edibles, bromeliads and other epiphytes, large-leaved plants like Colocasias, gingers, cannas, and bananas, and then houseplants and container gardening.

Danger garden writes Danger Garden from Portland, Oregon. The focus is very much on the sharp pointy things: Agaves, Yuccas, Euphorbias (though mostly the outdoor, hardy types, not the pointy ones, which seems like an oversight, but I will forgive a blogger of a lot of things if they have 57 posts tagged "Agave"), that sort of thing, hence the blog name. And there is a dog. I think I ran across Danger Garden via Plant Zone, but I'm not sure.

F that S (yeah, it stands for what you think it stands for) is sort of about everything and nothing. There are tendencies toward the horticulture industry, graphic design (and then landscape design, the overlap of the two), travel, and much photography of nature-type stuff. I'm probably leaving things out. It's written by Corinne Weiner from New York City, and I'm pretty sure I found it when Statcounter told me someone came from there to visit PATSP.

That's it for this round. If I haven't mentioned you yet, please know that I probably feel really bad about it.

Link of interest

A reader e-mailed me an interesting link this morning, to a site with a lot of interesting macro photos of cacti, as well as even some photos taken with the aid of a microscope, which makes me sad all over again that my plans to get a microscope last spring didn't work out. The cacti in question appear to be mainly Mammillarias.

A Close-up View of Several Members of the Cactus Family

New Blogs of Interest

Or maybe that should read "Blogs of New Interest." The blogs aren't necessarily new, but my interest in them is. Neither phrasing is very clear. Maybe "Interesting Blogs of the New."

Anyway.

Letters and Leaves is the relatively new blog from longtime PATSP commenter Ivynettle, who writes from . . . . (Have you said where you write from, Ivynettle? 'Cause I'm just now realizing that I don't know.) Topics include indoor plants, plant-related employment, and more indoor plants, so far. Found via her comments here at PATSP.

Terra Mirabilis is written by Penny McCrea from somewhere in the depths of South Florida. Frequent topics: the outdoor growing of tropicals, wild wildlife, domesticated wildlife, her neighborhood, food plants, weather, and the various topics where the above overlap. I ran into TM via James Missier's Garden Chronicles.

Watching the World Wake Up is written by Watcher, from Salt Lake City, Utah, and is fairly difficult to categorize as far as subject matter. Plants, animals, bicycling, Utah, science in a general way, science in a specific way. WtWWU is frequently very wordy, digressive, and sciencey (and this is me saying!), but with enough naughty words to keep it readable, and there are often footnotes (including footnotes in the photos, occasionally, a level of footnoting I've never achieved before, so I'm impressed), so PATSP readers should feel more or less right at home. I think the sequence by which I encountered WtWWU is, I went to Phytophactor, which was hosting Berry-Go-Round #24, which included a link to a post at WtWWU that made extensive reference to triploidy, which happened to be something I was very interested in at the moment.

I can't imagine there's anybody reading this who wouldn't already be familiar with NellJean's Secrets of a Seed Scatterer, but I've recently added it to my Blogger reading list, so it counts. NellJean writes from Southwestern Georgia, primarily about outdoor gardening there. There's also quite a lot of nice photography, some meta-blogging (blogging about the process of blogging), frequently interesting polls, and a bit of houseplants. I don't remember how I became aware of it first; probably Blotanical. After a certain point, it no longer really matters.

Our Little Acre is another sort of surprising long-term omission. I don't have an explanation. It's written in Northwest Ohio, by Kylee, and has lately been about houseplants quite a bit, but there are also posts about travel, meta-blogging, food gardening and ornamental outdoor gardening. You probably already know all this. This is another one that was probably found through Blotanical, but it doesn't matter because I could have run into it ten thousand different ways, had Blotanical not been there.

Far Out Flora is written by, well, "faroutflora," (Megan) but also mattisalomaki (Matti). They write from San Francisco, California, primarily about houseplants, and the plants that can be houseplants or outdoor plants in San Francisco, which is apparently most of them. Particular emphases include bromeliads, succulents (but not cacti so much, for some reason), carnivorous plants, and a recent-seeming (?) enthusiasm for vertical gardening. Also considerable photography of plants: indoor, outdoor, retail, landscape, whatever.

Son of Even More Blogroll Additions

PATSP hiatus begins tomorrow, and I have to say, I've rarely looked forward to hiatus as much as I do this time. I do, in fact, finally have too many plants, and keeping up with all of them has gotten to be a bit of a pain. (I know I've said this before, but this time I really mean it.)

This has especially been the case following the recent evacuation. This won't actually let me off the hook for anything, since I'm still going to have to be working on the blog during the hiatus, as well as continuing to keep the plants watered, but at least not having to come up with stuff for a few days means that I might be able to finish some of the longer posts I've been trying to work on. Some of them will be very cool if I ever manage to finish them. Plus there's a profile coming just any day now on Pandanus veitchii and P. utilis (UPDATE: Done!), and a large number of potential profiles (see sidebar).

(The Pandanus profile looks like it's even going to involve cake, for you fans of cake. I'm not kidding.)

But you are not entertained by promises of posts in the future! You want posts right now, am I right?

So allow me to recommend the following sites to enjoy in my absence:

Homegrown Evolution isn't really applicable to me so much, but I suspect they're relevant to a lot of my readers, and the site is well-written and interesting, so I include it. Main topics include urban gardening, self-sufficiency, environmentalism, beekeeping, canning, and similar hippie-slash-grandma stuff. But in a good way. It is written by "Homegrown Neighbor," "Homegrown Evolution," and "Mrs. Homegrown," which one rather hopes are pseudonyms. All three live in Los Angeles, CA. The site first came to my attention when they linked to my Asparagus spp. profile. (They don't like asparagus ferns either.)

Fuck You, Penguin isn't very houseplant-relevant either, but it's funny. Topics: mostly being rude to adorable animals, as the title suggests. Sometimes being rude to gross animals. Animals, animal photography, that kind of thing. Posts written by "BZA," though the book (F U Penguin: Telling Cute Animals What's What) is by Matthew Gasteier, which is at least strongly suggestive that maybe BZA and Matthew Gasteier are the same person. I think I found this by checking out the other blogs that one of my "followers" followed, but I don't remember who it was.

Howplantswork Weblog is yet another blog that is more or less exactly what it sounds like: it's a blog about how plants work. Consequently, it contains a lot of science; most of it is about two notches more sciencey than PATSP, and there's more biochemistry than the average PATSP reader is going to be accustomed to. But it also explains things like how plants make flowers, how plants know how big they are, how and why plants produce ethylene, and various other stuff that we've occasionally touched on here. Try it and see if you get anything out of it. If you don't, no harm done, and you don't have to go back. I think I found it through a Google search on something or another.

The Phytophactor is both the title of the blog and its author, who when referring to himself in the third person sometimes calls himself "The Phactor." The Phactor is an academic biologist, with a particular interest in tropical rain forests, but the jargon is fairly minimal, and the science, when presented, is totally readable. The vocabulary is roughly equivalent to, or maybe even a notch below, PATSP, depending on the post. I have no memory of encountering this blog, so I can't tell you how it happened. Topics: academia, gardening, rainforests, taxonomy, plant diversity.

Liz and the Professor is written by who you would think it would be written by. They live in Key West, FL, U.S., and grow a lot of the same things I do, but they grow them outside instead of inside. It's mostly about the photography, but -- it is very good photography, especially if you're like me and have only ever seen these plants indoors, in pots. It hasn't been updated much lately, which makes me wonder about things, but before November there were about three posts per week. I'm pretty sure I found it during the Blotanical Awards last September (L&tP was up for Best Florida Blog; it placed third, but as a multiple third-place finisher myself, I say third is not that bad).

Garden Chronicles is similar: it's interesting to find pictures of houseplants I have growing outdoors, fifty times bigger. Also lots of orchid pictures. Garden Chronicles is written by James Missier from Batu Caves, Selangor, Malaysia. (If you're reading this, James: I tried to find Garden Chronicles at Blotanical to fave you, and literally could not get to your blog or plot. I know Stuart said he was going to be fixing the navigation problems, so I can only assume that he's started to do so already. But the intent was there.) I suspect I found it through My Nice Garden, but I'm not sure.

Greensparrow Gardens is written by Greensparrow (Joseph Tychonievich) and appears to be mainly about outdoor gardening, plus a good bit of science and miscellanea. It's hard to summarize. I also don't know anything about this alleged green sparrow: was it green to begin with? Did someone make it green? Is it metaphorical, and the sparrow in question is just really environmentally conscious? We do not know. We may never know. I don't remember how I found it: possibly via comment here at PATSP, or through some other blog (The Scientist Gardener would be a likely candidate).

Good to Grow, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure I discovered through looking at my Sitemeter statistics. Houseplants, interiorscaping, how-to, retail, outdoor. It's written by Liza, from Albuquerque, NM, U.S.

I don't even know what the name of the next one is, because it is, unfortunately for me, written in Greek. It looks like "Phytology," maybe. (Google Translate renders it "Fytologio.") I found it when the author started to follow PATSP. (I don't check out all of my followers' profile pages, for various reasons, but I usually do eventually look at most of them.) I recommend it mainly for the photography, which is very good. Lots of close-ups of very obscure succulents, plus also some orchids and really strange cactus stuff. (For example, this post from October, which involves grafting cactus that have been cut vertically: the plant which results is an Echinopsis on the left and a Sulcorebutia on the right. Crazier still, both of these appear to be grafted themselves, onto an Opuntia. Why? I do not know. But it certainly expands my understanding of what can be done with cactus grafting. Also check out the thinly-sliced Lithops pictures, which does the same for my concepts of transmitted-light plant photography.) The pictures also link to a separate website with a really ridiculous number of plant pictures, which I had previously run into when researching for the Haworthia profile, and which is nice for IDing stuff because there are many pictures of each plant, from various angles.

So. There. That should hold y'all for four days. (Actually, some of those sites could give you reading material until Easter, all by themselves.) Have a good Christmas, and I will see you again on Boxing Day, at which point we can gleefully fling poinsettias into the garbage while saying rude things to them, which is how I traditionally observe Boxing Day.

Even More Blogroll Additions

Are these posts boring for you guys, as readers? I'm never sure if they're, you know, planty enough to be bothering with. In any case, some more blogs I've enjoyed lately, in no particular order:

The Scientist Gardener. Written by MAT kinase. From upstate New York. Outdoor, agriculture, food science, food politics. I probably found this through James and the Giant Corn.

The Hanging gardens of EpiCrazy. Written by J.J., in Antioch, Tennessee, United States. I sort of hesitate to include this, because it's narrow focus and short duration so far (the first post was 29 Sep 2009) mean it may not be around long -- a lot of blogs are abandoned after a handful of posts. However, he seems appropriately obsessive, and you've never seen such epiphytic cactus flower photos. So THGOEC makes the cut. Epiphytes, particularly epiphytic cacti (Hatiora, Epiphyllum, Schlumbergera, etc.), eye candy. Found through Blotanical.

Plant Zone. Written by Aerelonian. London, Ontario, Canada. Tropicals (especially orchids, Hibiscus, and Bougainvillea), growing plants from seed, succulents, some outdoor. Found through Dirt Therapy, which is funny since Dirt Therapy isn't on the list yet.

So, naturally, we'll add Dirt Therapy. Written by Phillip Oliver. Florence, Alabama, United States. Outdoor, ornamental, cooking, lawn replacement. Found through the 2009 Blotanical Awards (DT was the winner of Best Alabama Blog).

Animal Review. I'm unclear about whether this is still being updated regularly or not: it had been from May '08 to March '09, and then it just kind of stops for six months while, allegedly, a book was being written. But it's a hysterical read all the same. Written by nobody in particular (meaning I couldn't find any kind of author name, not that it's written by someone who goes by the handle "nobody in particular,"), from no particular place. Animals, humor, humorous animal-related geekery, anthropomorphism. I do not remember how I found this but suspect Twitter is responsible.

Joe's Paphs and Orchid Blog. Written by, as you would assume, Joe. Singapore. Orchids, in particular Phalaenopsis and Paphiopedilum, photography. Not a lot of text or care information, but holy crap the eye candy. I promise you, you have not seen phals and paphs like these, even if you're really into phals and paphs. I do not remember how I ran across this blog and don't even have a guess.

Genetic Maize. Written by Anastasia Bodnar. Ames, Iowa, United States. Genetics, agriculture, genetic engineering (GMOs), food politics. Another one I found through James and the Giant Corn.

Talking Plants. Written by Tim Entwisle. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Orchids, Australian outdoor gardening, science, Australian native plants. Don't remember finding this one either.

All Andrew's Plants. Written by Andrew. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It's fuzzy w/r/t the subject matter, since it's new, but houseplants have been promised. Found via Andrew himself, whose other blog I was already following.

How to Make Trees Scarier

(Link to I09.)

I'm sorry: your what burst?

Global warming's not just for scientists anymore! Now you can get involved directly, just by looking at stuff! (Well. Looking at stuff, and then writing it down, and reporting it accurately, with details, to somebody. It's not all fun and games, kids.)

Project BudBurst is looking for volunteers in the United States to collect climate change data. The idea is pretty simple: you note when you see the first buds, first leaves, first flowers, and so on, of a specific list of common plant species, and these results are collected and compiled annually and compared. Participation runs from February to July, and you can do as much or as little as you want: whatever you have time for. Looked at one way, you're providing valuable information to the scientific community; looked at another way, you're getting the chance to go walk around looking closely at plants with a built-in excuse if anybody gives you weird looks. ("Oh, don't mind me. I'm just doing science.") Maybe there are other useful applications. ("Sorry, dear, you'll have to fix dinner tonight. I have science to do.")


The site explains itself a little differently:

Phenology is literally “the science of appearance.” Scientists who study phenology – phenologists -- are interested in the timing of specific biological events (such as flowering, migration, and reproduction) in relation to changes in season and climate. Seasonal and climatic changes are some of the non-living or abiotic components of the environment that impact the living or biotic components. Seasonal changes can include variations in day length, temperature, and rain or snowfall. In short, phenologists attempt to learn more about the abiotic factors that plants and animals respond to.

Examples of springtime phenological events that interest scientists include flowering, leaf unfolding, insect emergence, and bird, fish, and mammal migration. Think about the changes where you live that tell you spring is almost here. In the Washington, D.C. area, cherry blossoms are a sure sign that spring is on its way. In many parts of the country, hearing the songs of the first robins of the season is what you look forward to. California poppies are an indicator of spring to many along the Pacific shores. In the Midwest, the greening up of fields and pastures is a signal that winter is almost over.

Phenological observations have been used for centuries by farmers to maximize crop production, nature-lovers to anticipate optimal wildflower viewing conditions, and by almost all of us to prepare for seasonal allergies. Today, this well established science is also used by scientists to track the effect of global warming and climate change on organisms and to make predictions about the future health of the environment. By tracking changes in the timing of these phenological events, scientists are able to better understand how our environment is changing.

Anyway. That's Project BudBurst. Check it out.

Everything's Coming Up Anthuriums

(The title is more amusing if you imagine it sung by Ethel Merman.)

I don't know if it's meaningful, but lately it seems like I've been running into a lot of stuff about Anthurium cultivars, particularly A. andraeanum. I'm also noticing that the aforelinked post is getting a lot of hits, more than most of the other plant profile pages.¹

Bafflingly, it seems to be impossible for me to get a good picture of my own plants. I can't figure it out. They're really not normally this blurry.

So, with that in mind, I'm doing the first PATSP link dump about Anthuriums. Here we go:

Water Roots did a long piece on Anthurium recently, which is very much worth checking out.

Anthurium is also one of the fastest-growing segments of the horticulture industry, apparently because there are suddenly many highly-trained plant cultivators working round the clock to create new varieties, some of which are legitimately exciting and cool. Not all of these are necessarily available yet in the town (or continent, alas) where you live, but even so, the Earth is now home to Anthurium cultivars in the following colors:

*pink
*bright red
*white, with a pink spadix
*another pink
*pink veins on cream background, which over time shade into pink-on-pink, with a white spadix tipped in orange and green²
*lemon-yellow spathe with a white, yellow and green spadix²
*a double-spathed brown flower with red veins
*a slightly orangish red
*red with green "ears"
*brown

At work, we're going to be getting another shipment of tropical plants from Florida at the end of the month, which has me very excited: we're supposed to have just a ton of Anthuriums in there (including Anthurium crystallinum 'Mehani:' I don't intend to buy one, 'cause I don't think I could keep it alive, but I'm curious about how they're going to look), as well as a Dracaena I want ('Art'), and a whole mess of Haworthias. It's going to be an expensive shipment for me, I'm betting, even though I am just about sick of losing entire days to plant-watering and I have no places for any more plants anyway. WCW³ is almost beside herself with anticipation over a batch of Vanilla orchids -- not only have I never seen her that excited before, I've very nearly never seen anyone over the age of twelve that excited about anything.⁴

My own Anthuriums (and thank you for asking) aren't actually doing all that well at the moment; I didn't clue in to the change in season, so I was keeping them too wet, and they've dropped some leaves. I think we're going to pull out of this, though, relatively soon. This is happening to a degree with the ones at work, too.

-

¹ It would not surprise me if this was a popular page solely because the title has the word "hooker" in it. I can't decide whether or how much this bothers me.
² WANT!
³ (Do I need to keep explaining that this stands for "wonderful co-worker," and is meant sincerely, or no?)
⁴ Just in passing, I'd like to mention that this is one of the most wonderful things about my job. Previously, I worked in a couple grocery stores, and people go to grocery stores because they have to, not because they want to, and this shows up in how they deal with staff, and other customers. Not a good time. People come to look at houseplants, on the other hand, because they want to, by and large, and consequently most of them are in a really good mood. It's nice to see people see the plants, and get excited about a find, or about learning something (a customer just yesterday was just giddy when she found out that sometimes you can grow Citrus from cuttings and have it bloom). That WCW and I occasionally also get to behave like this is just gravy.