tripsis

That was the word I was looking for!

Just because one N-fixing plant makes for a good companion plant does not mean all of them do. It's like saying that because some Acacias contain DMT, all of them do, while the reality is probably that they are a vast minorty. Is there any evidence to suggest that Native Americans planted those two together because beans are a nitrogen-fixer? Corn is often planted alongside beans as it gives something for the beans to climb up.

No doubt dumping from ships is a large contributor, but ocean currents have a way of channeling rubbish to specific areas, creating literal islands of floating plastic and other junk. I don't know whether the area/areas where this is happening is one of those places, but it could be. I recently watched a documentary about plastic and it was pretty sad. These guys went out to remote areas of the oceans and skimmed the waters for plastic. They found a very significant percentage of the plastic floating in the oceans was in the form of resin beads. These resin beads are the basis to all plastics - that is at that stage, they can become anything - resin is not a differentiated plastic. The first thing that petrochemicals are made into on the way to becoming more usuable plastics is resin - it has virtually no use other than to become other plastics like polypropylene, etc. What this means is that when these resin beads are initially created in the factory, a percentage of them are lost down the drains, to find there way into remote areas of the ocean. The worst thing about it is that they were never ever used as anything, it's just outright pollution. So don't underestimate how far pollution can travel. It's a similar scenario to pollution in the form of fine particles and gases. They get taken up into the atmosphere here, where it is warm, travel on air currents to the artic where it is cold and then they precipiatate and fall back to earth, causing extremely high rates of cancer among the Inuits, where is should by rights be one of the cleanest places on Earth.

Yes, it is definitely a prolific flowerer, it has several on it flowering presently and many dried ones too. Probably more buds on the way as well. The value it gains with age mean little to me, I don't plan on selling it if I buy it, it would be valueless to me. The fact it is older than me and will always have those years on me and any Lophs that I grow from seed is pretty significant though. Does anyone here in Aus on this forum have any old plants similar to the one I'm talking about? Edit: is that your pic Chiral?

This is unfortunately true, it has been recorded before and is a fairly common occurence. I highly doubt that those pictures are set up. It is very sad to see what is happening and many of us are responsible for it it some way. If anyone here litters, think of where that litter can end up. For more info: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/pos...-any-2009-10-27 http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/ocea...tics_albatross/ Or to just see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o_rtV68Yn8...player_embedded

Thinking about this, do they live in houses? Or hunt? They must do, which means they must have some concept of time to be able to think ahead of the things they need (e.g. food and shelter).

Damn, that is big. The one I've been looking at is probably bigger than in total, but each individual offset is much smaller, the largest probably not being greater than 10cm.

Hm, the idea of companion planting ethnos appeals to me. Companion planting at all actually. Would look good and reduce evaporation from the soil. I see no reason why that would actually help the B. caapi. Nitrogen-fixing plants fix nitrogen for their own benefit, not the benefit of the surrounding plants. Only if the N-fixing plants are killed and then mulched back into the soil is the nitrogen of any use to surrounding plants. So unless you were periodically killing your Acacias and Mimosas, or chopping off their root nodules, the benefit would not have come from the ability of those plants to fix nitrogen.

I love nudibranchs. I remember looking at one under the microscope in a bio prac last year - it was awesome!

Chiral, how big was the one that went for $800? Dale, there's a 30+yo one on there right now going for $450, but it isn't nearly as nice or in as good condition as the one I'm thinking about getting. My point was not that they are not sold on Ebay, but that Ebay rules specifically prohibit it, thus why they are not called by there scientific names.

Well I don't really know if it's a good price here, but I'm guessing it isn't too bad. I do know that there would be people who wouldn't hesitate to pay that much, but then there are also people who would hesitate to but a Ferrari, so it's really not much to go off. I agree it fucked Lophs aren't allowed to be sold on Ebay, there reasoning is plain stupid. But it's the same backward reasoning that makes importation of Loph seeds/plants into Australia prohibited too - they put all Lophophora species under the drugs schedule. Who the hell would eat a diffusa?! At any rate - correct me if I'm wrong - I think it's pretty rare for large Lophs to be sold in Australia.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, having a suplus of money would definitely make a hell of a difference. I'm saving to go overseas though, so I don't. EG, there are far more Lophs available in Europe to buy than here in Aus. Köhres helps in that regards enormously no doubt. We have nothing even close to him here. I think it's pretty rare to see ones this and old for sale, let alone crests and the such. If only they were that cheap here...

EGA was brilliant. Met so many awesome people, learnt so much. The talks were great, I really loved how everyone came from such different walks of life. Can't wait until the next one!

That is fascinating, thanks for the article xodarap.

Agreed. This book is brilliant. Worth every cent. Thank you Snu, for all the time and effort you put into this book, it's bloody excellent!

EGA was awesome! So many great people, so many interesting talks and workshops. I learnt so much and met many, many wonderful people. Bear was hilarious. What a character. That poor girl was humilated ruthlessly though, but she didn't make it any easier on her self. Many of the speakers were real characters actually. Great to see to much community spirit amongst those who made it, even if we're all from different walks of life and have disparate values, etc. Thanks to Ronny and everyone who made it possible and thanks to everyone who made it what it was.

According to Snu Vogelbreinder's 'Garden of Eden' (which is well and truly worth getting) Rana temporaria contains bufotenine, while other Rana spp. have been found to contain peptides such as ranatensin, bradykinins and bombesins. the leg flesh of Rana spp. is apparently an aphrodisiac.

Picked up a couple of cacti from Bunning today, one is a Trich for sure, the other I'm not sure about. Can anyone ID what species they are? Cactus 1: Cactus 2: Thanks everyone.

How big/old are the caapi?

Cool, thanks for those. The older parts look very much like standard bridgesii, but the young arms look remarkably like the second one of mine. I was at Hamilton's on the weekend. I should have asked them. I only saw one small bridgesii seedling and not a single peruvianus one. I was pretty surprised. It wasn't nearly as cheap as Chiral said and had a surprisingly small range available for people to buy from. Pretty average really. I guess times change. They now import many of their cacti from the Czech Republic and surrounding countries.

As the title suggests, how often should one fertilise Lophs and at what strength/dilution should the fertiliser be? I use Charlie Carp...

I vote non-city. I'd much prefer to live out of a city than in.

I've been thinking about vegetative reproduction in cacti recently and how certain clones such as 'Eileen' and 'Yowie', etc are widely distributed and grown. I think it's pretty amazing that a single plant (in terms of genetics) can become so successful due to human interaction. What may have become a single 6m+ giant in its life instead has managed to become probably much larger when adding up all the separate plants which have been cloned of it. Anyway, I'm getting side-tracked here... So with mushrooms, cultures will, over time, undergo senescence and become old, slow and weak, eventually leading to death. Cloning that culture does not lead to fresh vigour as the cells can only undergo division so many times until they die. They are not germ/stem cells and thus do not have the capacity for unlimited division. With plants senescence also plays various roles, from leaf abscission to the hardening of seeds coats, etc. This is somewhat different to the process above though, as it is programmed into specific cells as part of plant growth, leading to apoptosis (programmed cell death) as opposed to ageing. Plants cells are totipotent, meaning most cells within a plant, bar those that are already highly differentiated, are capable of differentiating into any other cell type. This is why any part of the plant can be used to create a callous when culturing and eventually, with the aid of hormones, an entire plant. Germ cells, stem cells and cancer cells all have the ability to keep dividing ad infinitum, as their chromosomes have the ability to continually repair their telomeres, preventing them from senescence. What I'd like to know though, is whether a clone of a specific cactus is more or less immortal, or whether at some point down the line the cells have undergone so much division that they are no longer capable of continuing and thus the clone dies? I'm assuming that plants having totipotent cells does not mean they are like stem cells, as all plants eventually die. But perhaps being able to reproduce asexually bypasses that problem if the right conditions are given?

Thanks, makes much more sense now.

For what it's worth, I was just taking a look at a couple of TBMs I recently got and on many of their areoles there are 5 and 6 spines. None had above 6 spines per areole though.