During a partial eclipse when leaves on trees cause dappled shade, each hole between the leaves can act like a pinhole camera causing an effect on the shadows. See the pictures below which were taken at the same time of day. You can see that the leaves show the crescent sun.
| Normal | Eclipse |
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In a prior article,I mentioned that I was conducting an experiment in propagating a ribbon plant that I had. I am pleased to report that propagation from cuttings is straightforward.
This year was the first year my pitaya (dragon fruit) plant produced more than one fruit. They are wonderful, my favorite fruit, but I recommend the much less picky cereus peruvianus since they require less water and are much more tolerant of low temperatures.
The plant in the pictures below must have been planted by my grandfather or great-grandfather many many years ago. My family simply referred to it as a ribbon plant. Investigation online revealed that it is actually Homalocladium platycladum, also known as the tapeworm plant. An article said that the berries were edible but not worth collecting since they were so small. We have chickens as pets and they tend to be very destructive to plants since they dig up the roots of almost everything and destroy small plants. What was notable is that the chickens liked to eat the berries and young leaves. It gave credibility to the article saying that the berries were edible. I got up the courage and tried them. It’s true: the berries are reasonably tasty; very much like a blackberry. I also tried eating the young leaves which, as you might expect, tasted like leaves. No discernible bad health effects. I’m currently trying to propagate the plants via cuttings; I’ll post later if that works. I like them because they are very drought tolerant, survive cold temperatures at least into the 20’s Fahrenheit and look nice and green. They provide a bit of a treat to the chickens and in a pinch I might eat them too. I highly recommend this plant.
I don’t like chili peppers or spicy food in general. The “spicy” taste seems awfully similar to me to the sensation commonly known as “pain.” I, for one, don’t like pain and couldn’t comprehend why people would eat spicy food.
That spicy taste that I don’t like is the chemical Capsaicin. It is the method chili peppers use to defend themselves against mammals that would otherwise like to eat them. Birds disperse the seeds and are beneficial to the plants so they are not sensitive to capsaicin.
Humans experience the pain of thorns on cactus and they experience the pain of the chili peppers, so it was very mysterious to my why people enjoy and seek out the experience of one and carefully avoid the other. All other mammals avoid both.
I asked my co worker, who happens to enjoy these sorts of things, quite some time ago what the explanation was of this uniquely human behavior. He proposed that perhaps it was associated with some positive experience like the good feelings that come from having a well prepared meal with friends or family. I didn’t buy that explanation because there is no way people would ever start poking themselves with needles and then introduce the practice as part of an enjoyable family meal.
Just this week, he remembered my question and offered an explanation. “Misattribution of arousal” is the psychological process whereby people make a mistake in assuming what is causing them to feel stimulated. It might be that if you asked a man and a woman to go running together, their increased heart rate, sweating, and general excitement of exercise would be attributed to falling in love. As a result they might begin to feel romantically attracted to each other.
Our conclusion was that people were misattributing the arousal from the hot taste of the food to the food tasting good. I’m sure that positive experiences of friendship, family, having a good time, all got mixed in there and reinforced the pleasurable association.
The chayote plant got damaged by animals and killed by drought. Maybe I’ll try again next year.
Looks like the chayote is doing ok but not nearly as well as you would expect for its age.
The chayote has been in the ground a couple of weeks now. It’s growing nicely and looking healthy.
As I previously mentioned, I am interested in growing chayote. As the newspaper article that I linked to instructed, I bought three chayotes and waited for the stems to grow. One rotted away but just last weekend, I planted two of them. Now, one week later, the stems have gotten above ground level. I was supposed to keep all other plants a good distance away but they’re still fairly close, that’s one strike against the chayote. Also the ground has relatively little organic matter in it. We’ll have to see how things go.
The Sapote tree has now gotten through some harsh winter weather and still looks good. It even grew some in January. I believe the fortress is helping.
802701 A.D. 