eastern skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus)! ive talked about them extensively before on here so i won’t again, but they were my first Intense Plant Research Love and like all specific plant species i’ve spent large amounts of time delving into they hold a very special place in my heart. first of all, they are wildflowers, and i adore that they’re not traditional wildflowers; they’re stinky muddy disgusting lads who love having their enormous root systems submerged in cold running water at all times, usually in cold creeks and streams in north america. theyre also botanically fascinating for their production of heat during flowering, a phenomenon known as thermogenesis!
theyre also the plants i get asked about most on this blog. i probably get a couple ‘what plant is this?!?!?!?’ skunk cabbage pic submissions every few months because the strange muddy lads tend to catch people off guard. this is what they look like in bloom (they start green before they bloom and then turn red/purple):
they look way more unassuming when the flowers die off and they spend the spring and summer sitting in the mud photosynthesizing, living their lives:
iowa is at the southern end of their range, but there’s one (1) population in a protected habitat here just chilling in a spontaneous bog in the middle of a ton of farmland! it’s left over from the ice age, and from what i’ve seen there’s a good 400 individuals living their stinky lives down there. i used to visit periodically in high school lmao
love these guys! They are an important early source of pollen for honeybees, often the first thing to flower; their pollen is also black! Freaked me out the first time i saw bees zooming around with their pollen baskets full of it.
forbidden wildflowers provide the bees with dark pollen for their endeavors
Is it just me or is everyone forgetting about bi boys with this whole 20biteen thing? people are calling it wlw solidarity with 20dyketeen but y'all!!! bi boys exist and they’re valid as fuck so this lesbian sees and appreciates bi boys as well as bi girls, 20biteen is for ALL bisexuals.
Aimed at people who don’t know where wool comes from, it’s 100% plastic. Yes, plastic.
So any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.
You’re supposed to believe that sheep shearing is violent and cruel. There are imbeciles out there that work in an unprofessional manner while shearing, but that’s not the case overall.
Sheep don’t suffer from having their fleece removed.
Left on, the fleece can become a home for fly eggs and the subsequent maggots which can eat the sheep. Chemical treatments are available to prevent that happening. It’s much better for the sheep, the land and the farmer to avoid chemical use.
Don’t be fooled. Wool is a sustainable material, one we should make more and better use of.
