#dodder

[uxbridge]

Early fall flowers 1

[bogleech]

I was walking by a river in Portland and saw this from far away:

There's a lot of dead yellow plant life but the yellow here looked so intense! And stringy?! So I thought "haha what if it's my favorite plant that I've never seen in person that's be neat but probably not!"

Well it WAS!!!

The tapeworm of wildflowers!!!

I can recognize dodder a mile away apparently just from having seen photos but I couldn't possibly tell you what the normal green plant is that it's sucking on

[wsjyuyuyuau]

Weenus (Robotomy)

Name: Weenus

Series: Robotomy

Gender: Male

Status: Alive

Family: None as of Now

Flower Motif: Dodder (Cuscuta)

Flower Meaning: Mischief

Weapon of Choice: Reverse Grip Shotguns

Associated With: Interdimensional Hero Club (Ally)

Stationed At Which Cafe: Baltimore, ML, USA

Hero Form Appearance: A combination of a student's robotics attire and YuYuYu’s Hero Form outfits. The undersuit of the outfit is a solid gray, which helps serve as a canvas for the lighter colors that is the main outfit. The main outfit is primarily a white hue, and as you make your way towards the part of the sleeves past the elbows, the part of the pants past the knees, and the tailcoat and the collar, it shifts gears to a dark green. The accent colors include black, white, gray, gold, orange, yellow, silver, and hints of blue. The shoes, gloves, and belt all have subtle patterns based on the dodder and the only other accessory is the cluster of bells of Ireland flowers that serve as a brooch on Weenus’ left breast. The flower’s petal shape can be seen in the collar, tailcoat, and sleeves.

Full Bloom Gauge Location: Stomach

Guardian: Brazos (Based on a Brazen Bull)

Favorite Food: Oil!!

Parallel To: None

Bio: Weenus is a green nerdy robot who attends Harry S. Apocalypse High. His body is very weak and tiny, but he has a giant hand that is extremely powerful and destructive. Weenus is often a very happy robot, but also has Tourette's which makes him insane and dangerous sometimes. 

[gaynaturalistghost]

Plants aren’t… peaceful and harmonious, as a rule. Some are incredibly invasive, some produce compounds that prevent others from growing and developing properly, pumping the soil full of toxins (allelopathy). Cuscuta (a genus with ~200sp, also called dodder, the orange one^) was the first parasitic plant I saw, working outside weeding a giant round-about with an ungodly amount of petunias. Weeding petunias makes your arms all sticky (which I still hate them for). One whole side was carpeted in highlighter-orange vines with no leaves, I had to pull them up in armfuls. I’ve spotted them a few times since, once covering a giant hanging basket of petunias in Missouri.

I think it’d be interesting if some plants or The Green were a little more malignant towards Ivy. I know there are plants she’s drawn with, Hedera helix (English Ivy) in particular, are noxious invasives. Bit odd for a botanical ‘ecoterrorist’.

[strangekindstudio]

Happy Women's Day to all women, femmes, and femme-adjacent friends 💕

The femmes of KIND spent the day eating samgyeopsal (Ilana made the most superior lettuce wraps), getting sloppy drunk off Anything Goes, and doing mock executions with Dana's sword collection (watermelon was used for visceral effect). This inevitably turned into testing Olivia, Ilana, and Clover's physical sturdiness Mythbusters style, which Giv quickly had to put a stop to.

[revretch]

Dodder is a kind of parasitic plant that winds around other plants and sucks the nutrients out of them. Apparently there's at least one species (Cuscuta epithymum) that will get confused and start sucking the nutrients out of itself.

Haha look at this fucking idiot

Source: https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajb2.1590

[nikofortuna]

JTTW Chapter 14 Thoughts

Chapter 14 for the @journeythroughjourneytothewest Reading Group! Another nature heavy one! Potential TW: under the cut is a parasitic plant that kind of looks like yellow spiderwebbing or something similar.

Though first a little by the by as I have mentioned before I actually prefer this aspect of the German translation, which translates Xin as heart instead of mind.

Anyway it’s flower symbolism time! Wisterias in Buddhism stand for humility and reflection, which is very fitting for our monkey to be overgrown by under the mountain.

Additionally if we go with the saying ‘somebody has something coming out of his ears’ which means that someone had enough of something, the detail of those flowers growing out of Sun Wukong’s ears is even more fitting. Though I’m not sure if it’s the same in English, but that’s how the saying goes in German.

Wisterias are also very pretty and grow very abundantly which is just a gorgeous sight to behold.

However there is actually some discrepancy found between translations about which plants grow out of his ears and growing on the mountain for that matter.

In the German translation the “creepers and vines” are actually specific plants. The first is called creeping fig or climbing fig (ficus pumila or 薜 bì), which is also the one mentioned in the J.F. Jenner translation.

They can grow to cover entire surfaces too! Like this wall for example.

Dodder or amarbel or how I like to call them ‘forbidden spaghetti’ (cuscuta or 蘿 luó) is the second one.

They have little flowers too.

Those two plants stand for eremitic life in Chinese symbolism. As that note is citing the Chinese characters, I’m inclined to take this for the accurate translation.

Regardless both plants function equally well in terms of symbolism in my opinion.

Continuing with translation shenanigans “axe or drill” in the Anthony C. Yu translation is “axe or chisel” in both other translations, which sounds more natural to me. Though “drill” does bring to my mind a funny little picture of Tang Sanzang with a hard hat and a handheld drill trying to drill away the mountain above Sun Wukong.

Checking out the original Chinese with Google translate I’ve also come across something interesting. 斧鑿 fǔzáo when separated from the rest just gets translated to “axe + chisel”, but together with the full section it gets translated as “axe to chisel” instead. However when translated as part of the complete speech it’s just “But I don't have an axe.”

“Only when he […] saw the handsome features of Tripitaka” an early instance of Tang Sanzang looks having a greater influence on people.

Love to see Sun Wukong getting along with people!

A little side note because I just find it to be a really cute detail regarding the whole “sugar man or honey man”, in the German translation specific sweets are mentioned because they start with the same letter. I just think that’s neat.

I love when a bit of Slice of Life is sprinkled in and attention to detail is paid for everyday things, I hope we see some more in the future!

Ah, the first time Tang Sanzang falls from his horse.

I must admit that the names of the six bandits are more straightforward and easier to understand in the J.F. Jenner and German translation. For the J.F. Jenner translation specifically they are translated as “Eye−seeing Happiness, Ear−hearing Anger, Nose−smelling Love, Tongue−tasting Thought, Mind−born Desire, and Body−based Sorrow”. This also makes the reactions of them easier to understand as they are actually matched to one bandit each! “This made the bandits happy, angry, loving, thoughtful, desirous, and sorrowful respectively” as in the J.F. Jenner translation again. It barely comes across that those are matched in the Anthony C. Yu translation.

The bit about monks looking out even for insects is very sweet! Especially since I am a moth enjoyer, they are so fluffy and adorable.

Shigong’s shoe-based shenanigans made me briefly try to link it to Cinderella. Journey to the West is known for starting a bunch of tropes, so it makes sense my brain would try to link it with a lot of stuff, but Cinderella is probably not related. A humorous thing to imagine still.

Closing this post with another note on Tang Sanzang. Ohoho so our dear monk is able to lie. And right after telling Sun Wukong that a monk should not lie as well. He has flaws! Very neat, I quite like that actually. Character development will be something very interesting to keep an eye out for.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Parasitic plants have developed a specialized structure, the haustorium, which is a modified root (Figure 23.36).

"Plant Physiology and Development" int'l 6e - Taiz, L., Zeiger, E., Møller, I.M., Murphy, A.