WoodDragon

Hey all. After really enjoying the Corroboree over ten years ago I slipped off the radar once my kids came along and I became the primary care-giver, but I tried to kick-start my presence a few years ago just before I lost my home computer. Since then I've had a replacement (couldn't use my VPNed work one because NSFW...) and I'm finally getting around to relaunching here. If any of my old buddies are around - hi! And if there are any newer Tassie members who might like to get in touch - hi, too! There are a few plants that I'll be posting about soon - looking, or to pass on, so watch these spaces... It's so bloody good to be back.

Heh, I was going to put up a similar post myself tonight as I'm rebuilding after having to part with a large part of my collection years ago - you beat me to it! If you're in Tassie I have an unnamed double white (possibly this) that I could pass on immediately, and probably a Maya in a few months. I have a very small Burnt Orange but I doubt that it'll be big enough to prune until next summer. I may have some sanguinea seeds, but I'll need to dig around the leaves to see if the flowers set now that 'I have another one nearby... if there are any other Tasmanians here with brugs I'm desperately searching for Clementine, Mathildenwalzer, and Culebra. The Dancer would be nice but I doubt that it's down here. As an aside, I note that yesterday Yamina took down all their brug pages. That was a bit upsetting - I was hoping that they'd restock, because they were the only nursery that imports to Tassie and that had Culebra in the past...

And welcome back after your hiatus too, Tv2.0. I'm sure that we can both make it stick!

Great to see your name here too, A. It feels almost as if I didn't disappear! And as if to celebrate my return, I have clouds of whitefly descending on one of my young brugs. The buggers seem determined to ruin my night garden fun...

Hey all. I've been trying to find seeds of Zaluzianskya ovata and Zaluzianskya capensis (night-scented phlox) through the usual horticultural channels but with no luck - neither species appears to be currently available in Australia. If any of the clued-in community on the Corroboree has any leads I'd love to hear! There is another Zaluzianskya species in the country though - Z. divaricata. Once again it doesn't seem to be available in the nursery trade or through home gardener channels, but it's listed as naturalised in the southwest of WA around Perth, and in SA around Adelaide. If there are any members who live in one of those areas and have come across the plants, I'd be very happy to reimburse them for their troubles getting a sample of some seed. Cheers, Woody. https://florabase.dbca.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/7113 http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/cgi-bin/speciesfacts_display.cgi?form=speciesfacts&name=Zaluzianskya_divaricata

I'm assuming that these have not been posted before (I'm still catching up...): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi38HMIvRpGgMJ0Tlm1WYdw All his own words, but exposed for their shallowness by the simple expedient of adding sass. And for extra chuckles:

Whitewind. The phenomenon about which Monbiot is speaking is that of shifting baselines. It's briefly summarised on Wickedpedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline and exemplified here: http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/02/17/historical.photographs.expose.decline.floridas.reef.fish.new.scripps.study.finds http://www.psmag.com/environment/fish-stories-the-ones-that-got-away-3914/ And Shortly's on the button - we were passing the point of FUBAR about the turn of the millenium. It just takes a while for spaceship Earth to manifest the change in its course.

Hey mutant. Aside from my germination notes above I posted somewhere about my cultivation experience with mandrake, posssibly at AE. To date I grow them from seed rather than from root cuttings, and they're easy to grow as long as you give them what they need in terms of soil and temperature. Mine woke up after winter solstice, and they're doing well. I leave them to their own devices, and the snails are a pain, but the roots look to be putting on size nicely. I have not dug any up, and probably won't for a few years yet - my interest is as a collector and hopefully when they decide to flower, as a source of seed. Unfortunately the labels were removed so I haven't figured out which are officinarum and which are the turks (I still have my autumnalis in the fridge), but there is a subtle difference in leave shape so when I get some time I'll try to ID them properly and post some photos. I'm hoping that flowering might be the easy way out!

Hi all. It's been many, many months since I've been circulating, mostly because I've had an awful year with getting thoroughly shafted by someone I trusted, having family and friends die, and getting caught up in the ARPIS debacle in July. It's spring though and I'm right-side-up again, and one ray of light that remains from my shafting earlier in the year is that I was introduced to Thai eggplants and their unique place in green curries. I'm keen to track down seeds with which to grow my own and rather than start a new thread I thought that I'd resurrect Coin's old one from ten years ago. I'm after both the Solanum melongena cultivars such as 'Thai Violet Prince', 'Thai Yellow Egg' and 'Thai Round Green'; and also Solanum torvum, the turkeyberry or pea eggplant. I'd be especially interested in Solanum torvum 'Puangyok'. If anyone can help I'd be very grateful. Now that I'm back in the saddle I'll be checking PMs much more regularly. Cheers guys.

I've heard that all the best people live in Tassie...

Namaste.

Yeah, staps, huernia, hoodia... They're straightforward to germinate with a pre-soak and good coarse river sand with a bit of potting mix. The biggest thing to be wary of is too much nitrogen - they can make do with bugger all, and too much can knock them over, especially when they're young.

Nooo! Say it isn't so!

Ob, I might have to corner you some time and see if you can push me up the R learning curve. It's one of the most popular programs in my field, but I've avoided it because I'm a non-scripter, and Minitab, SPSS etc almost always came up with the goods. I have a few nuts though that I think R would crack, so maybe it's time for me to jump into the deep end...

Gawd, we're all the same! Plants: columnar cacti, epiphytic cacti, ascelpiads (when they're not being nicked), orchids, bromeliads, carnivorous plants, giant bamboos, fruit trees, weird and wonderful solanacea (still looking for Mandragora caulescens), hoyas, pachycauls, salvias, medicinals, wisterias... and on and on... Books by the thousands Gems, shells, feathers Crystal balls (biggest is 200mm diameter) and other arcana (I would love to pillage Dumbledore's study...) Music (CDs by the thousand) Oil lamps and candle lamps Yixing clay teapots (favourite is my cobalt blue Cycle of Life) Fish fossils, and especially fossil shark teeth (Very) rare chicken breeds Broadheads Colonial tools Shakuhachi Antique botanical prints That's for starters...

Heh, a friend sent me the cabinporn URL last year, and I wasted an hour at work downloading photos to my 'inspiration' folder! If peeps like that site, they might also like some of the links here: http://www.australianethnobotany.net/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4383

Interesting question. The short answer is 'theorectically', the slightly longer answer is 'not with our cultural/political proclivities', and the ultimate answer is 'any society that relies on a continuous growth model of economics with ultimately fail'. It boils down to the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Very few economists properly (or even vaguely) understand the laws of thermodynamics, or the fact that all human activity is beholden to them. Almost no politicians understand this. The current global fixation on continuous growth won't last. The idea that it can be sustained indefinitely is simply an illusion, although hints such as the GFC, degrading ecosystems, and disintegrating national economies should be waking up more than a few intelligent people. If humans don't take the initiative and restructure their economic activity, the laws of thermodynamics will. It's as sure as death, and more sure than taxes.

There's at least one other thread about the lemon juice and olive oil thing, besides the one linked at #10. I'm not sure if it's here or at AE, but I know that it was well and truly dissected. The short answer is that it's the oil that is mistaken for stones, just as satyr noted. Doesn't mean that there might ot be some benefit, but those green blobs aren't gall stones. If someone has gall stones, there are much more efficacious treatments.

A great old Aussie comedy is "Hercules Returns". Slow to start, but one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I laughed so much that I gave myself a headache. Four and a half out of five.

I come from a country where licorice is almost a national dish. Love it. The trouble is, too much gives me headaches. Probably not surprising, as the glycyrrhizinic acid and glycyrrhetinic acid in it is known to raise blood pressure. Consume with care.

"Error bars"? Do they show you where the mixings-up are? Cool! Does anyone have a screen shot? Coin, your blue (boom tish) with your grandmother reminds me of one I once had with an ex girlfriend over an aqua vs turquoise issue. Seems that I was probably right - that'd piss her off if she knew...

There are many reasons for the US going down the plug hole but their ideological hatred of paying taxes is one of them, and their excursions into other countries is another. Oh, and inventing multiple pathways to obscene credit in order to build castles in the air helped. I sometimes wonder if the country could sell what's left of itself to its creditors to try to keep from imploding - can you imagine the US being China's bitch, for example? Of course the citizenry wouldn't stand for it, and they'd shoot the government, their creditors, and themselves to oblivion first. All they can do now is to stagger on from fiscal cliff to fiscal cliff, always creeping closer to the edge, and pillaging some foreign country's loose change in the process. They don't have much other choice - a new war won't work as their model for the last few has been to borrow to fund, rather than to tighten the belts and the budgets. There's really no feasible way to borrow like that again. And with any serious calamity now - whether war, or pandemic disease, or Peak Oil, or food crisis - there would be that 1% of rich people trying to escape by pulling their money, which would knock over the markets and force runs on the banks that would tip the economy into the bin. And in the background will be many countries nursing a grudge against the US, just waiting for the weakness to show... It's been too many decades since the States had a true statesman for a leader. All they have now are crazy fundamentalist Tea Partiers whose policies are structured exactly to make the problem worse, and a lame duck president who doesn't have the balls to tell his countrymen that they need to grow up and stop believing in their national fairystories. It's not the Great American Dream for nothing.

Kuychi, I'd offer to hold your hand but my arm prolly won't reach that far... Halley's - that was a big anticlimax! A tiny little triangle that was outshone by some of the stars near it. Bogfrog I wouldn't worry about the comet smacking into the sun. Even if the astronomers has cocked up their calculations (which is highly unlikely) it would be like a snowflake landing on a burning house. But I am excited at the possibility of a light show - I want to see one of those portent-of-doom style comets, complete with sleepless night and general hysterical social mayhem. Mwah ha ha haaa!

I did the first row in about a minute and the others in about 30 seconds each. It's the first time that I am happy to score 0 in a test, but I always knew that I could pick colours well. It's a different matter with acuity though - I'm useless without my specs.

Yeah, Martin's photos are insane stapeliad eye candy. He was the reason I really caught the bug. Bastard!