Most of the time I have to devote to creative things like photography or blogging is Friday, Saturday and Sunday so I can be a little slow catching up to what’s happened during the week. Here are a few of the dishes I have standing in the sink:
Greg was wondering about a plant I’d generically called a thistle earlier, and how it looked unlike what he was calling a thistle in his own garden. Thanks to a chain of weird coincidences of the sort that some might interpreted as miraculous enough to have founded a modern religion, I learned that my thistle is actually Dipsacus fullonum, a teasel. Both are in the asterid group of plants and unplesantly spiny, but this is a distant relative.
Fun facts about teasel (from Wikipedia):
- The individual florets that make up this larger flowering head start blooming about half-way up, then move both up and down, as you see in this picture.
- The dried flowers were used to comb impurities out of wool.
One of my recent posts had a quote that within it held another quote, one by Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and a few other volumes. Mary Ann had a post with a link to a video of him presenting some of his ideas. He’s an engaging speaker and has things to say. I worry that some of them work towards validating a human-centric world view that I try not to hold, but he’ll get you thinking.
It’s a shame we don’t need another religion–that sounds like a good story waiting to be told!
Ahh, teasel…I’ve heard of that, actually. Thanks for the clarification.
Ooh, side panel for display…why hadn’t I thought of that?
It is a beautiful plant.
Hey, I finally got around to imagining some kind of version of the general idea of the concept of the business of the meme you tossed my way a couple weeks ago. Okay, fine. I changed it completely. Sort of.
Anyway.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful plant.