#african plant

[heartnosekid]

giant african land snails (archachatina marginata) | msk.snails on ig

[gent-illmatic]

[iambrillyant]

“sometimes you need to repot yourself in a better environment so you can finally grow. just like a plant outgrows its pot, your soul craves a space where it can stretch and thrive. breathing new air, shedding old habits, trusting the changes, finding the right room to bloom.”

— billy chapata

[flowerishness]

Osteospermum alt. Dimorphotheca (African daisy)

These African daisies are basking in a sunny spot but as the sun slowly sets and the shadows lengthen, their petals will start to close. No point in all that fancy advertising if the bees are fast asleep in their hive. As the morning light touches the petals, the African daisy will unfurl them again. Plants that close their petals at night are called phototropic, not to be confused with heliotropic plants (like sunflowers) that follow the sun during the day.

[389]

African Blood Ride Gliders with Orange Sky Another World & (Fields & Visions) (2022) by Ori Gersht

[hellsitegenetics]

i HAVE to profess my love for african painted dogs

look at this fucking thing. holy shit its so cute. they have such beautiful patterns on them with the orange and black and white, their ears are SO ROUND and SO BIG. i have an enamel pin thats an african painted dog and a plushie of one who i named atlas, i wanna get a keychain of one so so bad. they're such underrated animals and i think more people should love them because they deserve literally everything in the world. if i could have any animal as a friend i would choose african painted dog. they are so friend shaped its insane ive never seen another animal look so cute, little african painted puppies are like looking at pure joy given a dog shaped body. more people need to love this animal and they need to do it NOW

String identified:

A t aca at g

at t cg tg. t t ct. t a c at att t t t ag a ac a t, t a a a G. a a a tat a aca at g a a a ata, aa gt a ca a. t' c at aa a t t ca t ta tg t . c a a aa a a c aca at g. t a a t a at aa ct, tt aca at a g at g a g a . t t aa a t t t

Closest match: Gossypium herbaceum isolate Zhongcao1 chromosome 7 Common name: Levant cotton

[snototter]

An African corkwood tree (Musanga cecropioides) in Uganda

by Julien NKS

[jadafitch]

Impatiens paucidentata, an epiphytic plant, native to Africa. Recent commission.

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

August 28th, 2024

A couple days ago a fire started on the ridge above the big grove of eucalypts (picture number 4). Thankfully it was spotted quickly, a mild wind was blowing in the opposite direction, it had recently rained, and wildfire response resources were not deployed elsewhere; I watched the water tankers hovering over the spot for a while, grateful for everything, but especially for the fact that fire prefers to go up hill rather than down, and that this fire started in the ridge rather than the canyon. Eucalypts are not native to my area, and greatly increase the risk of out-of-control wildfires. They drop a ton of highly-flammable litter – tannin rich leaves that also leave an acidic, nutrient-poor soil few other plants can survive. So most of what's down in that grove is (also highly flammable) poison oak. Worse, if fire reaches the overstory, the whole thing can go up in what is basically one big explosion.

What you can see peeking through the afternoon fog in the first picture is over a century of cow-forward fire suppression; non-native grasses on (what is now public) land grazed by privately owned cows (damaging the watershed and increasing the risk of catastrophic fire in the long run). What you see in the bottom photo is an example of a more modern form of fire suppression: fire goats raised a couple counties away are hired to graze this field and clear small growth (mostly poison oak, since that's the most opportunistic plant around) annually in mid-summer, and it's mowed somewhat regularly. There have been attempts to thin or remove the eucalypts in the canyon entirely, but they are stubborn resprouters and starting from scratch poses its own dangers.

I think it's unlikely there won't be a catastrophic fire here in the next 50 years. There's just too much fuel. We just need an unseasonable lightning storm, a bad fire season with first responders deployed elsewhere, reckless smokers in the gully at night with the winds blowing west. Every year I prepare myself for this possibility. We've had wet winters and hot, dry summers, and that's probably only going to get worse. Why would I stay here?

I don't know. I can walk down into the canyon and the eucalypts, unaware of their own malignancy, yawn and groan as they bend to touch one another in the wind. I get to watch coyotes hunting for wild plums in the evening; the plums aren't native but I'd guess the coyotes don't know that, either. My neighbors plant gardens you couldn't grow somewhere without this much warmth and sea fog. Crows harass red-tailed hawks in the few redwoods planted here to evoke a recent, unreachable past. I know where the nearest great horned owl lives. I know what the arrival and departure of naked ladies means, which oaks are which and which I love most, when thimbleberries might arrive, how to scare a mountain lion, where to go to find cool elders and willows when I'm feeling hot and low, how to tell toyon from everyone impersonating toyon, when the newts migrate. One one side of the ridge I can hear the train screeching unmistakably, but if I hop over into the next watershed it's gone, replaced by bickering scrub jays, happy dogs, children playing near the creek far below me. Would you know how to leave?

[greenhousechronicles]

Greenhouse lookin' gooood today.

[fyblackwomenart]

"mh! they thought they knew it all." by baaba on INPRNT

[gent-illmatic]

[kundst]

Ina van Zyl (RSA 1971)

Baby Blue Eucalyptus (2023)

Oil on linen (50x30cm)

[natureisthegreatestartist]

Oh, those lips! Well, they're not really lips. They're part of a succulent plant, Conophytum pageae, that's native to Africa.

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Monday 18 September 2023

These giant marigolds, Tagetes erecta ‘Giant Orange’ (African marigold, American marigold, Aztec marigold), were making a bold autumn display alongside one of the barns at Great Dixter, East Sussex.

Jill Raggett

[colorsoutofearth]

King protea flowers (Protea cynaroides) in South Africa

Photo by Claudio Velasquez