 |
| FINALLY, A CRISP, CLEAR MORNING |
 |
| CONE AT TOP OF LEAFLESS STEM |
 |
| STEMS WITH PROMINENT JOINTS |
Tuesday, 9:00 AM. 24 degrees, wind WSW, calm at ground level but brisk at cloud height. It is a bright, crisp, almost cloudless morning, the first really nice day in a while, but the barometer predicts snow, a few inches of which would be welcome for Christmas.
Horsetails are very primitive, non-flowering plants straight out of the age of the dinosaurs that are common in wet, sandy waste places, but are often overlooked by the casual observer. The one pictured is the scouring rush, Equisetum arvense, in the horsetail family (Equisetaceae) in the horsetail order. Instead of flowers and seeds, the plant reproduces by spores, borne in a cone at the top of its unbranched, leafless stem. The ridged, hollow stems have very prominent joints. Horsetails are very low on the evolutionary scale, and proof positive that ancient concepts can still be valid and competitive in the modern world.
Warning: get ready for a left-hook sucker punch from the Environmental Protection Agency, whose nameless, faceless, unelected bureaucrats are publishing a “Little Green Book” (remember Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book”?) that outlines new regulations for an undefined “sustainable environment” that will put a chokehold on the US economy and your personal freedom, and will make us all subject to new United Nations environmental protocols, the intent of which is to relegate the United States to a third-world economic status.
No comments:
Post a Comment