[HN Gopher] Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't
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Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't
Author : DarkContinent
Score : 666 points
Date : 2026-08-06 04:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com)
| razster wrote:
| Slowly killing my lawn. Red bud trees will soon forest my
| property.
| contingencies wrote:
| Congratulations! Add a water feature ... it will attract birds.
| And next to that some smaller shrubs. Then once the trees grow
| you can put climbers and ferns in them. And throw down some
| rocks for good measure. It encourages variant microclimates
| which encourages biodiversity.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Also throw down some Psylocybe Allenii spores (family
| Hymenogastraceae) for even better measure!
|
| It thrives in otherwise hideous and tacky Home Depot woodchip
| landscaping beds in front of luxury yuppie condos, banks, and
| other nondescript, bleak looking buildings.
|
| They'll lift the veil on your own bullshit, and make you deal
| with whatever's harming you, like four weeks of therapy in
| four hours.
|
| The Ethnomycology of Ugly Landscaping:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHRgY8fZNv4
| contingencies wrote:
| ROFL. Banned in Australia. "Requires age verification."
| Next up: Ethnomycology of nanny state....
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| It's a North American fungus and you want to sow it in
| Australia? You really do need to listen to Joey
| Santore....
| contingencies wrote:
| Many fungi have pan-tropical or global distribution. See
| p158+ in PDF https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journa
| ls/10.1146/annur...
| franciscop wrote:
| > "at the time, he was probably mostly thinking of "white
| European cultures", and while we can acknowledge how backwards
| and fucking goofy this is now, we can still admit that Linnaeus'
| ideology was simply flawed like his time and NOT throw out the
| baby with the proverbial bath water"
|
| In the 18th century someone living in Europe making science books
| would definitely be using Latin, maybe French if you were a
| modernist, as that was the language of science publication and
| communication. I don't see how this is either backwards or goofy?
|
| It's similar to use English on an internet blog post nowadays (as
| the author does), since there's many more Chinese or Spanish
| native speakers than English, but English IS the language of
| international communication.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Because latin was common only for part of one continent where
| he happened to be and not to the rest of the world while
| english happens to be spoken all over the globe due to a big
| goofy empire that went places.
|
| However, let's keep out the culture wars from a post mainly
| about plants.
| mantas wrote:
| Latin was the language for education and science waaaay
| beyond ex Roman Empire. Pretty much whole christian europe
| used Latin in medieval age and beyond.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Christian Europe waited until the XIII-XIV to get most of
| its latin inheritance in latin. Before that it was either
| greek or arabic.
| usrnm wrote:
| > english happens to be spoken all over the globe due to a
| big goofy empire that went places
|
| Why do you think Latin was popular?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Well, it wasn't universally popular is my point.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| If in 17 hundreds you wanted to choose a language that could
| be deciphered, say, also in China, Latin was a much better
| choice than any native language in various vicinity.
| gostsamo wrote:
| In XVIII there was no language that could be universal was
| my point and latin was known mainly through its
| derivatives.
| kriro wrote:
| Agreed. The author in question (Linnaeus) was from Sweden and
| professor at a Swedish university (Uppsala). Latin was used
| across the board in "traditional" sciences in northern Europe
| at that time and in fact the distinction of disciplines was not
| as clear as it is today. Linnaeus was a professor of medicine
| formally but focused on botany. He traveled a lot and had many
| international "contacts", especially in the Netherlands. His
| correspondence was usually a mix of Swedish and Latin (which I
| find interesting because I assume Swedish was not widely
| studied at the time) but his professional publications were in
| Latin.
|
| But it was an interesting time as slowly native languages
| became more common. The chair for economic sciences at Uppsala
| was specifically to be taught in Swedish (1741).
|
| Southern and central Europe were ahead of the curve a bit and
| it was more common to see French, English and German for
| example (French and English scientific journals date back to
| the 1660s).
|
| For more information, I can recommend "Languages of science in
| the eighteenth century" by Britt-Louise Gunnarsson which
| specifically focuses on Linnaeus. It's Open Access:
| https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/97831102...
| rhodin wrote:
| I'd also recommend "Scientific Babel How Science Was Done
| Before and After Global English" by Michael D. Gordin [0]. It
| goes into detail about which languages scientists have used
| over time.
|
| [0] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo145
| 049...
| jhbadger wrote:
| Even speakers of more common languages like English used
| Latin for science. Newton wrote the Principia in Latin and
| William Harvey wrote De Motu Cordis (the book that showed
| that the heart was a pump that circulated blood) in Latin,
| for example.
| bragh wrote:
| It's an interesting topic, though. If Latin is backwards
| because of assocation with European cultures, what are
| biologists nowadays proposing to replace it with? Some kind of
| universal coding system like ISBN or DOI?
| melagonster wrote:
| They just use any name can be spelled by Latin characters.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Oh, and use your oppressive, colonial numbering system? /s
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Of all the things you could criticize as backwards in 18th
| century biology, the choice of using Latin is probably the
| silliest. It was the language of learning. It's a practical
| choice that you and I would make if we were transported to that
| time.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| More scientific lectures should be delivered with a blue collar
| Chicago dialect and accent.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Not Chicago, but I always liked listening to Feynman lecture
| in his working-class NYC accent.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Simlish was intentionally designed to be linguistically
| neutral, so we didn't have to laboriously translate all the
| game audio into dozens of languages.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simlish
|
| For the same reason, botanical nomenclature should obviously be
| standardized in Simlish. Sul sul, Laganaphyllis simnovorii!
|
| Laganaphyllis simnovorii is the scientific name of the
| Cowplant, literally suggestive of a plant that devours Sims. It
| first appeared under that name in The Sims 2: University as a
| Natural Science career reward. The Sims 3 Store also uses the
| full name officially.
|
| https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Laganaphyllis_simnovorii
|
| >This bizarre bovine vegetation is large enough to swallow your
| next-door neighbor whole. In fact, it WILL eat your neighbors.
| Your friends will be hard-pressed to resist the tantalizing
| vine-cake of the carnivorous Laganaphyllis Simnovorii. After it
| has consumed some prey, milk it for sweet, rejuvenating nectar
| of life. A swig of this liquid refreshment will add precious
| days to a Sim's life and wash away any regret they may have
| over their visitor's fate.
|
| A proposed technical lexicon:
|
| Plant: floragerb. Flora: floragerbia. Vegetation: verdigerbium.
| Fruit: pomofroob. Vegetable: olerinoob. Root: radixgerb. Stem:
| caulob. Leaf: folinurb. Flower: anthofleeb. Seed: seminib.
| Pollen: pollinoob. Spore: sporib. Cell: cellubo. Cell wall:
| muracellum. Chlorophyll: chlorofleebin. Photosynthesis:
| photofroobulation. Cellular respiration: respiragerbation.
| Germination: germinoobulation. Pollination: pollifleebation.
| Fertilization: gametogerbination. Transpiration:
| evapofleebulation. Xylem: xyloob. Phloem: phleebum. Stoma:
| stomabo. Phylogeny: ancestragerbics. Morphology:
| formagerbology. Binomial nomenclature: duonominoobulation.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Luckily the author continues with
|
| > I say this because a few unthinking "performative leftist"
| nitwits as of late have decided to attack the science of
| taxonomy itself).
| Lutger wrote:
| Why? What is he referencing? I can't find anything as
| controversial as this with an online search.
| Levitz wrote:
| By now, such things are so prevalent that I don't think it
| would even make the news anywhere.
| franciscop wrote:
| Sorry, please correct me if I'm wrong but with this follow up
| he's not contradicting the quote I put, but saying that
| despite of tha, the science is valid? Which means the bits I
| quoted are still stated as a matter of fact WITHOUT attacking
| the science of taxonomy itself. So he's still saying that
| using Latin in science was "backwards and goofy".
| neuroticnews25 wrote:
| The way I parsed the sentence, the backwards and goofy part is
| just the """he was probably mostly thinking of "white European
| cultures"""", not the choice of Latin. Just a concilatory
| disclaimer to avoid being cancelled for talking good things
| about someone born before the abolition of slavery.
| renlo wrote:
| It was neither backwards nor goofy for a man in 18th century
| Europe to create a system only his 18th century European
| peers could use (the only peers whom he could even come into
| contact with in 18th century Europe).
|
| What actually would be goofy and backwards would be for this
| man to consider all of the world's cultures with whom he had
| never come in contact with, and try to create a system that
| worked for them. That would be very goofy and backwards, it
| would make him a crackpot.
|
| The mere mention of this conciliatory statement for those
| "[pesky] leftists" (of which the author is one), the author
| is asserting that "Linnaeus was backwards and goofy but yet
| he made a good system!". Why does this even need to be said?
|
| Do we call Confucius backwards and goofy for only writing his
| virtues in Chinese and only considering his Chinese peers?
| Why didn't he, or the Chinese (they had an empire and the
| means to do this), send envoys to the west so they could
| divine and predict what cultures would exist in a thousand
| years, allowing him to write his virtues in all of the
| languages and to consider all of the different mores of the
| world when writing his virtues? It's too Chinese! Or what
| about the Mayans, why didn't they in their backwards and
| goofy manner realize that a thousand years later their script
| would be indecipherable (for a while) to the European-
| language-speaking researchers of the future? If they had
| written in Latin we would be able to understand what they
| were trying to say! Very goofy and backwards of them. \s
|
| The author's statement is what is backwards and goofy, and
| it's a cultural shibboleth that worked -- I stopped reading
| the moment I saw that, because to me it is a goofy and
| backwards thing to say.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Same here, I stopped reading right when he said this
| idiotic "guy from 300 years ago - when science as we know
| it basically only existed within the realm of white
| european culture" didnt thought about the rest of the world
| BS
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Watch this guy's YT channel - have been for years now. I think
| what originally caught my attention on his channel was a video
| specifically about the flora around run-down Oakland urban-
| industrial areas.
| chao- wrote:
| I think I also first found him from his "guerrilla gardening"
| work in Oakland. I think it was in a median, planting native
| species on a barren strip of dirt. Something of that nature.
|
| His backstory is really one-of-a-kind. If I recall correctly,
| he got really into botany because he worked for Union Pacific
| railroad, and while stopping in a city, would go to the library
| and checkout different botany books.
| botanrice wrote:
| I believe I discovered him through that same video! I now
| tell everyone I know about guerilla gardening lol, haven't
| got the know-how to do it myself quite yet though. Soon
| enough.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Hey I've been telling myself I know about a lot of plant
| stuff just based off his videos. I don't really either, but
| maybe soon.
|
| These videos just have this quality of bringing you into a
| POV where you're reminded that there is a _lot_ going on in
| every detail of the reality surrounding you. Maybe I didn
| 't learn much botany from these videos, but I definitely
| learned to just pay attention more.
| wiether wrote:
| I discovered it recently, and I find it quite funny
|
| I'm not really into botany itself, but I enjoy their rants
| about how people manage "green" spaces
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I love those too - the combination of crude rant persona with
| extremely sophisticated knowledge is disarming.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| His video trip to Berkeley Bowl West was so fucking funny and
| spot on:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUFQouwqbe8
|
| (I love BB)
| talon8635 wrote:
| His video about the hippie snake oil isle in Berkeley bowl is
| outstanding
| iammjm wrote:
| I can strongly recommend the mobile app Flora Incognita for
| quickly identifying plants. It's made by one of the German
| universities so it's free, don't have ads, and don't collect your
| personal data. I even showed it to my mum and she loves it
| dmos62 wrote:
| Better than PlantNet?
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| PlantNet covers everything, Flora is more central Europe
| focused and has a hard time with non-native plants.
| iammjm wrote:
| I live next to a botanical garden which has climate-
| regulated glass domes with all sorts of non-native plants
| from around the world and it gets 90%+ of them right, but
| sometime you have to feed it different parts of the plant.
| PlantNet does look great too, I'll have to check it out!
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| That's a nice anecdote, but I didn't just make up this
| fact. According to their paper [1], Flora has 4851
| supported species, while PlantNet covered 30,261 at the
| time. Flora also tends to mix up cultivated/ornamental
| plants with wild counterparts, so your perceived accuracy
| may be deceptive if you're not a botanist. So yes, it's a
| cute app if you are a walking outside in central Europe,
| but it's nowhere near PlantNet.
|
| [1] https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11
| 11/2041...
| Eueudhsbsj32 wrote:
| Looks like they've both added a lot since then. If I
| select their worldwide species list in app, I get 38k for
| Flora and 85k for PlantNet.
|
| I just gave them a try for some common trees around Costa
| Rica that I'm confident in identifying, and they both did
| very well, slightly better than PictureThis and
| iNaturalist, which I've been using for a while.
| darkwater wrote:
| PlantNet seems pretty open as well right? Looks like is from
| several public institutions so it should be ads and trackers
| free, can you confirm?
| dmos62 wrote:
| I don't recall running into ads, don't know about trackers.
| PlantNet hasn't triggered any red flags for myself.
| kamma4434 wrote:
| +1 for Flora Incognita. This is what apps should be.
| max-ch wrote:
| Besides the utility for users, Flora Incognita is _also_ a
| massive crowdsourcing project for science: They use the GPS
| location of photos in combination with the identified plants to
| build a temporo-spatial database of confirmed plant sightings.
| (To my knowledge no link to any personal data of users.)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I use iNaturalist for plants and animals, mostly insects (and
| Merlin for birdsong recognition).
|
| No ads, non-profit, contribute to research, etc. It also allows
| you to find out what others have spotted in your area. I like
| the range maps, the images across seasons, and other seasonal
| information.
|
| The actual ML-based recognition is somewhat hidden, I think
| that part of the UI needs some work; it seems like it was made
| for researchers first then hacked for non-experts to use.
|
| https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/about
| stinos wrote:
| How does it compare to iNaturalist or observation.org which are
| like the 'standard' ones?
| rapnie wrote:
| It is a pity that, while their focus is on openness and
| accessiblity, neither Flora Incognita, nor iNaturalist or
| PlantNet can be installed from the F-Droid appstore. I
| unfortunately don't use Google Play, so can't testdrive them.
| calmingsolitude wrote:
| Flora Incognita and PlantNet are not open source, so they
| cannot be published to F-Droid. However, iNaturalist is and
| the apk can be directly installed from the GitHub releases
| page.
|
| https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistAndroid/releases
| palata wrote:
| I find it very weird that a free app coming from a
| university would not be open source...
| otherayden wrote:
| Thank you for the rec, I used it to identify a mystery house
| plant I was gifted :)
| dyauspitr wrote:
| PictureThis is an old favorite and still works quickly and
| quite accurately. I believe it's a Chinese app though so do
| with that information what you will.
| jkmcf wrote:
| I'm going to use Flora Incognita if only because it's a 29MB
| download so even if it's offloaded, it won't kill me to
| retrieve it.
|
| Seek is 220MB...
| chao- wrote:
| A friend from my youth always had an encyclopedic knowledge of
| plants, could identify them effortlessly just as we were walking
| around. I always envied him, but despite a love of plants,
| gardening, et cetera, I never went beyond a surface level until I
| started casually following Joey and CPBBD during COVID times. A
| big theme of what I've learned from him is how deeply geology is
| intertwined with plant evolution. Seems obvious once you hear it,
| but I genuinely never considered it until then.
|
| At some point he taught an online course called "Blue Collar
| Botany" that went through plant ecology, evolution,
| identification, and other topics. It was fantastic, and finally
| got me into learning about the plants around me more rigorously.
| Years later, I still hear his voice in my head when I see certain
| parts of a plant like a laminar stamen. His affect is so unique
| that it actually helped me remember the content easier.
|
| I don't know if he still teaches it or sells the videos from
| those sessions, but I would recommend it to anyone who wants to
| learn more about the natural world around them.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Woke Grocery Store (Whole Foods in Berkeley)
|
| https://youtu.be/PUFQouwqbe8?t=180
|
| Now this, this is the bargain, this is the bargain section.
|
| Now shit gets a little hectic here, 'cause you get people, you
| get a bunch of hippies clubbing each other with the cucumbers,
| throwing shit, fighting to get, you know, the cheapest avocados.
|
| But you get, like dollar thirty-nine for eight of these. They're
| about to go bad but, they're not bad yet. Still good, all kinds
| of good stuff.
|
| You got little papayas and shit. Maybe a little soft, but still
| edible.
|
| Okay but you get, again, sometimes you gotta wear a helmet when
| you come in there. Because it does, it gets hot.
|
| There's people, just, it gets, I mean, you've seen, you know, on
| the outside they're soft, and they seems like they got nice soft
| liberal values.
|
| But then they just start attacking each other, the claws come
| out, you know. I've seen a couple knifings in that room before,
| it's absolutely...
|
| Oh look the berries! Physalis species. All right, who doesn't
| like solanaceae right there.
|
| Golden gooseberries. I don't know what the fuck a gooseberry is,
| but that's a physalis. There you go, $3.25 for a basket.
|
| [Watch the looks he's getting from people:]
|
| Ok, so overall this is a wonderful spot to get talked down to,
| condescendingly lectured by a college student with a septum ring
| who can explain to you how you should think and behave and uh,
| and uh, you know, police your language.
|
| Very uh, there's a lotta, there's a lotta lessons you can learn
| here, ok? You know. And if it wasn't for this spot, I don't know
| what I would do.
|
| Now they, the got some guavas, they got some, I don't know where
| they hid the guavas at, but...
|
| Now this is my favorite section, aka the hippie snake oil
| section, ok. Absolutely wonderful spot. [...]
| HPsquared wrote:
| The article actually is about botany, but the title reminded me
| there is a whole area that could be called "criminal botany". As
| in, there are specific plants cultivated for illegal purposes.
| And on the other side, forensic botany (things like analysing
| pollen traces)
| Biganon wrote:
| There's also guerilla gardening, where you plant stuff where
| you're not supposed to, typically municipal soil
| chabska wrote:
| There are a lot more to Criminal Botany. There's the chaotic
| evil variety, like planting an invasive species, planting
| bamboo near your enemy's house, and sprinkling mint on
| someone's garden plot. There's the chaotic good variety, like
| broadcasting native seeds on a grass lawn and releasing moles
| onto a golf field. There's chaotic neutral, like making air
| layering on trees that you don't own, or otherwise taking
| seeds, cuttings, or plantlets from them.
| jcattle wrote:
| I thought you'd mention plant poaching. Which is just evil.
| avadodin wrote:
| Most plant-related crimes are pie-on-the-windowsill-on-Sunday
| tier.
| philips wrote:
| I listened to his book, Concrete Botany[1], while doing my
| gardening last month. I really enjoyed it even as a long time
| watcher of his YouTube channel. I don't know if I could have read
| it because it does seem to drag on a bit but it was worth it for
| his narration.
|
| [1]: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798317900410-concrete-botany
| rib3ye wrote:
| Joey is also an amazing fine and graffiti artist (ALONE)
|
| https://www.publiclandstore.com/blogs/gallery/joey-alone-exh...
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| His interview with the old railworker and grease-pen graffiti
| artist Colossus of Roads was fascinating. Unfortunately I cant
| find it on youtube anymore with a quick search, otherwise I'd
| put the link here.
| Brybry wrote:
| Is this it? https://youtu.be/-Eo4WuhpiJg?t=1085
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| Yes
| voicedYoda wrote:
| Railroad guy was Russell Butler. He was relatively prolific
| and had an insta account.
|
| https://www.instagram.com/buzblurr/
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| Wow this is fantastic stuff. Thank you
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| He's great, I love his concrete botany videos about weeds
| thriving in harsh human environments. His tour of the Chicago
| River is great, and an NYC parking lot that has been taken back
| over by nature is fascinating.
|
| https://youtu.be/SRRbspvheRc
|
| https://youtu.be/AVPkBv-QQ6U
| rafram wrote:
| The NYC video was about Floyd Bennett Field, a former airfield
| that's now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, to be
| exact.
| xnx wrote:
| The night heron gulping the rat was something! I think it even
| surprised them. https://youtu.be/SRRbspvheRc?t=2057
| 3lambda wrote:
| Love this guy!!
| ouz-a wrote:
| That's a great title & look for the website, I'm tired of generic
| looks we see everyday, something like this excites me as I
| remember the old web.
| contingencies wrote:
| I'm aware of this guy but the presentation is a bit full on for
| me. My buddy who is in to botany says apparently his podcasts are
| really good: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zJDjluBz6qVCGrF1I8JhP
| vw_bulli wrote:
| I know nothing about Botany, but I must compliment a good website
| and writing style when I see one.
| ggm wrote:
| Great article with elements of "how to draw an owl" about it.
| To be really good at botany is simple. Just learn how to be
| really good at {list of requirements which are themselves
| recursively complex and challenging, despite being written as one
| word like "learn"}
| trentor wrote:
| I am lost they have training videos, they have a reading list,
| they have tutorials... everything you need to get started. How
| else would you acquire skills? There is no upload function yet.
| klez wrote:
| From mobile it's a bit unclear that there's a whole website
| beside this article. I, for one, noticed the hamburger menu
| only after I read your comment. I suppose GP had the same
| problem.
| ggm wrote:
| I think there is a common belief if you make a lot of
| information available, acquiring skills is "easy". It's
| certainly easier than without, but the thing is, drawing the
| owl just takes a fucking long time to learn. There are no
| shortage of online tutes to learn how to draw, the genre is
| ancient.
|
| Plants mimic each other for advantage facing herbivores.
| Isn't that fantastic!.
|
| Learning Latin is the least burden here, the problem is that
| a profusion of morphological features defines set membership
| and professionals assign a significant role for DNA analysis.
| We have a hodgepodge, taxonomy has warfare inside.
|
| Botany is great. Being good at it takes time. Being good at
| anything takes time.
| trentor wrote:
| There is just not shortcut to acquire a skill worth having.
| I don't understand your argument.
| ggm wrote:
| My argument is to tone. The articles tone is "come on in
| the waters fine" and my point is that easy is deceptive.
| I don't understand your continuing lack of understanding
| but perhaps we read the article with different
| preconceptions.
| schainks wrote:
| One of my favorite channels of all time on youtube. You get to
| see new places, learn amazing botany facts, local history, and
| experience interjected spicy opinions.
| yreg wrote:
| Every page on this website ends with the How to make a herbarium
| pressing tutorial.
|
| I crave for some photos of the author's herbarium.
| giov4 wrote:
| I think nature and plants always interested me since I was a kid.
| For example I loved to plant from seeds, see them grow, learn and
| explore a bit with curiosity my mum or aunt plants and when being
| out in the forest, but not a lot more than that.
|
| Later, while growing up, I noticed my brain noticing plants or
| tree details, auto mapping them to possible genre, trying to find
| out, trying to memorize... but not always voluntarily, meaning
| that i felt like I was much more attracted and focused on plants
| and tree details and recognition after a certain age.
|
| Something similar happened with birds, my brain started recording
| and recognizing the different birds sounds, and I started
| recognizing birds types more. Like something that before was a
| random signal or a bunch of sounds suddenly with age started
| having patterns and clear distinctions that attracted my brain
| and memory, and I simply started being able to distinguish birds
| by just hearing them.
|
| I love it, I observe, I listen, I learn. I use the plant apps and
| birdnet for the bird soiunds (from CornellLab and Technical
| university of Chemnitz). Cool projects, lovely apps and
| interesting tech usage. I'm planning to upgrade terrace with
| constant camera feed for auto-detection.
|
| But the main point is, does anybody relate to this grown interest
| to plants and bird distinction with age? is it something known
| and defined? it kinda feels like part of a biological evolution
| related to age, but no idea.
| visarga wrote:
| > does anybody relate to this grown interest to plants and bird
| distinction with age
|
| I have a similar interest but mine is about passively
| assimilating foreign languages while watching movies. Every
| time I grok a new expression it feels like a rush of dopamine.
| giov4 wrote:
| yeah ok, now that you put languages in the pot, I felt the
| same when absorbing other foreign languages too, and I
| totally understand your feeling. I was grokking successfully
| foreign language phrases or expression with the help of IT
| terminology and latin roots on the fly, was very interesting.
| It was like unknown input but with some clues and the brain
| auto decoding and mapping in that case.
|
| maybe is just how our brain is wired and predisposed to such
| things that let us notice and enjoy this evolution or
| process?
| Eueudhsbsj32 wrote:
| I've experienced that with trees over the last 5 years. I've
| been working on forest restoration on some land as a hobby and
| everywhere I travel I try to identify the trees I see.
|
| For me, it's really just trees though. Birds and other wildlife
| are nice, but they don't draw my interest in the same way.
| stinos wrote:
| _does anybody relate to this grown interest to plants and bird
| distinction with age?_
|
| I do, and I've seen it in others, but from the limited data
| points I've seen there's no causal relationship with age. I.e.
| what I've seen is people largely oblivious of
| nature/ecosystems/flora/fauna sudenly becoming very invested in
| it, for various reasons, but this doesn't happen at or only
| beyond a certain age. For me it was around 30 but that's simply
| because of a series of coincidences (new house, large garden,
| needed solution for mowing, happened to see a 2nd hand scythe,
| looked into grassland ecology, etc). But I know people whos
| obsession started at 16 and at 60 and like everything in
| between.
| giov4 wrote:
| cool! thanks for sharing, that's my usual fallback reason
| too.
|
| meaning that i feel it was a change also triggered by other
| factors and life conditions, or even a reaction to those, but
| at the same time I realize that my brain started receiving
| and analyzing and appreciating those signal, not me
| completely voluntary.
|
| one thing that comes always to my mind is the possible reason
| of reaction to shitty work and work related stress that makes
| us crave for nature and nature contact, like a story of a
| friend stopping the car just to touch grass with the feet.
|
| I relate to an approximate after 30 thing too. But in my case
| nature contact was reduced compare to initial life part, and
| I got a garden after that.
|
| But again, it feels like an over semplifcation or easy
| shortcut, and I believe there is maybe just something innate
| that blooms at a certain point.
|
| how can we get more datapoints for this? I was trying to
| crowdsource here :)
| stinos wrote:
| _one thing that comes always to my mind is the possible
| reason of reaction to shitty work and work related stress
| that makes us crave for nature and nature contact_
|
| I'm sure that's a thing for some people. And there's
| research to back that up IIRC. Even seemingly silly things
| like the smell of a wet forest being beneficial.
|
| One aspect which stood out for me is 'awareness'. I find it
| deeply fascinating how many people, as I used to be one,
| can just stroll through everyday locations without even
| knowing the names of the most common plants let alone think
| about their connection to the surroundings. Once I started
| to realize how unaware I was of this I started forzing
| myself to be more aware and it's fascinating how much there
| can be going on in like even 1 square meter of nature. And
| of which I only know a fraction.
|
| And for me this is really meditative - even though it's
| somewhat counterintuitive. Meditation is usually about
| clearing the mind, but for me being in nature and filling
| my mind with thoughts about the whole interconnection of
| individuals in ecosystems can bring peace and relaxation.
| Well, as long as I do not think about how we're
| collectively destroying a lot of it.
| kombookcha wrote:
| I think it's one of those things that for whichever reason
| you happen to get switched on to, and once you're attentive
| to it, you'll constantly be noticing and learning more - once
| that positive feedback loop of rewarded attention is going,
| you're off to the races.
|
| It's deeply rewarding to find the world around becoming
| deeper and more intricately connected. And you get to see
| more of it every day!
| saidnooneever wrote:
| if you guys like this kinda stuff i can recommend the
| latest dump of buckminster fuller institute on his life
| work (series of transcribed lectures). The guy is
| fascinated by similar things and has potentially a lot of
| interesting insights about this if you are unfamiliar.
| schnevets wrote:
| Feedback loop is right. I think there are parallels to the
| Blank Check podcast playing "The Box Office Game", where
| those cinephiles try to determine the Box Office Top 5 on
| the week a particular film was released (even though the
| players may have been in diapers or not even born on that
| particular week).
|
| I have also seen this obsessive focus in sports fans: What
| was the half-season where Pat Maroon played on the New
| Jersey Devils as a rental? Well they made the playoffs that
| year which must have been Taylor Hall's MVP Award Season
| and ah yes! that had to be 2017-18!
| Gud wrote:
| I got very much into biology when I started growing weed at 24.
|
| Now I can't not have a little garden(currently growing chilli's
| and a citrus tree, from seeds)
| tsukurimashou wrote:
| weed was also my gateway drug for gardening
| pvaldes wrote:
| A tree is an expensive investment paid with years of time.
| You need to understand that a tree from seed is much more
| expensive than buying one on the nursery, and that you will
| have a big tree that may bear decent fruit or not. Most
| probably not top-quality fruit, and most probably with
| vicious long thorns. If the garden is not very big, a smaller
| thornless tree could be more convenient. Don't wait 30 years
| to discover this.
|
| If your citrus species is sensible to citrus tristeza virus
| you may prefer to replace your tree or graft it on a tolerant
| rootstock. Most of orange trees on sour orange rootstock
| before 1980's have the virus. Lemons are tolerant and its
| roots don't have this problem, oranges may die after you have
| invested 15 or 20 years of your life on this tree.
|
| Grafted fruit trees are vastly superior. You will want
| seedless oranges, so just do yourself a favor, buy a good
| navel type orange on a rootstock selected for your soil and
| avoid the rest of your life spitting seeds.
|
| If replacing your tree is not on the table, you may want to
| graft yours. Extra point if you made a double or triple graft
| for enjoying different types of citrus fruits in the same
| tree. In this case Is _essential_ to assure to buy virus free
| material before to graft other citrus tree with it.
|
| Never, ever, use the same tool to prune older and young
| different citrus trees without disinfecting it each time you
| move to a different tree.
| 7952 wrote:
| It is clearly a very useful skill to have as it helps us find
| food we know is safe. I think in the modern world this tends to
| be something most kids don't have an oppurtunity to develop.
| When in a more natural environment it would be expressed much
| earlier.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I don't relate to it myself, but I see it in people around me.
| It appears that's something that may not be limited to but is
| very prevalent in adults with very high functioning autism.
| giov4 wrote:
| what is very high functioning autism?
|
| to me it sounds just more intelligent people that can see
| things average people cannot or don't care about, might be
| slightly biased :)
|
| beside jokes is that defined somewhere? or is just that if
| somebody can focus and contextualize more things and details
| ends up in that "category"?
| ambicapter wrote:
| ah yes, whenever someone is sincerely interested in
| something, it's probably autism.
| forshaper wrote:
| It seems to be the case for me, though I remember it being
| present as a child. It's like it went away in adolescence and
| came back later. Same goes for rocks, weather (beyond basic
| planning), and so on.
| nemo wrote:
| I knew I wanted to be a birder since I was a kid, but wasn't
| sure how to make that happen, now I can bird by ear and pick up
| a lot of species, have 700 wild bird species on the life list
| with photos, and hit the trails every weekend to look for
| birds, I run feeders, and track local wildlife with
| iNaturalist/eBird. I do think as some folks age they recognize
| that they want to be more connected with nature and work on
| that in their ways, my family was mostly the same. Nature's
| more real than what you see on the glowing rectangles.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I grew up in a small town in the upper Midwest and always had a
| strong pull toward the neighboring forests, streams and
| wetlands. There was a lot of wonder at that age, but I wasn't
| prepared to really start contextualizing the depth/breadth of
| information until I was much older (which has obvious parallels
| to the systems/complexity thinking I enjoy elsewhere in my
| life/career).
|
| As an adult, I have found great value in assistive tools Merlin
| and Seek/iNaturalist for bird and plant identification. I would
| encourage everyone to try out Merlin at least once to learn
| more about all the great variety of birds in your neighborhood.
|
| I am also building a personal tool that captures and analyzes
| various environmental data sources (GIS, weather, phenological
| factors, species-specific habitat factors, etc) so that I can
| explore landscapes/ecosystems in my area (Minneapolis and MN/WI
| more broadly) to make the ecology/terrain legible and support
| observing various target species (fungi, migratory birds, fish
| runs, wildflower blooms, and so on).
|
| The format of the tool is very map/visualization/dashboard
| heavy which is fine for me - but carries too much bulk for
| friends and family. The project for this fall/winter is
| rewrapping the iOS experience around a quiet
| phone/watch/earbuds field-mode that only surfaces
| information/guidance/cue-stake recognition in skill-
| preserving/developing and eyes-up/phone away experience.
|
| It's a fun project.
| jl6 wrote:
| Can I get this, but for geology?
| cactacea wrote:
| Good news, he does geology too
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Obviously a much different vibe but i really enjoy Myron
| Crook's YouTube channel
|
| https://youtube.com/@myroncook?si=HE6EGqpemmVkaSDs
| autoexec wrote:
| Same link without the useless tracking:
| https://youtube.com/@myroncook
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| > It is my firm belief that any of the authors listed below
| (unless they're dicks) would not want anyone to be prohibited
| from reading their work <links to book sharing websites follows>
|
| Hot take - any book authors who want to chime in and share what
| you guys feel about a statement like that?
| garbagewoman wrote:
| The ones listed? You might want to get in contact with them
| because they are unlikely to be reading this thread
| sophacles wrote:
| Neither I, nor any author I know has published something with
| the intention of it going unread. Publishing something just to
| ne upset that it's being read seems rather dickish to me... The
| very act of publishing is a declaration of desire for others to
| read it.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I'm an author, and don't have any problem with it - however my
| book is obsolete as it's computer related.
|
| My publisher probably feels differently. :)
| chabska wrote:
| They spent a whole section glazing the Linnaeus system like it's
| a perfect thing, but as someone who has delved into taxonomy a
| lot (due to playing Metazooa and Metaflora), there are quite a
| few glaring issues with it.
|
| 1. political tussle. australian botanists managed to hijack the
| "acacia" name from the original African Acacia, to the totally
| unrelated australian plants that were also called acacia. I
| noticed that japanese botanists also have a habit of insular
| naming.
|
| 2. western bias. Names were given by the first white european man
| that "found" the plant, instead of the local inhabitants who have
| known and named the plants for thousands of years.
|
| 3. the eight rank taxonomy that only accidentally kinda work, but
| not really. The original ranks were domain, kingdom, phylum,
| class, order, family, genus, species. Modern taxonomy only pays a
| glancing homage to this system, because the actual evolutionary
| path that we found out there doesn't care about this neat
| categorization system, and so we had to shoehorn in hacks in the
| form of sub-phylums, sub-classes, sub-sub-sub-families, and sub-
| species. We could probably come up with a better system using a
| tree coordinate system.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| What specifically makes these issues, much less glaring issues?
| amiga386 wrote:
| I don't think it's a real problem. It's a way that one group of
| humans agreed to label things, and that way is the currently
| dominant way. Even the agreed rules (whoever publishes first
| gets dibs on the name) are just an incentive for academics to
| publish. If there were another labelling system, it would have
| the same problems and would only serve to split the humans into
| multiple ways of doing the same thing.
|
| But, ultimately, the naming is just for us humans. We care, the
| trees don't!
|
| To quote Richard Feynman:
|
| > The next Monday, when the fathers were all back at work, we
| kids were playing in a field. One kid says to me, "See that
| bird? What kind of bird is that?" I said, "I haven't the
| slightest idea what kind of a bird it is." He says, "It's a
| brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you anything!"
| But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: "See that
| bird?" he says. "It's a Spencer's warbler." (I knew he didn't
| know the real name.) "Well, in Italian, it's a Chutto
| Lapittida. In Portuguese, it's a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it's
| a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it's a Katano Tekeda. You
| can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the
| world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing
| whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in
| different places, and what they call the bird. So let's look at
| the bird and see what it's doing--that's what counts." (I
| learned very early the difference between knowing the name of
| something and knowing something.)
|
| Also, a tree coordinate system? We can't even be certain what a
| tree is, we can only look at a particular species and put it
| somewhere on a tree-bush continuum.
|
| This diagram is insane: we have trees with non-tree ancestors,
| and non-trees with tree ancestors!
|
| https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-th...
| dahart wrote:
| > If there were another labelling system, it would have the
| same problems and would only serve to split the humans into
| multiple ways of doing the same thing.
|
| If that were true, then you're saying Linnaeus has the same
| problems as before it, and it only split people up? Maybe we
| should go back to the previous names? Of course the system
| could be improved and solve some problems, the relevant
| questions aren't whether it's possible, they're about goals,
| scale, and agreement.
|
| Feynman's quote is cute but doesn't seem completely relevant
| to a hierarchical taxonomic naming system that in fact does
| tell you something about what a bird is from the name, no?
| amiga386 wrote:
| Feynman's quote is distinguishing knowledge of the thing
| itself (e.g. its behaviour, properties) which he thinks is
| useful, from ontological knowledge (naming and
| categorising) which he cares less about. As a physicist he
| only had to remember 61 particle names and 4 force names :)
|
| That's not to downplay giving things names! Obviously it's
| essential to get any collaborative work done that everyone
| uses the same name when they mean the same thing.
|
| On applying my logic back to the introduction of the
| binomial naming system... very clever! But I think it was
| Linnaeus's peers liked the properties of binomial naming so
| much it had a unifying effect on them... and now they
| _have_ unity, and there are many more scientists worldwide
| depending on this system to communicate, they don 't need a
| challenger system to provide a _different form_ of unity?
| dahart wrote:
| > from ontological knowledge (naming and categorising)
|
| The example clearly is discussing naming and _not_
| categorizing, which is precisely why Feynman's anecdote
| is not fully applicable to the Linnaeus system.
|
| > They _have_ unity
|
| I agree. That doesn't mean the naming system can't be
| improved, it just means unity is a goal and might be
| harder to achieve than before. This is what I meant about
| goals and agreement. If the new system were better
| enough, and unity was sought in advance, achieving unity
| might not be too difficult. It has happened before...
| chabska wrote:
| I didn't mean a literal tree that has leaves and bark. I
| meant the tree structure that you get when you trace the
| ancestry of all organisms. A tree coordinate system would
| assign a number to every node, so instead of saying _Tectona
| grandis_ , you say 2.44.32.543.45.33 . If that looks like IP
| address to you, yes, an IP address is actually a tree
| coordinate system.
| xienze wrote:
| > Names were given by the first white european man that "found"
| the plant, instead of the local inhabitants who have known and
| named the plants for thousands of years.
|
| I see this brought up often in all sorts of contexts. It's the
| "if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around" thing. If
| some indigenous group with no writing system nor contact with
| the rest of the world has a name for something... does it
| really have a name or even exist in the global sense since no
| one else can be made aware of it?
| defrost wrote:
| > nor contact with the rest of the world has a name for
| something
|
| Almost everywhere that white Europeans went and named things,
| they did so with native guides that had names for things.
|
| Many of the Australian plants and animals named with European
| taxonomies still have common native names and aboriginals
| alive, kicking, and somewhat traditional that still use older
| native namings.
|
| eg: (IIRC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7h9V4aKlJw
| TZubiri wrote:
| >We could probably come up with a better system using a tree
| coordinate system.
|
| I'd suggest having ones that count from origin, and other that
| count from present, so the current extant species would be +1,
| LUCA would be -1.
|
| Eukaryot? count from origin, Beagle? Count from present.
| picafrost wrote:
| I find it a real shame that botany doesn't receive a larger share
| of the curriculum in school. Plants are ubiquitous (obviously),
| they've been here well before we have and will remain here well
| after we've gone extinct. Despite that, in my experience, the
| average person knows very little about how and why they are
| organized into taxonomies and what characteristics that gives
| them.
|
| Seed pod? Square stems and opposite leaves? Five petaled flowers?
| All simple things to identify and dramatically narrow to a small
| set of families, if not one. And then the morphology between
| plants in those families becomes interesting to observe. And so
| it goes on.
|
| Then again, a great number of people live in areas totally absent
| of any plants that aren't from a Home Depot, so that knowledge
| can scarcely be used. This is something Joey (the author) loves
| to rant about in his videos.
| sophacles wrote:
| Too busy focusing on STEM to talk about stems.
|
| (I know botany is a science but STEM has a inherent bias
| towards white collar job acquisition and nearly every jobs
| requiring plant knowlege are not that)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| That is an S tier domain name/title
| amelius wrote:
| Putting a seed into the ground then waiting a long time and
| hoping (praying?) that something will come out that you will like
| is a lot like ... training deep learning models. The latter will
| pay more of course :)
| CalRobert wrote:
| If you watch only one video make it the Berkeley Bowl one
|
| https://youtu.be/PUFQouwqbe8
| jojocool0501 wrote:
| My favorite Youtube channel.
|
| Please watch the latest
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDVcfSYcxc0. It's an interview
| with an old botanist, who shares his wisdom and philosophy,
| remains engaged after decades of witnessing first hand America's
| nature getting destroyed. 2 main points: - destroyed old-growth
| forests, grassland, remnant prairies takes millennia to be back
| to what they were, not decades. Insects and other pollinators
| don't just reappear - water availability for plants comes in many
| forms, all of which disappear with tillage.
|
| Joey is an acquired taste, but if you look past the strong and
| odd personality (the persona?), his channel is a gold mine. But
| this time he was (rightfully) impressed by Gerry (Gerould)
| Wilhelm's wealth of knowledge.
| AHabe wrote:
| I love this guy, also my favourite Youtube channel and one of
| my favourite podcasts, he also guests on In Defence of Plants
| from time to time, I have the impression he's friends with the
| host.
|
| Loved him ever since I randomly stumbled across his guerilla
| tree planting video in I want to say 2020?
|
| Anyway, we all must support the train driver turned botanist.
| andai wrote:
| Brilliant, thanks for sharing.
|
| I'm reminded of an article I read once, it seems to have gone
| offline, an interview with indie game dev Jason Rohrer. He said
| the city took him to court for not mowing his lawn. He ended up
| winning under the 1st amendment (the lawn was "free expression"
| or something...)[0]
|
| I thought that was really interesting (and obviously wouldn't
| work in other countries).
|
| The other day I walked around the neighborhood and found this
| massive patch of grass and weeds that had been mowed, and
| scorched by the sun, so it was just mostly dead. Barely 5
| minutes away, the city had fenced out special plots and paid to
| have a bunch of weeds _instlled_ , to help the bees. Comedy.
|
| [0] Edit: Yeah it's deleted. I found backups though!
|
| https://archive.ph/j9025
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150315123808/https://www.esqui...
| badpun wrote:
| > I thought that was really interesting (and obviously
| wouldn't work in other countries).
|
| I don't know about other countries, but in Poland you're just
| not required to cut down your lawn at all, unless it's a fire
| hazard (you have a lot of dead and dried up plants).
| graemep wrote:
| I think legal requirements are a US thing. I had only heard
| of it in HOA run places though.
|
| Here in the UK there are no usually legal requirements, but
| it might be a social problem as your neighbours will not
| like it.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Not just HOAs. Talk grass allows insects and vermin to
| move more freely. In cities, this contributes to their
| spread, so some places have city-wide ordinances that
| require lawn maintenance.
| nsvd2 wrote:
| How terrifying that a bit of nature may be near a person!
| Better cover it with roundup so they don't have to suffer
| the horror of seeing a spider
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Rat and mice infestations are not fun. I have had enough
| trouble dealing with my pollinator and monarch butterfly
| habitats and mice. I actually TRY to get rabbits and
| squirrels but mice go after their babies.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I mean, I get it - I somewhat agree with your take, but
| this is somewhat of a "damned if you do, damned if you
| don't" case.
|
| I think you undermine your argument when you don't
| understand the complaint. Because I'd also like to see a
| lot more native plants, and less manicured, mono-culture
| yards with poison sprayed all over them.
|
| But at least in my area, the problem isn't "oh look a
| spider"... it's "oh shit, that house is collapsing
| because of termites", and "Oh shit, my neighbor's mom's
| house just burned down because rats chewed through the
| wiring in the walls", and "Fuck me! That's hogweed
| growing in that yard! Time to call the city".
|
| Pests are a real concern - they cause lots of monetary
| damage, and can seriously injure or hurt people if not
| monitored. Does that mean we should nuke everything with
| chemicals and make a sterile hellscape? No - I don't
| think it does.
|
| But it doesn't pay to be dismissive either.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The complaint is not well founded and doesn't explain how
| native landscapes make the problem any worse.
|
| A healthy ecosystem with owls, snakes, and coyotes will
| keep rodents in check. But well before that point, the
| ubiquitous feral domestic cats usually wreak havoc on
| pests and songbirds alike. Not to mention that most of
| the problem starts with bad food storage and waste
| management in the first place, not tall grasses or a few
| fruit trees (hence the flocks of pigeons and seagulls
| around parking lot dumpsters).
|
| Plus, no one is trying to stop you from tenting houses
| for termites, which are meditated by landscape practices
| like mulch and irrigation rather than the types of plants
| themselves.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Most city code about turfgrass lawns mandates cutting
| them if you have one. If you don't want to maintain a
| lawn by keeping it trimmed, rip it out. It's a non-native
| monoculture, allowing it to grow un-maintained is uh,
| stupid. Rip the sod out and plant clover and daisies,
| problem solved.
|
| My city also requires "noxious weeds" to be removed,
| which is a state requirement that the city
| inherited/adopted: https://www.mda.state.mn.us/minnesota-
| noxious-weed-list It's comprised of invasive species like
| Japanese knotweed and buckthorn and others I am
| unfamiliar with. Our State Parks and also private
| landowners use goats to get rid of buckthorn similar to
| other places.
|
| That being said, city code in my city would allow you to
| replace a grass law with clover or native plants/grasses
| or landscaping or wooded areas, etc. The code simply says
| "If you have a grass lawn you must cut it if the grass
| generates seeds or is 8" long."
| tobinfricke wrote:
| Apparently this text is part of the "International
| Property Management Code", which is incorporated into the
| municipal code of many cities?
|
| https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IPMC2024P1/chapter-3-ge
| ner...
| graemep wrote:
| So not just HOAs but very much US?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Generally, property in places where the landscape is
| well-maintained is worth substantially more than property
| where half the lawns are uncut and the fence lines are
| overgrown with weeds.
|
| The US is a land of individualists who also have most of
| their wealth tied up in their homes so property
| ordinances are popular, despite the "I can do whatever I
| want" attitude of American culture.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| There are municipalities in the US with lawn ordinances,
| mine has one.
|
| > Tall Grass and Weeds
|
| > Weeds or grass more than eight inches high or that have
| gone to seed must be cut or mowed. Noxious weeds, as
| defined by the state Department of Agriculture, must be
| controlled or destroyed completely.
|
| Source: https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/safety-
| inspections/rent-b...
|
| A lawn is not required, but if you have one, the grass
| must be cut if it seeds or is more than 8" long.
| xnx wrote:
| A weed is just a plant growing where you don't want it. So
| everything/nothing is a weed depending on context.
| holgerschurig wrote:
| > and obviously wouldn't work in other countries
|
| It wouldn't work e.g. in Germany since here we don't have
| "home owners associations" that reduce the freedom of whole
| housing areas. That is: you are "mostly" free in the first
| place to grow whatever you want.
|
| Mostly ? because there is always complexity with law. For
| example, if you grow a huge tree that takes all the sun from
| your neighbor, then you're tapping into the freedom of your
| neighbor. And then the neighbor can ask you to remove or at
| least trim the tree ... absolute freedom almost always hinder
| others.
|
| And so yes, there are cases where people though "My own
| freedom for a posh garden is diminished due to the biosphere
| of my neighbor, All the weed seeds are flowing to me". And
| people took others before court. And then each individual
| case is looked at. And often enough the case is just turned
| down because of the constitution guaranteeing freedom of
| expression.
|
| And that, in turn, means that "obviously won't work in other
| countries" is wrong.
|
| How US-Americans with one of the worst constitution and law
| systems of the western world constantly think that "only
| they" have something freedom-related is beyond me. If you
| look at your history ... you had slavery --- with your
| current constitution. You had genocide and trail of tears ---
| with your current constitution. You have gerrymandering ---
| with your current constitution. You sentence people to death
| but from 7482 death penalties of 1973-2004 a whole 4.1% were
| in error --- under your constitution. Each of these was or is
| an extreme reduction of people's freedom.
| dfltr wrote:
| His instagram account
| (https://www.instagram.com/crime_pays_but_botany_doesnt) is up
| there with Chuck Tingle in terms of subscribing to little bits
| of life-affirming joy in a difficult world.
| mudil wrote:
| How is the world so difficult? People live nowadays better
| than kings of France used to live. In the last hundred years
| we've been going through an unprecedented wealth creation,
| not just in the West but accross the world.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| I had an interesting internal debate the other day about
| whether farm fields were more natural than fields of solar
| panels. (Ignore fields that have both for now). To me, a tilled
| field that is being chemically fertilized and tilled is at this
| point just as far removed from the former native state.
| brunohaid wrote:
| Launching a thing soon to make it more accessible, without
| sacrificing scientific depth, eg:
|
| https://www.meso.cloud/plants/tracheophyta/magnoliopsida/gen...
|
| Aggregates 780k plants and fungi from many canonical sources
| (IPNI, Wikidata, GBIF, iNaturalist etc) and tries to present the
| data in an intuitive and engaging way, lets you search by common
| names in 300+ languages etc.
|
| Feedback from especially botany nerds very welcome!
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Very nice! Really incredible amount of sources you're pulling
| from.
|
| I actually vibecoded a personal app just last week to handle my
| personal collection of rare succulents and cactus I grow,
| primarily from seed. I wanted to create something for my young
| daughter that showed the mature plant along with information
| about its habitat, growing conditions, how to cultivate (I grow
| indoors due to my climate), etc.
|
| I'm actually really interested in the devices you have coming
| soon as I grow indoors and am always looking for improvements
| on lighting, monitoring, etc. I have a real hodgepodge of
| lights and gadgets.
| brunohaid wrote:
| Much appreciated!
|
| Still thinking about how to fold in eFloras and the expanded
| CoL XR data, and add the immediate habitat/surroundings
| beyond the climate/geo/pics we already have in a compelling
| way. If you have any examples of someone who does that really
| well (sites, apps, books etc) that she likes that'd be great.
|
| Taking the scenic route with devices, really want to nail
| comparing sensor readings with species' natural habitats and
| make that intuitive. What are your favorites so far in terms
| of vendors/items?
| vanessa1211 wrote:
| I was gonna say botany will pay too
| metalman wrote:
| move you to Caniba and grow you some extra special weed, and sell
| it all legal like, fuck you could get a job as a "weed
| inspector", of "canibis quality inspector" here, but the whole
| industry was built on crime, which has been semi ish, legalised.
| the Dutch have growing canibis down to a science, but there is a
| lot of room left, and as prices were set durring prohibition,
| profits remain very high.
| avadodin wrote:
| I loved botany and going outside before, but I loved it even more
| when he became popular(reference).
|
| I haven't watched him for years because I don't want to miss any
| of the botany.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Absolutely check out his multi part series "it doesn't have to
| suck" about turning Tucson AZ into a living greenspace city.
| It's hopeful and inspiring what they are doing there!
| znpy wrote:
| > at the time, he [Linneaus] was probably mostly thinking of
| "white European cultures"
|
| How boring this is, makes me want to close the page immediately.
|
| The guy, Linneaus, lived in the 1700s and "white European
| cultures" were all there was to him. Us wasn't even a whole
| nation yet and there wasn't much scientific cooperation with
| other civilisations.
|
| Also, at the time latin was the lingua franca for the scientific
| world.
|
| Stop judging people by the customs of their time, it's a moronic
| endeavour.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| If you read a bit further, they author then explains why they
| put that in:
|
| > The fucker [Linneaus] created a beautiful system, and it
| works. And that's why we still use it. I say this because a few
| unthinking "performative leftist" nitwits as of late have
| decided to attack the science of taxonomy itself).
|
| I think its in there to head of compliants from people who
| would otherwise say that latin scientific names are bad. The
| author goes on to illustrate why thats bad
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Well, he wasnt very good at conveying his idea then. I also
| stopped reading at that point. Fuck anyone that holds this
| idiotic beliefs.
| jckahn wrote:
| Oh hey it's the Chonkasaurus guy!
|
| https://wgntv.com/video/giant-snapping-turtle-nicknamed-chon...
| jpease wrote:
| I read through the site, but can't find the crime pays part.
| hmcamp wrote:
| The title is misleading. There was nothing in the article
| comparing/contrasting/linking botany and crime.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Man you must be _really_ fun at parties
| itomato wrote:
| You'll have to start with S1E1
| snarfy wrote:
| Instead of trying to make the plants healthy, make the dirt
| healthy. It seems like the same thing but it is a different
| mindset.
| TZubiri wrote:
| What is healthy dirt, if not dirt that grows healthy plants.
| Which will of course depend on the plant.
| DivingForGold wrote:
| Hort. Science degree from A&M in '80, employers offered to pay me
| $800 a month a water their greenhouses. Indeed, Botany was one of
| the more boring courses required. Scrapped by after the
| university as a landscaper-irrigator, then discovered too many
| years later the uber wealthy living on certain Texas Lakes would
| pay enormous sums to have me dive to service-install their pumps
| to feed raw water to their landscapes. Customers would call me in
| exasperation explaining they just got a water bill for like $900
| to $1,000. Raw lake water was available at about $150 to $175 per
| 325,000 gallons with a permit. A lady I knew convinced me that
| horticulture, and especially botany, are "labors of love", not
| particularly a way to become financially successful.
| goda90 wrote:
| I enjoyed his rant videos about soul sucking landscaping and the
| ways it could be better with lower maintenance native plants.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| What an obnoxious post.
|
| Pro-tip: knock off the vulgarity and avoid making ignorant
| remarks that pander to presently fashionable sentiments. It
| doesn't "spice up" your text or make it more "fun" or "real",
| unless you mean "really bad". It makes it obnoxious, likely phony
| (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here), and base.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here)
|
| Please expand on why you think it being phony is a benefit.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I didn't say being phony is a benefit. I was (in my view)
| charitably giving the author the benefit _of the doubt_ by
| assuming that his vulgarity is feigned (posturing) and not
| ingrained and habitual.
| greenyhuman wrote:
| imagine a world with no plants, how sad it would be. i try to
| fill my house with as many plants i can, a constant cloning of
| plants, i have started collecting rocks. its m new daily habit.
| collect a few rocks. it makes my plants happy. and you know what,
| my plants like to be happy, if the plants are happy i am happy.
| are you happy ? there is a android application on github that
| identifys plants on device using local ai plant net or something
| www.github.com/jegly/box
| apercu wrote:
| I just heard about a rare one in Wisconsin - someone I know knows
| someone that has land that includes original prairie and there is
| an almost extinct plant on that property. The local University
| has been studying the land for years, but a grad student stole
| seeds from this plant multiple years in a row and sold them - the
| landowner shut down access to the University, ending a 20 year
| study by a tenured prof.
| fl4regun wrote:
| I've recently taken to learning about plant identification, it's
| interesting to make observations about all the flora you see
| walking about. Will need to note these books for later!
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Me and my wife we talking about A/R glasses the other day and
| we both agreed that one of our number one use cases would be
| having the camera actively identify plant species when taking a
| walk or hike. Not every time it sees a plant obviously, just
| when a new species is identified along the way.
| arjie wrote:
| Haha, the Latin (or pseudo-Latin, I suppose) I like for the fact
| that it's sufficiently alien to not introduce terminology
| confusion like "strawberries aren't berries and pineapple is a
| berry" or whatever that is a colloquial language confusion.
|
| Science does have a lot of weird terminology that can be
| improved, though. One example is the thing I've always known
| since a child as the Fallopian Tube. At some point in my
| twenties, I learned Eileter - egg carrier - and the subsequent
| term oviduct. I'm a huge fan of Germanic compound words since
| destructuring them gives you information on the object - the ovum
| tube. There is a commonality in terminology between different
| parts of the body and this concordance aids memory and recall.
|
| A Fallopian Tube on the other hand implies some kind of
| membership of the group of Fallopes and has no function
| description.
| tenderfault wrote:
| all we want to know is how to grow our own mushrooms. I clicked
| with high hope.
| yboris wrote:
| Plant(ing) related: I planted 100 trees in my tiny back yard,
| creating a _pocket forest_ / _Miyawaki forest_ - a technique
| encouraging fast growth through dense planting (3-5 trees /
| shrubs per square meter). Routed my gutters into a swale along
| the tree line - looking forward to watching a forest appear over
| the next decade.
|
| https://www.creatingtomorrowsforests.co.uk/blog/the-miyawaki...
| wowczarek wrote:
| As a child of an entomologist turned botanist and another
| naturalist, who grew up in our home library full of assorted
| atlases, monographies and other odd books, I often learned the
| Latin names together with the respective common names, and it's
| amazing how it sticks. Being able to look at a random plant and
| say I don't know what it is exactly, but it's definitely
| labiaceae, is something I will always appreciate. Only recently
| my father sent me a video of a dormouse making themselves at home
| at a friend's cottage and my brain said "Glis glis". How I
| remembered it, I have no clue. I'm an IT person.
| Aboutplants wrote:
| My young daughter can identify a whole host of native species
| by their scientific names and it absolutely floors adults who
| catch her doing it. Our house is a plant nerd house so she just
| picked it all up on her own and enjoys it as a small component
| of her life.
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| One of my father's coworkers (environmental health & safety)
| was an entomologist. I wonder how much of her work was in
| forensics.
|
| Our family is Catholic, and Mom hates Latin, so as a
| reactionary I absolutely love it. As a child about 10 years
| old, I began to collect books called "Field Guide" such as
| _Field Guide to Spiders_ and _Field Guide to Butterflies_ and
| so forth. These were wonderful, glossy illustrated handbooks,
| and while the only field trips I made were into our suburban
| backyard, we saw a quality mix of flora and fauna because of
| Dad 's gardening and our proximity to a canyon.
|
| And the index would have all scientific names listed, and so I
| set myself to the task of memorizing as many as possible. I
| hardly recall any today, except _apis mellifera_ and _mosca
| domestica_ but I can tell you, it was really influential for my
| social life at recess to be blurting out the Latin names of
| creepy-crawlies. _Harry Potter_ was still at least 15 years in
| the future, then, and none of the girls showed interest in
| field trips.
| talon8635 wrote:
| So happy to see this Chanel posted. Love this guy!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Stopped reading when he out of nowhere felt the need to say that
| Linnaeus was probably a racist bigot, based on nothing.
| PatHyatt wrote:
| Wonderful podcast and shorts.
| chabes wrote:
| Joey is a gem
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| one of my favorite youtubers but I feel like if you're linking
| directly to a reading list the title of your post should reflect
| that
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Odd to see one of the best native plant communicators referenced
| on HN but I'll use to opportunity to mention a side project I'd
| been delaying diving in for years and finally committed to
| recently if there are folks here who want to not only learn to
| identify crucial native flora (and fauna) but contribute to
| restoring local native plants that are critical to ecosystems.
|
| So, mini show HN: https://indigene.app is a browser-only, offline
| & mobile-friendly, no account, no ads, open source tool to help
| you find native plants that would thrive exactly where you are.
| I've tried to make it as thoroughly sourced as possible but focus
| heavily on folks that have less experience with gardening _and_
| native plants in general.
|
| I've been adding coverage to a handful of US and French
| ecoregions for now (what I know) and you can already do plant
| lookups by GPS, postal code, and ecoregion). The app will help
| you identify you spot, sun, soil, and specific ecosystem support
| goals (wildlife, birds, erosion or runoff control, growth) and
| offer a sortable list you can fine-tune with requirements (max
| height/width, no thorns, pet safe, spread, zero watering, etc.).
|
| There's a lot more in there I've wanted for years like bloom
| windows, host species counts, dependent native wildlife, growth-
| over-time charts, propagation tips, and tons of sourced
| references that overlap with a lot of the resources Joey Santore
| and other native plant folks reference.
|
| None of this replaces useful tools like iNaturalist whose
| excellent open API I use to show what native plants look like in
| Indigene, but hopefully it encourages folks who have the means
| and the time to start rebuilding local ecosystems we've neglected
| or actively destroyed.
|
| PS: because I can't help it, the app has detailed release notes
| gendered from its changelog at https://indigene.app/release-
| notes/. It also takes privacy & safety very seriously:
| https://indigene.app/privacy
| hinkley wrote:
| There are several branches of horticulture that require the
| same sort of systems thinking that makes one a good staff or
| principal engineer. Natives are one of them.
| gooob wrote:
| hell yeah, glad to see it, keep at it! this is the type of
| thing that i always figured software people would naturally
| tend to support, because it's just systems thinking. what
| better thing to do than to heal the ecosystems on which we
| depend?
| exolymph wrote:
| Aw man, since you're sharing this on HN, you gotta cover
| California!
| olivierlacan wrote:
| This is all the motivation I needed. I want to add more
| species to Florida first because this project finally came to
| life thanks to a visiting friend who still lives in Florida
| and struggles to find what to plant around her house.
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Southern California is in. Took a bit longer than planned
| since as you'll see there were quite a few other improvements
| today: https://indigene.app/release-notes/0.24/
|
| I'll move on to other parts soon, like the Bay Area.
| legel wrote:
| I'm a Visiting Scientist at UC Berkeley focusing on AI for
| ecology.
|
| Always great to see fellow technologists in this space!
|
| For the past few years I've maintained a free open source
| project called Ecodash (https://ecodash.ai) covering the
| world's native plants, with trait filters.
|
| Code here: https://github.com/legel/ecodash
|
| While I'm also an entrepreneur and *do* believe there is a lot
| of financial opportunity in this space, I also really just want
| to see ecosystems thrive.
|
| Keep up the great work!
| olivierlacan wrote:
| It's so nice to know you've worked on this. I'm very curious
| what sources you used.
|
| The most fun I had with Indigene was when I decided to add
| French ecoregions so my parents could use the app too. Most
| of the work is in this PR where I used a recently published
| study's plant host species data to offer ecosystem
| value/services metrics since the Tallamy data doesn't cover
| that: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/53
|
| That stuff reignitated the kind of deep data hunt fever I
| haven't had since my COVID Tracking Project days when I was
| finding random ArcGIS dashboards and extracting data from
| their JSON calls to find some reliable case data.
|
| I'm bummed I didn't find your project before. I kept looking
| for something when I moved from Florida to Washington after
| converting my entire yard there. Having to learn a whole new
| ecoregion was rough and it made me think the barrier should
| be drastically lower for people who aren't as motivated.
|
| On the financial opportunity side, I hoped for a while that
| there may be a way to align our best interest as a species
| (and our ecosystem) with what our modern societies value but
| the last decade has made it clear to me that neither
| governments nor private enterprise are capable to remain as
| focused as they need to be. Plus leveraging worldwide public-
| funded science to make a living seems a bit odd if I can
| instead use my engineering expertise to _not_ require
| unnecessary waste of resources (servers, more LLM tokens,
| etc.) as the ecosystem rapidly degrades.
| nja wrote:
| Wow, this is a lovely tool, and it's clearly built with a lot
| of your own knowledge! I'm in New England and this has some
| great recs for my land.
|
| One slight piece of feedback: it's pretty clear a lot of the
| text was output of AI. IME (and just _my_ E, of course), this
| detracts somewhat from the authority of the page, as it makes
| it seem more like it just came from a conversation with Claude,
| rather than from your knowledge filtered through building an
| app. Might be worth doing a couple of passes to tighten up and
| human-ize it a bit :). (since it's open source, I suppose I
| could always PR myself if you'd be open to it)
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Thank you, it's very explicitly the result of a relatively
| tight but fast TDD development process with Opus (4.8 & 5
| mostly), a _lot_ of cross-referencing with established
| sources (see https://indigene.app/sources), and my own 30
| years of amateur gardening experience and roughly 10 years of
| Florida & PNW native planting & observation experience.
|
| So I take this feedback to heart and just like with the
| (sourced & generated) French localization I'm working my way
| through validating everything. This is another benefit of the
| project being entirely public, you can see precisely in the
| repo what I did and didn't think to do in order to ensure
| accuracy.
|
| When it comes to prose & style, I've set some clear
| accessibility goals in the agent config, and I've rewritten
| some things but it can be hard to fight the needless
| verbosity of LLMs at times.
|
| I would deeply appreciate if you took the time to send a PR
| for any kind of improvement or addition). Thanks in advance.
| alex-robbins wrote:
| I'm at https://indigene.app/regions/pnw (on Firefox on Android)
| and I'm frustrated because I can't find a map of the region's
| boundary. It's not at all clear to me how far north or south
| the region extends.
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Fair criticism, this is based on EPA Level III/IV Ecoregions
| (cited in https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/blob/main/
| DATA_SOUR...) but I agree there should be a way to see it in
| a clear map.
|
| Level III/IV Maps are here: https://www.epa.gov/eco-
| research/level-iii-and-iv-ecoregions...
|
| At the very least I'll make sure each region page links to
| this given it's the source that determines what species are
| shown.
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Fixed via https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/105
|
| Thanks again for the suggestion. It'll take some refining but
| I also included nearby cities so it's easier to get a sense
| of scale and proximity.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| You've done a great job with the "how big does it get"/"what
| will it look like" SVG diagrams, those are incredibly helpful.
|
| https://indigene.app/plants/symphyotrichum-subspicatum
|
| https://indigene.app/plants/juncus-patens
|
| Very helpful for choosing plants.
| olivierlacan wrote:
| Some are pretty crude but it was one of the hardest things to
| determine when dealing with a fairly small garden. I agree
| they've been very useful before and sometimes after planting
| when it becomes clear you might have to relocate a plant.
|
| The next thing I'd like to do is categorize some of the
| plants that are ideal for foundation planting (water
| management, vertical taproots) or curb islands (between
| sidewalks & streets).
| gooob wrote:
| glad to see this posted here on my day off! the universe seems to
| have a way of reminding of certain things and pointing me in the
| right direction!
| ASinclair wrote:
| I saw him talk at SF Nerd Nite years ago. Very entertaining and
| informative. The crazy thing is he's self taught. Smart man.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Two nits to pick, one major, one minor:
|
| Major: "Common names simply don't work on a
| large scale. One common name (ie "cedar") can refer to 8
| different totally unrelated plants, where as Cedrus refers
| specifically to the genus which contains the species C. libani,
| C. deodara, and C. atlantica."
|
| Actually, those 8 different plants are hardly "totally
| unrelated". They are quite closely related in the evolutionary
| scheme of things (plants have been around for 1.6 billion years).
| Red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and Cedrus (Cedrus atlantica)
| are both plants, but also Pinidae (conifers), and diverged about
| 250 Million years ago (time tree.org), so more distantly related
| that mammals (~80 y), but midway between humans/platypus (200 My)
| and humans/ducks (320 My). Hardly unrelated.
|
| Minor: "Why is it [taxonomy] cool? Because we
| now group things according to how evolutionarily related are, and
| how they evolved."
|
| Yes, we group things by how closely related they are, but not
| necessarily by how distantly related they are in time. Taxonomy
| is about branch order, not distance in evolutionary time. The
| same species in a genus may include organisms that diverged
| several million years ago, but other species may have diverged
| much more recently. Taxonomy is a kind of evolutionary history
| that need not have a very regular clock.
| cmpb wrote:
| To nit 1: "totally unrelated" could reasonably mean "not in the
| same genus", but even relaxing that to "not in the same family"
| holds true for the word "cedars". The author's point about
| "common names" seems pretty salient
|
| To nit 2: I fail to see what you're actually nitpicking here...
| How evolutionary related things are and how they evolved _are_
| pretty well illustrated by taxonomic ranking. Some organisms
| (in a stable ecology) don't change much over time and some
| things do, and taxonomy gives us a good way to discuss that.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| I suppose "totally unrelated" might mean not in the same
| genus to some set of taxonomists, but for the larger audience
| to which this essay was directed, unrelated might mean "is
| not related in any way" (as in, does not share a common
| ancestor).
|
| Yes, they are "totally unrelated" in the sense that I am
| likely totally unrelated to you, but this not a very
| evolutionary sense of the word "related".
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Yes, they are "totally unrelated" in the sense that I am
| likely totally unrelated to you_
|
| Why would you assume that the "larger audience" would
| assume that "unrelated" means that these species of trees
| came from independent origins of life on earth instead of
| this totally normal and common sense of the phrase that you
| use here?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This guy is the Regular Car Reviews of botany - no punches
| pulled, heart of gold. I love his work, especially his parody of
| the depraved landscapers of today:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be5ZnQiZslE&t=74s
| pvaldes wrote:
| This may explain why they are so few botanists and so many
| criminals, even when everybody needs more botanists but nobody
| needs so many criminals.
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