Amantia muscaria mushrooms have an intriguing and sometimes contradictory ethnobotanical history. In today’s podcast episode, we’ll be diving into their purported connection to jolly old Santa and his team of magically flying reindeer.
Why Bats?: How Nighttime Pollinators Became Spooky
If you are at all like me, you’ve wondered a time or two why bats, pumpkins, and the like have become associated with Halloween, Samhain, All Hallows Eve, or otherwise associated with the season. This is not going to be an exhaustive description, so feel free to share further lore in the comments, but it will cover a wide range, but today we will be discussing our beflighted mammal friends.
Botany Book Club, Epi 1: Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs
The contents itself, while somewhat difficult to navigate at first, is informative and useful, each herb entry containing information for that plant’s common, scientific, and folk names, associated gender (masculine/feminine), ruling planet, element, and sometimes deity, and associated magical uses, rituals, and powers.
Botany After Dark Podcast, Episode 1: The Morning Glory, +BONUS Waffle and Plans
Welcome to the experiments in voice editing and mic use that has been my life for the past week and a half.
In today's episode, we dive into the weird and wonderful world of the morning glory, specifically the Mexican morning glory (tlitliltzin, Ipomoea. tricolor), a vibrant blue and featured in the episode artwork, and the Beach moonflower (Ipomoea. violacea). Join me in discovering the... altered states and effects of this plant.
Some Updates and General Life Things
Hey, all! I wanted to come on here and let you know that I’ll be posting new articles shortly, but life, health, and new projects have kept me away. I’ve been sick off and on for the past two weeks, after a run-in with unlabeled butter in a bag of popcorn. Been dealing with bad head-cold symptoms ever since. I’m feeling loads better now, though so that’s a positive. Now my system just has to re-calibrate… again.
In other news, I’ve launched a new podcast. By the time this is posted, it should be linked in the upper right corner of the screen, but I’ll put a link below anyway. It’s entitled “Botany After Dark” and discusses the dark mysteries of the plant world. Here, we explore the darker and more potentially polarizing, side of botany.
New episodes will be uploaded every Wednesday or Thursday. Enjoy.
Kate
https://botanyafterdark.pinecast.co
Lessons from the barrel cactus
Seeds of Potential: Part 2 of Ancestors for All Seasons
The Wreath as a Herald of Fortune
The Yulelog: Rekindling the Sun
Ethnobotany and the Epitaph
Humanity's Beautiful Diversity
Human rights and diversity are important regardless of your background, dear reader, but are perhaps most spotlighted when concerning those members of society whose voices tend to be suppressed in some way. Minority voices are important, brightening and enlivening the global human narrative, whether that be religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender expression, relative ablebodiedness, or other aspects.
Under the Harvest Moon
Apples of Mabon
Things I learned from plants (A Series): #3. You can heal from injury.
Whether it be physical, mental, emotional, or otherwise, dear reader, you can heal from injury.
Have you ever seen an old, decomposing tree stump in the depths of the forest, with a seedling sprouting from its ruin? The decomposition and complete breakdown of the old makes way for an emergent new life form, providing the impetus for its growth and development.
Things I Learned from Plants (A Series): #2. Water is Life and Should Be Respected.
Water is party to all things, dear reader. While all Earth-dwelling embodied lifeforms have their own characteristics, goals, needs, and expectations of their environments, water is a common necessity they all share. Without proper hydration, the brain's receptors stop interpreting and correlating information and general organ failure occurs, plants are unable to photosynthesize, and moisture continues to evaporate from the body at a rather high rate.
Things I learned from Plants (a Series): #1. Strong roots let you grow tall.
Have you ever noticed, dear reader, how a an unbalanced, top-heavy thing is prone to collapsing? Some things are balanced by having a flat base on which to build, brick structures forming in orderly fashion. Some have a reasonably stable base and overall structure, but topple when the weather or environment changes.
Breathe
Bring in the May
Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria)
Remembering Fern Gully
In honor of today being Earth Day, I thought I would share some of my earliest memories of ecology and the need for ecoactivism. Some of you might remember the 1992 film, Fern Gully; some of you likely weren't yet born. I didn't know there was a sub-header for it until I was looking up information again, but it's "The Last Rainforest."