Blithe

Age 23 m Send me buff wolf men for encouragement

[blithegreycat]

I love this fat lesbian

[blithegreycat]

Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) despite the name the fruit is only ripe by late July. The plant itself is poisonous everywhere including the fruit itself when unripe. The fruit rewards your luck and patience with a flavor very reminiscent of passion fruit if you get the privilege of finding a ripe one. Their range is shockingly wide, I’ve seen them from Illinois all the way to Florida. I commonly associate these guys with mushroom foraging since they usually emerge around the same time morels do in mid early spring

[blithegreycat]

Syzygium jambos (Syzygium samarangense is also called this) also know as rose apple is a fruit that is a member of the Myrtle family and popular in tropical landscaping. According to what I read it tastes like watermelon. The Thai name for this is chompoo which also just translates to pink. It is also a Thai surname which is most likely tied to the local agriculture of the area it originated from. Weirdly enough I’ve seen these plants in Florida at one point so apparently they can be grown in the United States

While researching this I came across blogs that said it was used as an offering but when I looked into it further I could only find sources telling me that it’s inappropriate to offer this fruit to ancestors in Buddhism. So if anyone familiar with Thai culture could tell me who or what this fruit is offered to and why I would like to know. If they’re even offered at all

[blithegreycat]

Mewgenics gameplay

[blithegreycat]

(Orchis militaris) Turkish ice cream is made from a flour harvested from the tubers of this orchid (more than one species can be used though) the flour is called salep. It and plant resin give the ice cream its elastic properties as well as its ability to resist melting. Salep also is the name of a hot beverage made using the orchid flour. At one point in history it occupied a similar niche that hot cocoa did in 18th century England. From personal experience having salep it tastes like a drinkable version of instant packet cinnamon oatmeal. It’s quite pleasant albeit it’s very thick and heavy

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I was thinking about American persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) today so I figured I should talk about persimmons in general. Persimmon trees themselves are dioecious having both male and female trees however this isn’t set in stone.

Persimmons are much more prominent in eastern cultures and have a general strong association with the fall. Persimmons come in two different varieties called astringent and non astringent. The most popular non astringent persimmon is the fuyu and they are typically eaten fresh. Astringent persimmons are a lot more interesting and require a lot more processing to become palatable. They are chock full of tannins that create this mouth numbing fuzzy sensation from personal experience. You can get rid of this by allowing the fruit to overripen or treating it with alcohol. Deep freezing it to a sorbet like texture also helps get rid of the astringency. They have a very deep and rich sweet flavor when they’re fully processed I highly recommend trying hoshigaki at least once for this reason

The trees take forever to grow. A persimmon in my parent’s backyard is barely above the width of a pencil and it was planted 8 years ago. This comes with the added benefit of making really dense wood that was used for making golf clubs

[blithegreycat]

Death Valley is blooming right now (it’s basically over for low latitude) so I figured it would be interesting to talk about. During springtime when it’s cool and wet enough a super bloom can occur. It occurs at different times for high and low elevations with the low elevations producing those large fields of flowers. The plants that are usually found in a bloom are desert sunflowers, desert five spots, and phacelias. There are more species but those stood out to me the most. Death Valley itself is a very interesting place with one of the highest recorded temperature on earth. Never been there myself but according to my grandfather’s anecdotes it was hot and dry enough there it gave his sliced bread a similar texture to toast

[blithegreycat]

Getting my pipes fixed has made me stay up later than I normally would otherwise. May as well use this time to be productive

Tristerix aphyllus aka cactus mistletoe is parasitic just like its namesake. The seeds embed into the cactus and leech off of nutrients using an organ called a haustorium. When the time is right months later they flower and then produce fruits so the birds can spread the seeds to other hosts. They’re primarily pollinated by hummingbirds hence why the flowers are very long and tubular with those anthers sticking out

[blithegreycat]

Haleakala hopping moth for your viewing pleasure. It’s forced to be flightless because the mountain it lives on has high winds. Both the larvae and adults feed on shrubs

[blithegreycat]

Chrysanthemum

They’re a short day plants so that means they appear everywhere when fall rolls around. They’re also a part of the Japanese imperial crest. They also produce insecticidal compounds called pyrethrins. These pyrethrins attack the nervous system of insects causing paralysis and insecticides use similar synthetic compounds called pyrethroids

[blithegreycat]

It’s that weed day or whatever. Got me thinking of how many of my boyfriends in high school were bi stoners. Guess I just attract them somehow.

Anyways plant fact:

The compounds that you get thc (tetrahydrocannabinol) from the trichomes on the cannabis plant. Cannabis is also dioecious and the female of this plant species tends to be the most valuable. The male plants can produce thc but not enough for it to be sellable so they are generally relegated to reproduction. The female plants that are used for bud production often remain unfertilized because they would divert their energy into producing seeds instead of their resin heavy buds

[blithegreycat]

Wisteria frutescens is a species of wisteria native to the United States that should be blooming around this time. Wisteria is in the legume family and like other legumes it’s capable of fixing nitrogen from the air into the soil. Wisteria is associated with longevity and the afterlife in a lot of cultures

[blithegreycat]

Linen is its own unique fiber that is derived from the flax plant (also hemp but the properties of the two after processing are virtually identical where it counts). The fiber itself comes from the bast fibers of the flax’s phloem. The fiber’s role in transporting nutrients to the seed head of these tall plants gives it moisture wicking properties making it excellent for summer clothes and tent canvases. This also gives it a niche over cotton since it doesn’t readily absorb water and odors. It also can be more ecofriendly in comparison to cotton because making linen on an industrial scale doesn’t require a lot of water or chemical processing compared to other natural fibers. Ireland currently has one of the strongest linen industry out there since they have been weaving with the flax plant since at least the 11th century

[blithegreycat]

Ginkgo biloba is a living fossil that first appeared during the Jurassic. The trees are dioecious meaning they come in both male and female. Male ginkgos are much more popular in landscapes because they don’t produce the seeds. From personal experience the seed smells like a very potent rotten cheese and a female ginkgo is hard to be around for this reason. They have excellent yellow fall colors which is why they are a popular landscape tree. The trees are also prized for their longevity and resilience with some being documented to survive the Hiroshima nuclear blast. I have heard of them being used in Chinese medicine for longevity and they are currently being looked at to treat dementia

[blithegreycat]

Morning glories are not as mundane as they might outwardly seem. Their seeds produce a hallucinogenic chemical similar to LSD. They were also a popular ornamental plant in Japan when they were first introduced to the country as a medicine around 800 c.e. Sweet potatoes are also in the morning glory family and not the nightshade family unlike normal potatoes

Convolvulus arvensis (field bindweed) is probably the most relevant morning glory I can think of at the moment. It’s pretty much the scourge of anyone who wants to do herbicide free farming on a commercial scale. They have this quirky little trait of damaging equipment via clogging and tangling. Their roots make it extremely difficult to kill them without herbicide as they can simply regrow themselves when tilled and mulched over

Another stand out morning glory is the moon flower which blooms at night. It’s primarily pollinated by moths and like other night blooming flowers they have a very strong fragrance. Ironically they require full sun to grow properly

[blithegreycat]

Welwitschia mirabilis is so unique that it gets its own separate category in the rather fringe group of gymnosperms called gnetophytes. It has a monotypic genus meaning there is only one species in its genus with no close living relatives.

The species has only two leaves and lives for an extremely long time being able to live for 1000 years or more. Because of this the leaves tend to split over time and grow extremely long.

They live in the Namib desert which itself is a very interesting place and is also one of the driest deserts out there. It is so dry that the coastline ecosystem of the desert subsists solely off of fog (though welwitschia doesn’t live in this part of the desert).

[blithegreycat]

Azorella compacta

It’s in the carrot family and forms tightly packed mats to prevent moisture loss. It grows in the Atacama desert so it’s adapted for high altitudes with little to no rainfall. It lives for a shocking amount of time considering it is in one of the driest deserts in the world. Some plants live for well over 1000 years. My guess is that the longer life span means more opportunities to successfully propagate and/or it’s just a product of how glacially slow this plant grows but I’m just spitballing. I also heard it smells like parsley but I’ve never seen it in person so I can’t corroborate that