occidentalis

incog, I still haven't figured out how I'm going to get out there I will be transporting some equipment for the workshop, so I'll definitely need a vehicle... still figuring out if I will hire one or try and jump in someone else's If you're interested in sharing hire costs then we could get a few people together for the journey.

yes indeed not sure how or exactly when though I suspect I will fly into melbs a couple of days before hand meet up with the posse and then get out there anyone else?

In order to inspire people for the upcoming EBA grafting competition, and just generally to show them off, I will post a series of images detailing the growth and development of a Lophophora williamsii seedling I recently grafted onto Pereskiopsis. The graft was done on the 19th of August. The scion was sown in March this year (making it 5 months old at grafting), and was a plant germinated from seed collected from one of my own Lophs, which I purchased from a commercial nursery where it was labelled "Lophophora caespitosa". It has not shown any caespitose tendencies. The photos are small as I'm on dial up at the moment so should be accessible to all. The first photo was taken when I first noticed that it was growing, which was september 10th (3 weeks after grafting): September 19th: The graft continued to grow new aereoles for a few weeks and was relatively uninteresting photographically, so I waited until November 17th when I noticed it had started pupping. This last one was taken today, November 29th: I'll keep updating this every time it does something worth photographing...

Hell yeah would love to watch it in DVD quality and will definitely buy it when it's released but until then this will keep me pretty happy

75000 YA is not really a realistic time frame in relation to plate movement. The major differences at that time would have been sea level - which may have been much lower due to glaciation, making it easier to traverse what are now oceans (particularly between SE Asia and Aus, and also between Aus mainland and Tasmania). However the continents would have been pretty much as they are now. Gondwanaland was hundreds of millions of years ago.

Highly astringent, and stimulates the salivary glands. Makes your mouth feel like it's getting a good clean out . Great fun, sometimes a bit overwhelming though.

Yeah this is interesting I've been using G+ and I like it. One of the reasons I like it is it enables me to define a public persona that the world can see, in order to promote myself and the things I do and then behind that, to post whatever I like to people that I know and trust I don't actually have a problem with having an 'identity' that a company like google can use to 'track' me - as long as certain conditions are met. These are that I can manage the identity, and that there are ways for me to interact with the internet outside of that identity and exactly what that 'tracking' consists of is clearly defined and communicated So far I have found Google to be exemplary in terms of ethical behaviour when it comes to users' information. They know that people have to trust them, and they need to work to ensure that trust. They've certainly fucked up a few times, but IMO you can tell more about about a company or person by the way they deal with their fuckups than you can from the fuckups themselves - and Google has always dealt with them with transparency and integrity. This is in contrast to Facebook, who always seem to have the tactic of going much too far on privacy, and then rolling it back just a little bit in compromise when people complain. I would MUCH prefer Google to have my 'identity' than Facebook. Diaspora has now become fairly available; I have invites if anyone wants them. Just PM me with an email address. I hope that with Diaspora and Google+ online now, people will start to move away from Facebook over the next couple of years.

True, and there are other advantages of being in a big city. However after a few months of travelling (and with a few more months ahead of me) I found little of interest there. Oh yeah, except a really crazy expensive supermarket in Miraflores where you could get such delicacies as soft cheeses, lindt chocolate, and other treats not generally available in SA ;). I did visit a brujo stall but just ended up getting ripped off story of my trip.

highlights from my trip Argentina: northern argentina - Salta and Jujuy areas Bolivia: Salar de Uyuni and surrounds Samaipata - relaxed hippy town in the easy, just up the hill from Santa Cruz. La Paz Peru: Cusco is pretty awesome. Very touristy but ignore that and enjoy. Macchu Pichu is totally touristified, but still amazing. Take some cactus and walk up the hill early in the morning. Lima - avoid. The rest of Peru, while there are a few bits of botanical interest, has a very low signal to noise ratio and plenty of annoyance. I will avoid in future trips. I spent a few weeks travelling throughout the northern coast and Sierra and mostly found it dangerous and hasslesome. YMMV. Ecuador: Vilcabamba is not a bad relaxing spot (note the Vilca trees in the main square!). Good cactus too. Full of crazed Americans though, each with a fascinating conspiracy theory that they will be happy to explain to you at length. Cuenca is a beautiful colonial town and has quite a diversity of indigenous culture. And some good bars! one of my favourite spots all up. Quito - avoid. I managed to get down to the oriente to stay with the Secoya people in on the Rio Aguarico. This was amazing but hard to organise. Next time, I want to hire a boat in Coca and go down the Rio Napo to Iquitos, stopping along the way. Chile You really can't go past Valparaiso as far as urban culture goes. Absolutely awesome town. Otherwise I was not highly impressed with any particular places. Chileans were generally pretty friendly and the whole country seems like a wonder of economic development after spending a while in Peru and Bolivia. But the downside of that is that it's very expensive. Next time I want to go to the far south. The Fjords sound amazing.

you mean put something like that vertically in the back of the fridge? I guess that could work. Only downside would be then you'd have to cut holes in all your fridge shelves to fit it through them! Does it matter if the material insulates? Some heat will still leak out, and as long as the heater can get the water hot enough to warm the fridge space up to the right temp with that bit of heat, you're fine. The water inside the pipe will stay hot for longer, and it might reduce the rate at which your heater has to come on and off.

Contrails will form in air that is cold and/or moist. The amount of time they hang around for depends on the turbulence of the air and also the temperature and humidity. They usually form in the upper atmosphere, because the air is colder, but can form at lower altitudes if conditions are right. They tend to form at higher latitudes for the same reason; you don't see them in Perth very much (also because planes don't fly over Perth; they tend to be taking off or landing when you see them in the sky here, but contrails do form occasionally here. I have seen them much more often further south around Esperance where the air is colder and also the plans are flying higher. How do you know these trails are something other than normal contrails? Regarding the virus hypothesis, if someone wanted to infect people with a virus they wouldn't fly around in a plane and advertise it, they'd just spray a small amount around on public transport or a crowded public place. That would start the pandemic.

Firmness may also affect the extent that the mycelium can penetrate the agar; if it's really soft, the fungus might start growing quite deeply into it. Not sure if that's a real problem or not; I guess oxygen availability will limit growth into the 'depths'.

I was planning to place the aquarium heater horizontally in a large rectangular tupperware type container with a lid, holding probably about 6L of water. I was going to drill a hold in the lid for the heater cable, and then silicon the hole sealed around the cable. I figured that this amount of water would be enough to hold some thermal mass and prevent sudden fluctuations due to opening the door, but not be so much that it would take too long to heat with a heater designed for larger amounts of water. the purpose of the incubator I am building is for small grain bags, liquid cultures and petri dishes, so I don't want a highly humid environment (too much moisture increases contamination). Hence the lid on the container. My only major concern is that many aquarium heaters (not sure about all) have an automatic shut off above a certain temperature (which is often quite low). This would mean that the water may not be able to get hot enough to warm the entire space within the fridge.

Monkey what kind of relay/circuit are you using to switch the higher load devices from the Arduino? And how are you planning to control temperature? I am planning to use an aquarium heater in a container of water as my incubator heater.

thankyou, that one is getting shared...

The two colours I was referring to were in the general area, not in that photo - ie the orange and purple ones that I posted. Thanks a lot for the article, I will have a read...got anymore Gym taxonomy papers?

sounds ok, but 5cm is probably a bit too deep i would put the cable closer to the surface.

well, since we're all in the mood, here's a few Gyms to get us started Big orange one Another big orange one Some purple ones coming out of a log More little purple ones poking their heads out. There seems to be two distinct colours in this spot - not sure if this corresponds to G. purpuratus and G. allantopus or just different types of G. purpuratus And some cute little Mycenas

thanks mate i have been out hunting a fair bit lately and have plenty of photos of Gyms and many other taxa to share. So you reckon I'm getting the ID right, just had the name wrong? what do you think of this one? I had previously called it G. purpuratus but after seeing some other mushrooms with more obvious purple caps and paler stems, I am thinking this might be G. allantopus or something else.

Mycot, these are my photos - can you please give me some more info regarding what you think is the misID and why? i am trying to improve my Gymnopilus ID skills. cheers

I'm a big fan of Cymbopogon ambiguus; I've collected it many times in the Murchison and the smell as you walk through a dry creek bed lined with it on a hot day is amazing. Unfortunately it appears the aromatic oils are extremely volatile because dried material never smells anything like the fresh stuff.

I tend to agree with you philosophically, but practically I see some problems. Do you think it would be OK for me to claim that my snake oil product can cure cancer, and get rich selling it to desperate people who are trying anything to survive a bit longer? The modern history of medicine is riddled with examples of things like this happening and it is only because of adequate regulation that it happens a bit less today. I would love it if everyone was able to take their health into their own hands and make rational, evidenced-based decisions about the medicines and supplements they use, but when I see some of the nutty shit that some of my friends are into, I have to question if it's realistically going to happen. Even if it was, to make those decisions, you still need adequate information, and hence you need regulation requiring that products in the marketplace are well enough studied to have that information available.

I haven't read the whole article because in the past I have found Natural News to be so full of shrieky, fear-mongering, poorly researched bullshit that I don't usually bother. But just for the sake of discussion, I pulled out this little snippet: Although I think herbal substances which have been in use for centuries should be exempt from clinical trials, aside from that I don't see these requirements as being unreasonable at all and I don't have a problem with natural medicines being regulated in a similar way to pharmaceuticals. All drugs have side effects; some worse than others; and if natural medicines are to be considered as valid as pharmaceutical ones, then they should be subjected to the same requirements - ie, that they are effective at treating the diseases they are claimed to treat, and that they are relatively safe. While there could and perhaps should be different models for addressing these questions for pharmaceuticals that were synthesised yesterday and herbal substances that have been traditionally used for ever, if herbal medicines are effective, then we should not object to them being regulated. If they are not effective, then we should definitely not object to them being regulated, because regulation would remove the snake oil products from the market. I'm not saying that I think the US gov. will do a good job of the regulation or that pharmaceutical interests will not do their best to derail the natural products market (in cases where they cannot profit from it) via this regulation - but I think we need to be wary of viewpoints that defend our 'right' to sell snake oil products just because they are herbal based. The comment regarding 'the name of the scientist who originally gave the plant its Latin name' just shows that the journalist who wrote this article knows nothing about botany - the name of the scientist who originally gave the plant its latin name is known as the 'authority' and is necessary to distinguish between different plant species that have been accidentally given the same name by different scientists. Authorities are often listed as part of the latin name (ie Salvia divinorum Epling & Játiva) where Epling & Játiva are the authors that described the species and gave it its name. It's not an unusual requirement to include this information at all. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_nomenclature#Authority for more info.

I tend to agree however there is a big distinction here between weedy plants and weedy fungi: fungi travel much further and much faster than plants do because they have spores. It's very surprising that A. muscaria is not already more common in WA given that it is common on the east coast. I really don't think that much can be done to control it. While it is worthwhile notifying DEC from a scientific perspective, I don't think they will even try to do anything about it. I hope that no one on this forum would actively spread this species or other non-native and invasive species But at the same time I think the most parsimonious response to this one is to get out bush and enjoy taking some photos of these fungi. No point crying over spilt milk, particularly when there is no way to clean it up.

indeed looking forward to finally snaring myself some photographic opportunities with these guys