magicpotions1211

 

 
The flowers are not just beautiful, they are also inteligente. The origin of the angiosperms (flowering plants) has long been considered one of the great unsolved questions of biology.
Flowers are almost everywhere, but the origins of flowering plants are far from clear: Charles Darwin called the problem an “abominable mystery.”
 
Flowering plants, are thought to have evolved around 130 million years ago from gymnosperms, the prevailing land plants when dinosaurs reigned in the Cretaceous and Jurassic eras. Angiosperms have become the dominant plants on Earth today.
 
But this blog is not about the evolutionary problem of the "sudden" appearance of flowering plants on Planet Earth but the clever ways this beautifiul living organisms found out to be so well successful, regardless, in same cases, their fragil appearances.
 
 
The case of Heliconia and the Slave Hummingbird
 

 
This flowering plants are native to the tropical Americas and the Pacific Ocean islands west to Indonesia. Many species of Heliconia are found in rainforests or tropical wet forests of these regions. They are quite beautiful, but good looks are not enough to guarantee survivor. Because they have very small flowers peeping out from the bracts, they need a specific polinizer: an insatiable bird with a long beak and tongue. Hummingbirds are already the main pollinators of Heliconia flowers in many locations. But the female Purple-throated Carib hummingbird is the perfect slave of the Heliconia. By dosing the amount of sweet nectar available turns the bird into an addict: it never leaves the flower, visiting frequently for another dose, fights away all potential competition and is a permanent polinizer always available.
 
 
The case of the Saguaro Cactus and the Nectar-feeding bats
 

 
The magnificent Saguaro Cactus, the state flower of Arizona, can reech great height and weight. A dense group of yellow stamens forms a circle at the top of the tube. The sweet nectar, together with the color of the flower, attracts nectar-feeding bats that get their protein from pollen.
The Saguaro has more stamens per flower than any other desert cactus but not all of the flowers on a single Saguaro bloom at the same time. Instead, over a period of a month or more, only a few of the up to 200 flowers open each night, secreting nectar into their tubes, and awaiting pollination. These flowers close about noon the following day, never to open again. If fertilization has occurred, the fruit will begin to form immediately.
The saguaro cactus flower is held out at just the right angle for a hovering the only two species of bat to access. The flowers are just the right size for a bat to put his face in. In fact, the bat tongue is just long enough to be able to access the nectar in a saguaro flower. As they move from flower to flower the bats pollinate the saguaro flowers.
 
 
The case of the Dragon's Blood Tree: specialized in water retention
 

 
A dragon's blood tree grows on Socotra, a small group of islands in the Indian Ocean. This tree has a unique and bizarre appearance, its upturned, densely-packed crown having the shape of an upside-down umbrella. The dragon's blood still mantles the high plateaus and the misty valleys, hidden between the crags of the Hajhir Mountains, that are the highest mountain range in the eastern, inhospitable and dry Arabian peninsula.
Each branch of the tree is made up of a series of sausage-shaped sections of part of the large, dense crown thereby forms to minimize evaporation, acting like a funnel that redirect the water to the center of the tree. Also the waxy leaves is reminiscent of a sword minimizes the lost of precious water.
It gives shade and channels humidity from dew, mist and rainfall down the branches and trunk and into the ground for dissolved nutrient uptake by tree roots. The shade and the anti-evaporation measures help both the tree and the tree’s seedlings which often grow beneath their parent, that benefit of each drop of precious water that fall in the grownd.
 
 
The case of Australian Red Mangrove: the perfect salt filter
 


 
The Red Mangrove (Rhizophora stylosa), grow more often in north-eastern Australia are evergreen trees or shrubs, often with conspicuous aerial roots easily distinguished from other species by tangled, reddish prop roots. Leaves are oval-shaped, small, creamy-white bisexual flowers occur in branching pairs while the leaves are arranged in opposite pairs on the stem.
Mangroves are uniquely adapted trees and larger shrubs that inhabit the tidal sea edge.
Stout, large arching prop roots are characteristic of the species, which support the main trunk and contain numerous lenticels (air pores) on their surfaces. The lenticels are air-filled spaces that connect with underground root structures. Aerial roots growing from the tree's limbs also help the plant breathe. Mangroves eliminate salt at their roots as water is taken up. Excess salt that finds its way into the plant is stored in the leaves, and removed from the plant when the leaves die and fall from the tree.
Red mangroves serve as feeding, breeding, and a nursery for different fish, birds, and other wild life. They also trap mud therefore increasing the soil around them.
 
 
The case of Number One success
 

 
The most successful plants on Earth are not the flowers or the specialized three. That place belongs, by right, to the simple gramineous like corn, rice and wheat, the cereal grains and the central role they played in getting civilization off the ground.
Their dessemination were directly responsible for the human population explosion, and even today, the planet couldn’t support most of its inhabitants without them.
 

 
 
Fonts:
www.springerlink.com
www.desertusa.com
derdriu.hubpages.com
www.daff.qld.gov.au
Several articles and pictures available on internet.
 

 

 

 
Chachapoyas means "people of the clouds" in the ancient language. The Chachapoyas were a pre-Hispanic people that lived in the Andean cloud forest region of Peru. Their culture is thought to have developed from 800 AD. They were conquered violently and become overpowered by the Incas in the 15th century, shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Peru.
 

 
The Chachapoyas had a very close relations with their dead not only preserving their mumified bodys in specific buriel sanctuarys but also emboss the bones in the walls of their homes. They also preserve the mummies in cave-like niches set in a cliff areas almost unaccessible.
 

 
A cache of more than 200 mummies was found in Peru in late 1996 by machete wielding grave robbers (they cut through the cloth wrappings, looking for jewelry and other treasures).
Some of the very well preserved mummys can be seen in the Leymebamba Museum, Peru.
The anthropomorphous sarcophagi resemble imitations of funeral bundles provided with wooden masks elements of funeral architecture observed throughout the Andes.
 

 
The architectural model of the Chachapoyas is characterized by circular stone constructions as well as raised platforms constructed on slopes. Their walls were sometimes decorated with symbolic figures such as the Lepard; they belive shaman could use the bravery of this animal to protect the village, the crops and the spirits of the ancestors.
 

 
The Chachapoyas people built the great fortress of Kuélap, with more than four hundred interior buildings and massive exterior stone walls reaching upwards of 60 feet in height, possibly to defend against the Huari around 800 AD. Referred to as the 'Machu Picchu of the north,' Kuélap receives few visitors due to its remote location.
 

 
La Fortaleza de Kuelap is the biggest of the pre-inca Perú. This citadel lost in the Peruvian jungle still awaits to be fully discoverd.
 

 
Archaeological sites in the region include the settlement of Gran Pajáten, Gran Saposoa, the Atumpucro complex, and the burial sites at Revash and Laguna de los Condores (Lake of the Condors), among many others.
 

 
That proximity and cult to the dead in architectural and mortuary variability do suggest social inequality, and early documentary evidence intimates that demonstrated prowess in warfare and sorcery, as well as heredity, provided routes to leadership status. In reality, the archaeological evidence for local and regional Chachapoya socio-political development is paltry, and open to various interpretations because there is yet a lot to discover about this people.
 

 
Another group of Chachapoya mummies was recently discovered (late 2006) by a farmer in a burial cave complex some 82 feet below the earth's surface (the cave is known as Iyacyecuj, or enchanted water, by local people). According to an article in the London Daily Mail, the "walls near the mummies in the limestone cave were covered with paintings of faces and warrior-like figures which may have been drawn to ward off intruders and evil spirits."
 

 
The mummies were not made accidentally, but a detailed analysis has not been released of the mummification methods they used.
They were placed in a flexed (fetal) sitting position and bundled in cloth. According to one account, a face was stitched onto the cloth over the head. Most of the bundles were placed in a two-room two-level stone mausoleum built against the back wall of the cliff overhang (entry was through the roof only). Elite burials appear to have involved coffins made from cane. The Chachapoya also ensured preservation (whether knowingly or not) by choosing a dry, well-protected site covered by a ledge.
 

 
The Cachapoya were also called the "Warriors of the Clouds". Before they were defeted by the Incans, they were fierce fighters who took the skulls of victims as trophies and were believed to also eat their hearts. They worshipped mainly pumas, eagles and snakes, with a mummified jaguar found in a royal tomb and images of these animals depicted in their art and constructions. Animal and human sacrifice were also performed at the temple in the ruins.
 

 
The citadel bilt by the Chachapoyas people was never taken by force because of it's incredible design. The only entry points through the high walls were two gates, one on either side of the complex. The gap in the wall starts wide then narrows as it ascends the steep stairs, like the shape of a pizza slice.
 

 
Many attacking soldiers could charge in together but would get jammed as the passage narrowed, and the top was wide enough for only one person to pass at a time. This single soldier would be met by a wall of spears and other weapons, and both sides of this gauntlet would be defended by soldiers slinging down rocks and other instruments of harm. Even to reach the outer wall you needed to charge 1.2 kms vertically up from the river below. At 3000 m altitude, this is no easy feat by itself. Furthermore, there was a guard tower at the top of the complex that had a direct line of sight to the fire or smoke signals of the three nearest villages, providing an advanced warning signal for attack.
 

 
The citadel was never taken but, instead, it was sieged for about 20 years - cutting off access to outside food and water - until they eventually surrendered. They survived off huge stockpiles, some farming within the fort, but mainly by their intense hatred of the Incans. Only 60 years later the Spanish invaded. Even with the advantage of arms and other technology, they could not take the citadel by force either. However, due to the highly infectious Small Pox brought over by the Spanish, this siege of the now Incan held fort took a little under a year.
 

 
This civilization, that ruled over a large area for almost 1000 years, didn't fear death and most houses had tombs for deceased relatives at the door for the believed protection it provided from evil spirits.
 

 
Fonts:
columbusstate.academia.edu
www.mummytombs.com
thesouthamericandream.blogspot.pt
http://www.chachapoyas.com
General web articles and pictures

 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 


 
 

 
The time is a villain, people say. It's like a bucket full of memories, the old at the bottom and the fresh on the top, they keep messing with each others up as time goes by, one pulling the others like a string made of beads, while we touch bead by bead, the comeout is a smile or a tear, maybe a bit of anger or desapointement, some regret, perhaps.
 
Nevertheless it is a certainty of life: we all have time; what we do with it marks the path we go thru.
 

 
The 17th-century English poet Robert Herrick wrote something beautiful about making the most of the the time we have.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Landscape
 
If the green in your hand
becames the red of my lips
could the ice melt
could the winter go?
 
You set your dark curly head in my lap
a soft whisper of a song
that escapes from your lips
turns the blue, and the white, and the brown
an only shape, an only flower, an only leaf
a unique whisper in two equal drops of water
 
When we set apart
will this trees remember the song
that softly flown from your lips?
will the water remember the shape
of our hands together
will the willow remember the embrace?
the soft kiss upon my sholder...
 
will we?
 
poem by D.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some natural events or otherwise never cease to amaze humanity. The source of this blog is this site
atlasobscura.com, you can vist to more complete informations.
Those events I choose were randomly within the line of my own personal interests without scientific purpose whatsoever.
 

 

 
Between 1946 and 1962, the US military conducted 105 atmospheric nuclear tests over the Marshall Islands and several other nearby South Pacific atolls. In the late 1970s, in an effort to clean up the radioactive debris left by those explosions, the US government dug up 111,000 cubic yards of soil from the Bikini and Rongelap atolls and deposited it on Runit Island.
The result: an enormous, foot-and-a-half-thick, 100,000-square-foot dome consisting of 358 gigantic concrete panels. Despite signs warning off visitors, it is still possible to make landfall on Runit and stomp across the Cactus Dome. Bring a Geiger counter.
 

 
My hometwon was, for many decades in the earlier 20th century, a huge industrialized spot, receiving raw material and exporting to the country and the world the manufactured products. The cork transformation industry came mainly from there.
 

 
That small urban town are shapped in dark corners with crumbled, faded walls, beautiful solitary abandon places, wavy smoke of some few facturies, old timer industrial arquitecture and railway tracks, all over the place, like someone finger nails on the attempt of crawl out from there, furrowed the land.
 

 
I know very well that magical feeling about abandoned railway tracks, like veins in the land.
Every leaf of grass had a story to tell, every nettle made an imprudent hand hurt, the undiscribable bugs that come under those heavy bars of iron, made be often step back and them forward with curiosity, to follow their speedy but rather instable run.
 

 
Still come to mind, closing my eyes, the mixed smell of rosemary and rust, the joy to see the thistle exploding in green and purple, the red dots of the poppies and the yellow of the dandelion, floating away so high when got their transparent body and cotton little feet, dancing round and around, in an invisible dance floor, heading to an unrevealed destination.
 

 
It was a portal leading to adventure... even today some of the tracks are there, others gone away leaving behind their straight scars of mud and grass like little crooked rivers when the rain come, unveil wounds that have not yet healed.
 

 
But near the river all changes, the white explodes like a diamond field; here and there the sea tide mills brings us back in time.
The boats, dancing in the waves, in their incessant ant like life, sail the radiant blue playing with the sun and the foam, or with the lead of a stormy clowdy day, always carry people from here to there, never asking way things are the way they are.
 

 
Rain drops, season goes one after the other, the fog still leads you to a world made of cold and wet cotton candy, on the winter mornings, making you walk like in smog trails.
 

 
Occasionally, the heavy rain after giving you chills and a running cold nose, a raiwbow is there when you lift your eyelashes, it's a gift that make you forget the rest.
 

 
Sudenlly is May, and is June and the dandelion are fleeting away with their cotton feet, the poppies teach you what red is all about, the vibrante thistles make you think about tiny wedding fairys bouquets, and all the songs that you want to sing.
 

 
The layers of the dusk colors make you hate the dark, but the smeel of pine wood, and rosemary tangled in the river breeze, take you to the land when dreams are waiting for you.
 

 
And all this sensations catapul your soul into so many feelings, like when light defracts as a caleidoscope, pulling your eyes into every litlle detail.
 

 
You always remember that perfect feeling, when you fall asleep in the warm sun in the beach and open your eyes and the world is made of pure bright blue.
 

 
And that feeling makes you wish you never have to grow old.
 

.


 


 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


 

 
- Hi... you are so weired didn't know what to bring you... - he sayd.
 

 
- Oh, that is a lovely strange flower - she kinda smiled, her eyeslashes smoothly downed to admire his gift.
 

 
- Let's go outside, see the ocean, it's beautiful - his eyes glowed with the misty moon light.
 

 
- The ocean... - in her pale cheeks a light colour of pink was slightly visible - I can smell the breeze from here...
 

 
- Come with me outside... - his heart made the sound of his voice hopefull.
 

 
- But I can't... it's not my world... you go insted of me, for me - her voice ended the words in meerly a sad murmur.
 

 
He stepped out of the shadow. It was almost down.
 

 
Was alone again. Felt the slow cold of the teardrops rolling down his face.
 

 
In this hospital of souls only some hearts heal with love.
 

 
Others get home alone.