It’s plosing first…

Okay, everybody knows how plants can cope with adverse conditions, especially when it comes to dormant organs just waiting to resprout when spring or whatever environmental trigger lights on, and then “whoot whoot”, I’m here. I’m alive and well. This is a sign of resprouting, or let’s pretend. It’s been far too long this blog’s been dormant. Water in, light on, nutrients duh?

It’s been a long time there wasn’t much shameless self promotion here, so Seeds Aside is back whoot-whooting blatantly with open access science. I know, this isn’t the first time I get published in an OA venue, but this time it’s with a well known and almost historical part of OA. The ONE that turned what is called a science mega-journal (currently publishing over 23,000 papers a year): PLOSONE.

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Keeping up, carnival edition

Recent carnivals it’s more than time to highlight:

April Berry Go Round

March Berry Go Round

May BGR is coming soon!

The Game of Evolution (CoE #170).

Have a good read!

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Flowers timelapse

I know there are numerous and interesting timelapse art creations all over the internet, but this one is absolutely wonderful. I recommand you follow the link and experience this one:

Flower.

Nothing to add!

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Berry Go Round #66…

January Berry Go Round #66 is posted! Go read your plant carnival now!

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Peanut Leechy Gallery: Palms oddly

Gogonuts palm edition, perhaps oddy a psalm oddly…

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Berry Go Round #64

Previous Berry Go Round is found at For the love of plants.

This is edition #64.

Unfortunately, I’m currently only left handed, so this edition will be more like a round of links and probably less wordy than could have been.

Any typo is mine…

Are tannin familiar to you? Did you know about how there’s even a special organella devoted to them? Then you should learn about it thanks to Kathleen Raven at Food Matters:

• Tannosomes and the trickle-around effect: a new cell organelle is discovered

This is a wonderfull collaborative blog, so you may find a lot of other stuff of interest, with or without plants but plenty:

• Cultivating Reform: Planting The Seeds For Healing The Food System, By Patrick Mustain

• Flour Power: Exploring the Nutritional Potential of Grape Pomace Flour, By Layla Eplett

• Organic Synthesis: Towards An Inclusion Of African Americans In Organic Farming, By Layla Eplett

And even GMOs debate going on:

• GMO Labeling, I-522, and Why This Debate Sucks for Progressive Scientists Like Me, By Kevin Bonham

• GMO Labeling Debate Follow-up, By Kevin Bonham

Anyhow, please have a nice blog mining, and hopefully we’ll meet Food Matters on next occasion!

Season is falling in tempirate climate, so how do trees cope? Find out in good company at… a rocking plant I thing:

• Autumn Tree Strategies, I
• Autumn Tree Strategies II

Unless you’d prefer Ghosts in the Rocks and spectacular spectralities!

• Needles to say, sheathe got an option! Looking closer is always good…

• … at least as good as chasing farther away. As long as it’s for plants of course:) it’s all in our Art: Plant Hunters – Marianne North

If it’s edible… it’s also readable:

• The Queen’s mulberries
• Unles you’d rather go for the Pea soup. It all depends on genealogy!

• But if it’s barely eaten, you can still “voir la vie en rose” or blue… (Metaphorically, blogging is for flowers too: see a Thanksgiving Tribute)

Or passing by, can you take it warm?

• A Plant Sexual Thermostat? – New Information About Temperature Controlled Flowering

Some more Raflesia on the internets: How A Plant Makes The Biggest Flower of Them All…

Aren’t plants always a mass of stuff? Well, while some families are familiar, the other are… Malpighiales: A Glorious Mess of Flowering Plants

Mossible? Unmossible?

• The Misery of the Misting Moss

•  Sooty mould makes a killer honey (in the “not a plant but still you should go” category)

Climate change is happening (one more bit of evidence):

• Grassland managers not responding to phenology shifts

Okay! Left hand tired flat! Oh, but there are many more gems over over!

For example, what’s in a tropical understory? A sub story of some sort? Probably not:

• Rainforest understory

And browse the recent tropical blogging at Phytofactor!

Wants more? Well, next Berry is expected soon! Please volunteer if you feel like, you’re welcome to too!

Late edit: forgot this submission, about Larchness monster.

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September BGR

Oops, I’m late. Please find September’s edition of Berry Go Round.

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Keep up with BGR!

The latest Berry Go Round can be found at Mostly Science. Go read!

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Peanut Leechy Gallery: Lianas

Lianas are so good for mandalas!

Simple horizon

And here’s another take:

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Simply wxrong rather than an easy get

I was just reading the following post on The Panda’s Thumb:  Challenge: research in the 1000 most common words. Basically, it is pointing to a list of the 1000 most common words in the English language and challenging you to write a simple statement of your research that is only using words from this list.

There’s this link that will check it for you when typing.

That’s really challenging. I lost at this game. This has a lot to do with the fact that I’m currently working in a discipline that cannot avoid a minimal jargon: phytopathology, the science of plant pests and plant illness. Any word related to pests (pathogens, fungi, microbes, viruses) are forbidden first. And it all begun with “plant” itself, which is not allowed (plants do not belong the 1000 commonest, does it make sense?). I’m afraid there’s no way I can express my research under such a challenging constraint. The best I came up with was this:

I study how small cell things are attacking bigger green things that need light and water to grow.

And frankly, this is just a way to weave in implicit meaning. That is, I’m utterly wrong. Anybody ignoring or not getting the implicit that green things that need light and water to grow means plant won’t have the slightest idea as to what I’m doing in my job. Not to say “small cell things” is any better -it is much worse indeed. It’s a very bad way to imply I’m working on fungi, the only idea I get somewhat right is that they are plant enemies.

I think I need to ponder about simpler ways to tell what I’m doing in my job…

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