Week Eleven: Living Diversity

1. Examine your own immediate environment for diversity of species. Post your findings.

Houseplants: We have a few plants in the house.

One "goes to sleep" at night and she is my favorite plant friend. I like to watch the "tic...tic...tic" of the leaves slowly springing inward after the sun sets. I wish I knew the name of this plant.

There is also what is called a "Lucky Chinese Money Tree" that a friend of mine gave to me. She bought it for her boyfriend, then moved to Australia to complete her PhD on Dengue Fever. He was supposed to join her there, but instead he dumped her. When she came back for a visit she took the Lucky Chinese Money Tree away from him, and gave it to me. Lucky?

A tall, bedraggled, all too often ignored Corn plant lives in the living room.

An orchid sits in the kitchen. It has been alive for many years and one must be patient with it. Suddenly it will bloom, lasting for months, and then drop its petals and sit baldly for many months.

Yard Plants:
Oh, way too many to list, but I will list what I know:
Orange tree, lemon tree, rosemary bush, jalapeno, several varieties of tomato that haven't given up yet, calendula, yellow and red onions, brussel sprouts, squirrel-bitten kale, celery, basil, mint, pear, plum, persimmon, fig (the tree most often picked by neighbors), fennel, foxglove, lavender, belladonna, princess tree, bougainvillea, flowering kale, stocks, yarrow, echinacea, rhubarb, green beans, avocado, date palms, blue spruce, magnolia, wisteria, many varieties of succulents and cacti, blackberry, many varieties of roses, crab grass (erg!), clover, nasturtium, passion flower, stinkhorns (a very unusual mushroom...it looks like a penis and smells like semen--I swear!), morning glory, hana flowers, pyrocanthis, spider plant, geranium, orchid, kinickkinick, false madrone, fake orange tree, fireweed, ferns, bamboo,


Foods: pumpkin, onions, garlic, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, rice, teas, coffees, herbs, beans... (if I go into the pantry and list all the different species I find I might never come out...)

People: male and female (different species??)

Dogs: two. Different breeds. Same species.


Other living creatures (mostly) outside of the house: rats, mice, squirrels, raccoons, ruby-throated humming birds, tiny irritating ants, fruit flies, brown apple moth, black widows, house fly, silverfish, tons and tons of rock doves (pigeons!), house finch, an occasional California scrub jay, crows, seagulls and Canadian Geese fly over head, once I saw a very impressive tomato hornworm, ladybugs, aphids, snails, the occasional stray cat, redworms, bees, wasps, and many other bugs and creepy crawlies that populate the outdoors.

2.Impressions of the links on cells

The first link presents theories about how the first cells may have formed. I find these theories kind of silly. It reminds me of an idea a little kid would come up with to explain something mysterious in the grown up world. No matter where the "building blocks of life" came from -- hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, rain, meteorites from outer space -- there is no mechanical explanation that can satisfactorily explain the beginning of life. You can mix all the essential ingredients of life into a soup pot, but do you create life? No. You don't. And I think even after billions of years, you'd still just have chemicals sitting in a soup pot.

In a science-nerd sort of way I think it's sweet that we couldn't survive without our bacterial friends that live in our gut. We are so different, and yet they are part of us, and have been since the beginning. I have a tender feeling toward them -- they are helping to keep me alive, and I am helping them by providing real estate!

To the left, my little buddies.