Mar 27 2023 - Ugly Nature

 

"Breathtaking", "beautiful", "nature's wonders" - aren't we used to these expressions?  There seem to be unlimited articles with pictures of nature's most beautiful places, birds, animals and flowers. What about the ugliest animals? Definitely the Turkey Vulture would pop up on the list in my neighbourhood. They fly overhead every day and if you see one at the side of the road, it is a bit of a shocking sight in such contrast to the beautiful flying and soaring overhead. Then the list goes through the expected candidates - star-nosed moles, mole rats, proboscis monkey, snake necked turtle, bats - particularly the horseshoe bat, and what about elephant seals? There's an ugly frog, the warthog, and the hyena.   They don't seem so ugly as something towards a bit strange.  But then consider the blobfish - it is often considered the ugliest. It looks more like a grumpy Bob-fish.  And the Monkfish - that is a bit prehistoric and so for me falls into ugly land. I think we would run from the Japanese spider crab - a crab-sized spider would be creepy.  There are pictures of them all HERE. And we haven't started on the insect world at all.  These ugly animals were on the good news website called goodgoodgood.co.   And what about those ugly flowers? They seem to think that Pitcher plants, and corpse flowers such as Titan Arum are the ugly looking flowers - but they stink worse than they look.  I have seen a Black bat flower in bloom and thought it was beautiful rather than alien/ugly.  And I've seen the Dutchman's Pipe plant blooming and it is strange looking. All of these dark flowered plants seem to also be stinky. And that seems to make for the experience of ugly.  Dad: When you are in a garden, which flower will you pick? Little Johny: The ugly ones This is my candidate for ugly flower.  It is a fasciated lily - everything gone wrong in terms of a symmetrical  blooming stem.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Searching for Wisdom, Finding the Absurd

In the late 80's, we worked on the information technology strategic planning methodology.   We distinguished between data, information, knowledge and wisdom, showing the logical relationship between them.  Wikipedia has these graphical representations - often we did it as a pyramid with wisdom the peak - a pinnacle of thinking processes.  If we achieved wisdom with technology, we would achieve the ultimate.  The components are described here. The Wikipedia article continues with a section on criticisms:  Rafael Capurro, a philosopher based in Germany, argues that ... any impression of a logical hierarchy between these concepts "is a fairytale". What do others say in this discussion?  In my search,  I found this very fun and quotable assertion.  It was my "morning smile". "Owning a state-of-the-art CD player is pointless if you use it only to listen to polkas played by a kazoo ensemble." - T.H. Davenport and L.Prusak in "What do we talk about when we talk about knowledge?" Our picture today brings together the bizarre and the beautiful.  The bizarre is that this is a fasciated lily in the Lilycrest hybridizing field this year.  It is a mutation caused by growing conditions that cause a flattened stem which produces dozens of flowers crowded together in a 'bouquet'.  The beautiful is the blue lily - it's been given a blue wash in one of my photography filter programs. A blue lily isn't achievable with its normal dna. Likely a Delphinium will need to get spliced into it to get this colour range.

Fasciation

Fasciation - we've all seen it and wondered what happened to that flower. It's weird and wonderfully interesting.

The University of Saskatchewan's website defines it as: "a widespread phenomena reported in more than 100 vascular plant species. The term refers to a flattened or ribbon-like appearance. Woody plants, annuals and even cacti are affected. In some plants fasciations occur on woody stems; other plants exhibit this condition in the flower stalk, roots, fruit or flower clusters." One plant that we're all familiar with is Celosia where the flowers have inherited fasciation and we can count on their funny shapes in the garden.

I've never seen fasciation in a poppy before. Here's the visual comparison - look at all the petals everywhere in the photo on the bottom compared to the photo on the top with the normal set. These flowers were next to each other.

I'll be hunting for more examples and will report on them - I expect to find some on Sunday in my brother's Lilycrest Gardens field where he has thousands of his own hybridized lilies in bloom.

For now, though, it's the month of July - the month of endless summer days and long, warm summer evenings, so enjoy!