Life as we know it....

Migrating grebes and ducks foraging in early light ..... my etched impression of Mono Lake in Autumn.

With the surreal spires of tufa, great pool of still water and encircling misty mountains, I thought that if someone were to find an alien life form on earth, a Loch New Monster or something, it would be in a place like this.

Less than 2 months later, NASA published finding a bacteria in that lake that not only utilise Arsenic for energy but use this to replace Phosphorous in their cell structures...in DNA, cell membrane etc. Now both P and As are in the same column in the periodic table which essentially means chemically they are rather similar. However, biochemically, Arsenic, as we know from our Science if not from murder books, blocks the Krebs cycle, the ubiquitous path to energy production in aerobes, which eventually leads to cell death. Even anaerobes dispel this element from the body after utilisation. So to have it as part the of cell structure is unthinkable.

Granted, an image of a bacterium does not inspire as much awe as a Nessie but the scale of the discovery is such that basic science book will be rewritten and life as we know it is no longer limited to what it used to be.

Well, I was just glad I did not heed a guide book's proposal and took a plunge in the Arsenic broth....what happened if I accidentally took in a mouthful ?

Here's the link to Nasa's Report

Another Caudiciform Impatiens

This one again coming from the Indo China region, where exactly I am not sure but I was told it was from Laos (unsubstantiated).
The medium size flattened bulb produce a plant with reddish stems and green leaves with a red mid-vein. The whorled arrangements of the leaves, the long racemes and its corky caudex sets it apart from the other more herbaceous Impatiens with Annual growth patterns. While resembling an I. mirabilis, this is quite different in a few ways namely the red stems the scarlet fine roots that appear when it breaks dormancy and scalloped leaves. Also, it is seasonally dormant, dying down to the horizontally flattened tuber annually, which is quite different from a mirabilis which rarely goes dormant unless in severe drought. On top of that, this plant rot so easily in the lowland that I am pretty convinced it is a dryish highland species.

Anyway there appear to be a few new species of caudex-type Impatiens unleashed from this region in recent years, mostly from the limestone hills.... so while we wait for the experts to publish their authoritative findings, I welcome any reports of other fellow grower's experience and observations on this interesting group of plants.

Dendrobium garrettii

The minuscule bloom of this Thai orchid revealed .....each flower is less than 1cm long. The plant goes dormant seasonally, leaving only small spindle shaped pseudobulbs smaller than fingernails pronouncing its existance.

Hairy Pottery and the deathly hole

I am getting an unbearable amount of spam comments on this subject for some time now, (mostly asking me to see some free streaming) .... so here's my version of this episode.... presenting....

Hairy Pottery and the Deathly Hole ......

"Oh no....those black flying tattered cloaks are here again....I am so mortified I cannot recall its name...let's hide....hmmm these are convenient ....."

"...oh...shall we hide in the bigger one ? It'll give us more head room .... "
........"Arghh ! " .........

Dear Reader, our three young heroes are kindhearted and quick-witted, but their lives, I am sorry to say, are filled with miseries and series after series of unfortunate events. Hence, despite being named after Nepenthe Pharmakon...the drug that chase away sorrows, this so mentioned pottery is the mother of all sorrows...especially if you are a bug, as our heroes are. So, if you have a stomach for deception, contraption, acidification, dissolution, obliteration and assimilation do stick around and proceed to.....

Hairy Pottery and the deathly hole Part II

Our villians of the day: (top) Nepenthes ampullaria, a deliciously pink form and (bottom) Nepenthes rafflesiana, a tricolored form from Sarawak.