Trajectory Of The Tip Of A Crow’s Wing

na bachlóga

the buds

Acianthus caudatus.

Orchidaceae: Diurideae.

By Start with the Leaves. [x]

the Guardian

York groundsel blooms again in Britain’s first-ever de-extinction event

Yellow flower that only grows in York went extinct in 1991 brought back to life by Natural England experts

By Patrick Barkham

The Guardian

May 27, 2023

York groundsel was a cheerful yellow flower that slipped into global extinction in 1991, thanks to overzealous application of weedkiller in the city of its name.

But now the urban plant has been bought back to life in the first ever de-extinction in Britain, and is flowering again in York.

The species of groundsel was only ever found around the city and only evolved into its own species in the past century after non-native Oxford ragwort hybridised with native groundsel.

York groundsel, Senecio eboracensis, was discovered growing in the car park of York railway station in 1979 and was the first new species to have evolved in Britain for 50 years, thriving on railway sidings and derelict land.

But the new plant’s success was short-lived, as urban land was tidied up and chemicals applied to remove flowers dismissed as “weeds”.

It was last seen in the wild in 1991. Fortunately, researchers kept three small plants in pots on a windowsill in the University of York. These short-lived annual plants soon died, but they produced a precarious pinch of seed, which was lodged at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank.

Andrew Shaw of the Rare British Plants Nursery had a vision to bring the species back to life, but when tests were carried out on some privately held seeds very few germinated successfully.

So Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog, quickly authorised a de-extinction attempt via its species recovery programme, which has funded the revival of the most threatened native species for 30 years.

“The Millennium Seed Bank said the seed was getting near the end of its lifespan and so we thought we would only have one more chance of resurrecting it,” said Alex Prendergast, a vascular plant senior specialist for Natural England.

Natural England paid for a polytunnel at the Rare British Plants Nursery in Wales, where 100 of the tiny seeds were planted. To the botanists’ surprise, 98 of the seeds germinated successfully. The polytunnel rapidly filled with a thousand York groundsel plants.

In February six grams of seed – potentially thousands of plants – were sown into special plots around York on council and Network Rail land.

This week, the first plants in the wild for 32 years began to flower, bringing colour to the streets and railway sidings of York.

This de-extinction is likely to be a one-off in this country because York groundsel is the only globally extinct British plant that still persists in seed form and so could be revived.

But Prendergast said the de-extinction showed the value of the Millennium Seed Bank – to which plenty of York groundsel seed has now been returned – and there were a number of good reasons for bringing the species back to life.

“It’s a smiley, happy-looking yellow daisy and it’s a species that we’ve got international responsibility for,” he said.

“It only lives in York, and it only ever lived in York. It’s a good tool to talk to people about the importance of urban biodiversity and I hope it will capture people’s imagination.

“It’s also got an important value as a pollinator and nectar plant in the area because it flowers almost every month of the year.”

How to Describe Plants

Ghost Pipe Monotropa uniflora

"Unlike most plants, it is white and does not contain chlorophyll. Instead of generating food using the energy from sunlight, it is parasitic, and more specifically a mycoheterotroph. Its hosts are in the Russulaceae family. Most fungi are mycorrhizal. Meaning, through the fungal web of mycorrhizae the M. uniflora roots ultimately sap food from where the host fungi are connected to the photosynthetic trees. The clustered node roots of this plant are covered in hairs called cystidium. The cystidia found on these roots allow easy attachment to fungi hyphae, such as can be seen in ectomycorrhiza. Since it is not dependent on sunlight to grow, it can grow in very dark environments like in the understory of dense forests. The complex relationship that allows this plant to grow makes propagation difficult."

Mystical Rock Lotus

An extraordinary plant with delicate pink blossoms emerging from rugged rocks, supported by intricate and vibrant pink roots that cascade down the stone surfaces, creating a mesmerizing display of natures resilience and beauty!

Light: Partial to full sunlight.

Water: Mist regularly to maintain moisture around the roots.

Soil: Requires minimal substrate, often growing directly on rocks.

Temp: 60-75F 16-24C.

Humidity: High humidity is essential.

Fertilizer: Rarely needed; thrives in natural, nutrient-rich environments.

This plant is perfect for creating a unique and captivating focal point in rock gardens or terrariums!

source: Coffee loves

link to pdf 

George Ella Lyons, With a Hammer for My Heart

I learned that the fruit of the [mesquite] tree was one of many in our landscape that had evolved to be eaten by the giant mammals who disappeared from this continent not long after humans showed up, one of those factual nuggets that punctuate a truth about the deep history of the Anthropocene in ways reading alone cannot. […] [W]e will soon need to learn not to take for granted things like the wild food that goes uneaten due to the absence of the animals whose extinction our dominion coincided with.

I wonder what kind of cake we will make, if we have to make it from the fruit of the old tree that grew up in the brownfield.

Christopher Brown, A Natural History of Vacant Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places (2024)

In an age that witnessed considerable support for social improvement, public schools often took center stage. By the 1830s, a chorus of reform-minded people began to sing the praises of free, tax-supported schools: Thaddeus Stevens, later a prominent Republican activist in Pennsylvania; Catharine Beecher, advocate of more educational opportunities for women; Caleb Mills, an evangelical minister who later became Indiana's leading common school advocate; and even notable Southerners, who faced the greatest opposition and whose efforts bore the least fruit. Enthusiasm for social improvement through education flourished. Since the turn of the century, countless pamphlets, speeches, reports, petitions, testimonials, newspaper editorials, books, and articles had promoted the importance of education in a republic. A few dozen educational periodicals also popularized the cause of learning by promoting a class-inclusive school system, especially for white children.

In Philadelphia, New York, and other cities, the editors of workingmen's newspaper - the voice of the skilled artisan minority - despaired over the fate of youth as apprenticeships declined and unskilled factory labor increased; they endorsed instituting a common system and eliminating the stigma attached to free schools. "I think that no such thing as charities should be instituted for the instruction of youth," wrote one articulate worker in the Mechanics' Free Press in Philadelphia in 1828. He favored free schools dependent not on "private charities" but "founded and supported by the government itself." One Ohioan added, "Unless the Common Schools can be made to educate the whole people, the poor as well as the rich, they are not worthy of the support of the patriot or the philanthropist." "Give to education... a clear field and fair play," said a recent immigrant in A Treatise on American Popular Education in 1839, "and your poor houses, lazarettos, and hospitals will stand empty, your prisons and penitentiaries will lack inmates, and the whole country will be filled with wise, industrious, and happy inhabitants. Immorality, vice and crime, disease, misery and poverty, will vanish from our regions, and morality, virtue and fidelity, with health, prosperity, and abundance, will make their permanent home among us.”

Born in an age when millennial ideals, such as universal peace and prosperity following Christ's imminent return to earth, influenced wide sectors of the population, the common schools became a useful barometer of the extensive social changes that transformed the nation before the Civil War. Cities, factories, and foreign immigration generated moral panic and social fears among many northern reformers, whose search for solutions to public ills centered on a more expansive public school system. Reflecting the contradictory passions of the reformers, schools not only favored greater access to literacy and academic study but simultaneously downplayed intellectual achievement by elevating the moral aims of instruction. America's ambivalent attitude toward the life of the mind and scholarship thus found expression in the nation's emerging school system, where character development and moral uplift took precedence even as lifeless instruction in academic subjects predominated. Setting a pattern that long endured, reform-minded citizens increasingly assumed that individual welfare and social progress depended on an extensive network of public schools.

william j. reese, america's public schools from the common school to "no child left behind"