#katia plant scientist

[katiajewelbox]

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson

Source: Grow Your Garden Instagram page

#katia plant scientist #botany #plant biology #plant science #plants #trees #plants make people happy #sustainability #ecological #solarpunk #intersectional environmentalism #environmentalism

[prerodinu]

Dacian Vuk HC’S

                       _________________________________________

6′5″ tol dude.

has to wear glasses when he’s reading a book or something. Honestly speaking he never lets anyone see him wear glasses. Also needs them when he sketches. Doesn’t.

Very soft boi??? Like despite constantly being angry he’s soft. He wants love and affection.

Actually reads a lot.

Avid sketch artist. Will sit at a coffee shop with some pencils and sketch people out. Charcoal is his favorite medium.

Actually also likes to take photos. Has a Polaroid camera with him most of the time to take said photos.

Likes to also work on cars. smells of motor oil, exhaust, and leather almost all the time.

Dirty hands. From working to killing people his hands are dirty.

Avid nightmares. On a sleep schedule of about 4 hours per night.

Naps during the day when he can. 20-minute intervals.

Can cook very well. just never does.

Hair is either super short or long. His hair curls at the end.

Loves to talk about astronomy. He wanted to be a scientist for nasa if he ever went back to school.

favorite food is french fries dipped in a milkshake. Has to be vanilla.

drinks his coffee black

and prefers mint tea over coffee but most of the time doesn’t want to make the tea

and loves to walk around museums and art galleries.

Owns a bunch of paintings from van Gogh to Salvador Dahli to Monet and a couple Rembrandt paintings.

If anyone is lucky enough to be invited over to his place he will show them when asked about them. Sometimes he will go into long rants about the paintings.

Art History fucking nerd.

Has a bunch of old Norse men / viking thing’s in his home. Particularly a stone with Elder Futhark runes carved into the stone. He was the one that carved into the stone. Him and Katia so he keeps it for sentimental value.

Actually has a lot of houseplants. Mostly vine crawler plants.

No TV. Just huge windows for him to look out at.

Books everywhere in his home. Sketchbooks. Art books. History books. Just books.

Does not spend alot of time at the pack house.

Always has a bag packed in case he needs to go somewhere on short notice.

Does not keep guns in his home. He does have knives though and lots of them.

#(Dacian // Lore) #◜ ╱ que. ⟩⟩ things to do during a full moon. ◞

[mmushroomwriter]

Demo (twine) ° Ask box ° Cast ° Pinterest ° Graphics ° Glossary ° Polls

When your older brother told you university was going to be wild, this wasn’t what you expected.

In his extensive (and probably highly exaggerated) tales of wild parties, terrifying teachers and mad study sessions the night before exams, he didn’t once mention multiple ancient horrors rising and heralding the apocalypse. How rude.

However, a group of troubled young adults have banded together and just might be able to put a stop to the end of the world.

There’s hope after all!

Well… kind of.

Unfortunately for both you and the world, you happen to know this group - so well that you’re one of them - and there is no one you’d trust less with such a task.

Playlists for the End Times is currently rated 16+ for strong language, alcohol/drug use, and discussion of sensitive topics such as mental illness. A more thorough list will be in the demo.

Customise your protagonist’s name, gender, sexuality and appearance.

Play as a medobestia, an almost extinct specialisation of magic

Go on the so-called ‘best road trip of all time!’ (which may also be the last road trip of all time)

Romance one of six potential love interests (2x female, 2x male, 2x selectable), or don’t. It’s up to you!

Try to put up with your child of an older brother

Explore your relationships with each of your eight quest companions, all with their own baggage

… and befriend some monsters?

Osric ‘Osi’ Jalava

21 ° he/him ° creviso ° RO (Unwilling) student, waiter and (self-proclaimed) tortured artist When Osric volunteered to join the group, everyone thought he was joking - maybe making fun of them. But no, here he is. And no one’s complaining, he supplied the mini-bus after all. With his perpetually messy mop of hair, eyeliner that’s somehow always a couple of nights old, clothes that look like they’ve never touched an iron before (because they haven’t, he doesn’t own one, he ideologically disagrees with them), and the scent of cigarette smoke always lingering on him, you can see why some of professors consider him a lost cause. That doesn’t mean you agree, however, because there’s something more to him. You’re sure of it, there has to be. Nobody signs up for a death mission just because “why the fuck not?”.

Lucius ‘Luci’ Vinter

20 ° he/him ° misamum ° RO Student and resident acoustic-guitar-guy at parties Nobody is quite sure who invited Luci, but he’s here anyway and raring to go. With gorgeous black curls almost down to his shoulders, a smile that could light up a black hole, the bone-structure of a god and more money than most people could visualise, it’s hard not to fall for him - it's the reason he’s so widely beloved around the university. So why is he here, with a group of random outcasts on a doomed mission? And more importantly, why is he so happy about it?

Katia de Sola

21 ° she/her ° morcius ° RO Student, essay-editor, and real-life mad scientist Many years ago, Katia wasn’t your childhood friend, but you were certainly aware of each other. Not much has changed about her since both her and your parents tried to make the two of you into best friends with constant play-dates and dinners. Not her slightly hunched posture that developed from being constantly reading, the way her eyes always jump around as though begging to soak up more information, nor the piercing look she gives when interrupted that can freeze the toughest adbellus to the core. Now here she is, on the precipice of greatness. She’s going to save the world, and nobody can stop her… That’s definitely the only reason she’s here…

Etheline ‘Ettie’ Bohan

19 ° she/her ° gramand ° RO Student, plant-nursery worker and (possible) manic pixie dream girl Ettie arrived out of nowhere on the second day of the second week of classes and she is fascinating. From her obsession with living life to the fullest and insistence on taking every opportunity, to her musical voice and mischievous sparkle in her eye that never quite fades, Etheline Bohan is addictive. How anyone could not want to spend time with her is perplexing, so the fact that she decided to come along is great. To quote her “may as well get a good seat for the apocalypse”.

Tomas ‘Tom’ Mabille/Tamsyn ‘Tas’ Mabille

22 ° he/they or she/they ° gramand ° RO Student, bartender, aspiring journalist and (probable) future sibling-in-law When T’s older sister, Gisela, started dating your brother four years ago, you never expected them to become such a big part in your life. With chin-length floppy red hair, dark eyes that always seem a little bit lost in thought, and a smile that for some reason always looks a little apologetic, T has had your back since the moment you met. They claim that they’re coming on the trip to write it all up in an exclusive story that’ll for sure shoot them to the top, but you can’t help but notice the uncertainty in their voice as they say it.

Cassandra/Cassius/Cass ‘Cass’ Phillips

20 ° she/her or he/him or they/them ° adbellus ° RO Student, librarian, and owner of a mysterious backstory™ Your actual childhood best friend, Cass used to be the life of the party. Always happy and sociable, as a kid, you don’t think anyone could’ve disliked them. But then they moved away at thirteen, returning seven years later. Now instead of mischievous, their face always looks melancholy. Instead of chattering non-stop, constantly (and good-naturedly) teasing everyone, they rarely speak. And instead of their bright eyes that always exuded such zest and excitement for life, their eyes are sad and tired. Something obviously happened while they were gone, but they refuse to even admit to it. Maybe this trip will get them to open up. After all, what’s a better time to confide in someone than the end of the world?

Miles

27 ° he/him ° misamum Teaching assistant, older brother and village idiot Hey, did you really think your older brother would let you go on a perilous world-saving quest without him? Being seven years older than you, Miles has always been very protective, and this is no different. With a face that seems to be perpetually stuck at age fifteen, a tall and lanky body that he doesn’t seem to have full control over, a constant look of disarray, and a complete lack of common sense or basic self-preservation, it often surprises people that Miles was valedictorian of his class, and is now in training to be a professor himself. But it doesn’t surprise you, not in the slightest. He may be a mess in most (if not all) aspects of his life, but your brother is probably the best person you’ve ever met. Now hopefully he just doesn’t accidentally fuck up your quest. That’d be bad… and unfortunately, very in character.

Gisela Mabille

24 ° she/her ° saconda Doctor-in-training, older brother’s girlfriend and potential Disney princess When Gisela and Miles started dating, you didn’t expect her to become such a permanent fixture in your life. Her doe eyes, button nose, somehow permanent dusting of blush and rose-tinted hair make her look like some sort of ethereal princess and her personality only adds to it. And you have to admit, having a healer on board can’t be a bad thing. Still, with both Gisela and Miles along, you can't help but start to feel like a child being chaperoned.

#interactive fiction #if wip #twine #playlists for the end times if #playlists for the end times #playlistsfortheendtimes #if #wip

[fatehbaz]

Slime molds learn, remember, and communicate?

Slime molds are among the world’s strangest organisms. Long mistaken for fungi, they are now classed as a type of amoeba. [...] [F]or about a decade, scientists have debated whether slime molds have the capacity to learn about their environments and adjust their behavior accordingly. [...]

Even more intriguingly, and perhaps controversially, research by Dussutour and others suggests that slime molds can transfer their acquired memories from cell to cell, said Frantisek Baluska, a plant cell biologist at the University of Bonn. “This is extremely exciting [...].” [T]he notion that single-celled organisms can learn something and retain their memory of it at the cellular level is new and controversial. [...]  For Dussutour, “that such organisms have the capacity to learn has considerable implications beyond recognizing learning in nonneural systems.” [...] She started studying the slimy blobs by putting herself “in the position of the slime mold,” she said — wondering what it would need to learn about its environment to survive and thrive. [...] Of course, organisms can adapt to environmental changes in ways that don’t necessarily imply learning. But Dussutour’s work suggests that the slime molds can sometimes pick up these behaviors through a form of communication, not just through experience.

The researchers then separated the different molds again after three hours — the time it took for all the veins of cytoplasm to form properly — and both parts still showed habituation. The organism had learned. But Dussutour wanted to push further and see whether that habituating memory could be recalled in the long term. [...] What that means, according to Dussutour, who described this unpublished work at a scientific meeting in April at the University of Bremen in Germany, is that a slime mold can learn — and it can keep that knowledge during dormancy, despite the extensive physical and biochemical changes in the cells that accompany that transformation. [...]

Scientists have no idea what mechanism underpins this kind of cognition. [...]

There are more than 900 species of slime mold; some live as single-celled organisms most of the time, but come together in a swarm to forage and procreate when food is short. Others, so-called plasmodial slime molds, always live as one huge cell containing thousands of nuclei. Most importantly, slime molds can be taught new tricks; depending on the species, they may not like caffeine, salt or strong light, but they can learn that no-go areas marked with these are not as bad as they seem, a process known as habituation. [...] Each tiny part of the slime mold contracts and expands over the course of about one minute, but the contraction rate is linked to the quality of the local environment. Attractive stimuli cause faster pulsations, while negative stimuli cause the pulsations to slow. Each pulsing part also influences the pulsing frequency of its neighbors, not unlike the way the firing rates of linked neurons influence one another. [...]

Research into the behavior of protozoa such as the slime mold Physarum polycephalum (especially the work of Toshiyuki Nakagaki at Hokkaido University in Japan) suggests that these seemingly simple organisms are capable of complex decision-making and problem-solving within their environments. Nakagaki and his colleagues have shown, for example, that slime molds are capable of solving maze problems and laying out distribution networks as efficient as ones designed by humans. [...] Chris Reid and his colleague Simon Garnier [...] are working on the mechanism behind how a slime mold transfers information between all of its parts to act as a kind of collective that mimics the capabilities of a brain full of neurons. [...]

Baluska said that many researchers also fiercely disagree about whether plants can have memories, learning and cognition. Plants are still considered to be “zombielike automata rather than full-blown living organisms,” he said. But the common perception is slowly changing.

--

Text: Katia Moskvitch. “Slime Molds Remember — but Do They Learn?” Quanta Magazine. 9 July 2018. Photos: Audrey Dussutour, CNRS. Heading: me.

[a-prekliatyvlk]

                                           Dacian Vuk HC’S

                       _________________________________________

6′5″ tol dude.

has to wear glasses when he’s reading a book or something. Honestly speaking he never lets anyone see him wear glasses. Also needs them when he sketches. Doesn’t.

Very soft boi??? Like despite constantly being angry he’s soft. He wants love and affection.

Actually reads a lot.

Avid sketch artist. Will sit at a coffee shop with some pencils and sketch people out. Charcoal is his favorite medium.

Actually also likes to take photos. Has a Polaroid camera with him most of the time to take said photos.

Likes to also work on cars. smells of motor oil, exhaust and leather almost all the time.

Dirty hands. From working to killing people his hands are dirty.

Avid nightmares. On a sleep schedule of about 4 hours per night.

Naps during the day when he can. 20 minute intervals.

Can cook very well. just never does.

Hair is either super short or long. His hair curls at the end.

Loves to talk about astronomy. He wanted to be a scientist for nasa if he ever went back to school.

favorite food is french fries dipped in a milk shake. Has to be vanilla.

drinks his coffee black

prefers mint tea over coffee but most of the time doesn’t want to make the tea

loves to walk around museums and art galleries.

Owns a bunch of paintings from van Gogh to Salvador Dahli to Monet and a couple Rembrandt paintings.

If anyone is lucky enough to be invited over to his place he will show them when asked about them. Sometimes he will go into long rants about the paintings.

Art History fucking nerd.

Has a bunch of old Norse men / viking thing’s in his home. Particularly a stone with Elder Futhark runes carved into the stone. He was the one that carved into the stone. Him and Katia so he keeps it for sentimental value.

Actually has a lot of house plants. Mostly vine crawler plants.

No TV. Just huge windows for him to look out at.

Books everywhere in his home. Sketch books. Art books. History books. Just books.

Does not spend alot of time at the pack house.

Always has a bag packed incase he needs to go some where on short notice.

Does not keep guns in his home. He does have knives though and lots of them.

#(Dacian // Lore) #╳+┤Things to do during the full moon+├+╳+(Que)

[healthandfitnessrecipes-blog]

Using Essential Oils on Medical Devices to Stop Bacterial Infections

https://healthandfitnessrecipes.com/?p=8289

Node Smith, ND

There is a new technique that has been developed which will allow the application of plant extracts – like tea tree oil – as a biologically active coating for medical devices. It is thought that this new coating could help prevent millions of infections by preventing biofilms from growing on medical hardware.1 The research scientists are from James Cook University in Australia.

Upsurge in unplanned surgeries to fight infections caused by bacterial contamination spurs this process

The process has been born out of an increase in unplanned surgeries to fight infections caused by bacterial contamination of medical devices. “Biofilms” form on medical devices in hospitals and other care facilities, which have begun to cause quite the epidemic in hospital-acquired infections.

17 million biofilm-related bacterial infections occur each year in the U.S.

In the United States it is estimated that 17 million biofilm-related bacterial infections occur each year, ending in around 550,000 deaths. Upwards of 80 percent of surgery-associated infections may have to do with biofilms. The use of plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) may be able to help.

Plant secondary metabolites (PSMs)

By converting PSMs into a polymer coating for medical devices – including implants – the broad-spectrum microbial actions of these herbal compounds can be utilized to prevent biofilm formation. The use of herbal compounds is more desirable than pharmaceutical antibiotics because bacteria are growing increased resistance to many antibiotic agents used in medicine.

How it works

Dr Katia Bazaka, adjunct senior research fellow and team member comments on the process:  “We used plasma-enhanced techniques within a reactor containing the essential oil vapours. When the vapours are exposed to a glow discharge, they are transformed and settle on the surface of an implant as a solid biologically-active coating. These have shown good antibacterial properties.”

No risk of contamination with chemicals & it’s environmentally sound

The process does not use toxic chemicals or solvents, so there is no risk of contamination with harmful chemicals; it’s also an environmentally safe process.

Transparent coating

The coating is also optically transparent, which means that it can be use to cover lenses and screens as well.

Source:

Ahmed Al-Jumaili, Avishek Kumar, Kateryna Bazaka, Mohan Jacob. Plant Secondary Metabolite-Derived Polymers: A Potential Approach to Develop Antimicrobial Films. Polymers, 2018; 10 (5): 515 DOI: 10.3390/polym10050515

Image Copyright: splinex / 123RF Stock Photo

Node Smith, ND, is a naturopathic physician in Portland, OR and associate editor for NDNR. He has been instrumental in maintaining a firm connection to the philosophy and heritage of naturopathic medicine among the next generation of docs. He helped found the first multi-generational experiential retreat, which brings elders, alumni, and students together for a weekend camp-out where naturopathic medicine and medical philosophy are experienced in nature. Four years ago he helped found the non-profit, Association for Naturopathic ReVitalization (ANR), for which he serves as the board chairman. ANR has a mission to inspire health practitioners to embody the naturopathic principles through experiential education. Node also has a firm belief that the next era of naturopathic medicine will see a resurgence of in-patient facilities which use fasting, earthing, hydrotherapy and homeopathy to bring people back from chronic diseases of modern living; he is involved in numerous conversations and projects to bring about this vision.

  Credits: Original Content Source

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/false-alarms-highlight-weaknesses-in-national-alert-system/84079/

False alarms highlight weaknesses in national alert system

 /February 10, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —Weather junkie John Grosso knew it was highly unlikely a monster wave was barreling toward the Connecticut coast. Still, when a tsunami warning appeared out of the blue on his phone Tuesday, he felt a twinge of fear. His co-workers, who got the same alert, asked whether they should evacuate. It turned out to be a false alarm, a computer glitch. The damage? An erosion of trust.

“Now I have to check every single time, God forbid, there’s a tornado warning, a tsunami alert, pick your poison,” said Grosso, 25, a social media manager from Stamford. “I have to look at it and go, ‘Is it a test? Was it sent in error?’ And I could be wasting precious time in case it was real.”

Last month’s bogus ballistic missile warning in Hawaii and, now, this week’s tsunami snafu have highlighted trouble spots and prompted calls for change in the nation’s increasingly complex system for alerting Americans about dangerous weather, active shooters, kidnapped children, plant explosions and other emergencies. Both incidents have prompted calls for reform, including better training for emergency workers in charge of sending alerts.

More than 1,000 federal, state and local government agencies have the ability to issue emergency alerts through an array of federally managed communications networks. It is a patchwork system that usually works as intended but can wreak havoc when it doesn’t.

In the Senate, legislation introduced this week in response to the false missile alert would establish standards for state and local agencies’ participation in the national alert system, require federal certification of their incident management systems, and recommend steps for avoiding false alarms.

Additionally, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered wireless providers to do a better job of targeting emergency alerts to only those in the affected area, with a geographic “overreach” of no more than one-tenth of a mile.

Aside from the false alarms, emergency agencies have been criticized for sending alerts to too many people or too few. In Alaska, for instance, a tsunami warning triggered by an undersea earthquake in January reached residents of Anchorage even though the city wasn’t in danger. In Northern California wine country, where wildfires killed dozens of people in October, some residents complained that authorities failed to send an emergency alert to their phones.

“The emergency alerting system is really a whole collection of systems, and there are various places where it can break down,” said Dan Gonzales, a scientist at RAND Corp. who studies emergency alert systems. “With so many organizations involved, it’s difficult to make it foolproof.”

The risk of too many false alarms, Gonzales said, is that “people will ignore warnings if they believe they’re not accurate or not relevant.”

That was on vivid display Tuesday when AccuWeather, the private forecasting service, took what was intended to be a routine, monthly National Weather Service test message and sent it as a real warning to subscribers up and down the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Katia Del Negro, 33, was at home in New York City when she got the alert, her surprise quickly turning to skepticism. “I definitely got a bit concerned when I saw that many people along the East Coast received the alert,” she said. “But at the same it seemed so weird, so I thought something was off, thinking back about what happened in Hawaii not long ago.”

AccuWeather, based in State College, Pennsylvania, blamed the weather service, saying the government agency miscoded the test message. That caused the company’s computers to interpret it as real and push it to subscribers’ cellphones, according to AccuWeather.

The weather service insisted its message was coded properly.

Daryl Herzmann, a systems analyst in the agronomy department at Iowa State University, said the message contained a “T” flag, indicating test. But the weather service also recycled a tracking number it used in a previous tsunami warning, probably confusing AccuWeather’s computers, he said.

The weather service has been recycling tracking numbers for years, said Herzmann, who runs an environmental data project that compiles information from the weather service.

Weather service spokeswoman Susan Buchanan had no comment on Herzmann’s observation. She pointed to an earlier statement that said the agency is “working with private sector companies to determine why some systems did not recognize the coding.”

It was human error, not a computer problem, that caused last month’s panic in Hawaii. A state worker mistook a drill for a missile attack and sent an emergency alert to cellphones and broadcast stations. It took nearly 40 minutes for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to figure out a way to retract the alert. The worker was fired and the agency chief resigned.

“This cry of wolf damaged the credibility of alert messaging, which can be dangerous when a real emergency occurs,” Lisa Fowlkes, an FCC official, said Tuesday during a House committee hearing on the nation’s emergency messaging system.

Jeremy DaRos, of Portland, Maine, who lives near the water and got the erroneous tsunami alert, said he is concerned that people won’t take seriously the emergency alerts they get in an actual crisis. “People need to trust the alerts they’re pushing out,” he said. “This is important stuff, and to have two incidents in the span of a month is just unacceptable.”

By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (R.A)

#FCC official #Federal Communications Commission has ordered #government agencies #Northern California wine country

[katiajewelbox]

The surprising diversity of Pineapples (Ananas comosus).

The Active Pineapple Germplasm Bank (Pineapple AGB) of Embrapa Cassava & Fruits (Embrapa/ CNPMF) has more than 700 accessions under field conditions. As backups, there are copies kept in a greenhouse, with one or two plants per accession, cultivated in plastic pots with commercial substrate. An in vitro gene bank was established in 2003, and during the past few years, several studies have been carried out to improve the in vitro conservation protocol. Currently, about 60% of the AGB’s accessions are preserved by this protocol. Another conservation strategy used is cryopreservation of shoot tips and pollen grains, with well-defined methods. One of the most significant advances in the pineapple germplasm conservation has been the implementation of a quality control system, which enabled to define standard operation procedures (SOP) towards a more efficient and safer germplasm conservation.

Source:

Vidigal Souza, Fernanda & Souza, Everton & Aud, Fabiana & Costa, Eva & Silva, Paulo & Andrade, Eduardo & Rebouças, Danilo & Andrade, Danilo & Sousa, Andressa & Pugas, Carlos & Rebouças, Érica & França, Beatriz & França, Rivã. (2022). Advances in the conservation of pineapple genetic resources at Embrapa Cassava and Fruits. 28. 28-33.

#katia plant scientist #botany #plant biology #plant science #plants #fruit #pineapple #pineapples #biodiversity #agriculture #conservation #genetic diversity #sustainable agriculture #tropical plants #science #biology

[katiajewelbox]

Can you tell the plant from the animal in this photo? 

“And the Boscar (Bird Oscar) for best costume design goes to... golden plover chicks! They've adapted to blend in amidst the moss of their breeding grounds in the Arctic tundra. 📷 Twitter/Camilo_Carneiro #Oscars #Oscars2023 #Birds #Birding“

(Source: Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust Linked In page)

#birds #katia plant scientist #plants #moss #mosscore #moss covered #mossy #green #green moss #thick moss #thicc moss #chick #baby bird #golden plover #golden plover chick #nestling #cute animals #baby animals #green and black #hand #nature #nature is wild #naturecore #artic #artic tundra #tundra #camouflage #disguise #evolutionary biology #birding

[katiajewelbox]

Fruit of the Womb: The Botanical Classification of Fruit A scientific illustrator, showing the botanical classification of fruit. Source: https://buff.ly/3Ie4D4F Credit: @markabelan

Found on Dr. Geetha Plackal’s Linked In page. #botany #Fruits #sciencecommunication #Savetrees #Savenature #Savebiodiversity #deforestation #Saveearth #peace #Happiness #Awareness #educational

#katia plant scientist #plants #plant #botany #fruit #flowers #gardening #naturalist #natural history #illustration #botanical illustration #art #science #biology #plant anatomy #anatomy #scientific diagram

[katiajewelbox]

A close up look at DNA extraction from Medicago leaves ☘️. The small plastic tube I’m holding shows 3 distinct layers. The tube contains pulverised frozen leaf tissue mixed with CTAB buffer and chloroform. This chemical mixture causes 3 distinct layers to form in the tube based on their density. The dissolved DNA is in the upper layer (the least dense) where I can collect it and transfer it to a new tube for further purification with isopropanol and ethanol.

#katia plant scientist #botany #plant biology #plant science #plants #biology #molecular biology #science #mad science #laboratory #labcore #sciencecore #women in science #eppendorf tube #sample #dna #medicago #chlorophyll

[katiajewelbox]

The tasty tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica) is where we get the English name “tomato”. The tomatillo is a domesticated version of wild plants found in Central America and is known in the Nahuatl language as “tomatl”. This plant is related to tomatoes because it is a member of the Solanaceae family, but it is not a tomato! This fruit grows in a husk that resembles a paper lantern and when it’s ripe the husk splits to reveal the plump green fruit. The tomatillo is the main ingredient of Mexican / Tex Mex salsa verde.

#katia plant scientist #botany #plant biology #plant science #plants #tomatillos #tomato #green #plant scientist #plant #plant aesthetic #plantblr #plantcore #greenhouse #edible plants #nahuatl #mexican food #aztecs #indigenous food #salsa verde #fruit #exotic fruit #gardening

[katiajewelbox]

Tomatoes are an international fruit (although many people think it's a vegetable!) but their homeland is in South America. Peru is home to the wild ancestor tomato 🍅 (Solanum pimpinellifolium) which was domesticated by indigenous people thousands of years ago. The wild species contains the genetic potential to help make domestic tomatoes more disease and pest resistant because it has had to adapt to these environmental challenges over many generations. The wild tomato is a small plant with red fruits no bigger than a pea, but through careful selective breeding humans have produced a dazzling rainbow 🌈 of diverse domestic tomato (Solanum lycopersicum).

#tomato#tomatoplant#tomatogreenhouse#greenhouse#jungle#peru#nativeamericanfood#southamerica

#katia plant scientist #botany #plant biology #katia hougaard #biology #peru #tomato #tomatoes #native plants #plants #greenhouse #south america #plant facts #solanum #plantcore #nature #plant science #naturecore

[katiajewelbox]

Diagram showing the number of tree species and the estimated tree population of the world in 2022.

“The number of tree species and individuals per continent in the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI) database. This dataset (blue points in the central map) was used for the parametric estimation and merged with the TREECHANGE occurrence-based data (purple points in the central map) to provide the estimates in this study. Green areas represent the global tree cover. GFBI consists of abundance-based records of 38 million trees for 28,192 species. Depicted here are some of the most frequent species recorded in each continent. Some GFBI and TREECHANGE points may overlap in the map. Image credit: Gatti et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2115329119.“

Source: Tom Kimmerer’s Twitter page

#scientific diagram #trees #forestcore #botany #katia plant scientist #rainforest #taiga #woodland #forests #Forest #tree cover #nature #science #ecology #natural history #diagram #infographic #big data #biology #plant biology #bioinformatics #science news

[katiajewelbox]

Meet the original source of the flavouring know from toothpaste, mouthwash, and chewing gum - the spearmint plant (Mentha spicata). This plant thrives in shady spots in the garden during the summer. The distinctive taste and scent comes from the naturally occurring chemical R-(-)-carvone. The taste of genuine spearmint is far richer and more complex than its artificially flavoured version, and spearmint plants have been bred to have many different shades of flavour such as “chocolate mint” and “pineapple mint”. It’s an excellent tea herb and it combines well with many other fresh herbs from the garden. There is medical research supporting spearmint’s herbal medicine uses for digestive system issues and antimicrobial properties.

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[katiajewelbox]

I wish I could create Instagram posts with “smell o vision”, because this fragrant herb is Cinnamon Basil (Ocimum basilicum).

The Cinnamon Basil is the same species as normal Italian Basil but the scent is more like a rich floral and spicy perfume than mere cinnamon. Among its bouquet of secondary metabolites is methyl cinnamate, the same naturally occurring chemical that gives cinnamon its distinctive flavour. The cinnamon basil originated in Mexico and is used in both sweet and savoury dishes.

I grew this unusual herb from seed here in the UK and it is flourishing in the greenhouse. The plant is reported to repel white fly although this has not been thoroughly researched yet.

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