Notices by mk30 (mk30@regenerate.social)

@br00t4c @deepmud looks a lot like a bipolar person in manic mode

Do you see the snail in this pile of leaves? It's an invasive giant African snail.

After living in the forest for a few years, I've definitely gotten better at seeing the critters camouflaged against various forest floor environments. It amazes me every time!

#animals #snails #hawaii #camouflage #nature

I did a farm visit yesterday. Here's a gardenia and some sheep 🥰

#hawaii #flowers #nature #Bloomscrolling #sheep #farm #animals

My jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) is blooming! 🥰

Fun facts:

1. Originally from Philippines
2. Pollinated by bats!
3. Invasive, and can grow very long to cover whatever it's vining on, so be careful!
4. Seems to do fine in poor soils in a tropical wet climate

#plants #flowers #Bloomscrolling #gardening #garden #Tropical #hawaii

How do you tell if an orchid has root rot? For reference, check out the image below. This is a dendrobium that has pretty rotten roots.

It also has a fire ant nest in the roots (see the little orange stuff bunched up near the center bottom). And I also found a flatworm curled up in its roots 🫣

Dendrobium seem to mostly prefer being up in the canopy, and I had left this one on the ground, so it got fully waterlogged, even though the stems and leaf seemed to still be green and perky.

I shook out the ants, killed the flatworm, and set it in the nook of a tree with moss covering its roots. It'll be a slow recovery, but I think it will make it.

#orchids #gardening #epiphytes #plants #hawaii #plants #tropical

Power-sharing in Canada: "A wild experiment is under way in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province: the government is rewriting its laws to share power with Indigenous nations over a land base bigger than France and Germany combined.

[...]

The legislation is dauntingly complex, involving distinct negotiations with more than 200 First Nations and the dismantling of a system built to protect industrial profits over any other interest.

[...]

6% of the world’s population is Indigenous; so is 6% of BC’s. That’s 300,000 people speaking 34 languages, spread across coastal fjords and misty rainforests, subalpine meadows and semi-arid desert and dense boreal forest. Most have been here since the last ice age.

Almost their entire land base – about 97% of most of what’s now “British Columbia” – was seized without a treaty or any pretence of legality. Since then, four-fifths of the province’s primary forest has been logged. Wild salmon and herring are down to a 10th of their once-spectacular abundance. Habitat destruction from mining and fossil fuel development have pushed another 2,000 species to the brink of extirpation." - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/09/british-columbia-blueprint-decolonisation

#indigenous #canada #environment #nature

"The Elwha Klallam people, who suffered the most devastating effects of dam construction — and who worked for generations to see the dams removed — began a limited ceremonial and subsistence fishery on the river in 2023. The youngest generation of Elwha people are now growing up with a productive salmon stream, and like countless generations before them, welcome the return of salmon with prayers and celebrations." - https://rewilding.org/what-the-river-teaches-ten-years-after-dam-removal-on-the-elwha-river/

#indigenous #DamRemoval #washington #rivers #water #salmon #nature #environment #rewilding

Study showing how Australian Aboriginal people shaped the distribution of useful plants across their lands, dispersing them in more preferable areas, etc:

"The findings call into question our whole notions of what agriculture is," said Douglas Bird, study co-author and professor of anthropology at Penn State. "Rather than thinking about the difference between agricultural societies and hunter-gatherer societies as a matter of kind, we'd be better off thinking about it as a matter of degree—that people influence plants long before they engage in what we think of as farming."" - https://phys.org/news/2024-10-landscape-effects-hunter-reshape-idea.amp

Peoples who are used to living with the environment (instead of "against" it) understand that often the best interventions are the ones that are extremely subtle. In this case, the interventions were so subtle that they didn't fit into traditional western understandings of cultivation and agriculture.

So it's good to see this kind of subtle cultivation getting more recognized by science. There are many ways to live with the environment and to place the resources you need into places that are convenient for you and your people. The more that westerners can learn that, the more possibilities open up for how to live with the land.

#indigenous #australia #cultivation #agriculture #science #gardening #gardeningau #plants #nature #environment #ecology #anthropology

Too much pollution has gotten spilled into the soil!:

"New research published in the journal iScience found that soil pollution was the leading cause of declines among organisms living underground. The finding has surprised scientists, who expected farming intensification and climate change to have much greater impacts." - https://phys.org/news/2024-09-soil-pollution-surpasses-climate-threat.amp

The land is sick 🤢. Gotta clean it up and heal it. ❤️🩹

#pollution #soil #ecology #nature #environment #ecosystem

#nature #ecology #restoration #hawaii #environment #plants #land

Q: How long does it take for life to come back on a lava flow?

A: it depends on many factors, including whether humans are helping the process.

Looking at the 1990 lava flow at kaimu/kalapana on Hawai'i Island, we can see differences in places where humans have planted things, brought in soil, built up little rock walls to hold soil, etc.

Pic 1: typical section of the lava. As you can see, 20 years after the flow, very little life has come back. This is a harsh environment for most plants: heavy sun, heavy wind, and no soil.

Unaided by humans, seeds from little ferns and other plants drift and fall into cracks and low areas in the lava. These low areas provide enough protection from the elements to allow baby plants to grow. But without soil, only the plants most adapted to these environments will make it. And the process takes a long time.

You can see the difference in places where people have planted trees and brought in soil.

Pic 2 shows a breadfruit tree with a bunch of dragon fruit growing around its base. The breadfruit is planted in a crack in the lava.

Pic 3 shows coconut planted on both sides of a path. Coconuts are capable of growing in this kind of environment. They are a common tree that people plant on new lava. As you can see, some of these are already quite large!

Pic 4 shows noni - another plant that's well-adapted to this environment. These are some unripe noni fruit. Noni is not very tasty at any stage of ripeness (and smells awful when fully ripe), but it makes a fermented juice that is medicinal. Given how few things can be planted and just left to grow on the lava, noni is a good choice.

Plants like coconut, noni, and even breadfruit can start building a canopy on new lava, and provide useful products for people.

Plants like pineapple, dragon fruit, ti, and Cuban oregano can be grown under them (like in pic 2). This is how humans can help bring life back to lava.

Let this land remind you that it's much easier to destroy an ecosystem than it is to regrow one.

But humans CAN assist that process. With careful planting and care, life can return to lava faster than one would think. No one is eating from these plants yet (probably), but the process is on its way 🌋🌞🌧️🌴.

yesterday was my 2nd pickup from local CSA "Da Box" (https://www.daboxbigisland.org/)!

i got: bunch of lettuce, watercress, a big papaya, a big avocado, 3 kohlrabi, sweet potato, & chocolate breadfruit mousse (omg it was so delicious. i ate it right away).

i'm scared of all local lettuce (even hydroponic) due to angiostrongylus, but my neighbor happily took my lettuce! yaay!

#CSA #hawai'i #food #TropicalAg #tropical