#rosids

[chlorophyll-and-chitin]

Hypocalymma xanthopetalum

18-SEP-2025

Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Vic

[plant-taxonomy-showdown]

Bonus Round 1/Semi-finals: Rosids vs Basal Eudicots

Rosids vs Basal Eudicots

Rosids

Basal Eudicots

Voting ended onSep 20, 2024

Apples of Discord vs Sacred Lotus

Rosids: The romantic clade. Do you want not only a dozen roses, but also a nice glass of wine and some strawberries dipped in chocolate to go with them? Of course you do. Vote Rosids. (And yes, this is also the cannabis clade, so light up/grab your edibles.)

Basal Eudicots: Here be funky flowers: the sacred lotus, poppies, the king protea of South Africa and the waratah of Australia. Also, macademia nuts.

(What's a eudicot? The class that won the previous round. More info here. Many taxonomic categories can be divided up into "basal" and "core" members, the basal ones splitting off the evolutionary tree relatively early on, while the core ones have a more recent common ancestor.)

[coffeenuts]

[written-nature]

Although the Chinese didn't immediately think of it as a writing material (preferring split bamboo for everyday use, and silk for high-status texts) paper found a multitude of applications across the Chinese empire while the codex spread across the Roman Mediterranean and Near East. Usefully, it could be made from a variety of raw materials; hemp, mulberry bark and old fishing nets all made good paper, and linen fibres, readily available in the form of worn-out underwear, worked particularly well.

"The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper" - Roland Allen

[wikipediapictures]

Grechetto

“Image of Grachetto di Todi grapes.” - via Wikimedia Commons

[deathtek]

8/31/24

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers – celandines.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" - C. S. Lewis

[wonder-rooms]

The Nasturtiums, No. 2 (c. 1861-1897) - Thaddeus Welch