BIOS & LOGOS

Moth Mullein Flash Mobs the Meadow! (but in a good way)

2011-08-19T19:59:00.003-04:00

Over the past few years, a wildflower meadow at a nearby nature preserve has been overrun by a nasty invasive alien weed called Mugwort. Last year, the meadow was stripped of the offender by mechanical and chemical means, with the hope that native plants would be given a chance to return.

For one species, at least, the project has been an almost spectacular success. One of my favorite plants, the Moth Mullein, is back in force. In recent years only a few of these plants could be seen blooming throughout the 107-acre preserve. When I visited yesterday, literally dozens of mulleins were in full bloom throughout the meadow, including the usual solitary plants but also clumps of several stalks.

Something about the removal of the mugworts and the chemical treatment with a short-lived herbicide must have provided just the right conditions for the germination of buried Moth Mullein seeds, and nature took its course, producing a delicate sprinkling of yellow across the field of grasses. There is even one of the white-flowering variety, a rarity, at least in this part of the county (a little further south, they seem to be the dominant form.)

Of course there is usually a flip side to every story. Truth be told, the Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattaria) is itself an alien, native to Africa, Asia and parts of Europe. But it’s ever so much more attractive, and less likely to take over completely, than the dreaded Mugwort that was removed to allow its resurgence.

I am looking forward to the reappearance of Moth Mullein’s big cousin, the Common (or Great) Mullein (Verbascum thapsus), a truly impressive, very furry plant with a 5- to 10-foot flower stalk, of which I have seen few at the preserve in recent years. Of course, it too is an alien, which can aggressively take over a meadow—so maybe we should be careful what we ask for.

But let’s not forget the big picture that I’m always pushing here: any plant that you see, whether big or small, hairy or smooth, colorful or drab, native or alien, is an engineering and biochemical marvel. Just the story of the reproductive cycle or the development of a plant from a tiny seed could fill several books, containing many mystery plots that still baffle the science guys.

Flowering plant evolution has been mind-boggling to those guys for a century or more. Once in a while we see an article relating some promising theory, but it is usually filled with ifs, buts, maybes, as well as evolutionary assumptions, rather than solid data—and amounts to nothing. I’ll stick my scrawny little neck out and say, with God-given confidence, “They didn’t evolve!”

Soli Deo Gloria

Eupatorium perfoliatum--what a great name!

2011-08-05T16:03:00.002-04:00

Eupatorium perfoliatum—the name glides off the tongue like a fried egg from a non-stick frying pan. It’s the scientific name for a really slick plant. Common names: Boneset and Thoroughwort. And all its names have been awarded for good reasons. Both “perfoliatum” and “thoroughwort” are reminders that the two leaves in each pair are fused at their hind ends so it looks like the stem is perforating a single leaf. And “thorough” is an old version of “through,” so you can see the connection (“wort” is just an old term for plant or herb).

“Boneset”, rather than describing structure, derives from the plant’s use in folk or herbal medicine. A potion made from the leaves and stems was used to treat dengue or breakbone fever. It has also been used to treat everything from migraines and gout to intestinal worms and malaria. These days it might be better to stick to more modern treatments, since boneset contains some vicious toxic compounds that can cause liver damage, muscular tremors, weakness, constipation—and death (although all of the above may be true of some “modern” medicines as well).

The Genus Eupatorium contains 30 to 60 species (depending on who’s classifying), including (at least formerly) Joe-pye weeds and snakeroots. So the boneset stands in good company. Take a look here at my previous post about some classification confusion.

Human-made classifications not withstanding, the Eupatoriums are magnificent creations, as are all plants. Sometimes we underestimate their complexity because they have only five “organs,” – root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit—as compared to the dozens making up animal bodies. But when we look closer we find that plants are far more complex, especially in their biochemistry, than animals. That’s why the plants are called autotrophs—self-feeders. They make their own food from carbon dioxide, water and a few minerals, while we have to stuff our faces with pre-made food to keep us growing and going.

That’s why God made plants first, then animals, contrary to faulty, illogical evolutionary theory. And He called them “very good,” which was almost an understatement. They are more than good; they are magnificent biochemical machines that produce thousands of complex chemicals, not only for their own survival but for us poor hapless heterotrophs, who are totally dependent on them, either directly or by way of the food chain, for our survival.

So thank a plant today, for its outward beauty and for its hidden secrets—and thank the great Creator God who made it.

By the way, if you look closely at our photograph (you can enlarge it by clicking on it) you may notice someone else who is thankful for the Boneset, at least as a temporary shady resting place.

Soli Deo Gloria

Some mimics leave a bad taste--when story tellers dishonor their Creator.

2010-08-11T12:49:00.002-04:00

You know the story: a harmless species “evolves” to resemble a harmful species and therefore is less likely to be eaten. It’s called Batesian mimicry, named for an English naturalist who spent too much time in the Amazon.

The mimicking of the Monarch by the Viceroy has been used as the standard example for probably a hundred years. The story goes that the Monarch tastes bad because its caterpillars eat milkweed leaves containing nasty cardiac glycoside compounds. These toxins are carried over as the larvae pupate and then metamorphose into the adults. So monarch butterflies taste awful. Supposedly, Viceroys taste good because their caterpillars feed on willow leaves.

The standard story is that the Viceroy (the one with the black stripe across its wing) “evolved” (by random mutations and natural selection, of course) to resemble the Monarch and thus escapes predation because birds associate the orange and black coloration with bad taste.

Then, as happens with so many (especially evolutionary) just-so stories, someone did one too many experiments and falsified the tale. Abdomens (wings omitted to remove the color clues) of both Monarchs and Viceroys were offered to birds—and the birds gagged on both. Turned out that Viceroys taste as awful as Monarchs!

Oh, so it’s not Batesian mimicry after all—let’s call it Muellerian mimicry, in which two harmful species both “evolve” warning colors to discourage predators.

So tell all the stories you want to, and change them to fit some real evidence. The fact is that these two rather unrelated butterflies—with very different looking caterpillars, which feed on different plants—didn’t “evolve” in the first place, nor did any other butterflies or insects or any other life forms. Molecules-to-man Darwinian evolution is an out-dated 19th century just-so story that is being dismantled by real 21st century science almost on a daily basis.

Let’s enjoy God’s creatures for what they really are: evidence of His intricate handiwork—and convicters of those who refuse to see them as such but who choose to worship the creature instead of the Creator who made them (Romans 1:18-25).

Soli Deo Gloria

Feathers are not frayed scales -- period -- end of story!

2010-07-18T20:59:00.016-04:00

It has almost become the ruling paradigm that reptiles (dinosaurs, that is) evolved into birds -- in fact that birds are really merely highly evolved dinosaurs, flitting about and singing sweet dinosaur songs.

There are about a zillion reasons why this is a fantasy; and one, illustrated by our photos, is the difference between scales (here shown on a representative reptile -- couldn't seem to find a dinosaur to photograph) and bird feathers (here illustrated by the flank of a cooperative Canada Goose and a somewhat less cooperative Chickadee). I invite you to click on the photos (especially the bird photos) to see at least the superficial details of what makes feathers so special.

The story goes that scales somehow evolved into feathers -- that somehow scales became frayed and became feathers. This story is ridiculous at every level. The vast difference in complexity between the two types of structure should prove the obvious. While scales are formed as mere skin folds (which the snake in the photograph will periodically shed as one piece), feathers originate from follicles whose complexity is difficult to imagine -- with the ability to generate feathers whose complexity is even more difficult to imagine.

And what about those "feathered" dinosaurs dug up in China? They have generated as much controversity among ardent evolutionists as they have between evolutionists and creationists -- and not a small number of out-and-out fraudulent claims.

Of course, the scales vs. feathers difference between reptiles and birds is but one of the multitudinous reasons that the two life forms are of different created kinds. Believing otherwise is a matter of pure darwinian faith and has little to do with real scientific evidence.

If you've been drinking the darwinian Koolaid, it's time to switch from that unhealthful sugar water and start taking big gulps from God's inerrant communication to man -- starting from Genesis 1. Good reading!

Of course, listening to this 15-minute clip might be of value as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCiVaiv0HN0

Soli Deo Gloria

No such thing as a good-for-nothing

2010-07-12T12:52:00.012-04:00

Polygonum cuspidatum (Japanese Knotweed) is one unpopular plant. It grows so fast that we, as kids, used to sit and think that we could actually see it growing before our eyes. It's an alien and it's invasive, so when it grows and spreads into huge stands (of huge plants), it crowds out smaller native species. And it's nearly impossible to eradicate, once it gets a foothold. So there is nothing much to like -- we might legitimately call it a "good-for-nothing."

The photos above show the leaves of P. cuspidatum and its unique, not too unattractive fruit. But what on Earth is that bottle of a popular dietary supplement doing here? What is the connection between Resveratrol, a powerful antioxidant and anti-aging compound usually assocated with red wine, and a nasty invasive weed?

The truth is that the knotweed plants have the talent for producing and concentrating resveratrol, primarily in their roots, at a concentration hundreds of times greater than any grape can possibly do. Hence, P. cuspidatum has become the primary commercial source of the supplement. It is certainly easy to grow year-round. Grape vines are seasonal and require lots of tender loving care. So the choice is an easy one.

Conclusion: there is really no such thing as a "good-for-nothing" plant. God has given us all things richly to enjoy." We just have to go looking for the good that exists even in the nastiest and most unpopular among us.

Of course, use, enjoy and misuse are all operative words here. Sinful man can always find ways to misuse even the most useful gifts of God. Maybe even grapes. Enough said--don't get me started on that subject.

Now I'll go pop a couple of Resveratrol capsules--maybe I can save my telomeres yet. (Certainly a subject for another blog post.)

Soli Deo Gloria

Of Amberwings and F-22 Fighters

2010-07-09T10:03:00.004-04:00

I sat by water's edge for an hour or more, trying, mostly in vain, to photograph Eastern Amberwing dragonflies in flight. They are tiny; they are fast, so even the camera's auto-focus usually failed to catch them accurately. And even shooting six frames per second produced only an occasional moderately clear image. Our one lucky shot, however, caught a surprising feature--the retractable landing gear! With the front pair of legs tucked under the chin and the other two pairs pressed tightly against the "fuselage," this odonate exhibits all the precision engineering of an F-22 Raptor!

Of course, when the Amberwing extends its legs and lands, photography becomes less tricky; and even more of the design features--the radar dome-like head, with 360 degree-vision compound eyes--and especially those crystal-clear amber wings, with their precise pattern of supporting veins!

Billions of dollars were spent engineering and building the F-22 fighter. Only 187 have or will be built. God designed and built the Eastern Amberwing with a snap of His mighty finger--and millions of copies are made, using engineering and manufacturing programs that man can never come close to duplicating.

We should be amazed at His incredible skill and wisdom and at our relative lack thereof.

Soli Deo Gloria

No Gestalt -- No Rorschach

2010-07-08T11:27:00.011-04:00

I suppose you expect me to tell you to stare at the above and find people, animals or psychological insights. Or perhaps that a switch will flip and you will see an old hag instead of a pretty young lass -- or that you should concentrate intently and eventually you will see Jesus.

None of the above -- although I think I see a fez-wearing, left-facing, large-nosed fellow at the bottom -- and a dog, barking at something below, on the left -- and how about the beret-sporting gent in white, blowing smoke from his nose -- or maybe the whole thing resesembles a map of the Eastern Hemisphere after a thousand years of global warming.

Think anything you want -- it's a free country -- and the fantastically designed, God-given but sin-cursed human mind has almost limitless powers of imagination -- and ability to be tricked.

But our photograph is actually of a perfectly natural outdoor scene -- as evidenced by the mosquito flying off to the northwest -- the severely insect-chewed leaves of the Swamp White Oak. The chewed-up-ness is evidence that Quercus bicolor is a native species, gnawed by native insects. If it were an alien tree, its leaves would probably be in better shape, even in July. It's just another example of one species adapting to another, this time in a food chain relationship.

I am always yapping about imperfect things being evidence of God's curse on the ground (Genesis 3:17-18), but perhaps our chewed up leaves aren't such an example. After all, plants were the food of animals and humans before the entrance of sin. So you insects, eat your fill without guilt.

Soli Gloria Deo

Three Tummyaches

2010-07-07T09:42:00.007-04:00

Duckweed, goose feather or the bug on the feather--which should cause the darwinist the biggest case of indigestion? Answer: all three should be equally as nausiating to the devotee of random mutation and mindless natural selection as mechanisms by which these organisms have originated.

Botanists may call the duckweed a simplified version of a flowering plant, with only one leaf and some dangling roots. But any flowering plant, with its photosynthetic mechanisms, deserves the Darwin Abominable Mystery Award.

Feathers are not frayed reptile scales! While scales are mere epidermal folds, feathers originate from incredibly complex follicles--even more intricate than human hair follicles.

And as for the bug--Nobel Prize Astronomer Fred Hoyle once said than insects are so incredibly complex and weird that they couldn't have originated on Planet Earth--they must have arrived as spores from space.

Don't be duped by the popular literature, or even by "serious" scientific literature, that insists on clinging to increasingly stale, out-dated theories. In fact, doing a little digging into some time-proven literature, such as Genesis 1 and 2, might be profitable for learning about the true origins of life--and everything. But don't forget to go on to Genesis 3, because if you don't understand what happened there, you don't really understand anything about today's beautiful but sin-cursed world.

Soli Deo Gloria

The Right Flower/Bee Match

2010-07-06T09:01:00.010-04:00

Yesterday, we saw a carpenter bee straddling a milkweed blossom and draining nectar from deep within the flower. No problem for the bee or flower, except for the fact that the energy-rich nectar was produced by the plant precisely for the purpose of attracting pollinators. The bee, however, is taking the nectar without necessarily picking up any of the golden pollen bodies (pollinia) because its feet are avoiding the slots in which they are lying in wait.

Today we see the insect for which the milkweed blossom is intricately designed--the honeybee. The bee perched on the leaf edge has visited several flowers and is literally weighed down with glistening pollinia. She will eventually continue her nectar gathering and will most likely deposit at least some of the pollen on the stigmas of the visited flowers, thus assuring the fertilization of the ovules deep within. In a few weeks, a pod containing hundreds of seeds will develop--and the reproductive cycle will have been completed.

Evolutionists would call the adaptations of bee and flower "co-evolution". But even devout darwinists are beginning to doubt that random mutations and natural selection are capable of producing such intricate mechanisms, let alone producing flowering plants and insects in the first place.

There are untold thousands of plant/insect relationships throughout the biosphere, many even trickier than those shown here. Information theory and probability theory argue powerfully against their existence without the designing power of mind--the mind of the Creator of all things, the God of the Bible, whose Son not only created all things but sustains all of His creation and redeems His elect people from their sin. He is Lord of All. (John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:16-17)

Soli Deo Gloria

Getting Down to Bees-ness

2010-07-05T08:59:00.006-04:00

Since I have been particularly sporadic in my posts this year, I thought that something a little more spontaneous might correct the situation. Let's try some periodic photos with short blurbs, rather than the longer essays you are used to seeing.

No matter what the subjects of the photos may be--and they will certainly be small examples of God's creative handiwork, as our theme has always been--we should keep two passages of scripture in mind as we stare at the color, form and detail of each photographic subject: Colossians 1:16-17; and Romans 1:18-20. In essence, they say, (1) Jesus made them and holds them together; and (2) We had better recognize Who made them or we are in big trouble. "Under the wrath of God" is a terrible place to be.

So let's get down to business--or bees-ness--with the above photo of a carpenter bee extracting nectar from a milkweed blossom. Both bee and blossom exhibit intelligent design beyond our wildest imagination. Any thought that either could have "evolved" by random mutations and natural selection is an insult to the God Who created them.

Of course, there is a touch of Romans 8:19-22 seen in the photo as well. The carpenter bee is cheating on the flower by stealing nectar without necessarily carrying out the pollination duties for which the flower was designed. Tune in tomorrow to see a better flower-to-pollinator match.

Have you bothered to look up those passages? If not, why not pause to do it now, so you can make some sense of this little blurb. You can look them up in the Searchable Bible link on the right side.

Soli Deo Gloria

Have you considered spores lately?

2010-05-13T13:57:00.017-04:00

Have you been contemplating the subject of spores these days? Not likely, unless you’re a total botany nut like me. But most likely you have been experiencing—even suffering—the effects of spores during this spring season. Let me explain (be patient—this may take a while).

The photos above, mostly shot within the past month, all have to do with spores of one sort or another…

But sir, you haven’t even given us a definition of the word! What kind of teacher are you?!

OK, a spore is a unicellular (usually microscopic), monoploid reproductive structure which will germinate and grow into a plant if given suitable conditions.

That was not helpful, sir. You’ve only further confused us.

Very well, allow me to at least define some of those terms:

Microscopic: teensy weensy
Unicellular: comprised of one cell
Monoploid (AKA haploid): containing one set of chromosomes
Reproductive: makes a baby something
Germinate: sprout
Grow: get bigger
Plant: a multicellular usually photosynthetic organism
Suitable: nice

Sir, we sense a bit of sarcasm and condescension in some of your definitions.

So be it. Let’s go on. Perhaps describing some of the photos will help. The top two photos show some moss sporophytes.

What’s a sporophyte?

A plant that reproduces by means of spores. And I wish you wouldn’t interrupt so often. You’re beginning to sound like Neil Cavuto!

OK, sir. But we’re only seeking clarification—just trying to get edjacated!

That’s ed-u-cated! Those sporophytes, consisting of a stalk and a spore capsule, produce microscopic spores by the process of meiosis…

Sir…

Look it up for yourself!!

The spores get sprinkled out, using a magnificently designed mechanism involving changes in humidity and those little teeth you see in one of the photos…

But sir…

Yes, Neil?

Magnificently designed? But sir, I thought all good biologists believed in mindless chance mutations and natural selection to produce complexity.

NOT! They’re designed! Anyway, some of the sprinkled spores land on nice moist soil and germinate into gametophytes…and before you rudely interrupt, a gametophyte is a monoploid plant that reproduces sexually by the union of gametes—and don’t tell me you’re not old enough to know what that means! The green moss plants that we usually associate with mosses are the gametophytes. I won’t go into the sexual process here, but it involves antheridia, archegonia, mitosis and the morning dew.

Sir, you are deliberately avoiding an obviously controversial but important subject!

Perhaps I’m merely teasing the next lecture. Today, we are dealing with spores. To continue, the fertilized eggs grow into the sporophytes you see in the photos. It’s all about what we call “alternation of generations.”

The third photo shows the fertile (spore-bearing) frond of a fern. Same story: the spores will be sprinkled out, land on moist soil and grow into gametophytes, which are really small, so we seldom see them—but that’s another story.

But sir…

I’ll ignore that interruption.

But sir, we want to know about the fourth photo—those flowers—what do they have to do with spores? We thought flowering plants reproduced by means of seeds, not spores.

Excellent thought (for a change). The flowers actually are groups of sporangia (spore-bearing organs). We just call them by different names, just to confuse. In fact, flowers produce two kinds of spores: microspores (small ones) and megaspores (big ones). It’s called heterospory. We call the microspores pollen grains (which contain sperms) and we call the megaspores ovules (which contain eggs). And we call the processes of how they get together pollination and fertilization—another tease for the next lecture.

Pardon another rude interruption, sir, but at the start of your bloviation you said that we were experiencing and even suffering the effects of spores during this spring season…oh, we see it now—that yellow stuff all over our cars is pollen—microspores! And the fact that half of us are blowing our noses and popping allergy pills—now we get it!

I am amazed! But don’t blame the pretty chokecherry blossoms in the photo for your problems—because they’re entomophilous! It’s the anemophilous pollen that yellows your cars and causes hay fever.

Now really, sir…

LOOK THEM UP!!!!!!

Dead Leaves

2010-01-24T14:56:00.005-05:00

It’s nearing the end of January, so I suppose you are wondering why you’re seeing a bunch of dead leaves in this usually seasonally topical blog. The simple reason is that I use this photo as my Windows wallpaper on my computer and it keeps reminding me of its presence and (to me at least) attractiveness, every day.

You can learn a lot by looking at dead leaves. For instance, you can tell what kind of forest community (what kind of trees are growing together) the leaves are a part of. In this case, it’s primarily a community of oaks, beeches and birches. From that information, you should be able to tell something about the forest’s climate and geology, as well as the chemistry of its soil. A veteran Bergen County hiker might be able even to identify the woods where the photo was snapped.

Beyond the ecology, it’s the structure of the leaves themselves that draws me in. Dead as they are, they maintain their intricately engineered structure after the abscission process has nudged them from their parent trees. Fortified with cellulose and lignin, the outer form, especially of the oaks, may endure for months or even years before offering up its structure to dehydration, oxidation and fungal decay, the biosphere’s slow but efficient recycling machine.

A few months earlier, our fallen leaves had been vibrant solar-powered food factories, sucking up Carbon Dioxide and puffing out Oxygen in the process of producing carbo-hydrates, proteins, fats and an amazing cornucopia of other complex organic compounds ranging from pigments to toxic alkaloids. The cell layers of each leaf are engineered for controlled light absorption and gas exchange, while the organelles within each cell are working their magic in biochemical pathways that boggle the minds of biology students and should, when considered without naturalistic bias, cause nightmares for evolutionists. One glance at even a simplified depiction of the Calvin Cycle (oh, that’s what that funny diagram is) should tip any objective mind toward Intelligent Design and away from mindless evolution. (By the way, that biochemical pathway is named after Melvin, not John, as much of a fan of the latter I may be.)

Another glance at our forest floor detritus has me contemplating subjects more profound, such as the condition of the organized church and our individual Christian lives, about externals versus internals and such. I know that’s a stretch, but that’s how the SAITUAHFTC Principle* works (or should work) in this blog.

There is no doubt that the old denominational churches, as well as so-called non-denominational churches, are in big trouble. They have strayed from biblical orthodoxy in countless ways, ordaining women and homosexuals, centering on entertainment, showmanship and seeker-friendly worship—and often straying from the very foundations of the Gospel. Even the conservative churches, while maintaining strict adherence to reformation doctrine, seem sometimes to be spiritually dead, their outward structure hiding inward dryness and decay. The charismatic groups, while claiming to be “filled with the Spirit,” often exhibit bizarre emotionalism, mostly devoid of doctrinal content, stretching the limits of biblical “decent and orderly” behavior in their worship.

So what’s new? The problem with the churches is that they are filled with a bunch of weird, miscreant oddballs called—sinners, saved by grace. And such has it been from the start. The first century churches were a handful for their leaders, always straying into either legalism or permissiveness of gross immorality, protognosticism and other false philosophies. Most of the New Testament epistles were written, at least in part, as correctives of such misbehavior and errant thought. And only two of the letters sent by Apostle John to local congregations included no condemnation from Jesus. The church at Sardis, in particular, was a really “dead leaf” bunch. And the Lord threatened to push the Laodicean leaf off the tree (spew them out of His mouth).

Then there is the rest of church history—one heresy after another having to be fought over and corrected; the construction of a monstrous, legalistic hierarchical organizational structure, gross immorality in leadership, even selling tickets out of Purgatory—so bad that God had to bring the Reformation to bring His Church back to its roots.

One of the tenets of the Reformation is “semper reformanda”—always reforming. That doesn’t mean always changing, as seems to be the habit of the modern church, but rather, constantly re-examining, detecting and correcting our constant tendency to drift from the truth.

But thank God that the dead leaf analogy that started this harangue is only partially and temporarily consistent with truth! Yes, dead leaf churches and congregations have always had to be pushed off the tree—for the survival of the tree. Dead leaves are not only useless, they can—through the accumulation of snow in winter—cause damage to the branches and the entire tree. It is the massive tree—roots, trunk and branches—His Church—that He promised would survive through thick and thin, until He returns.

In another sense, we, as individual believers, are His leaves. Are we clinging to our Branch? No! The Branch is clinging to us—with His almighty strength! He will never let us go! But we too must constantly be practicing semper reformanda, detecting signs of dryness, returning to His Word for nourishment and strength, as we endure the vagaries of life in the forest of His fallen creation. The mere thought of becoming mere skeletons of cellulose and lignin should literally put the fear of God in us.

Yes, dead leaves can get us thinking!

*SAITUAHFTC: Start anywhere in the universe and head for the Cross.

Soli Deo Gloria

A Webby Declaration

2010-01-07T13:02:00.006-05:00

The pictured Barn Spider has long ago headed back to the barn for the winter, but I’ve dragged him out photographically because he is such a great example of practically everything. Sooner or later, we’ll probably use him to illustrate several aspects of the intelligent design of his anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. But this time, we will wander far from the biological barn and into the theological woodshed.

As Sir Walter (Scott, that is) said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” Our spider’s web seems a bit tangled, primarily because this nosy photographer got too intimate with a macro lens. But right now, I’ll get nosy with a subject of theological controversy brought about by the publication of a document called The Manhattan Declaration. (Click on the link and then on the “The Declaration” tab to read the entire document.)

The document is signed by a long list of conservative religious leaders and more than three hundred thousand others who are rightly troubled with the state of American society. It says, essentially, to paraphrase Howard Beale, “We’re as mad as heaven and we’re not going to take this anymore!” And we’re willing to go to jail as a last resort, if civil disobedience is the only possible response.

The three principles being defended in the Declaration are (1) the sanctity of human life, (2) the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and (3) the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

So where is the web? Where are the tangles? Anyone with even a semblance of a biblical worldview or even a basic human sense of moral values should agree with the Declaration’s premise that we shouldn’t kill babies or old people or people with disabilities; that the “traditional” view of marriage is the only sane one; and that the U. S. Constitution should ensure our right to free speech and public expression of religious views.

The problem, in the view of several conservative Christian theologians, lies with the following statement: “It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.”

Proclaim the Gospel? Which gospel? The three groups represented proclaim three different and antithetical gospels!

One of the representative sects of Christendom proclaims a gospel that is, when closely examined, a monstrosity of legalism, ritualism, idolatry and ultimately, blasphemy. It presents a savior who doesn’t really save. Another group practices a religion based almost entirely on its ritualistic liturgy but is mostly unintelligible to outsiders.

Only evangelical Christianity, and then only in its pure Reformation variety, proclaims the true biblical plan of salvation: salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone—thus giving all glory to God alone. In short, it has a Savior who really saves His people from their sins (Matt 1:21).

So the authors of the Declaration dare not proclaim “the Gospel” within their document. They are stuck in the tangles of a theological spider web. While their intensions are good from a moralistic viewpoint, their unwarranted ecumenism thwarts their ability to fight the real battle being waged in this fallen world—the spiritual battle for the hearts and souls of fallen humanity. Or at least, their ecumenical entanglement has them somewhat unequally yoked (2 Cor 6:14).

Moral and societal woes are ultimately spiritual problems. We can take potshots at them and gain some superficial, temporary victories, but only God’s sovereign grace, capturing and transforming sinful human hearts, will win the war.

I’ll leave the links to The Manhattan Declaration here for the time being because it has much to offer. But ultimately it, like our pictured arachnid, might have to go back to the barn. I am still praying about its ultimate disposition.

As one of my favorite theologians says, “The Gospel is ours to proclaim, not to edit.”

Soli Deo Gloria

Merry Christmas to All!

2009-12-20T14:40:00.008-05:00

Christmas Holly’s thorny leaves and blood-red fruit—a hint of the true reason for the incarnation

She will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:21 (English Standard Version)

The Birth of Jesus Christ
1In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels
8And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. 10And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!"
15When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." 16And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
21And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.

Luke 2(English Standard Version)

Soli Deo Gloria

Hamamelis Yes--Hobgoblins No!

2009-10-30T17:25:00.009-04:00

Well, it’s here, again—Halloween. Big orange pepos (specialized berries with tough rinds) are everywhere; and the little (and not so little) hobgoblins and probably quite a few “balloon boy flying saucers”, Sarah Palins and Obamas will be hitting up the neighbors for unhealthy treats.

You can probably tell by that lead that I am not thrilled about Halloween. It’s the devil’s holiday and I don’t like giving him any undeserved attention. So the closest I’ll come to recognizing the day is to offer the above photographs of a lovable but rather odd native tree. It’s called Witch-hazel, wherein lies the stupid Halloween joke.

Hamamelis virginiana is a small understory tree, usually less than 20 feet in height. It is straggly, usually with several trunks. In fact, some would even call it a shrub, rather than a tree. Nevertheless, it’s one of my favorite woody plants. It’s easy to identify and has so many unusual features that it’s just fun to look at during all seasons.

Everything about Witch-hazel seems irregular, like it should be found on the dented cans table at Stop & Shop. Take the leaves (the pictured ones were the only ones left on the tree in late October). Does that look like any other tree leaf, nicely symmetrical and pointy, with smooth or evenly toothed margins? Look at the base of the leaf—the two sides don’t match. And the edges of the leaf—all wavy and irregular, like they were cut out by a Kindergartner with plastic scissors.

Even more unusual are the flowers. What respectable tree blooms in October, after it has shed its leaves? And look at those flowers—yes, those stringy things are flower petals. You call those petals? I don’t know how those flowers get pollinated, but I suppose there are some insect visitors around to do the job, laughing all the while.

But it's the weirdness that makes Witch-hazel so fascinating and lovable.

Of course, when we think of Witch-hazel, we are likely to think first about a certain aroma and a cool feeling, back when barbers routinely splashed Witch-hazel lotion on your neck after your haircut. It’s been a long time since any barber has given me that treat. I wonder why they don’t do it any more. On my next visit to the tonsorial parlor, I must ask for, or maybe even demand a cooling splash.

What is that lotion anyway? For one thing, it’s evidence of the exquisite complexity of plants and their talents as biochemists. The extract from the leaves and twigs of Witch-hazel contain a virtual cornucopia of complex organics: tannin, gallic acid, catechins, proanthocyanins, flavonoids (kaempferol, quercetin), essential oil (carvacrol, eugenol, hexenol), choline, saponins, and bitters. (You can click on each of those fancy names to discover more about them.) The drug store/barbershop solution contains some alcohol as well. Because it is an astringent, it shrinks tissues (seals any leaks that a razor nick may produce) and is used to treat various other skin-related problems.

But just think of the genetic instructions that are necessary to code for all those molecules, as well as the cellular mechanisms needed to manufacture them! We just have no excuse for claiming that plants are “simple” in any way. Just because they don’t jump around or do other things that your dog does, doesn’t mean that they are any less complex. It also means that we have no excuse for thinking they could have evolved from anything else by some mindless chance process. (Periodically, why not check the Creation/Evolution Headlines site in the "Links to good stuff" on your right? Dr. Coppedge and crew have a remarkable talent for uncovering logical falacies in supposedly legitimate scientific sources.)

I know, I know. We are supposed to be doing special things this year in honor of Mr. Darwin, just because it’s his 200th birthday. But the facts are these: he’s dead and his theory is hanging on by a thread—not in the minds of his sycophants but in the eyes of real experimental science. Every day, it seems, science reveals some new molecular machine in living cells that absolutely precludes life having originated by chance or that it can increase in complexity by mutations and natural selection.

Just a peek at one small, scraggly tree has me reflecting on the greatness of our Creator God. So why should I dress up and give one little bit of honor to the devil or paganism--or a 200 year-old dead man with a failed theory?

But if, just if, I were to backslide, what would I be this Halloween? I know—I would dress up as a witch—a pungently scented witch called Hazel.

Soli Deo Gloria

A Prolonged Summer Blog Hiatus

2009-09-08T10:48:00.003-04:00

TV shows, as a matter of course, take their summer hiatuses and force us to watch re-runs. Well, Bios & Logos has taken a prolonged hiatus, not in imitation of the entertainment industry, but just... because! But soon the juices will flow and fresh material will come with that flow. Check back often--perhaps even later this week--and be surprised. Meanwhile, if you are not a regular reader, just scroll down this page or even click to previous years in the archives. You may find some enjoyable and useful old stuff.

Soli Deo Gloria

Dazzling bracts

2009-06-11T19:20:00.015-04:00

When it comes to botanical structures, bracts are the ones we probably think of least often. In fact, I’ll venture a guess that the great bulk of humanity hasn’t given them even a single thought—or even knows what one is. Actually, until dogwood season this year, my bractish meditations had languished—ever since last year’s dogwood season.

Bract (n). a modified leaf associated with a flower or inflorescence of flowers.

Oh, that’s helpful—not! But a picture is always worth a thousand hackneyed expressions, so a glance at our dogwood photographs will give you the opportunity of seeing hundreds of colorful specimens.

Now tell me the truth. Aren’t you muttering, “You mean those pink things aren’t petals?” Don’t feel bad—we’re all guilty of falling into that botanical sin.

Going back to the definition, if the pink things are bracts, where are the “flowers or inflorescences of flowers”? Right in the middle, where, if the whole ensemble were a flower, we would expect to see stamens and pistils, the reproductive parts of a flower.

Now that we’re oriented, we see that each flower—whoops, inflorescence of a dozen or more flowers—is surrounded by four colorful bracts. The flowers themselves, as you can see, are greenish-yellowish and minimalist, each with four petals and in various stages of opening.

Why big, colorful bracts—or big colorful flower petals, for that matter? Billboards, of course, to attract pollinators. They must work. Otherwise, why would dogwoods go to the trouble of investing a tremendous amount of energy to construct them? Just imagine the number of energy-sapping mitotic cell divisions it takes to produce that display--and the biochemical pathways necessary to produce the red pigment molecules.

Actually, wild dogwood, Cornus florida, usually has white, non-pigmented bracts. But, according to my favorite botany teacher, there was a mutation to a tree near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania that somehow produced the pink color. And all pink dogwoods are offspring of that tree. I have often wondered how a mutation could produce a complex red pigment where there was none before, since mutations always destroy information rather than adding to it. But who am I to disagree with Dr. Kuhnen? Nobody messes with Dr. Kuhnen. But then again, maybe she has rethought the matter by now. And dogwoods do know how to make red pigments for their fruit. So I’ll just keep cogitating on the matter.

At any rate, breeders, since then, have produced nearly twenty different cultivars from the wild types. I’m guessing our pictured specimens are “Amerika Touch-o-Pink.” Some wise nurseryman will no doubt show me up.

Now we should deal seriously with stories you will find all around the internet (do a Google search and you will find them—look for “The Legend of the Dogwood” or such) about how the rough notches in the dogwood bracts, often tinged with brown, represent the nail holes in Christ’s cross—and that Jesus was crucified on a cross made from a dogwood—and that dogwood trees were once the size of oaks—and that since then, dogwoods, out of deference to Christ’s sacrifice, have become only small understory trees….

Now hold on there. I enjoy a fable or good story as much as anyone. They’ve been around almost forever. Old Aesop wrote a ton of enjoyable ones (although most of them seem to have been real downers. )

But when it comes to the Cross of Christ, fables and legends are out. That Cross and the event that took place on it are real history—momentous history! The Cross, and the subsequent resurrection, represent the turning point of human history (look at the calendar). Any attempt to fictionalize the Crucifixion, during which the Sinless Son of God took upon Himself the sins of His elect people, is so horridly blasphemous as to be unthinkable. The Crucifixion was not a pretty event and should not be turned into a pretty story. But the good news of substitutionary atonement is pretty—very pretty! (II Cor. 5:21).

Christ may not have died on a dogwood—but He did create the dogwood—bracts and all. Think about THAT! (John 1:3)

Soli Deo Gloria

About alien mustards and other cruciferous oddities

2009-05-25T10:58:00.015-04:00

After more than a month without a bloggy condiment from the bioman, it’s about time I snatched the Gulden’s from the fridge and spread the word about the Brassicas or Crucifers—the mustard family, that is. It’s also called the cabbage family. Take your pick. Either is correct, because botanical taxonomists are a fickle lot—keep changing their minds and the names of plant families. So technically, it’s either Cruciferae or Brassicaceae.

We can’t do justice to all the members of the family. After all, they include a whole range of your favorite—or not—veggies, not just cabbage, but broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, beets, radish, wasabi, and of course, mustard. We eat their flowers, stems, roots, leaves, seeds—raw, boiled, steamed, slawed, mashed, ground—whatever.

But wait—that’s not what this piece started out to be about. As you can see by the photos, it is supposed to be about a couple of pestiferous members of the family—invasive aliens that can ruin things for our native wildflowers.

The most infamous is of course the white-flowered one, Alliaria officinalis, the dreaded and deadly Garlic Mustard, which has virtually taken over many wooded areas and crowded out and poisoned out many native wildflowers. Once it grabs hold, it is almost impossible to eliminate, try as we may, by pulling or cutting, as witnessed by the photo of the hapless soul wading in a sea of the stuff (Sorry, Jim—didn’t make it to the last pulling session.)

The yellow-flowered species is another alien, one that prefers sunnier fields and meadows instead of shady woodlands. It’s called Winter Cress or Rocket. No one seems to get exercised by its appearance, perhaps because it’s prettier and doesn’t transform its environment into a weedy mess, as does its white-flowered relative. Its massive displays of sunny yellow brighten the early spring scene, so we usually don’t get xenophobic about it. Probably the worst thing it can do is to crowd out other aliens.

These mustards are masters at conquering the landscape because they are fast. They sprout fast; they bloom fast; they set seed fast, in stringy pods called siliques. So if you don’t get rid of them fast—before they go to seed—they will foil any attempts to eliminate them for years to come.

Their fastness also makes some mustard species valuable research plants. In fact, a University of Wisconsin geneticist has bred a really fast version of the common mustard, Brassica rapa. The plants bloom fourteen days after planting, so students can study their complete life cycle conveniently in the classroom. Appropriately, they are called Wisconsin Fast Plants®. Read about them here.

There is another Crucifer that has made its (really long) name in the science lab, a tiny weed called Arabidopsis thaliana. Because of its short life cycle and convenience for laboratory culture, it has become what biologists call a model organism—one that has been studied extensively in hundreds of labs and has taught us more than almost any other about the genetics, embryology, growth and reproduction of the flowering plants.

One final Brassica-related fact, one that may disappoint or even distress you, is that there is no such thing as a canola. If you use canola oil in your kitchen (and I wish you wouldn’t—but that’s another story), I’ll bet you have wondered where it came from. I’m sorry to inform you that it came from Rapeseed, Brassica napus. Rapeseed oil is valuable as a lubricant—but it tastes awful and can be poisonous because of its high concentration of erucic acid. But some Canadian growers bred a low-acid version whose oil is suitable (some say) for human consumption and named it Canola—short for Canadian Oil Low Acid. My advice is to stick with olive oil, even though it’s not a Crucifer. It’s an honest oil, one that has nothing to hide.

We have wandered far in field, forest, laboratory and kitchen here. But now it is time to give thanks to the Creator for His gift of the Brassicas, alien or not, pestiferous or not, edible or not, for their contributions to nutrition, research and natural beauty. They are master architects and biochemical engineers, whose unimaginable complexity we are just beginning to recognize. Even Charles Darwin acknowledged their imagined evolutionary origin (along with all flowering plants) to be an “abominable mystery.”

And I will be thankful for getting through this piece without using the expression, “cut the mustard,” whose etymology I recently read about, but the details of which I promptly forgot. Maybe eating more cruciferous vegetables would help my memory.

Soli Deo Gloria

A lily is never quite enough!

2009-04-12T14:28:00.016-04:00

In 1919, a World War I soldier brought a suitcase full of big flower bulbs home to Oregon and passed them out to his friends. They grew them. They liked the sweet smelling, pure white lilies and started cultivating them. The climate of the Oregon coast proved ideal for growing Lilium longiflorum, and by 1945 there were more than a thousand Easter lily growers up and down the west coast.

But it takes a lot of work and patience to grow the bulbs—three years of planting, culling, separating, fertilizing, replanting—not to mention forcing them to bloom at just the right time of year. So now, only about ten commercial growers produce most of the lilies that pop up in stores and nurseries for sale at Easter time.

These lilies have become almost synonymous with Easter, along with bunnies and eggs. While those symbols are of pagan origin, as is the name Easter (we should be calling it Resurrection Day), the pure white lily can at least offer some imperfect analogies to the meaning of Passion Week, the turning point in human history.

Let’s begin with the color—pure white. The lily’s whiteness comes from the refraction of light within its cells, which act as miniature lenses. But notice, from our photographs, that without the proper lighting, the blossom may appear dingy and brownish. In fact, nothing can compare with Christ’s pure, holy whiteness. As Christians, we are robed in the white robes of Christ’s righteousness, not our own; and the dinginess of our old fallen human nature lurks within until, by His grace, we are transformed into His likeness.

How about the flower’s three-part structure? As a monocot, the lily has its parts in threes or multiples of three. I suppose we can make an analogy to the mystery of the Trinity—but again, it would be an pitifully imperfect one. Any little illustration of the Trinity falls miserably short. We use little diagrams and comparisons, simply because our puny human minds cannot embrace the concept of Holy God, one in being and essence, three in persons—let alone the hypostatic union: Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man, one in person. We believe in God on the high order of Trinity because His Word teaches it in so many ways.

As I write, here in my “man cave”, the fragrance of the Easter lily wafts in from the living room. The flowers are pumping out complex volatile molecules called terpenoids, their odor now diffusing throughout space. It’s a pleasant perfume, but one plant is quite enough for my home. Too many of these flowers in a closed space can produce so much of the stuff that the atmosphere can become oppressive and sickening. We can make a pretty good analogy here to the Gospel, the true Gospel (not the weak, inoffensive substitute preached in so many churches today) of the birth, death, burial and resurrection of Christ, as it is spread throughout the world. As the Apostle Paul said in II Corinthians 2: 15-16, “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.” The true Gospel is heavenly sweetness to the ears of the believer, but an offense to those who refuse its message.

Easter lilies do not naturally bloom at Easter. They must be induced to bloom by artificially chilling the bulbs and altering day/night cycles. But Easter is perfectly timed. Of our Christian holidays, Easter is the one that is celebrated at the right time of year, coinciding as it does with Passover. Christ is our Passover. The first communion meal was a Passover meal. All aspects of the Passion Week were perfectly timed. All the actors in the original “Passion Play” did exactly what they were supposed to do, when they were foreordained to do it. There was no adlibbing. There were no accidents. Jesus’ death was not a fortuitous accident. It was all an integral part of God’s magnificent plan of the salvation of His people.

We said that it takes a lot of work to grow Easter lilies. Think of how much work by how many people must be involved from the time of the original planting of bulbs to the delivery of the blooming plants to nursery or store. But the work of salvation is by One and One alone! God did the work in the person of Christ—alone! Christians work because they are saved—not to achieve salvation. Sadly, all other religions, including some that claim to be Christian, insist that we must cooperate with God to achieve salvation. They present Easter lily gospels—hard work to produce short-lived plants that must be planted and worked for, year after year. Christ died once—only once—a sacrifice that propitiated God’s holy wrath—perfectly—for those who would believe.

In addition to the one Easter lily on my coffee table, there are a few silk flower arrangements here and there, mainly because I am too lazy to take care of real houseplants. So the substitutes provide some labor-free color around the place. But it would be an insult to use these dust collectors as an analogy of our True Substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. Substitutionary Atonement is a big, fancy term, but it is one of the most important ones going! Christ died, not as a mere example for us to follow and not as an example of suffering, but in the place of—instead of—those who would believe. He is the true substitute! We sinners deserve nothing but death and eternal misery. By pure grace, because of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice, we have life instead!

And finally, let’s reflect on resurrection—what Easter is all about. The Easter lily may provide us with an imperfect analogy. After all, a really dead looking lily bulb is buried and in due time comes to life. But of course, the bulb wasn’t really dead at all, but merely in a dormant state. The sinless Son of God, Jesus, having been crucified, was dead—really dead, the consequence of His taking our sin—all of it—upon Himself on the cross. And any earthly analogy to that truth is so inadequate that it becomes idolatrous—even blasphemous—to think such a thing. His was not a mere temporary resuscitation. It was resurrection from death to everlasting life. He is risen. He is risen indeed!

So let us take the Easter lily for what it is, a fantastically complex creation, given to us as a tiny reminder of God’s unfathomable grace—but totally inadequate (as is this puny essay) as a representation of the Gospel.

I am posting this near the end of Resurrection Day (in the eastern United States) so that we may reflect on all that we did and didn’t do to honor Him on this, the commemoration of the most important weekend in human history. Most certainly we didn’t—nor could we ever—do enough. That’s why we need The Savior!

Soli Deo Gloria

An Early Spring Salmagundi

2009-04-04T13:48:00.020-04:00

Sorry, but you’ll have to bypass the primary definition of salmagundi—no fancy salad platters here—but today’s photos surely do represent a heterogeneous mixture of the good, bad and ugly. A couple of visits to Campgaw Reservation and the Celery Farm in the first weeks of spring yielded a bit of each.

Somewhere along the line, the American Beech lost the instructions for making very good abscission layers—those thin layers of cells that get dissolved by enzymes come fall, causing the petioles to separate from the twigs and the leaves to utter that familiar phrase, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” That’s fine with me, as the sprinkle of café au lait softens the blacks, grays and darker browns of the winter and early spring woodland. And the fact that the dead leaves tend to droop and curl probably reduces their surface area and prevents the buildup of snow, one of the several reasons that most deciduous trees like to get rid of their old leaves. It’s just one more reason that the American Beech is one of my favorite trees. Pin oaks like to hang on to their leaves, too. So I guess I had better add them to my favorites list as well.

As long as I am breaking my promise to lay off the fungi for a while, I might as well do it with something particularly disgusting. You will agree, I’m sure, that there is nothing even mildly attractive about Black Knot. Several reference books I looked at described it in scatological terms. I won’t go that far, but it does look like something on a stick. It’s a nasty parasite that can wreak havoc in a cherry orchard as well as with Wild Black Cherry trees. This ugly fungus kills young branches and whole trees if given the opportunity. Don’t cherry trees have enough to endure with tent caterpillars?

Euonymus alata (Cork Bush, Winged Euonymus or Burning Bush) is an absolute pest when it invades our woodlands, since it often displaces our native plants. But don’t blame it on the plant—blame it on the people who import it for ornamental use. This shrub has ways of escaping from yards into the woods, especially since birds have a yen for its bright orange seeds. Nevertheless, it’s a classy bush in its own right, if only for its unique twig design. Just try to imagine the amount of genetic information and precise engineering that goes into growing those pure cork, razor-edged wings out of a green twig. Nothing random about it! I wouldn’t have a negative thought about this Burning Bush if it didn’t often displace our native Burning Bush, an eponymous Euonymus (E. atropurpureus), also called Eastern Wahoo.

I refuse to get into a discussion here about bulbs, corms, rhizomes and tubers and their distinctions. Such conversations can get quite contentious and ugly. What we need right now is a true harbinger of spring. And the appearance of crocuses is certainly that. There are about eighty species of Crocus, thirty or more of which are cultivated. The most commercially valuable species is Crocus sativus, the stigmas of which yield the spice saffron, a very expensive way to make food yellow. There are fall crocuses too, but they aren’t harbingers. Fall doesn’t have harbingers. Only spring has harbingers. By the way, crocuses grow from corms, but I’ll leave it to you to look up the definition.

These brief springtime treks have once again reminded me of the importance of the biblical worldview in appreciating and understanding the significance of our environment. The good, the bad and the ugly aspects seen in our salmagundi have reminded me again of the framed motto on my desk: “If you don’t understand Genesis 3, you really don’t understand anything.” The very good world of the original Creation was wounded terribly by the entrance of sin. It is still God’s good Creation, but it and we personally desperately need to be bought back from the ravages of sin. It is our hope (assurance) that it will happen soon. Genesis 3:17-19 and Romans 8:18-24 are the passages to reflect on today. To read them in context ("Text without context is pretext") pop open the old-fashioned paper version--always more satisfying!

Soli Deo Gloria

Fungi have to eat too, you know!

2009-03-28T18:48:00.011-04:00

I’m sure you have caught up with the news that a honey mushroom fungus is consuming a forest in eastern Oregon. After all, it’s been doing it for over 2000 years.

Yes, genetic tests have pretty well confirmed that the 2300-acre fungus must have originated from one spore, and so is considered to be a single organism—the world’s largest, at an estimated 605 tons.

Consuming a forest, you say? Of course! Fungi, after all, are consumers (as are we), meaning simply that they and we can’t make organic compounds out of carbon dioxide and water like green plants can—so we have to consume ready-made food.

Unlike those clever lichen fungi in the last post, who partnered up with photosynthetic algae, most fungi must attack living or dead things with their digestive enzymes and absorb their victuals in liquefied form.

In the case of our honey mushroom, the food source is living Douglas Fir and other trees. And that makes this fungus a nasty parasite. It starts at the roots, grows up under the bark and eats the sapwood. And it sends ugly black “shoestrings” from tree to tree, thus spreading the destruction.

Doesn’t sound like a mushroom to me. Well, by now you realize that a fungus is always more than meets the eye. The bulk of our humongous fungus’s 600-ton mass consists of the mycelium, that mass of fibers underground and under the tree bark—eating and growing and spreading…eating and growing and spreading….eating and growing and spreading….

But once in a while, a portion of that mycelium gets happy, bunches together and grows upward, breaks the surface—and becomes a ‘shroom, the purpose of which is to produce reproductive spores in order to spread the misery. And that is usually the only part of the organism we ever see, unless we go poking.

Where does that leave us? With the saprophytes, of course. They have to eat too, you know. And that’s a good thing. Saprophytic fungi are the folks that do the bulk of the decomposing and recycling by eating dead plants, dead animals, dead everything. Without their services, dead stuff would pile up, fast. Soil would be depleted of nutrients and food cycles would grind to a halt—and so would we.

What a magnificent plan the Creator has devised to maintain stability in His sin-cursed biosphere! It is simple in principle, yet so intricate in detail and vast in scope that it has kept ecologists busy for decades trying to figure out how the biosphere stays so balanced—and how we human sinners keep trying to throw it out of balance.

You will have to admit that fungi are different from the rest of us. It took biologists a long time to admit this—they kept wanting to call them plants. But finally they had to give in, given all the weirdness—no separate cells to speak of, just long tubes (hyphae) of cytoplasm; a different substance making up their cell walls and a host of other biochemical and metabolic oddities. So the taxonomists (the classification guys) finally assigned the fungi a new kingdom: Kingdom Fungi. Is that too logical or what?

Fungi are highly skilled biochemists, able to produce complex digestive enzymes for their food-getting operations—and a variety of organic compounds that will kill you if given the chance—or at least make you wish you were dead, by damaging various internal organs. In fact, I wouldn’t chance eating any of the beautiful specimens in the above photographs. Are their sophisticated chemical laboratories designed for defense, or just a part of the Edenic curse? I plan to ask the Creator when I see Him. And to avoid meeting Him before my assigned time, it’s supermarket mushrooms only for me.

Well, it’s spring now, and things are starting to sprout, bloom, migrate and generally get happy. So maybe I’ll be able to lay off the fungi after this post. But you never can tell. Just as I was writing this, up popped an email from Amazon.com advertising this new arrival. Will I be able to resist?

Soli Deo Gloria

Beatrix Potter's Favorite Pets

2009-03-22T13:30:00.009-04:00

After scrolling through the photos, I trust you are as much in love with lichens as Beatrix Potter was. What, you didn’t know? You don’t mean the Peter Rabbit lady? Yes, that lady.

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) grew up loving dogs, her pet rabbits, Benjamin and Peter—and fungi. And she liked painting them. Lichens, especially, fascinated her. In fact, she was one of the first people to suggest that lichens were some sort of symbiotic organisms. But no one believed her because she was a female. No EEOC in Victorian England!

So Bea’s career as a professional lichenologist was over before it began.

Potter version 2.0: writer and illustrator of children’s stories—Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, et al—earning her a more handsome income than lichens would ever have afforded her.

Nevertheless, Ms. Potter’s early adventures with the crusty symbionts helped awaken science’s interest in one of creation’s most fascinating phenomena—no thanks to Darwin. You see, at the time, any suggestion that nature could involve cooperation, rather than bloody competition and survival of the fittest was, well—anti-Darwinian. Now we know better—than Charlie D., that is.

A lichen is not, after all, a single organism; it’s a marriage of two or even three totally different organisms living as one cooperative household and creating what amounts to a new and identifiable species—in fact thousands of species, depending on the combinations of single organisms involved. The symbiotic cooperation involves the fact that one partner, an alga, is autotrophic—green—photosynthetic—makes food, while the other, a fungus, is heterotrophic—needs an external food source—but is good at soaking up available water and dissolving rocks to get minerals.

The alga-fungus combination, therefore, can live where neither partner could comfortably live separately. As you can see by the photos, that means on rocks and tree trunks—or even on frozen tundra soil. It’s a great arrangement. The biologists are not nearly as cooperative with each other and keep quarreling about words like parasitism, commensalism and mutualism with regard to lichens. Guess what? The lichens couldn’t care less. They just do what lichens do—cooperate to survive.

And survive they do. Their biomass exceeds that of all the life in the oceans, not primarily due to the rather skimpy examples we have in New Jersey, but because of the extensive ground cover they provide in northern climes, like the arctic tundra—good reindeer food and good medicine for natives of the area.

We can learn a lot from the lichens, about cooperation, of course, but also about living on a rock. Not just about the mundane life on the “third rock from the Sun,” but about living on The Rock—The Son.

A little Bible meditation will give you a break from my pitiful prose and offer something of eternal value. (I’ve made it easy by providing a “click-on” version—but real men and women will also want to crack open the paper version to read the verses in their contexts.)

Let’s start with my life verses: Psalm 40:1-3 (Actually, He waited—and grabbed me when He was ready—I usually don’t wait patiently for anything.) And by the way, salvation is one event in which there is no cooperative effort. God does it all. Man-made religions always want us to think that we can help. Biblical Christianity is the only non-“Hamburger Helper” faith.

And a few more to click on and mull over: Matthew 7:24; 1 Corinthians 10:4; and most certainly Psalm 18:2;

Finally, as the name of our pioneer lichenologist should remind us, God is the ultimate Potter—we are clay in His hands. And He will mold us into vessels for His ultimate glory and honor—something certainly much more than a crusty patch on an inert boulder.

Soli Deo Gloria

Feeling musty

2009-03-16T10:16:00.009-04:00

I opened the carton, peeled away several layers of bubble-wrap and shrink-wrap—and there it was—my copy of Edwin Way Teale’s Circle of the Seasons! What a blast from the past; what a flood of memories; what other clichés will I use to describe the experience? And what is that smell? It’s the smell of a fifty-six year-old book just released from airtight shrink-wrap after a two-week entrapment. Musty!

Musty or not, I was excited to receive this nearly pristine first edition copy of a long lost friend from the past—for six dollars plus shipping! That’s only two bucks more than its original retail price!

All the packaging, aromas and pricing aside, what was so special about receiving this old book? As mentioned in an earlier post, Edwin Way Teale was the author who, more than almost any other, sparked my interest in nature and nature photography. The brief daily entries and full page, extremely sharp black and white photographs had me going back to the book time after time in appreciation of Teale’s descriptive and photographic skills.

Let’s see if it still sparks. A couple of samples should tell us.

How about the January 9th entry:

THE NOBLE RED MAN. The “Noble Red Man” never was and never is—it is not races but individuals that are noble or courageous or ignoble and craven or considerate or persistent or philosophical or reasonable. The race gets credit when the percentage of noble individuals is high.

Oh, my! I can almost hear the PC police knocking at the door. I don’t think we could get away with that one these days.

Let’s try January 13:

OPTIMISM. Optimism is more likely if we keep our eyes on the average, the general, rather than the exceptions, the individual. The bat caught on burdock burs—this is the exception, the tragic, the unusual event. It is best not to dwell too long on the exceptions. But what if we are exceptions?

Huh? Other than seeming to encourage mediocrity and fear of risk taking, I fail to see much “spark” in this one.

OK, we’ll give him one more chance. Maybe it gets better later in the year. Let’s go for July 22:

BATTLE BY BOUNCE. Two bluejays in the backyard are quarreling over food. As each rushes toward the other, it bounces high in the air. This is a battle by bounce. The birds seem buoyant, as though partly filled with helium.

This one is at least based on a personal observation of nature in action. So I’ll give it a C, or maybe an Incomplete for its lack of detail.

Oh, Eddie, the spark is gone!

To be fair, I chose these examples mainly for their brevity and for their lack of luster. Many of the longer pieces are more descriptive and are fine examples of old fashioned natural history writing. And many of Teale’s other books, such as North with the Spring and Grassroot Jungles, having a more narrative style and without the constraints of the daily snippet format, were better written, as I recall.

Why the disappointment with my renewed acquaintance with my old friend after a half century? In a word (a very long word), it’s Weltanschauung, that is, Worldview. In high school and even in college, when I first read Teale, I frankly didn’t have much of one. All was naturalism and pragmatism—whatever the teachers and professors threw at me and whatever it took to get through. It seemed exciting and useful enough at the time—but no more.

Looking at the world through the Creator’s eyes makes all the difference. Seeing nature for what it is—His creation, wonderfully engineered and intricately crafted—is what makes it sparkle. A naturalistic, evolutionary worldview, because it is dead wrong, kills the spark. And because it doesn’t give credit where all the credit is due, it is inherently idolatrous—worshiping the created, rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).

And nature writing without the spark of the biblical Weltanschauung turns out to be pretty musty—no matter how long it’s been out of the shrink-wrap.

Soli Deo Gloria

The Last Snow Hike?

2009-03-09T11:47:00.033-04:00

Click on the images to enjoy them even snowier

After our recent snowfall, possibly the season’s last, I decided I had better get my boots on and head to some areas of photographic potential if I wanted to get any snowy scenes. After all, it’s March, and spring is nigh.

So on March fourth, I marched forth (sorry) into Campgaw Mountain County Reservation, not far from home, and hiked the lengths of Hemlock and Indian Trails, shutter-snapping as I trudged on already well-trodden paths.

It’s surprising what snow cover does to a landscape, besides the obvious whitening. The pristine blanket both adds and subtracts detail. Gone is the confusion of fallen twigs, branches, leaf litter and smaller scattered glacial boulders. Added are shadows, both stark and subtle, of tree trunks and in the gentle irregularities in the snowy surface. Larger boulders, in other seasons often unnoticed among the clutter, now show off their surface detail of cracks, nicks and scratches, evidence of the rough treatment they received during their glacial journey long ago.

The simplified landscape almost forces us to see those finer details—the great variety of color and texture of the crustose and foliose lichens decorating the boulders; the unmistakable curly bark of the yellow birch; the heavily lenticeled bark of the black birch, sprinkled with tiny brown fungi; a snow-capped log, showing signs both of decay and of its former life; the straight-laced, strictly parallel branch veins of a fallen beech leaf.

But while enjoying all that which is revealed by the snow, we can easily forget that snow itself is one of the most amazing phenomena, indeed one of the most unique substances in all of Creation. The idea that sparkling, intricately patterned hexagonal crystals of frozen water can fall from the sky in enough quantity to cover the earth, sometimes several feet deep, is amazing in itself. But the uniqueness of water as a substance is even more so.

The three-atom water molecule is polar, positive at the hydrogen end, negative at the oxygen end. That allows the molecules to cling to each other and gives water its unique properties—properties that allow life to exist on our planet. Water is harder to heat or cool, harder to freeze, melt or evaporate, than almost any other substance. Instead of continuing to contract as it nears the freezing point, it expands, making it less dense, so that ice floats instead of sinking. (Who wants to skate on the bottom of a pond?) And water can dissolve more substances than almost any other solvent.

Of course, the amazing water molecule is just one of hundreds of design features, both terrestrial and astronomical, that the Creator has put in place and precisely calibrated in order to make Earth a suitable home for life in all its tremendous variety, and especially for those made in His image.

Looking at our surroundings these days, we see a Creation somewhat out of kilter, poorly calibrated, even less than suitable, making life difficult or even miserable. The “very good” original Creation, cursed by the entrance of sin, awaits its redemption.

Snow is an apt example of the mixed messages sent by the good/not-so-good Creation. We love snow for its Currier and Ives Christmas card scenic beauty; we hate it when we have to shovel it or when it impedes our travel. Skiers love the invigorating recreation it provides, but they hate the injuries and even death it can cause.

My short snowy hike, perhaps the last of the season, was all Currier and Ives, with no bumps, bruises or casts to show for it. The resultant photographs certainly can’t match the images produced by those iconic lithographers—but enjoy them anyway, for what they’re worth.

...

p.s. Currier and Ives also illustrated disasters, like the burning of the Steamboat Lexington, but for obvious reasons, that scene was never used on a Christmas card. But it further supports the point that the very good Creation was horribly wounded by the occurrences recorded in Genesis 3.

Soli Deo Gloria

Bees get a town council meeting buzzing

2009-03-02T01:43:00.013-05:00

A while back, I was invited to attend a local town council meeting at which honeybees were to be a topic for discussion. Excuse me? Let me explain.

It seems that a town resident wants to put a couple of hives in her yard as an educational hobby and to produce some honey. And a group of high school students with an ongoing project wants to establish a demonstration hive at their school. Problem: there is a town ordinance against raising honeybees. And the strange thing is that the ordinance lumps the prohibition of beehives with that of raising goats. Go figure. (Sorry, I just couldn’t avoid using that cliché—the situation is just so go-figure-ish).

Before considering the reason for the ordinance, the council heard from a representative of the student group, from the hive-desirous resident and from the state apiarist, all of whom gave eloquent arguments for bee keeping as a hobby and against the ordinance. The apiarist described the habits of honeybees and those of other bee, wasp and hornet species, asserting that honeybees are the safest to have around, as far as the danger from stings is concerned.

Council members asked probing questions and said they would take the matter under consideration, reminding the bee lovers that there are bee haters who are tax-paying citizens as well. And of course the council members pondered over how the ordinance lumped bees with goats. They concluded that it must have been a good idea at the time—a time long before the terms of any of the present members. One member quipped that the whole thing sounded like the plot of a B movie—and that pretty much killed the discussion.

Of course, I learned a lot from attending the session, about bees and apiculture, and about the operation of a suburban town council—and it got me reflecting about all the honeybees and other buzzing hymenopterans that I have annoyed with my camera’s macro lens—without ever being stung.

Today’s photos were taken during the summer of course, when the honeybees and others were busy nectaring the milkweeds and other meadow flowers and pollinating them in the process. Pictured are a honeybee, a carpenter bee (with the black abdomen), which we usually confuse with a bumblebee—and a real yellow bumblebee, which you won’t confuse with anything else, once you’ve seen one, the furry little bugger.

By the way, our domestic honeybee, Apis mellifera, is not native. It is an Old World species, as are all true honeybees. Our species was introduced into the Jamestown Colony in 1622 and has been here ever since. There is so much to know about this very important creature that the best thing I can do is to refer you to good old Wikipedia.

Now one more thing, lest we ever forget. The various species and varieties of honeybees may have—in fact, almost certainly did—diversify from a common bee ancestor. That may be called natural selection or microevolution. But that is not the same as saying they evolved by random, unintelligent processes from “lower” forms. The fantastically complex bodies of insects are preeminent examples of intelligent design. A tremendous amount of information is programmed into their miniscule bodies. Precision flight, a brain that can interpret signals from multi-faceted compound eyes, the precise mechanism of master gene-controlled metamorphosis from larva to adult, not to mention hive-building skill and complex social structure—all reflect non-randomness and purposefulness to the nth degree.

Biblically speaking, believing that a honeybee is the product of anything but divine design—or even failing to give the Divine Designer full credit and honor—puts one in a precarious position, as described in Romans 1:18-25. That position is, of course, under the wrath of God—not a good place to be.

I know, I’ve gotten harsh again, just as in my anti-booze rantings. But truth is truth and we must face it squarely even though it stings. (Ouch—I promised myself I was going to avoid using bee metaphors). Of course we don’t want to stop at the bad news of Romans 1. We must go on to see that the news gets even worse, placing us all under God’s wrath—until we get to the middle of Chapter 3—and then we keep going as the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ unfolds before us—the Good News of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone.

Well, they say that the key to good preaching is to be able to start from anywhere in the Universe and head straight for the Cross. So you will have to forgive me for starting at a small town council meeting and winding up at the Gospel. An elected council may be an effective way to govern a small town, and the honeybee may be a beautiful expression of God’s intelligent design, but the Gospel is the ultimate expression of His unfathomable grace and totally undeserved love for all who believe.

Soli Deo Gloria

Grays, browns and a splash of green

2009-02-18T11:58:00.011-05:00

Click on the photos to enlarge them

A walk in the woods yesterday revealed mostly grays and browns, as would be expected in mid-February. But the ground ivy (or Gill-over-the-ground or Creeping Charlie) was showing off its first leaves. Charlie says, “Who cares if it’s 32 degrees out here—I want to photosynthesize!” Some photographic trickery reveals the intricacy of the leaf’s vascular system and even individual cells, if you look closely.

Meanwhile, the saprophytic fungi can’t, or care not to photosynthesize, preferring to dine from a fallen tree, their hyphae secreting enzymes to digest their meal extramurally. Recycling is their business.

Last year’s grasses, sere and broken, in sun and shadow, exhibit a palette of ecru, coffee, ochre, umber—you name the brown—it’s there.

The walk, the close observation, the photographing, the reflection, all make me think of Edwin Way Teale, the writer who stirred my fascination with nature in my boyhood days. Wish I could find my copy of Circle of the Seasons. Maybe it’s off to Amazon.com in search of a replacement.

Two cuddly babies born on the same day--what contrasting differences their lives have made!

2009-02-12T13:18:00.007-05:00

The illustration is presented courtesy of Creation-Evolution Headlines. On this important day of double commemoration, the best thing I can do is to refer you to that site. Spend some time reading the article here. Click on the links to Steve Austin's ICR article and video. They present an excellent example of how the reading and placing credence in two different books can lead two people along two different paths in their thinking--each with huge society-altering consequences.

Society-altering consequences, you say?
Darwin: "scientific" support of racism.
Lincoln: significant step in correcting the problem of racism.

In Darwin's case, the book was Lyell's Principles of Geology. In Lincoln's case, surely Holy Scripture played a large part in his presuppositions and decision making. Much of Lyell's work has since been discounted; God's Word never will be.

And don't be a stranger to Creation-Evolution Headlines. I have it among my links over to your right. It is a constant source of insightful analysis and debunking of evolutionary literature.

So harsh!

2009-02-11T11:09:00.015-05:00

If you are new here, be sure to scroll down and read the last post, or this one will make no sense.

One of the customers (as one of my favorite columnists calls his readers) commented in an email that my anti-alcohol polemic was harsh, over the top and indefensible. Any fool, he proclaimed, knows that red wine has great health benefits and that moderate drinkers have fewer heart attacks and strokes.

Well, there may be some truth to those claims, but I’ll risk going without those perks, thank you. The Lord has taken care of me without my partaking since probably 1968, except for the time that I was invited to take communion in a church that used alcoholic wine for the purpose, and perhaps a courtesy lip touch of champagne at a wedding reception.

But let me tell you a little more about that lowly fungus that produces the stuff. After I tell you, you’re less likely to call it lowly. With a name like Saccharomyces cerevisiae, one dare not call it lowly.

Yeast is a Eukaryote. A what? That’s what I said—a Eukaryote, an organism with “advanced” cell structure with a nucleus—as opposed to cells like bacteria, which are supposed to be simpler, but aren’t. I’ve said it a thousand times here and everywhere—there is no such thing as a simple living organism or cell thereof!

All living cells have PhDs in biochemical engineering. They know how to make hundreds or thousands of very complex molecules that very smart human chemists struggle to reproduce in multi-million-dollar, government-funded laboratories—if they can do it at all. Hundreds of precisely constructed protein molecules for their structure and function, fats and oils, carbohydrates and vitamins are all engineered under instructions from their DNA. Their membranes exercise precise control over what enters and leaves.

All the operations of a cell, including yeast cells, require energy, which is obtained by “burning” sugar in a precisely-controlled, multi-stepped process. When operating most efficiently, with oxygen used in the final step, cellular respiration produces two simple waste produces, carbon dioxide and water. But when deprived of oxygen, the process stops short, producing carbon dioxide and a still rather large molecular waste produce, our old acquaintance ethyl alcohol.

Yes, ethyl alcohol is a waste product, which in my anti-booze zeal I have been known to call fungus urine. Well, it isn’t really urine because it isn’t a nitrogenous waste, but using the term tends to get peoples’ attention.

Of course, yeast produces ethanol only when cruel humans confine it in a low oxygen fermentation vessel or lump of bread dough, forcing it to self-intoxicate and die in its own waste. If given plenty of oxygen, it carries on respiration just like the rest of us and lives a long, happy life. And, as part of its own defense against invading germs, it produces an extremely useful molecule in its cell walls—a molecule that has recently been isolated and has been found very useful as an immune system strengthener. It’s called 3-6 Beta-glucan, (pictured above). Taken as a supplement, it is thought to strengthen all those hard-working white blood cells that fight off invading germs.

Another marvel of biochemistry is a molecule engineered by grape plants and incorporated into the skin of their fruit. It’s the compound that gives red wine its supposed health benefits. It’s called Resveratrol, (See above). It has had some publicity lately on 60 Minutes. Watch it here. One pill of the product pictured on the bottle equals the Resveratrol content of 165 glasses of red wine—and won’t even make you dizzy. So if we’re of a mind to, we can get the benefits without the poison. Yes, poison. (There he goes again, being so harsh.)

God has given us all things to enjoy richly (I Tim 6:17). He has engineered in every sort of creature thousands of special chemical compounds having properties that can add to our pleasure, health and longevity in His sin-cursed creation. He has allowed medicine men ranging from “primitive” shamans to PhDs to discover and refine a cornucopia of these substances and put them to use for our benefit. So I say, why not use those special molecules that the Creator has provided—and let the waste products be what they are—waste.

Now, having left that bottle of Beta-glucan on my desk for a couple of days while writing this post—and having forgotten to take any—I feel a sniffle coming on. So it’s off to the kitchen for one of those small capsules and a good belt of Welch’s (non-fermented) grape juice. Not at all harsh.

Winter nature blogging perilous to writer and reader

2009-02-02T16:03:00.011-05:00

These winter months are dangerous for nature bloggers—and for their readers. In my case I get lazy about taking hikes and slogging through slush in search of photographic subjects. The danger lies in the fact that, in the absence of colorful subjects to image, my thoughts veer toward the political and its biblical implications as well as other negative thoughts about fallen human nature (with which we are all born) and its consequences that we witness every day. I went negative in the last post—and it will get worse, I suspect.

If you’ve stuck with me this far you’ve got to be wondering where I’m heading. Those with any sort of biology/biochemistry background may have gotten a clue from the illustrations.

The fancied-up diagram that looks somewhat like a Shmoo (only older Al Capp fans will understand) illustrates the tremendous complexity of a living organism (a fungus) that we usually think of as simple—if we think of it at all. It’s common baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae . The other stick figures are structural formulas for the first and last stages in one of yeast’s metabolic processes—alcoholic fermentation. It’s the process that under anaerobic conditions partially “burns” sugar (glucose) and produces ethanol—ethyl alcohol.

Ethanol is good stuff. It’s a useful solvent and fuel. We’ve probably got some mixed with the gasoline in our tanks right now. And of course, because the other waste product of fermentation is carbon dioxide gas, it’s what makes bread dough rise. What happens to the yeast in the process may be a clue to where this little blogotribe (a neologism?) is heading. Yes, the yeast poisons itself to death by producing the alcohol.

Yes, you guessed it: ethanol is poisonous, only slightly less so than Methanol (wood alcohol). Methanol will kill you in minutes—ethanol takes years, unless, under its influence, you hit a tree first—or someone else under its influence hits you. It destroys the brain; it destroys the liver; it destroys marriages; it destroys families; it destroys lives.

Gracious! What set this guy off? Well, I’m always “off” when it comes to talking about booze. Forty-one years of public school teaching gave me a lot of experience with the negative effects of the stuff—on my fantastic students and their families. I have spent a lot of time shedding tears and praying about them through the years.

Now wait a minute, you old prude! Who are you judging? Not judging anybody—I’m judging the stuff—and the society that has kids growing up immersed in it. A fish doesn’t know it’s wet, does it? And booze is so much a part of our society (if you can call it society any more) that our children probably think it’s normal. It’s not!

OK, at Bios & Logos we’re supposed to back up the Bios with the Logos. What is your biblical defense for this bloviation? Well, let’s give it a go.

Alcohol was probably involved when society was speeding to corruption in a hand basket in Genesis 6; But the first recorded incident of abuse involved Noah. Right off the boat he planted a vineyard, processed the grapes, got plastered and embarrassed himself; and the whole family. The effects were felt for generations afterward.

Warnings against use or at least abuse are scattered through the Old Testament, but Proverbs provides some gems. Check out 20:1; and 21:17; But.31:3-7; is the real kicker. Do you want to be a “king” or one who is “perishing”? The sad truth is that most are perishing. God’s common grace provides some momentary forgetfulness of their woes, for He knows they have nothing but everlasting woe in their future. Strong (non-alcoholic) medicine!

In the New Testament, Paul tells us “not to get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit”. Don’t want to be debauched, do you?

Well, what about Paul’s advice to Timothy?; Now, with a good W. C. Fields voice, say “for medicinal purposes”.

Now that I have added way too much yeast to this blog post and have over-filled your bread maker, I’ll end it with a picture of a Shmoo, for you youngsters out there. After all, he does look a little like the yeasty Pillsbury Dough Boy.

America has welcomed it with adulation!

2009-01-24T12:43:00.008-05:00

Forgive me once more for a detour from forest and meadow nature into the jungle of fallen human nature. The following may be described as free verse, for surely no one is likely to pay for it. But in fact, we shall all pay the consequences for our nievete.

The Trojan Horse

America has joyfully welcomed the Trojan horse.
Its door has opened, with hardly a creak.
In less than a week, stealthy soldiers have spewed forth.

A pronouncement here; a pen stroke there--

More babies will die.

The immune system is weakened.
More evil will surely follow.

II Corinthians 11:14

Let the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

Buried in beans

2009-01-12T10:39:00.008-05:00

Let me explain. The girls originally were standing next to or sledding down a gumdrop mountain. The fact that now they are buried in coffee beans certainly needs some clarification.

The original picture was a Christmas card. The altered (caffeine-rich) version is a thank-you note for the girls and their parents for the Christmas gift of two cans of Trader Joe’s Arabica beans. And tasty beans they are! So good, invigorating and mind-altering a brew as to inspire a synaesthetic couplet:

See those beans; feel how they glisten.
You can almost smell them, if you listen!

That bit of rhyming weirdness could lead in either of two directions in this post: a scintillating discussion of synaesthesia—or a maudlin meditation about why coffee beans aren’t beans.

In favor of synaesthesia is the fact that I have recently re-read a book on the subject by an old student of mine (Kevin T. Dann: Bright Colors Falsely Seen). The discouraging thing is that his writing makes mine look like a fourth grader’s.

In favor of coffee beans: I just took a sip of Trader Joe’s organic, fair traded, shade grown Ethiopian medium dark roast, medium bodied floral aroma 100% Arabica coffee from the Yirgacheffe region—the birthplace of coffee. Whew! Can you smell it?

I just flipped a bean (does a coffee bean have a head and tail?—take a look at one and judge for yourself) and the beans won. Synaesthesia will wait.

Here is the brutal truth: coffee beans are not beans, just as peanuts are not nuts. In fact, peanuts are beans, but to spoil the parallelism, coffee beans are not nuts; they’re drupes. Confused? Blame the botanists. They have come up with a phantasmagoric array of descriptive terms designed to help biology students fail their exams.

Peaches, cherries, olives and even almonds are drupes. They have fleshy outer layers and a hard inner layer enclosing a single seed. Mostly we eat the fleshy layer of drupes. We usually don’t even see the fleshy layer of an almond—we eat the seed inside the stony layer. By the way, coffee beans have two seeds—does this take away from their drupiness?

What about coffee? It’s like the almond; we get rid of the fleshy layer and use the highly processed seed. And wow, talk about processing. When we sip our morning brew, we seldom think about all that has happened to those little brown nuggets from tropical plant to can or sack on the kitchen counter. Maybe a few clicks to useful websites will help. For drupes, click here. For coffee beans, click here. And for a more general article on the beverage, click here. Not that I’m trying to get off easy, but good old Wikipedia will always do a better job than I can.

After reading all those articles, didn’t we learn some new things? I know I did. Sorry to get so pedagogical, but that’s what I am—an old retired pedagogue.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that plants are marvelous creations and that their Creator has given them all PhDs in chemistry. Just engineering a caffeine molecule is quite a feat. The plant does that to provide an insecticide to fend off leaf-eating bugs. It has no idea that humans are going to use its seeds for a tasty stimulant—but the Creator of the plant surely did. Here’s the Wiki article on caffeine.

Now it’s time for another mug of Trader Joe’s and maybe for me to take a couple of #2 pencils and tap out some inverted flam paradiddles on the plastic lids of the two coffee cans. The beans inside even produce a snare effect. Cousin Herb would approve. From synaesthetic couplets to inverted flam paradiddles? Whew, what a powerful brew!

Thanks Tom, Julie, Mady and Lulu for the coffee—and for the idea for this blog post!

A fast, cold trek on the penultimate day of 2008

2008-12-30T23:26:00.011-05:00

I admit it—I’m not a big fan of winter hiking, in the woods or anywhere else. I don’t think my body is well adapted for it. I shiver; I turn various shades of red, purple, blue and mauve (never have been sure of what mauve is exactly, but it was probably in my epidermal palette today).

But on this penultimate day of the year, I made a quick jaunt around the trail at the Celery Farm—well, actually, I made it about a third of the way around, climbed Pirie platform, was hit by frigid wind gusts and turned back. I think one of the reasons for making the trip on December 30th is that I just like the word penultimate—sounds sophisticated.

Along the (short) way, I did click the shutter of the 40D a few times and was thankful for the image stabilizer on the Canon 100-400L and its ability to minimize the effect of my shivering and quivering.

Of course, I’m exaggerating here—it was an enjoyable, if attenuated little trek. The air was bracing and the Celery Farm always, even in the dead of winter, offers some enjoyment of the Creation and photographic opportunity.

After getting home and warming up—maybe even before warming up—I snatched the CF card from the camera, cussed the computer for its repeated error messages, and managed to get some jpeg files into a folder. Then, as is always true with my amateurish photography, came the fun part—making lemonade out of some pretty photographically rotten lemons. A few of the results appear above, for what enjoyment or criticism they may bring.

The chorus line of gulls (they certainly would fail in Rockettes tryouts) all aligned into the prevailing wind, was the only bird life evident (at least to my non-birder eyes) in or around Lake Appert. A few flew in and left during my brief visit, so I know at least a few were not frozen in the ice.

Ice is nice, especially when coming or going—offers some intriguing postmodern patterns and subtle pastel-ish hues (OK, I did un-subtle-ize some of the hues just a tad). And combine it with rocks and logs and it makes for something moderately interesting to stare at. In fact, it can be absolutely fascinating. Don’t get me started on the unique properties of water and our total dependence on them (the properties, that is). The Creator done it right when He invented the stuff.

Bark is nice, at any season—texture, texture, texture! It’s not just cork!

Of course, most everything (besides the gulls) is in a dead or dormant condition in late December, so to see a flash of green was a thrill. How those honeysuckle leaves manage to look like they’re actually doing some photosynthesizing is beyond me. But they sure look healthy and crisp (not in the same way my hands and toes were by that point in my walk).

Now I conclude, before the midnight chime strikes and the day is no longer the penultimate.

Enjoy staring for a while—and don’t forget Who made it all and sustains it even in the midst of a cold New Jersey winter. Happy New Year!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Finished (mostly)!

2008-12-20T13:09:00.007-05:00

Here we are. Gifts are wrapped (mostly)—if what you call what I do wrapping. Well, what do you want? I didn’t have any (w)rap music to listen to while doing it. (By the way, if anyone is peeking, those tall green things are definitely not alcoholic.)

The minimalist decorations are up—with the smallest tree you’ve ever seen. No, it is not my custom to display a big organic conifer, ever since Willy the cat died around 1955. You see, it was Willy’s job to find exactly the same spot on the white sheet under the tree on which to sleep, every Christmas for fourteen years—and to knock the same ornaments off with his vertically oriented tail. So ever since, out of respect for Willy, I have enjoyed other people’s trees but have kept my decorations simple and inorganic.

And the cards are mailed, mostly, later than ever. With regards to addressing envelopes and signing cards, I am not a procrastinator; I’m a PRE-crastinator. I make up my mind in advance that I’m going to put it off until even past the last minute.

With all that said and done, it’s time to relax and reflect on the real meaning of the season. Let’s remember that the first Christmas gift was a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, rather than brightly colored paper. And that that gift was laid in a feeding trough made of wood that He Himself had created (See John 1:1-3) . And let us remember that, thirty-three years later, that perfect gift gave His life on a tree—and that, unlike my procrastinating performance, His timing was perfect, as it always is and ever shall be-- and that, if we bow the knee to Him as Savior and Lord, we are wrapped in the white robes of His righteousness (wrapped around our still sinful flesh.)

So let’s take some time to read about these important matters, in books written by those who were there—you know, those guys whose names begin with M, M, L and J.

My imperfect Christmas wrapping and mailing plans are finished (mostly) and God’s plans are finished (mostly). His perfect sacrifice on Calvary finished His plan of salvation of those He came to save, (Matt. 1:21); but His final gift, that of returning for His people, is yet to be given. But it will be— soon!

Merry Christmas!

A Day Late and a Connection Short!

2008-12-03T19:34:00.016-05:00

It’s getting dangerously close to a month between blog posts—and past my promise to escape from the political and to get back to the biological and theological. So here’s a little something.

Last Friday was Members’ Night at Fyke Nature Association. It was a fun meeting with eight or nine members presenting small sets of photos or other bits of handiwork related to nature. There were some outstanding examples of photography and even videos of Celery Farm birds.

For my part, I did a little study of Queen Anne’s Lace and its various stages of development, with a bit of comic relief at the end, showing a couple of pictures of a not-too-favored bird, the European Starling. I Introduced those images with a statement about the total non-connection between the two species, Daucus carota and Sternus vulgaris.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, I missed the perfect opportunity to make a connection between the two. You see, the very next day I was doing some additional research on Wild Carrot for a little book I am trying to get finished—and up pops the tidbit that starlings (at least in their home continent) actually line their nests with the leaves of Queen Anne’s Lace! It seems that the plant produces a natural insecticide that kills the mites that habitually infest starling nests. What a great segue that would have made!

Yep, It was indeed a day late and an educational opportunity lost. But at least I learned one more fact about the amazing intelligence with which the Creator has endowed His creatures, as well as the advanced biochemistry degrees He has awarded to all plants. And learning something new about the Creator's wisdom is always a blessing.

You learn something new every day. If you don’t, you’re probably dead. Check your

pulse.

Soli Deo Gloria

On the other hand...

2008-11-08T15:51:00.004-05:00

The Obama Victory Party

As the truth continues to sink in that the President-elect has gained his position by nefarious means and that he has the shadiest background (and we most likely don’t know a fraction of it) of any president in the history of the Republic, The Lord pushes our sinful little heads into His Word and commands us to pray for the man.

First, He guides us gently to I Timothy 2:1-6. Then, lest our prayers be prideful and self-serving, He inexorably moves our fingers to I Peter 2:13-20 , rubs are noses in the truth of the passage—and leaves us without excuse.

Yes, we are to pray for the man. We are to pray that God may soften his heart, remove the veil, show him the truth of the Gospel (which he certainly wasn’t exposed to in his former liberal, black liberation-centered “church”) and draw him to repentance and salvation. And we are to pray that God would use this man to the furtherance of His glory and honor, to bring undeserved blessing or rightly deserved judgment upon our land.

But that doesn’t mean, from the position of citizens of the United States, we shouldn’t hold the man responsible for his actions and see his character for what it is. We should pray that God would enable us to see the irreparable harm to our nation that an Obama presidency may cause and lead us to do all we can to mitigate that harm.

Will we ever get back to the pleasantries of this blog? After all, the theme of Bios & Logos is all about beauty, rather than ugliness. But even in its beauty, there is an ulterior (or rather, superior) motive: to leave the reader without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

Genesis 3 in Action

2008-11-05T11:50:00.005-05:00

I couldn’t find an image in my collection of looming clouds; the image of ominous ground fog will have to do to illustrate the following.

I know that we are all supposed to say gracious, politically correct things when one side wins an election. Indeed, the loser and the President have done their duty and made those statements. Be those statements sincere or not, their duties have been performed.

But let’s face the fact that the citizens of the United States of America have just elected a Marxist charlatan to the highest office of the land. Great crowds cheered the victory. Did you see the Hammer and Sickle flags and tee shirts in the crowd? Wonderful! Moral relativism and postmodern deconstructionism have won over biblical truth—but only temporarily, of course. Ultimately, truth will win (Romans 8:20-21), (Philippians 2:9-11). The second chapter of 2 Thessalonians should also be considered.

Let us pray that the system of government devised by the founding fathers will work to hold the power of all three branches of government in check so that irreparable damage is not done to the republic, to the Constitution, to the institution of holy matrimony, to the lives of millions of pre-born babies, as well as to other timeless principles.

Kyrie eleison!

A Huge—and all-important—Side Trip

2008-11-01T16:42:00.009-04:00

The term “creation” involves more than the usually limited scope of this blog and its focus on “natural theology” or how created things, such as bugs and posies reflect the Creator’s design. So to start off November (what happened to October?) I will plunge into dangerous waters—waters so important that the very future of the United States of America is at stake.

The first and second chapters of Genesis describe the creation of all things and especially the creation of Man and Woman in the image of God. All of creation was pronounced “very good.” But things didn’t stay very good for very long. Genesis 3 relates Man’s fall into sin and the resultant curses on the creation. Suffering, disease, death, environmental degradation ensued and have ordered the creation ever since (held in check by God’s sustaining power, grace and mercy).

So that fallen Man would not destroy himself and the creation, God instituted human government. Throughout history, various forms of governance have been tried: tribal leadership, kingdoms, dictatorships, communes. Some have held societies together for a time, but most eventually have failed.

Our founding fathers, rebelling against tyranny, cobbled together an experiment, partly based on English law, but, more importantly, founded on Holy Scripture, with which colonial culture was infused. In the formation of our experimental government, a form of representative republican democracy, this bunch of adventurous young men incorporated (either consciously or by way of the culture of the time) two Biblical principles: the imago dei (man created in the image of God) and the fallen nature of that image. The combination, worked into the Constitution, was intended to ensure God-given inalienable rights and some limits on those rights to hold society together in light of fallen human nature and its tendency toward sin and discord.

The experiment has worked, through many trials and near failures, for more than two hundred years. It has been, by any measure, the form of government that has produced more blessing for its citizens—and for people throughout the world—than any other in history.

On November 4th, the work of the founding fathers will be put to what may be its biggest test, the most crucial presidential election in the history of this young republic. Its citizens (hopefully most of the voters will be citizens) will make a selection between two men as Commander in Chief:

A man whose entire life, from childhood on, has been infused with duty, honor and country, and who has given his life to service and leadership.
or--
A man whose entire life, from childhood on, has been infused and saturated with Muslim schooling, liberal education, and close associations, over much of his adult life, with radical socialists, Marxists, black liberation theologians, a crooked Chicago slum lord, dirty Chicago politics, as well as with an organization that is creating havoc with the registration and election processes. And this man has brushed aside, obfuscated and outright lied about these associations throughout his presidential campaign. He also broke his promise to use public financing for his campaign, thus allowing him to collect obscene amounts of (largely untraceable) cash to spend on big productions, advertising and infomercials. An important bit of reading can be seen here .

In addition (and directly related to the subject of the inalienable right to life) this man is a radical supporter of abortion (all nine months and beyond). Click here for absolutely essential reading in this regard.

Most of the talk of late has focused on the economy. That is certainly an important topic. Peoples’ lives are being affected. But the economy will get fixed, sooner or later, with or without bungling government interference. Money is useful but temporary--Character lasts forever.

What won’t get fixed, or perhaps even survive, if we make the wrong choice, is the very character of the republic. And since our nation has largely abandoned the biblical base upon which it was founded and has abandoned itself to economic and sensual “blessings” rather than true blessings from the Creator and Savior, I have real doubts that Tuesday’s decision will be a sound one. In the last analysis however, the decision is in God’s hand. He, the Potter, uses us, the clay (Romans 9:21-23) to the ultimate end of His glory and honor. Will His decision be one of much deserved judgment or totally undeserved mercy?

Perhaps, after November 4, one way or the other, this blog will get back to picturing some of God’s creative wonders. After all, there is still beauty in this world, but only by His incredible grace and all enduring mercy.

A Little Side Trip

2008-09-19T13:39:00.006-04:00

I thought it would be good for a change to take a side trip away from the usual photo essay format of this blog and share a few items I’ve found particularly interesting or relevant. Be sure to click on the links to go to the related articles.

The most dangerous place to send your child:
My freshman orientation week at what was then called Montclair State Teachers College a half-century ago consisted of silly things like wearing a red beanie called a dink, learning the Alma Mater and maybe some non-memorable ice-breaking activities. It was somewhat intimidating to a shy eighteen-year-old—but non-life threatening. For several years now, after hearing horror stories about campus life today, I have often reflected on the thought that college might be the most dangerous place to send your child. College campuses have become in many cases dangerous physically, emotionally, philosophically and most of all, spiritually. Click here to read an article that makes the case. The author’s book might be a good investment if you have a child near college age.

Dino Classification Chaos:
In this blog I often poke some fun at over-zealous plant and animal taxonomists and even nature lovers who care more about picky species identifications than just enjoying plants and animals for what they are—fantastically complex and beautiful creations. I did it in the last post about goldenrods. Last year I lambasted botanists for messing around with one of my favorite plant genera, Eupatorium . If biologists can get into trouble with presently existing species, imagine what paleontologists can do with extinct ones. A recent post in Creation-Evolution Headlines has many important implications, especially about what science can and can’t and shouldn't try to do.

21st Century Reading:
I finally yielded to temptation and bought an Amazon Kindle . It’s a reading device about the size and weight of a paperback book. With it you can buy, download wirelessly and read over 170,000 books from Amazon at prices much lower than the paper versions. The screen is different than a computer screen (it’s called “e-paper”) and much more comfortable to read. I can read for much longer periods without eyestrain than I can a paper book. I have begun to load the Kindle with theology, biology and some lighter material. I think the thing will eventually pay for itself, but I’ll have to maintain some budgetary discipline. To paraphrase old Senator Everett Dirksen, “$9.99 here and $9.99 there—and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

One of the fun books I’m reading now is The Book of Animal Ignorance with strange facts about everything from aardvarks to worms. Maybe I like it for its writing style, which is about as quirky as mine.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that the 2.4 billion ants in a square mile of rain forest weigh more than four times as much as all the local mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians put together. Or that an eagle’s feathers weigh more than twice as much as its bones.

You learn something new every day!

Solidago sp.

2008-09-13T13:20:00.009-04:00

Having recently completely blown a pretty easy plant identification based on seeing photographs, I have taken a solemn vow never to go there again—and that plant wasn’t even a goldenrod.

Adding “sp.” after a genus name may be a cop-out, or it may mean that differentiating between and among species of a particular genus is difficult, impossible—or maybe just not worth the effort. When it comes to the 60+ species of goldenrods indigenous to the northeast, I’ll go for Solidago sp. almost every time. Life is too short. Yes, there are many fairly easily distinguishable species—but life is still too short.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enjoy the goldenrods. They are 18K treasures in God’s jewelry armoire and we appreciate them far too little. After all, their foliage throughout the summer may appear somewhat weedy and may be easily confused for other really weedy plants. And since most species wait until late summer or fall to show off their floral finery, they have by then damaged their reputation as genuine “wildflowers.”

Another problem for our admiration of the Solidago group is that when they finally bloom, we tend to see them as mere bunches of yellow stuff, especially when we encounter massed displays in the middle of a meadow or field. That’s like looking at the ocean from a hotel window or like bird watching through the wrong end of your bins!

So dare to get cozy with the Solidagos—real cozy. Take a hand lens with you. Go ahead. Stick your nose right in there. OK, there might be a bee or a wasp doing the same; but that’s what flowers are for, after all. The bees won’t bother you—they’re too busy lapping nectar and packing pollen. Most wasps are friendly, too.

If I haven’t convinced you to go up-close goldenrod gawking in vivo, the included photos should offer a somewhat satisfying substitute. Wow! They are actually really flowers! They look like miniature daisies! Well, that’s what they are—members of the Composite family, with ray flowers and disk flowers. Each bunch or spray is like a delivery from www.proflowers.com --but you don’t have to pay extra for the vase—and it lasts longer!

Never be satisfied with seeing “bunches of yellow stuff”—with leaving God’s gold shut up in the armoire.

Now that’s a bug—Really!

2008-09-08T19:33:00.006-04:00

Yes, really. Whoever first nicknamed the VW beetle a bug was obviously not an entomologist. Beetles are beetles; bugs are bugs; never the twain shall meet. Actually, the car looks more like a beetle, like a ladybug, which is a beetle. So who were the better entomologists, the namers or the nicknamers? Is this getting confusing? Maybe we should ask the Beatles, who were clever enough not to spell their name like insects but after their rhythmical musical genre, which changed popular music for all time--probably for the worse.

I think we had better get back to the bug.

The pictured handsome guy is a bug, an Hemipteran. He’s flat across the back and has that shield shape, due to the fact that his forewings are half leathery and half membranous. That’s what makes him a bug. Of course, there are other differences as well. This guy has piercing-sucking mouthparts; beetles usually chew.

In my curious youth, I carried a relative of the pictured specimen, a big Hemipteran called a Wheel Bug, in the car on a family trip. I put a couple of moths in the jar with it and watched as its piercing-sucking mouthparts reduced the moths to powder in a matter of minutes. Mom and Dad were thrilled.

The photograph pictures one of the “leaf-footed" bugs, for reasons that may be obvious. Its genus is Acanthocephala—why do insects usually have names longer than their bodies?

Now that I’ve driven you buggy with this buggy drivel, I’ll just say so long for now. Don’t let the bedbugs bite—and yes, bedbugs are real bugs, although they are not as buggy in appearance as our typical pictured specimen.

Now I’ve gotcha itchin’!

Theological lesson? If it weren’t for sin and its consequences, maybe we would have only friendly vegetarian insects. Just a thought.

Plants are simply amazing—but not simple!

2008-09-02T10:17:00.008-04:00

Click here to read an article about just one of countless examples of plant biochemistry and how plants use other creatures to do their bidding. It will also introduce you to one of the most amazing websites I have found. David Coppedge and his staff (I have never been able to figure out how many he has helping him with his site) do an amazing (there, I used that word again) job of cutting through the baloney and logical fallacies in scientific articles whose authors take Darwinian theory as proven fact. Dr. Coppedge works for JPL (Jet Propulsion Labs)

For future reference, a link to Creation/Evolution Headlines is included in the “Links to Good Stuff” over to your right. Check it often. I think you will find it....ing!

May I use your phone? —my car broke down…

2008-08-29T12:18:00.003-04:00

The pictured duo may look like refugees from an Orkin® commercial. (If you haven’t seen a recent Orkin commercial, the title of this post undoubtedly has you baffled.) But these chitin-clad beauties will probably not be ringing your door bell or eating your house. They could be building their own papier-mache houses under an eave, in your mailbox or in any other semi-concealed cranny. Polistes is the name—paper nest making is their game.

If I have them taxonomically pegged, the top photo is of Polistes dominulus, while the bottom bunk is occupied by P. annularis. They are two of the twenty or more species of paper wasps found in the U.S. While P. annularis is a native species, P. dominulus found its way to Massachusetts from Europe, in some modern version of the Mayflower, somewhere around 1980. In less than thirty years, it has colonized most of the continent. It’s just one more of those unfortunate alien species stories with which we have become so familiar. P. dominulus, while mostly harmless, has probably displaced some native wasps. By the way, although it resembles a Yellow-jacket, it is larger, and it doesn't particularly enjoy picnics like that pesky little hornet does.

Paper wasps are voracious predators, attacking leaf-munching caterpillars, making them beneficial to gardeners—except when it involves the larvae of our favorite butterflies. Of course, the adults don’t eat the caterpillars; they sting them to paralyze them, then take them back to the hive, chew them up and spit them out for the benefit of their babies. Adult wasps are limited to a liquid diet of nectar, honeydew (secreted by aphids) and even liquid food upchucked on cue by their babies. That is the downside of having a wasp waist (the envy of every human female) and digestive organs located in the abdomen—nothing but liquid gets past the constriction.

There must be a lesson or two in here somewhere, at least for the Christian reader. Maybe it’s “don’t be a wasp-waist Bible reader”. Yes, meditate on the Word. Chew on it—but be sure you digest it for yourself before trying to share it with others. That works. Soli Deo Gloria.

Swamped by the Mallows

2008-08-25T23:50:00.004-04:00

Jim & Patty's Swamp Mallow (Jim's photo):
Researching the Mallows:

Swamp Rose Mallow at Phair's:

Swamp Rose (Rosa palustris):

Fellow blogger Jim Wright recently posted a photo of a “swamp mallow” that his wife planted a couple of years ago by a stream near his back yard. It is producing brilliant red blooms this year. It got me thinking--is this the same species as the “swamp rose mallow” growing at Phair’s Pond? That clump of plants, growing almost in the water, is producing pale pink blossoms—and its leaves are different from Jim’s plant, which seems to be the Halberd-leaved Rose Mallow.

Well, that little mystery sent me rifling through three books and a passel of websites before I came to a few tentative conclusions about the matter:

1. Common names are often confusing (a pretty well known fact).
2. Even Latin names can be confusing!
3. Color means almost nothing in these Hibiscus species (Look at the computer screen shot—all pictures of the same species!)
4. Botanists are often in disagreement about classifying closely related species.
5. I might be completely (in the words of General Honore) “stuck on stupid” when it comes to trying to identify any of these plants.

Now let’s see if we sort out these plants. First, it’s all about the Genus Hibiscus—or maybe not. Some of the plants called “Mallows” belong to this Genus, but not all of them. Both the Wright plant and the Phair’s plant do. But they are obviously of two different species. I say this because of the leaves—two entirely different shapes.

Jim’s name, “swamp mallow” is probably a safer (and acceptable) choice for his wife’s persistent plant than anything including the word “rose”, because roses these Hibiscuses ain’t. That’s where common names can become particularly misleading. I suppose the Hibiscuses reminded someone of the Swamp Rose, Rosa palustris, a fine specimen of which we had blooming near the Pena Bench earlier in the summer. Well, its flowers are big and pink; but that is pretty much where the resemblance ends. So whoever named those mallows after a rose should be ashamed.

To add another layer of confusion, there are other “mallows” that don’t belong to the Genus Hibiscus, the most famous of which is the Marsh Mallow—and I haven’t had one of those roasted over a campfire in a long time! No, seriously, there is a real plant called the Marsh Mallow. In fact, the campfire treats originally were made with a gummy substance from that plant. Oh, I never knew that!

Marsh Mallow, Althaea officinalis, is an alien plant, native of Africa and Europe, pink-flowered and furry of leaf. And for economic reasons, cheaper substances, like galatin, are now used to make marshmallows.

It is one of the Hibiscus species from which carcade, a healthful herbal tea (Here's an interesting article) is made. Mussolini tried to get the Italians to drink the stuff. I think his penchant for insisting that the trains run on time had some connection with carcade—a connection that completely escapes me at the moment. Let your imaginations go--imagining.

Well, enough of this marshmallow fluff for now. If I started in on the confusion in the Latin names of some of these plants, you would be tempted to put me on a stick and roast me.

Shall we gather at the Asclepias incarnata?

2008-08-21T11:55:00.007-04:00

As August races toward its final weeks, flowers are transitioning to fruit, and seeds will soon be flying or being carried to new places to put down roots. Wind, birds and mammals are helping. The milkweed clan is no exception, but no seeds are flying just yet.

While at least two of the other milkweed species (See this earlier post) are proudly plumping their puffy pods, the Swamp Milkweed is still in florist-fresh condition and attracting pollinators and nectar slurpers. For more than a month, insects of at least four Orders have enjoyed exploring and sipping from the plant at the end of Phair’s Pond Path.

Last year, I blabbed about insect wings and how they are used to classify insects into their Orders. Now, how about looking at the antennae, which may not be as Order-definitive, but are no less fascinating. The problem with antennae is that they are generally small. But blowing them up via photography can help us enjoy them.

Skippers are strange in many ways (See a post from last year). They are generally some shade of brown, with yellow and russet highlights, less gaudily colored than some other butterflies; and they are rather hairy, more mothy than butterflyish. And their antennae are special as well. Moths generally have feathery antennae, while butterflies have matchsticks. Skipper antennae are matchstickish but with a little hook on the tip, as you can see—well, barely—insect antennae are hard to get in focus!

Obviously, the Longhorn Beetle’s antennae give it its name, while the oversized yellow feelers of the European Paper Wasp look like they would make the insect top-heavy. Nothing too special about the antennae of the Small Milkweed Bug, except for their many segments—and for the fact that all insect antennae are special both structurally and functionally.

If you want to get buried in insect antenna structural terminology, go here ; and if you want to get really buried in the details of insect antenna development, go here .

Functionally, insect antennae are not radio aerials. Beetles can’t tune into a station featuring old Beatles hits. No, insect antennae are noses, that is, olfactory organs. And as noses, they are extraordinary. They are best at detecting pheromones (sex attractants), enabling males to zero in on females, often from great distances (the most famous example is the male Luna Moth’s ability to detect pheromone concentrations in the parts-per-billion range up to five miles away from the female that has secreted the hormone.)

We have prated at considerable length here and have included more links (some just silly) than a Jimmy Dean sausage :) So you can click on them all and learn a lot, as I did, or you can just enjoy the photos.

But, as always, I remind us that insects are fantastic engineering miracles, not the product of some sort of “goo to you, by way of the zoo” blind evolutionary process! Sorry, Charlie D. Modern biology has made sausage of your theory.
Soli Deo Gloria

Seedy Free Verse (Does it have legs?)

2008-08-15T10:30:00.008-04:00

At the seedy centipede spelunker convention,
All crowded around the mysterious sinkhole.
Staring into the inky abyss, they pondered—
How deep? How deep?

We must explore!

Or as seedy (or maybe indehiscent fruity?) haiku:
Seedy centipede spelunkers.
Mysterious deep sinkhole.

Must explore!

At the end of its bloomin’ rope

2008-08-13T23:45:00.006-04:00

The Moth Mullein grew unusually tall and gangly this year, its single flower stalk topping out at a yard or more. But it retained its habit of distributing its unusual flower buds equidistantly and opening them only one or two at a time, starting at the bottom and working upward, day by day.

As of August 13, it’s almost the end of the line. I see only one or two flower buds above the bloom of the day. And such a flower—such a bud! As you can see, there is nothing “standard” about either—a cabochon ruby bud opening into a blossom with strange, feathery sex organs.

But it’s the fruit that takes the prize for alien mien. To the naked eye, it may look like a cute little marble, but attack it with a macro lens and—that’s just weird! (Don’t anyone light that fuse!) But it’s beautiful even in its weirdness.

To be fair, much plant material reveals strangeness under magnification. Veininess and hairiness are standard equipment in various parts of many plants, all designed to transport, protect and serve in countless ways. Those gland-tipped hairs on most parts of the mullein most likely keep chomping insects at bay.

In a way, it’s probably a blessing that the Creator hasn’t given our eyes the resolving power of macro lenses. Our relatively fuzzy vision allows us to see superficial beauty undistracted by functional weirdness. And the thought of someone turning a pair of macro lenses on us is not a pleasant one. Those magnifying vanity mirrors are bad enough.

On second thought—and a much more important one—there is a macro lens—one with omniscient resolving power—focused on us 24/7. Read Psalm 139 . Yikes! That’s why we need a Savior. In fact, for those who don't know Jesus Christ as Savior, this psalm should be absolutely terrifying! To His sheep, it is pure comfort and helps keeps us humbly in line behind the Shepherd. What a great pride killer!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Bipolar Flora and Fauna

2008-08-11T12:49:00.005-04:00

(Click on the picture to lift your mood.)

Actually, the title has nothing to do with mood swings, but rather with the fact that both the pictured bee and plant are friendly at one end and deadly at the other.

In the honeybee, the bipolarity is easily perceived. This worker bee is sipping nectar from which to make delicious honey—for the hive and for us. At the other end, however, her modified ovipositor is ready to inflict pain, inflammation—and for the allergic, threat of death.

The plant is the Spotted Knapweed. What could be bipolar about a scrawny, insignificant-looking weed? Even the flowerhead, enlarged and beautified in the photograph, is actually small and far from being a showcase in the meadow. But at least it is secreting some nectar for the benefit of bee nutrition.

It’s the “other end” of the knapweed that provides the "depressing" side of the story. Its roots secret a deadly herbicide called catechin to kill competing plants, allowing the knapweed to take over acres of ground, including grazing land for cattle.

So what seems like a simple flower and bee story turns out to be a veritable biochemistry textbook! Here are some of the main characters:

*Anthocyanin pigment in the flower petals, used to attract the bee. See Queen post for some anthocyanin chemistry.

* Nectar secreted by glands in the bases of the knapweed florets as a reward for the bee. It consists of simple sugars (monosaccharides), including glucose and fructose, as well as a small percentage of sucrose (disaccharide), a host of minerals, enzymes, volatile oils and vitamins. Nectar is very dilute, but back at the hive it gets concentrated to less than 18% water content by evaporation (worker bees beat their wings to death doing that).

*Catechin, secreted by the roots of the knapweed. It’s a natural herbicide that is as effective as 2,4-D (See here) and is used by the knapweed to kill its competition for space. The question is: why doesn’t the stuff kill the knapweed? The plant is clever enough to secrete the compound as fast as it makes it, not allowing it to build up its own roots—and by blocking its re-entry. There is a tremendous amount of sophisticated cell physiology going on. The other side of this story is that there are different forms of catechin. The other forms include wonderful anti-oxidants found in tea! Here is a health food store’s worth of information.

*Apitoxin (bee venom) secreted by glands in the tail end of the bee, consists of a complex mixture of proteins and is similar to snake venom. It causes local inflammation and is an anti-coagulant. When as little as a tenth of a milliliter is injected under human skin, it causes pain, blasphemous utterances—and in the approximate 1% of victims, who are allergic, anaphylactic shock and possible death. Of course, the pictured friendly honeybee is not likely to attack (The only time I have been stung by a honeybee is when I stepped on one). It’s another story with Yellowjackets and White-faced hornets!

What a Gilbert's Chemistry Set of diverse compounds is produced by cells in the two ends of two of God’s creatures! What blessings and curses the minor tweaking of molecular structure may produce! What stories may be told of biology before and after Man’s fall into sin and the resultant curses, as related in Genesis 3!

Soli Deo Gloria!

As mad as what?

2008-08-04T15:49:00.010-04:00

Note: in the remodeling of the Blog, the introduction referred to in this post has been removed. But I think the essay has some enduring interest, so it remains.

I suppose it’s about time that I attempted an explanation of why, in the introduction to this “nature” blog, I would attribute a paraphrase of a line in a nasty 1976 movie to the Almighty.

The movie is Network, and the original form of the oft-repeated compound sentence has become almost idiomatic in our increasingly crass and angry culture. You can see the scene here (with French sub-titles, of all things). Warning (as if any were needed)—coarse language. Notice how nothing much has changed since 1976!

The question is, is God really as mad as hell?

Well, the word used in Romans 1:18 is wrath. It’s a translation of the Greek word orge, which has meanings ranging from violent passion to righteous indignation and abhorrence. It certainly doesn’t mean “mild annoyance”! It means that God is furious at sin—all sin.

The particular sin condemned in Romans 1:18 and following is Idolatry—intentionally suppressing the truth that God created everything—and worshiping the creation in place of the Creator. It is that sin that is alluded to in the blog introduction. But ancillary to the sin of idolatry is that of attributing the work of the Creator to merely “natural” causes.

Suppose that you were to exert your time, talent and energy to produce a beautiful oil painting. Then suppose I were to view your work and pour compliment after compliment on the painting and its beauty—but then make an off-hand remark that the painting looks as if it had been produced by accident—maybe you had some help from a series of careless paint spills.

What an insult!

That is the principal point of the blog introduction. If we admire the Creator’s handiwork and then attribute it to mindless Darwinian evolution, the True Artist is bound to be offended.

Of course, there is more—much more—to Romans 1, and indeed to the first three chapters of Paul’s epistle, in which he condemns the whole human race as hopeless, spiritually dead sinners. Pagans, moralists and religionists (and that includes all of us) all get the bad news—in preparation for the Good News of the once and for all perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary for the salvation of all who would place their trust in Him.

You can read the whole thing at BibleGateway.com You have your choice of a zillion different translations. Read and be amazed.

Soli Deo Gloria

Queen pricks her finger whilst tatting!

2008-07-28T13:07:00.014-04:00

…and that, according to the fable, is how the exquisite lace doily of Daucus carota got a single dark red (or blue) floret as the centerpiece of its umbelliferous inflorescence.

The queen was Anne of Denmark, of course (See biography) and the plant is the Wild Carrot, the same species (but different sub-species) as our orange root veggie.

I have spent several hours in the past couple of weeks photographing this amazing plant in various stages of demonstrating its tatting talent. So some separate posts will certainly be required to do justice to the development of the blooms. But this time I want us to think together about that tiny central blossom.

How does this plant “know” how to make one pigmented floret in the exact center of a sea of white? And how does it know how to synthesize those complex anthocyanin molecules and pour them into the central vacuoles of the cells of that one floret? It’s genetically programmed, of course. But saying that is letting us off far too easy. The following description of the biosynthesis of anthocyanins should convince us of the complexity of the process:

Anthocyanin pigments are assembled like all other

flavonoids from two different streams of chemical raw materials in the cell:
One stream involves the shikimate pathway to produce the amino acid phenylalanine. (see phenylpropanoids)
The other stream produces 3 molecules of malonyl-CoA, a C3 unit from a C2 unit (acetyl-CoA). These streams meet and are coupled together by the enzyme chalcone synthase (CHS), which forms an intermediate chalcone via a polyketide folding mechanism that is commonly found in plants.
The chalcone is subsequently isomerized by the enzyme chalcone isomerase (CHI) to the prototype pigment naringenin.
Naringenin is subsequently oxidized by enzymes such as flavanone hydroxylase (FHT or F3H), flavonoid 3' hydroxylase and flavonoid 3' 5'-hydroxylase.
These oxidation products are further reduced by the enzyme dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR) to the corresponding leucoanthocyanidins.
It was believed that leucoanthocyanidins are the immediate precursors of the next enzyme, a dioxygenase referred to as anthocyanidin synthase (ANS) or leucoanthocyanidin dioxygenase (LDOX). It was recently shown however that flavan-3-ols, the products of leucoanthocyanidin reductase (LAR), are the true substrates of ANS/LDOX.
The resulting, unstable anthocyanidins are further coupled to sugar molecules by enzymes like UDP-3-O-glucosyl transferase to yield the final relatively stable anthocyanins.

More than five enzymes* are thus required to synthesize these pigments, each working in concert. Any even minor disruption in any of the mechanisms of these enzymes by either genetic or environmental factors would halt anthocyanin production. (Source)

*Enzymes, large, three-dimensional protein molecules, are far more complex than the anthocyanins they are responsible for synthesizing.

We all understood that, right? Just think how long it took very smart biochemists, working in million-dollar, government-funded laboratories, to work out those biochemical pathways! And we are expected to believe that “nature,” given millions of years, figured out how to do it by a long series of DNA-damaging accidents and natural selection!

Right—and we are all just “lucky mud.” Probability theorists would tell us that the "Queen Anne's lace-making boo-boo tale" would be infinitely more likely than any evolutionary just-so story in explaining the existence of the magical Daucus carota "blood spot"-- or even one of the machine-like enzymes necessary to make it!

(Note: click on the photos to magnify the magnificence of the Queen's work.)

Soli Deo Gloria!

Monarda Musings

2008-07-23T09:39:00.008-04:00

The meadow is ablaze with Wild Bergamot! Well, maybe not ablaze, unless the blazes are gas flames—but even that doesn’t quite describe the pale, lavender-ish color of Monarda fistulosa blooms. Whatever the tint, there is a lot of it in the meadow in July. The bees are happy!

We have three Monardas showing off at the Celery Farm. To see the other two, you’ll have to mosey off to the Butterfly Garden. It’s worth the trip. The showstopper is, of course, Monarda didyma, called Bee-balm or Oswego Tea. It’s red—very red—intensely red—like no other! Unlike some of my photos, I didn’t adjust or try to boost the color. You can’t intensify intense!

If Oswego Tea is too strong for your taste and Wild Bergamot a bit washed out by comparison, maybe you will prefer the Purple Bergamot, whose complexion seemingly is achieved by mixing the other two paint colors. Its scientific name is perfectly descriptive: Monarda media.

Don’t limit your Butterfly Garden visit to Monarda musings. The faithful garden ladies have planted and cared for a floral phantasmagoria, designed to attract fluttering Lepidopterans—but we humans are certainly allowed to admire the beauty and fragrance of this special place. Rest a spell on the bench.

(Click on the pictures to make them even more phantasmagorical.) Note: the photo of the garden scene was taken well before its prime season--July is much better than June.

In Appreciation of Asclepias

2008-07-17T17:00:00.003-04:00

It’s mid-July, if you can believe it! The flowering season for the Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, is through, and the plants have entered one of the least attractive periods of their life cycle. Shriveled, brown remains of their once glorious flowerheads hang dejectedly, perhaps reflecting on the inefficiency of their clever pollination scheme. Of the dozens of blossoms making up each umbel, only one, two—rarely three—have been successfully pollinated. Those successes are now evidenced by the presence of small but growing seed pods (technically “follicles”). These puffy, rubbery nurseries will continue to grow, then dry, ultimately to release hundreds of parachute-equipped, wind-borne seeds come fall.

As Asclepias syriaca finishes blooming, other representatives of the Genus take over—at least three at the Celery Farm.

On your walk at Phair’s Pond, rest a moment on the new Carlos Lopez bench. As you look toward the pond, you will see at water’s edge a small stand of A. exaltata, the Poke Milkweed, with its loose, drooping umbels of whitish, magenta-tinted flowers. It’s a smaller, more delicate species than its more common relative.

Further along the Phair’s Pond path, several specimens of Swamp Milkweed, A. incarnata, will catch your attention. Their intense pink-purple color and the intricate engineering of their typical milkweed floral design will demand your close examination and appreciation. You may even meet a dapper, chitin-clad longhorn beetle while you are admiring the flowers. The Pirie Platform area is another good spot to see this amazing plant.

Just coming into bloom in mid-July is perhaps the most brilliantly colored of the milkweeds, A. tuberosa, the Butterfly-weed. Look for it in the Butterfly Garden and later on in the Wildflower Meadow.

Visit the Celery Farm soon, while the Asclepias show lasts—or at least enjoy the small gallery of photos presented here—all taken within the past week. (Click on each photo to enjoy its full detail.)

And as always, I will remind us all to give all glory to the One Who very intelligently designed these plants and Who upholds them in spite of the curse that sin has brought on His creation (Romans 8:19-22).

But some orange is nice!

2008-07-14T10:55:00.010-04:00

I revamped this blog and got rid of that horrible orange Blogger template. But I kept an orange-ish colored title. Then I posted pictures of flies on Oxeye, which is pretty orange. Now, since Oxeye (False Sunflower) is one of my favorite meadow flowers, you are probably going to have to put up with even more orange over the course of several posts. Get used to it.

In this little gallery (just a taste of things to come) we see a typical flower head with nearly all of its disc flowers fully open. Notice the Hemipteran insect (bug) “walking the plank” on one of the ray flowers. Then I’ve zoomed in on a group of disc flowers to show their intricate design and precise alignment. (Click on the pictures to get their full impact.)

All this talk of flower heads, ray flowers and disc flowers may be confusing or arcane for those of you not familiar with members of the composite family (daisies, asters and the like). Our oxeyes are usually taken as single flowers, when in fact they are actually big, precisely organized groups of specialized flowers. The “she loves me, she loves me not” “petals” are really individual “ray flowers” consisting of one petal and little else. The central disc is made up of somewhat more complete flowers with the reproductive parts, either stamens or pistils or both. The whole assembly is precisely designed to attract pollinators, reward them with nectar and then have them unknowingly do the vital work of pollination.

In the last post, I copped out of explaining the “false” in the name of False Sunflower. I’ll continue to do that until I find a photograph that shows the critical feature clearly enough to be convincing. (Actually, the extreme close-up view does show the feature in the lower right. But it's a rather shriveled up example, so I'll make you wait--I'm sure that you'll be holding your breath!)

Some (but probably not many) may be wondering why I spell “disc” with a c rather than with a k. Disk is certainly an acceptable spelling, but with the advent of “compact discs”, almost always spelled with a c, I’ve chosen, for the sake of consistency, to take a C grade on my report card, rather than a K grade. And that, dear friends, is a joke so private that only a few old Ramsey High School teachers would get it.

But at least I’ve got you wondering. Please email me at tomburr@optonline.net if you get it or would like an explanation of “K grades”.

Bioman goes green

2008-07-10T09:43:00.001-04:00

...maybe a bit TOO green! Do you miss the orange? I don't. I thought it was time to take advantage of Blogger's new templates and get rid of that ugly orange. Most likely, I will be making some changes as I learn how to use all the new tools, but for now, enjoy all the old stuff as well as new posts in a more soothing pastoral hue, more in line with the Creator's green theme.

Bioman (maybe that old appellation, as well, will fade into this sea of green. Time will tell.)

Voracious Aliens Plunder the Oxeyes

2008-07-09T23:46:00.006-04:00

OK, they’re not from outer space, even though they look like they could be. In fact, they’re not even aliens in the biogeographical sense, since they are native to North America--870+ species of them. They are the Syrphid flies.

These members of the Family Syrphidae are called flower flies for obvious reasons. They are also called yellow jacket mimics, bee mimics or wasp mimics, depending on which group of Hymenopterans they are trying to imitate. Another common name for them is "hover flies", because they—hover.

Looking like a vicious stinging insect when in fact you are a harmless lapping insect should, in theory, protect you from predation. But being too small (less than ½ inch) to really look dangerous probably makes you look like Mickey Rooney trying to mimic Sylvester Stallone. Only macro photography has any chance of making these tiny Dipterans look treacherous.

The pictured Lilliputians are filling their tiny tanks from the nectaries of one of my favorite meadow flowers, the Oxeye or False Sunflower, Heliopsis helianthoides. Shall I attempt here an explanation of the “false” in their name? Nah! Maybe next time.

(Click on the pictures to make the Rooney's look more Stallone-ish.)

Rambling about the Brambles

2008-07-05T23:46:00.022-04:00

The crumpled-paper petals of the bramble blossoms are gone now, having been replaced by lumpy, multi-hued aggregate fruits in various stages of ripening.

The fruits are called aggregate because each surface lump grew from a separate ovary in the base of the flower. Each ovary had its own style and stigma, each one of which received a separate pollen grain to fertilize an individual ovule—or maybe not (more about that later). The result is a lumpy, fused bunch of “drupelets” that we call a blackberry (or raspberry). So the bad news is that a blackberry is not really a berry, according to the botanists’ persnickety terminology. A true berry contains many seeds in a single ovary. (A tomato--with or without Salmonella--is technically a berry. But calling it that in public will surely start an argument.)

Another bit of bad news, at least for those who care about identifying wild plants, is that there are at least 205 species of these prickly plants called brambles (Genus Rubus). All that taxonomic splitting is based on such picayune details that none but the most (resist inserting that rather crude Freudian term) botanist would even bother. It gets messier. As suggested earlier, some populations of brambles reproduce asexually, with seeds developing from unfertilized ovules. That can produce little local, cloned microspecies—and who knows how many of those there might be--perhaps thousands!

Don’t let this inane Linnaean rambling inhibit your taste for the wild bramble aggregate fruits—or from your brazenly calling them berries! If you can beat the birds and other wildlife to them, they are not only tasty, but are full of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants like lutein and zeaxanthin for your eyes.

And what about that other BlackBerry ™, the wireless, thumb-operated e-mail phone device of Canadian origin? It took the people at Lexicon Branding, Inc. several weeks of haggling to come up with the BlackBerry name. That means that corporate committees may be even more anal—there, I said it—than botanical taxonomists.

This Essay Stinks!

2008-07-01T12:07:00.008-04:00

Fellow blogger Jim Wright recently posted a photo of a strange, brightly colored fungus and asked for help in identifying it. After glancing at a couple of books and web sites, I mistakenly called it “Columned Stinkhorn”. A day later I looked at one more field guide and changed my mind. It turned out to be “Stinky Squid,” a related species.

Its name is certainly appropriate. Its horns somewhat resemble a squid’s tentacles. And it, along with the other stinkhorns, uses flies to spread its spores. Smelling like rotting meat or dead bodies is a good idea for attracting flies. In fact, when I gently nudged these specimens to position them for their portraits, then took a whiff of my hand—Whew!

The chemical compounds that impart the odor certainly have appropriate names: putrescene and cadaverine. They are so powerful that their presence in only 5 to 10 parts per million is enough to create a stink. Some flowers use the same tactics to draw flies to carry their pollen grains, which after all, are also technically spores (microspores).

Plants and fungi (now classified in separate kingdoms) are incredibly complex chemical factories, capable of producing thousands of organic compounds, not just to stink up the place but as sources of our food, supplements, drugs and a whole lot more. Be sure to thank their Creator for them every day!

When I got home from photographing the Stinky Squids, I washed my hands (of the whole matter?) so I would be just a little less likely to draw flies.

Tweaking Nature

2008-06-23T12:29:00.006-04:00

I’m not a great fan of making alterations to God’s creatures—or images thereof. I generally limit processing of my photos to cropping for composition and minor adjustments of brightness and contrast where necessary. A sharpening tool comes in handy as well when things are a little fuzzy.

Some subjects, however, just seem to produce bland images, no matter how carefully I compose or expose (and I am not a foreigner to careless composing and exposing). Yarrow, a plant plentiful in the meadow, presents one of those challenges. Even to bring out the delicate detail and color, especially of the central disk, requires some drastic measures.

As you can see in the present gallery, I went a little crazy. Not stopping at subtle enhancement, I ventured into the bazaar and abstract.

But a little crazy creativity is fun once in a while. Enjoy. (Click on the images to enjoy them bigger.)

Preening on the Patio

2008-06-23T12:29:00.005-04:00

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

The tireless Celery Farm volunteers have imported tons of rocks, soil and wood chips to build an erosion-retarding platform in front of the Warden’s Watch tower. A bench provides a ground-level resting and observation place for human visitors. But of course the resident Canada geese have taken over, contributing droppings and feathers to the patio. The pictured pair were grunting and preening as if they owned the place—and indeed, they do, along with more than 200 other bird species.

Canada geese are beautiful birds, but overpopulation makes them less than popular in the eyes of many. Even getting to Warden’s Watch can be a problem at times—and the use of the boot scraper a necessity upon leaving!

The opportunity to rest for a while and peer out over peaceful Lake Appert makes the goosy nuisance a mere footnote to one’s otherwise pleasant visit. And the opportunity to photograph both the geese and a vista of the lake was made possible by using a Sigma 10mm lens.

Of Clouds and Clubtails

2008-06-16T12:32:00.005-04:00

After I had filled my tank with barely sub-four-dollar gas in Waldwick, I looked up and saw some promising cloud formations. So I doubled back to the Celery Farm for a quick visit to Warden’s Watch. The clouds were interesting, if not spectacular (no calendar shots here).

Aside from the clouds, the platform railing was aflutter with male Common Whitetail dragonflies, as well as the pictured specimen, the only Odonate that cooperated for portraiture. I’m calling it a Unicorn Clubtail and I’m calling myself an expert, having glanced at a couple of books and websites. :-) A very nice gallery of clubtail portraits can be seen here. Tom Murray must be a very patient guy!

Whatever the species, this insect packs a load of engineering into a relatively small chitin-wrapped package (but imagine the equally sophisticated equipment crammed into a fruit fly’s miniature airframe). We shouldn’t hesitate to swat a fly or mosquito, but as we do, we should reflect on the magnificence of the creature we are deconstructing. And there is certainly no reason to flatten dragonflies, as important to their ecosystems as they are. But that’s another story.

Primitive and Advanced—a Couple of Primitive Botanical Terms

2008-06-11T15:33:00.011-04:00

If a flower has regular floral parts and lots of them (especially stamens and pistils) botanists call it “primitive”. If it has irregularly shaped petals—or if some floral parts are missing—and few stamens and pistils, they call it “advanced”. As far as I’m concerned, that terminology is primitive. It is evolutionary jargon. Since botanists tend to be confused about the supposed evolution of the flowering plants, they ought not throw around those words, trying to snow themselves and the rest of us with evolutionary “just-so” stories.

So enjoy staring at the photos of a few “primitive”, “advanced” and really advanced flowers and flower heads—and see if you can still dare call any of these highly complex, intelligently designed beauties “primitive”.

Here the flowers appear in roughly reverse order, from "really advanced" in the case of the fleabane, to primitive in the case of the multiflora rose and buttercup. The fleabane is actually a composite flower head, with dozens of ray flowers and disc flowers. The birdfoot trefoil has the typical irregular legume form.

All were photographed at the Celery Farm Natural Area at the end of May. Click on the photos to see the flowers WAY bigger than life.

A Mist is Good for a Smile--and Flare is Fair Photographic Fare

2008-06-11T15:33:00.007-04:00

Cool spring mornings are often misty mornings. Overnight temperatures fall below the dew point (the temperature at which relative humidity becomes 100%) and water vapor is forced to condense around microscopic dust nuclei. And voila, we can celebrate Ground Fog Day.

On the road, ground fog is a bad thing. It often concentrates in low spots. When we drive into it, the visibility becomes zero, and panic, chain collisions and other woes ensue. On the other hand, a misty sunrise at the Celery Farm offers a delightful, almost mystical (no puns, please) experience. Let the photos speak.

By the way, nobody dare say that water itself, in whatever state (solid, liquid or gas), is a bad thing. After all, without it we would be powder, and life would not be. It’s a very special little molecule with unique properties. The Creator “done a good thing” when He created H2O. He uses it in blessings as well as in judgment (See Genesis 7).

Flare, in photography, is generally not a good thing, unnatural as it is. It happens when light, especially from a bright source like the Sun, starts reflecting and refracting around in the elements of the camera lens and produces odd effects—general haziness and loss of contrast, as well as bright, colorful geometric spots and streaks in the photographic image. Flare is annoying when it spoils a picture, but it can be put to artistic use, either on purpose or by accident. Again, let the photos speak.

A Winter Break

2008-02-03T19:41:00.000-05:00

As you can see, nothing has appeared here in quite some time. After completing two Blurb books, one of which was based on past blog posts, I found myself quite blogged out. So we will take a winter sabbatical and resume when things begin to sprout in early Spring.

In the meanwhile, take a look at the books at http://www.blurb.com/ Put "bioman" in the search box to see and preview the latest. If you are daring and feel rich, you can even buy the books from that site. I won't feel insulted if you think they are too pricey for your budget, but I would be honored to have these books in your library.

Thanks. See you, Lord willing, come Spring.

What happened to November?

2007-12-06T13:11:00.000-05:00

November seems to have slipped by without comment. Other projects intervened. But maybe December will be different--but then there is Christmas and other matters...

Meanwhile, the above illustrations are presented without comment--none needed. I think you will see the connection. (Click 'em to enlarge 'em)

Late bloomers and multicolored fruit

2007-10-15T15:22:00.001-04:00

(Today's photos appear at the bottom. Scroll down to see them.)

Mid-October isn’t a season of riotous color in the meadow and woodland. It should be, with autumn leaves ablaze. But due to the "unusual" weather the trees are being conservative so far. So we have to be satisfied with a sparkle here and a glint there, mostly in flowers and fruits. The Evening Primrose persists in showing off, while little white unidentifiable (at least by me) asters hang on. But where flowers fail, the fruits of various plants offer some color, some vibrant, others subtle.

Fruits designed to attract birds as their seed dispersal agents are usually colorful, while wind-dispersed seeds tend toward brown. Why should they spend energy producing colorful pigments? Wind is blind. So apples, moonseeds and rose hips do serious organic chemistry, while Japanese Knotweed, Milkweed and Joe-Pye-weed just stick with brown or white. They pour their energy into making wings, parachutes and other paraphernalia that catch the wind and carry their babies (seeds) far and wide.

If you want to enter into a whole new world, that of botanical terminology (not recommended for the faint of heart), take a look at the classification of fruits. Is it fleshy or dry? Dehiscent or indehiscent? A pome, drupe, berry, hesperidium, pepo, multiple, aggregate, capsule, pod, achene, samara? And on it goes, all to the delight (or possibly despair) of every botany student.

But why should we worry about the technical jargon? The birds don’t care—they just eat. And the wind doesn’t care—it just wafts. So if the intricacies interest you, indulge yourself. Just don’t let the daedal lexicon interfere with your appreciation of the Creator’s wonderful engineering that enables the integration of all living elements of the biosphere, as well as wind, water and soil, into a system that keeps going and going, season after season, year after year.

Even as we appreciate the complexities and mechanisms of the biosphere, we must not fall into one or both of two traps: naturalism and/or deism. Not only is the living world inexplicable without the existence of an Intelligent Designer; it is also unthinkable that it is self-sustaining.(Genesis 1 : Colossians 1:15-17).

(Click on the pictures to enjoy larger views)

Autumn Asteraceae—E Pluribus Unum

2007-10-08T12:51:00.000-04:00

In spring, it’s the fleabanes; in summer Black-eyed Susan shows her smiling face, along with Oxeye Daisy, Sunflower and Oxeye (False Sunflower). But in late summer and autumn, the Coneflowers, Asters and Goldenrods take over the meadow.

They are all members of the Family Asteraceae, formerly called Compositae, the second- most abundant of all plant families, with well over 20,000 species in some 1,100 genera. Only the Orchid Family is larger, with more than 25,000 described species.

As you can see, some composites look like daisies while others don’t. The Mistflower, Joe-Pye Weed and Boneset in the previous essay and the Goldenrods shown here certainly don’t. The feature that puts all these beauties in the same family is the habit of arranging their flowers in “heads,” often consisting of more than one form. In the daisies, this is particularly noticeable. The “petals” of a daisy (or aster) are actually individual flowers, each with a petal and male or female parts—while the central disk is composed of a tightly packed bunch of florets that look entirely different than the ray flowers.

That is why I like to call the Asteraceae the “E Pluribus Unum”—“From the many, one” family. They pack a lot of flowers together in an arrangement that is designed to attract pollinators—which, besides offering beauty for human admirers, is the sole purpose of any entomophilous (insect-pollinated) bloom. Attract them with form and color; reward them with nectar and pollen; get your pollen transferred in the process. Great engineering! “E Pluribus Unum” has worked for over 200 years for our great country and for much longer for the Family Asteraceae!

That motto on our coinage and a big plant family also remind me of an even more significant “composite”—the Trinity. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s only a faint reminder, a grossly inadequte analogy. There is no way that packing a bunch of flowers together in one head is in any way comparable to “packing” three Persons together into One Godhead! But perhaps the Creator, living as three Persons in one Being from all eternity, thought that designing the daisies as composites might just give us a tiny glimpse of His nature and of the glory only He rightly deserves. We need reminding every day!

E Pluribus Unum
Soli Deo Gloria

Scientific names never change! Oh, really?

2007-10-03T22:38:00.000-04:00

Mistflower, Joe-Pye Weed and Boneset. Two of the three have had their names changed. (Click on the pictures to enjoy larger views.)

Some scientific names for plants just roll off your tongue: Eupatorium perfoliatum (Boneset), Liriodendron tulipifera (Tuliptree), Liquidambar styraciflua (Sweetgum)!

Some may disagree about the pronounce-ability of scientific names, but we are not allowed to disagree about their importance. Common names are famously ambiguous and confusing; Latin names standardize the identities of species, pinning them down once and for all—supposedly.

Not so fast. Botanists in particular like to argue and nit pick. They’ll stick their noses and hand lenses into the private parts of flowers and find minute differences. And then they’ll go to meddling with classifications that have been around for years. Such is the case with the Genus Eupatorium.

Eupatorium used to include some of my favorite plants. Then some overzealous botanists looked really closely at the stigmas (pollen-receiving structures) and saw some distinctions. So in their little nit-picking minds they determined to split up the genus and cause no little amount of confusion—especially to amateurs like me! And so a lot of Eupatoria (?) in good standing were kicked out of the genus and got harder-to-pronounce names.

For instance, the Joe-Pye Weeds went from Eupatorium to Eupatoriadelphus or Eutrochium. White Snakeroot, formerly Eupatorium rugosum, lost both Genus and species names, becoming Ageratina altissima. Pink Thoroughwort went from the easily pronounced Eupatorium incarnata to Fleischmannia incarnata. (sounds like a bit of egotism by Mr. Fleischmann to me!) And Mistflower joined the Genus Conoclinium.

But our first-mentioned species, Boneset, with its roll-off-the-tongue Latin name, Eupatorium perfoliatum, has withstood the botanists' snooping and stands unchanged—at least for the present!

It just goes to show how temporary things can be in this sin-cursed world. Even science changes day-by-day and year-by-year. Today’s science textbooks are outdated tomorrow. But God’s inspired Word never changes, never fails and always accomplishes His purposes. Here is a little Bible Study to meditate upon: (I Peter 1: 24-25); (Hebrews 4:12-13) (Psalm 139 -- All of it!) . These passages comfort and challenge me every time I dare meditate on them!

When it comes to classifying skippers—I usually skip it!

2007-09-25T14:21:00.000-04:00

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

In addition to colorful Lepidopterans like Monarchs and Sulphurs, the Skippers are working the Celery Farm flowers in late September.

What can we say about Skippers? First, they are almost moth-like, with rather furry bodies. But they have typical matchstick antennae, rather than the feathery antennae characteristic of moths. Second, they are almost all some shade of brown, with various patterns of other shades of brown in their wings. Third, they have big brown eyes. So they are nice butterflies—if you like brown.

When it comes to classifying Skippers, things get tricky, unless your eyes are particularly sensitive to shades of brown—and you have the patience to study closely the characteristics of the nearly 100 species listed in the National Audubon Field Guide to Butterflies. In that volume, Skippers are divided into the “Folded-wing Skippers” and the “Spread-winged Skippers”, classified by how they hold their wings when at rest. Our examples are obviously of the “folded-wing” variety.

Other than wing position, the pattern of spots becomes crucial and challenging, particularly to my patience! I’ll put up with just so much nit-picking between and among species; then I become what is called in the field of taxonomy, a “lumper” and readily leave the fine distinctions to experts who have devoted their lives to such things. There is a relatively new science called “Baraminology” (derived from the Hebrew and Greek: “study of created kinds”). From the creation standpoint, all Skippers—and perhaps all butterflies—are derived from a common created kind. That’s a perfect excuse for a lazy taxonomist like me to give up on distinguishing between look-alikes.

A recent identification at the Celery Farm of a “Sachem” (a species of Skipper) must have been by one of those experts, or just a good guesser. Staring at a photo didn’t convince me one way or another.

As to our examples, I’ll call the one on the right the Yellow Patch Skipper (formerly known as Peck’s Skipper) and let an expert help me with the other.

Unfortunately, we can all too easily get locked into the box of taxonomy and nomenclature (no offense to Carolus Linnaeus, who thought up the whole thing) and forget about the incredible engineering that went into the design of all aspects of the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology of every insect. Lying beneath the surface of the skipper’s brown eyes and brown body is a marvelous array of nano-technology that would have blown Charles Darwin’s mind. The human eye almost made him doubt his own theory; one look at an electron micrograph of even one of an insect’s cells would surely have finished the job—and we might have been spared the distraction of almost 150 years of less-than-useful speculation about the origin and diversification of life and could have made more progress in real science’s solving of the real problems facing this sin-cursed world.

Migrating Monarchs

2007-09-20T00:20:00.001-04:00

It’s now past mid-September, so the Monarchs are on the move south. They are slurping up the nectar from whatever plants are still in bloom. And, thanks to the faithful ladies who tend the Celery Farm’s Butterfly Garden, there is lots of nectar left to slurp. Mist Flower and Butterfly Bush (Buddleia) provide nourishment during a refueling stop for the Monarchs along the long route from New England to Mexico or southern Florida. (Monarchs west of the Rockies prefer southern California as their winter destination.) Here is a migration map.

So this week’s photos (Click on them to enjoy larger views) feature the travelers on each of the above-mentioned plants. I especially like the mirror image Monarch effect on the Buddleia (I took about a dozen shots of that flitting pair—this was the only successful one).

By this time (more than a week later) these Monarchs have flown well to the south and have been replaced by others in the still flourishing garden—the Mist Flower is at its blooming peak as I write this.

All migration is an incredible phenomenon when you think about it. Most often we think of birds flying thousands of miles, guided by Earth’s magnetic field, the stars and factors yet to be determined, often for the first time in their lives. Just recently, a Bar-Tailed Godwit won the distance record—an electronically tagged bird flew 7150 miles non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand! Here is an account of the feat.

As amazing as bird migration is, butterfly migration seems all the more phenomenal. These half-ounce invertebrates, flapping chitinous wings, have never before been to their wintering grounds. They are the last hatch of the summer, the great-great grandchildren of the Monarchs that flew north in spring. And, although they look the same as earlier summer generations, their bodies and behavior are different. They have entered a condition called diapause and won’t mate until next spring. They store fat in their abdomens and may actually gain weight during their 3000-mile migration. And their destination is not only the same general area used by their now dead great-great grandparents, but sometimes the same tree! Even my recently acquired GPS unit can’t do that for me!

Darwinian evolutionists can’t say much about this phenomenon (they try, but they just sputter or make up stories). But the Creator is using all this as a loud and clear message and warning: “I did it and there is no excuse for not believing that I have made it all. So make this the first step toward discovering an even better thing that I’ve done—sending my Son to save sinners. Now go to my Written Word and find Him!” Click here for the ugly truth and here for the good news.

Early and Late Summer Favorites

2007-09-12T12:10:00.001-04:00

(Click on the images to enlarge)

I suppose we shouldn’t play favorites with God’s creations, but I guess it’s only natural. Come on—equal appreciation for ragweed and rose? After all, rose equals beauty; ragweed equals hay fever.

But I digress, even before I get started. This week’s photos are of two beauties, neither of which has a chance of producing pollen allergies, since both are entomophilous (insect-pollinated) and don’t produce dusty pollen that is likely to get into your nose. So you can examine them closely—no need for Alavert.

It’s easy to see why I’ve chosen these two as examples of early and late summer bloomers. They are rather petite but unusual and exquisite in their own ways. The yellow flowers are of the Moth Mullein, which blooms in late June. The purplish-blue spikes belong to the Great Lobelia, still blooming in early September.

Moth Mullein, as you can see, like its much taller cousin the Common Mullein, bears its blooms on a single stalk and opens its flowers only one or a few at a time. But it’s worth the effort to stoop down (the stalk is only about a foot or two tall) and get a close look at its unique flower and its leathery buds. Moth Mullein, as far as I know, is not pollinated by moths. It got its name from someone who imagined that its red, feathery stamens looked like the antennae of a moth—took a lot of imagination, I would say. But it makes for a strikingly beautiful little flower.

The Great Lobelia, so called because it is larger than most others of its Genus, gets my vote as favorite late summer bloomer because of its stripy, spiky buds, its groovy stalk and its intense purplish-blue, interestingly shaped flowers. It stands out because there is usually nothing of its color or form in its immediate neighborhood.

Last year I saw only one or a few of each of these plants at the Celery Farm. This year they popped up in greater numbers in more different areas, giving more opportunities for photography. That was fortunate, because my failure rate in photographing small flowers is rather high!

This year I have saved you the pain of stooping—just enjoy the pictures (be sure to click on them to get larger views). But next year, if you happen to see one or both of these plants, why not stoop—and experience the real thing? Remember, no Alavert needed, but maybe some Tylenol for the back. :-) Some day soon, there will be no need for allergy or pain medications, when The Savior returns and restores His very good creation—but even better! (Romans 8:18-23) (Revelation 21:1-5)

Red Maple (Acer rubrum) jumps the gun!

2007-09-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

(Click photos to enlarge)
These photos were shot in late August, and the Red Maples were already showing their impatience for fall to arrive, well before any other species were even thinking red, much less displaying the anthocyanins (reds and blues), carotenoids (orange) and tannins (brown) that produce our autumn displays of color.

All those fancy terms represent fancy organic molecules that plants make by fancy (complex) chemical processes—which goes to show that plants are indeed fancy (complex) and aren’t simple in any sense. Plants make these pigments for various reasons, some of which are obvious and some still vaguely understood. Chlorophyll (green) is intimately involved with food making (photosynthesis), but what about the red, yellow and orange colors? What roles do they play? Some act as light antennas, shuffling important wavelengths to chlorophyll for higher efficiency in food production.

Our Red Maple leaves produce red pigment in spring, summer and fall, mostly for protection against excess light, visible and ultraviolet. Tender emerging leaves are particularly vulnerable to radiation, and the red anthocyanins serve same purpose as the sun block we slather on (or should) before our beach or birding treks.

Summer may bring new growth, again starting out red; and soil mineral deficiencies can also elicit color changes (a possible cause of our maples' premature color change).

It is in autumn, of course, when we usually think of color change. Some pigments are present all along and are revealed as chlorophyll breaks down in autumn in the trees’ preparation for “senescence,” during which important molecules are shipped out of soon-departing leaves to be conserved in trunks or roots.

But leaves once again manufacture anthocyanins for protection, this time from another danger—oxidation. As chloroplasts are disassembled, chlorophyll is set free and becomes a potentially dangerous oxidizer and destroyer of other valuable molecules. Anthocyanins act as anti-oxidants, tying up “free radicals” and saving the important stuff from destruction. That’s why an apple (skin) a day keeps the doctor away from US and why we are encouraged to eat all sorts of red and purple-skinned fruits so that free radicals don’t destroy OUR valuable molecules.

So as we look at these “fall preview” photos and look forward to our annual colorful display, we should remember several things:

*Plants are fantastically complex organisms and undeniable examples of intelligent design, not the result of mindless chance.
*Fall color is a blessing not enjoyed in all areas of the world, so be thankful for this treat.
*Eat your fresh colorful fruit (or take supplements made from them).
*Thank God for His wonderful handiwork—and especially for His great plan of redemption, by which He is able to save us from the "free radicals" of our sin.

p.s. There is another possible explanation for the premature blush of our Red Maple foliage: some passerby thoughtlessly called these trees “Swamp Maples.” Embarrassment and outrage stimulate the production of anthocyanins. :-)

Cedar Flyswallows?

2007-08-30T14:07:00.000-04:00

I don’t feel a bit guilty about abusing the name of the Cedar Waxwing, whose wings never seemed very waxy to me. My new moniker for this classy bird is based on its behavior that many have noticed at the Celery Farm over the past couple of weeks.

The usual image of the Waxwing is of a flock of them rabidly devouring berries from a tree or shrub. But since there are few berries of any sort around during late summer, what’s a waxwing to do but to take advantage of an alternate—and protein-rich—source of calories: insects.

Hence we get the unusual scene of Waxwings perched on high branches over Lake Appert, periodically dashing out to catch tiny flying insects and returning to their perches to wait, briefly, for more entomophagous opportunities. Some even swoop downward and over the water surface. So we have these berry eaters acting more like flycatcher/swallow hybrids—hence my silly but hopefully forgivable re-naming of the species.

While the Waxwings take advantage of the abundance of summer insects, visitors to Warden’s Watch at the Celery Farm have the opportunity of seeing these birds closer than usual as they perch on bare branches within ten feet of the platform and carry on their feeding behavior for minutes or hours at a time. And what an opportunity for photography, even for folks without super-long telephoto lenses!

Watching the “flyswallows” in action brought several words to mind: beauty, adaptability, design. Beauty? Just look at the photos, which don’t do justice to the real thing (but click on them to enlarge them anyway). Adaptability? Plucking berries may be easier, but these creatures have been given the ability to take advantage of a completely different diet when necessary for survival. And design? It is evident in every detail of bird anatomy, from feathers, hollow bones and neuromuscular control that enable flight—to eyes that can see miniscule insects from several yards away (I couldn’t see even one of the insects the birds were flying after.)

Perhaps a fourth word comes to mind: intelligence. The term “birdbrain” should be deleted from our vocabulary. I can’t attest to the IQ of the Cedar Waxwing, but recent work with crows shows some amazing mental abilities. An experiment was designed in which a crow had to retrieve a short stick to get at a longer stick with which to retrieve a piece of food—and the bird figured it out on the first try, never having seen the equipment. Please, none of this “birds are evolved from dinosaurs” stuff. But then again, maybe dinosaurs were smart, too. The Designer of both birds and dinosaurs knows.

Lunar Wipeout--and Mine!

2007-08-28T09:59:00.000-04:00

I would have posted this earlier, but after getting up at 5 to view and photograph this lunar eclipse, I wiped out and went back to bed. Unfortunately, cloud cover "eclipsed" the most spectacular part of the eclipse, when the Earth's shadow completely covers the Moon and it appears as a big navel orange in the sky.

Many articles and books have been written about our amazing satellite and how it's just big enough and just close enough to make our tides just good enough. It's only a tip of the proverbial iceberg of the "Anthropic Principle" which says there are so many parameters and measurements about our solar system--and the galaxy--and the universe--that are "just so" so as to make life possible on Earth. All by chance? No way! I enjoy reading Kipling's "Just So" stories, but our Creator wrote bigger and better.

Now how about a little hike down by the banks of the great gray green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees...but enough of Kipling, how about this for a taste of reality.

For another Moon-related post, click here.

Controversial Cormorants

2007-08-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

While scanning through folders of old photos, I happened upon this one, one of my favorite Double-crested Cormorant images. Then, in the Science Section of the New York Times, appeared this article about the fascinating and somewhat controversial species. (Unfortunately, the financially strapped NY Times has archived the article and wants money if you want to view it.)

In past years, we could always expect to see one or more “cormies” perched on branches or platforms on Lake Appert, drying their wings in preparation for their next dive and fishing expedition. This year, for some reason unknown to me, I have seen very few “devil birds” on any of my visits.

After reading the Times article and other pieces about the ecological, aesthetical and commercial problems that overpopulations of cormorants have caused in various regions, we might be thankful for the limited numbers that visit the Celery Farm. Even a moderate population of these ravenous gobblers might fish out the lake, leaving slim pickings for egrets, herons and ospreys--and stinking up the place in the process.

As with all things ecological, healthy disagreement and argument abound. Stewardship and management of complex ecosystems is no simple matter. Fixing one thing without breaking something else or upsetting various groups of people (hunters, fishermen, bird lovers, conservationists, property owners) makes for decision-making headaches. Add in government bureaucracy and things start to look like the dodder in my previous post.

Here is an interesting point-counterpoint discussion between a fisherman and an environmental lawyer concerning the cormorant situation in the Great Lakes. One side’s argument looks good until we read the opposing view. That’s the way it is in all debates. (Proverbs 18:17) ;

What amazes me is that there is so much concern at every level of government and by a plethora of private organizations—concern about individual species and biodiversity and the environment in general. Thousands of people and uncounted millions of dollars are involved in solving environmental problems and in saving endangered species. What motivates governments, organizations and individuals to put out so much money and effort in these causes? Motives range from purely selfish to somewhat altruistic. The biblical mandate is clear, but our fallen human nature has caused us to fail to fulfill it for thousands of years. We are thankful for those who try, whatever their motives.

The Dodder That Ate the Celery Farm

2007-08-17T09:59:00.001-04:00

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

It seems to be everywhere, spreading its orange, spaghetti-like stems over any plant it wants to. And stems it is; there are no leaves; there is no chlorophyll—and therefore there is no photosynthesis. So when it comes to food, the Dodder has to get it from a plant that IS green and CAN make food by photosynthesis.

Here’s how it works. Dodder grows from seeds. Its tiny seedlings grope about, sniffing the air for chemicals emitted from nearby greenery. When they come in contact with a likely host plant, they quickly grow around its stems and soon penetrate them with specialized roots called haustoria. The haustoria enter the vascular tissue (veins) of the host and absorb food, water and minerals to nourish the Dodder. The original root of the Dodder disintegrates, leaving it completely dependent on the host plant.

As you can see, it’s a very successful way of life. The Dodder quickly grows, spreads to other plants and even produces flowers, which in turn produce a lot of seeds for the next growing season.

With more and more growing at the Celery Farm each year, one wonders how much of an ecological problem it might get to be. Time will tell. No use trying to eradicate the stuff. The seeds can last in the ground for up to seventy years, so they say.

Dodder, AKA “devil’s guts” (and a whole bunch of other names people have given it over the years), is a true parasite, drawing not just water and minerals, but ready-made carbohydrates from its host plant. I don’t know how much damage it does to the host, but it surely can’t help.

Parasitism is one form of symbiosis. The more friendly kind is called mutualism, in which each partner in the relationship contributes something good. Such is the case in those crusty things called lichens, in which the fungus partner soaks up water and the alga partner makes food, so that the lichen can grow on a bare rock. Parasitism is all take and no give. We don’t admire it in humans and it surely was not a part of God’s original “very good” creation.

The Fall brought about ugliness in every aspect of the cosmos. We can’t wait ‘til He fixes it. Reflect upon the situation here.

Insect Wings--Making Order(s) out of chaos

2007-08-13T12:02:00.000-04:00

Click on each picture to see a large version. Then click your browser back arrow to come back here.

I seem to be mentioning insects and their wings frequently these days, mainly because I have been able to grab a few fairly decent shots of them this summer. Why do I find insect wings so fascinating? After all, they are merely dead sheets of chitin, varied in texture and color and sometimes covered with minute scales. But just contemplating how these precisely designed structures develop in the pupa stage or the nerves and muscles that produce their precise movements for flight should arouse a sense of wonder in us all.

Aside from that, the wings are the features by which insects are classified into major groups called Orders. That makes it easier for us amateurs to at least tell a fly from a beetle or a grasshopper from a dragonfly. And while most of us are inclined to call any insect a bug, the true entomologist would cluck his tongue and shake his finger, insisting that only members of the Order Hemiptera should be called bugs—and that their wings can identify them easily.

So take a look at the photos and notice the differences in the wings of various Orders. But please note: I have put the photos in random order and have left it up to you to match them up. Good luck!

Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) scale-covered wings (strikingly colored in this Eastern Black Swallowtail.)

Coleoptera (beetles) one pair of shell-like wings and a pair of membranous flight wings, which you see when ladybug (sorry, lady beetle) flies away home

Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, etc.) two pairs of membranous wings hooked together so that they act as one

Diptera (flies) one pair of membranous flight wings and a second pair that is reduced to small knobs and used like gyroscopes (You can't see them in this photo.)

Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) two pairs of similar membranous wings

Hemiptera (true bugs) forewings are half leathery and half membranous, giving a flat-backed appearance with a distinctive shield pattern

Even if you just want to enjoy the pictures, be sure to give credit (and honor) to the One who created these miniature marvels! (His name isn't Darwin.) Promise? I knew you would.

Fishing and Hunting at the Celery Farm

2007-07-29T12:11:00.000-04:00

Two old pros enjoy the quiet of Lake Appert while waiting for the appearance of something special to photograph.

Bioman photographs a wide-angle scene looking out from the Butterfly Garden, while another photographer looks into the garden for a flower or insect closeup.

One of Bioman's favorite Canada Goose portraits.
(Click the images to enlarge.)

The Celery Farm Natural Area is a great place for fishing—but only if you’re a heron, egret or osprey. No hooks, lines or sinkers are allowed, no matter what humans buy them. But you will see plenty of hunting going on—for subjects to photograph. Besides birding, photography is probably the next most popular Celery Farm sport.

Especially if there is a special attraction, like last year’s Mute Swan family or a rare bird appearance, like that of the Eurasian Widgeon or LeConte’s Sparrow, photogs will gather like flies to fill multi-gigabyte memory cards with untold thousands of images and to compare notes on camera models, lenses and tripods. Occasionally there is an appearance of one of the rarest of species: a film photography purist carrying his classic N series Nikon.

Even without a star attraction, in a place like the Celery Farm there is always some new image to capture. Light changes constantly; plants go through their growing cycles; birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects appear out of nowhere to offer surprise photographic opportunities. Even if you have photographed a Canada Goose a million times (as I seem to have) there is always a slightly different pose, lighting situation or swimming or flight pattern to make for a one-of-a-kind image. (The one shown here is one of my favorites.)

The motivation for doing nature photography is unique to every photographer. For me, it boils down to revealing the Creator’s skill in designing the structure and function of His creatures to survive and beautify the landscape even in His fallen, cursed cosmos, perhaps in a way never seen in quite the same way before. Did He foresee the coming of photographic equipment and techniques that could do this? Of course! Omniscience, omnipotence and pre-ordination are awesome things to contemplate! Soli Deo Gloria.

For a look back at an earlier entry about Celery Farm photography, look here.