plant news
This is what happens to your plants (plural) when you break up with your Plant Sitter four months before you get back to town. (The camera flash is making it look much healthier and shinier than it is. Trust me: it is limp, skinny and sad)
I gave him two goldfish plants in mid-January. They weren't the healthiest: infrequent watering (once a week) meant that their flowers were drying up and falling off. This plant, although flowerless, was three times as bushy in January. It lost a lot of leaves and branches. What is left is turning black and drooping. My Plant Sitter says that he watered it half an hour before I showed up and denys starving them out of a subconscious resentment over our break up. In his defense, his own plants aren't doing very well.
In other news, my roommate, Katie, discovered some old potatos in a cabinet today. They had all sprouted, this one being the tallest and most impressive.
It is really nifty: this thing grew in the dark. (Notice that it is not at all green. I wonder how long it will take for it to turn green)
One of my other rommates, Ben, did not like my (bullshit) arguement for how the plant knew which way was up. (I made up something about pressure differentials giving it a sense of gravity. I don't know any biology and have no business making bold statements like that.) Does anyone have a good explanation for how a plant growing in a dark cabinet can know which way is up?
The rubber tree has some new tenants (aside from the monkies sporting leis).
Are these going to be a problem for its health? (or for ours?)
Finally I'd like to have a shout-out to my third fabulous roommate, Kathy, and my officemates, Joe, Can and Greg, for keeping the rest of my plants alive and (very!) healthy while I was away. Thanks!
I gave him two goldfish plants in mid-January. They weren't the healthiest: infrequent watering (once a week) meant that their flowers were drying up and falling off. This plant, although flowerless, was three times as bushy in January. It lost a lot of leaves and branches. What is left is turning black and drooping. My Plant Sitter says that he watered it half an hour before I showed up and denys starving them out of a subconscious resentment over our break up. In his defense, his own plants aren't doing very well.
In other news, my roommate, Katie, discovered some old potatos in a cabinet today. They had all sprouted, this one being the tallest and most impressive.
It is really nifty: this thing grew in the dark. (Notice that it is not at all green. I wonder how long it will take for it to turn green)
One of my other rommates, Ben, did not like my (bullshit) arguement for how the plant knew which way was up. (I made up something about pressure differentials giving it a sense of gravity. I don't know any biology and have no business making bold statements like that.) Does anyone have a good explanation for how a plant growing in a dark cabinet can know which way is up?
The rubber tree has some new tenants (aside from the monkies sporting leis).
Are these going to be a problem for its health? (or for ours?)
Finally I'd like to have a shout-out to my third fabulous roommate, Kathy, and my officemates, Joe, Can and Greg, for keeping the rest of my plants alive and (very!) healthy while I was away. Thanks!
posted by Michelle at 9:00 p.m.
2 Comments:
LOL. I can totally see Ben not being happy with a BS argument. I think it has to do with special cells in the root tip that have these sacs with bubbles and particles, sort of the same principle as a level. (I.e. a carpenter's level, not a video game level.)
Michelle, you are going to get a lot more hits b/c you talked about Lubos Motl. Your blog is being searched by technorati for some reason (is it set on public?) and Lubos, for some bizarre reason, is one of the top searches on technorati.
after discussing on the important and fundamental issue of "how a plant distinguishes between vertical and horizontal direction" on the way down to Les Houches, we - namely three poor physicists - concluded that the difference in pressure btw root and leaves makes a plant to grow vertically.
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