Rabbit Holes

A prolific 'mother' spider plant that hides the two routers that we use. I am always scared when watering the plant that water will gush over the routers and instant silence on the two will happen.  In fact the plant doesn't look very happy. The plantlings (actually they are called spiderettes or pups) should be repotted on. 

The plant produces long specialised stems called stolons and the baby plantlets strike out from the nodes along the stolon.  In fact this rebirth is in favour of the mother plant (no cross pollination?) as the plantlings extend along the long line into soil, that is if they were in the ground, the mother plant has less to exhaust itself with.

Why am I thinking about reproduction? Must have been the talk about sexual reproduction last night on late radio,  which was about Desmond Morris's  book called The Naked Ape written in 1967.  I never read it  but remember the publicity it got, perhaps I should go back and read it.  Morris has written many books  but lived in Swindon and his girl friend at one time was, never guess who? was Diana Dors. 

 

This book has significantly influenced the understanding of human behavior in relation to animal behavior.  

Apparently  Morris went on to become a painter, fairly surrealistic and it is assumed that this painting has as the model Diana Dors.  

Girl selling flowers

You can read the Wiki here

Went off- piste there somewhat, what I was actually thinking of was the reproduction method of greenflies, I mean I know you will all be fascinated by such things ;)

"They can reproduce quickly, with many individuals developed from unfertilised eggs or parthenogenetically from female aphids.

  

"This is because in asexual reproduction, a successful genotype can spread quickly without being modified by sex or wasting resources on male offspring who will not give birth. Some species can produce both sexually and through parthenogenesis".

I fell in love with the word parthenogenetically along time ago and each year would remember it when I scrunched the blackfly and greenfly off the roses.  Sometimes I squirted the roses with Fairy liquid.  But as a balance of how livelihoods are experienced through the chain of life and how people have studied these things still gives me a sense of wonder at the intricacies of each and every aspect of life that unfolds before us, and yes I did feel guilty killing greenfly!

And just to finish look at that Longnet Stinkhorn, a fungi in Africa and see the work that is being carried out there.  Fungus or plain old mushrooms will teach us about the interconnectivity of the natural world.