Up in the hills of Oakland in Redwood Regional Park there is a remarkable patch in the Serpentine hillside and a second alongside the Dunn trail on the ridge. I wait for them each year and am always delighted to see them.
I need a map! I have never seen one in those hills. Tho to be fair, I have mostly been running in Briones and Strawberry Canyon recently. (If, for real, you do feel like sending me a map: Alexis.madrigal@gmail.com)
In Briones, i do various loops from the Bear Creek Staging Area. They are all pretty nice, tho it is getting pretty hot out there and it’s pretty exposed.
Near Redwood, I like starting on the Sequoia-Bayview, then popping through Big Trees over to Redwood through the Bowl onto the West Ridge and on to the French… tho admittedly, I have not done that one for a while. Now’s the time tho! Since it stays cool
I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on Barbara McClintock. Plant biologists tend to have a chip on their shoulder about how often the field is overlooked by the Nobel committee, so for many of us McClintock holds a special place in our hearts. I visited Stockholm in 2008 and dragged my friend to the Nobel Prize Museum. This was shortly after James Watson had outed himself as a racist, and the museum had obviously de-emphasized his prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA (Crick and Wilkins as well, as collateral damage). But there were a few displays about McClintock's work, kind of like an unproblematic substitute? It really felt like McClintock had the spotlight all to herself for a moment! You could even buy bookmarks with ears of corn at the gift shop.
I am now also curious about the color variation you observed in the mariposa lilies. I assume the pigment is an anthocyanin, and lots of things can affect anthocyanin production - sunlight/radiation, temperature, the nitrogen content in the soil. Some flowers change color after they are fertilized (perhaps because they no longer need to attract a pollinator?). If you learn more, please share it with us! I see similar variation in the color of the California poppies that grow in our front yard, but I also haven't been able to find much info on what factors may be behind it.
Ah, Watson. Writing about that revelation was the first time I encountered literal nazis on the internet (Stormfront, etc). They were so happy about all of it. Little did I know that it would be such a recurring feature of internet life. (I also do not think Watson is alone in those views among that cohort of scientists... I had a couple other encounters early in my career with folks who made me really ... wonder.)
As for McClintock—what I've been trying to wrap my head around relates to some of what you're saying. She was clearly a brilliant and dedicated scientist, as well as an independent thinker about many things. I encountered her in Evelyn Fox Keller, like a lot of people. And then I read some of Nathaniel Comfort's work about her, which tries to be extremely mythbusting about what she did and did not do. Like... WAS SHE RIGHT about her central discoveries and theories in the early 1950s, and did science really just reject her for reasons A, B, C or was the truth more complicated. Of course, the answer is the latter for him. As time has gone on, it seems as if more and more of her instincts about what cells could do have turned out to be right, and now there's even a second (or is it third) reevaluation that's been on. Most of it is the type you're talking about—pure hagiography and like turning her into a Frida Kahlo for science—but there are other strains of it. The one I'm most interested in is the views she held on cell competency, which I see echoed in biologists like Michael Levin, and her emphasis on the complexity of organismal development being important to evolution. I have been going to the lecture notes from later in her life (like 1971) and it is fascinating.
"Prediction: Studies of eukaryotic organisms, from all points-of-view will produce very great change in concepts regarding: nature of 'mutations'; nature of evolutionary processes; the nature of programming mechanisms during development; the nature of homeostatic mechanisms; the vast amount of symbiosis at all levels of organization—the oneness of nature in general."
Or take this one line, which (again this is lecture notes) I take to be about the similarities between genomes in terms of their "parts list."
“Any organism can make any other organism. Enzymes much alike; they are only the tools, putting together and taking apart where energy and speed required.”
Any organism can make any other organism. It puts a fascinating spin on that "we share 90% of our genome with cats" kind of stuff. And, for me, at least ... it highlights aallll these other things that are going on, outside the coding genes, in the interrelated networks of actors up and down the scales of life.
Anyway, HELLO MORNING COFFEE. HELLO AMY. It is 7:32am! Please forgive the three-hundred word comment.
The inverse of the westminster dog thing has always been kind of interesting to me, like, what's the most mutt-y mutt, the eigen-dog in the space between all those dogs? My nomination would be the yellow mutts you see wandering around most of latin america. 30-50 lbs, never know if they're friendly or bitey, largely a product of how kind the neighborhood is to it.
Haha! This is exactly right. Gotta have stubbyish legs and be the exact color “nondescript.”
I will give an honorable mention to the Greek street dogs. The thing I loved most about them was that they always seemed to have their own agendas. You’d see then hanging around until some thought occurred to them and then — TROT off to some rendezvous or task known only to them. Such a different life from the dogs who only know how to take direction from a person!
I too am another Calochortus fan! So many cool ones to seek out in the Bay Area. You may enjoy this talk from a UC Berkeley grad student: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMNDQUTxxkQ
Woah! That is awesome. I literally cannot wait to watch that talk. Now I have something to look forward to at the end of the day. What a cool talk. Even the slides are a wonder to look at. Thanks, Peter.
There is a Welwitschia housed in the greenhouse at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, it has it's own special box of soil. It's leaves spread off the box and onto the floor. Apocryphaly, a maintenance staff once "trimmed" its leaves thinking they were waste on the floor, cutting literal decades of growth away. I have heard that the rare plant collection is facing the threat of a massive redwood tree that hovers over it and whose limbs are failing, word amonth the arborist community is of a daring helicopter assisted pruning/removal operation.
The first time I saw one (different species, in Mt Diablo in California) — it felt miraculous. They just come out of nowhere with this super saturated pigment, almost like a desert orchid
I haven't, but I have it on my local hike plan list. (Also, I started listening to the talk for a couple minutes and it is SO on point. Thank you for delivering me the talk of my dreams!!)
Worth checking out Ring Mountain, even if it is too late this year to see that Calochortus in bloom. There are lots of serpentine outcrops with really interesting endemics, and stunning/unusual views. Glad the talk video is on-point!
I like Mariposa lilies too, for all the reasons you write about, many of which I didn't know until now. Thank you.
Up in the hills of Oakland in Redwood Regional Park there is a remarkable patch in the Serpentine hillside and a second alongside the Dunn trail on the ridge. I wait for them each year and am always delighted to see them.
I need a map! I have never seen one in those hills. Tho to be fair, I have mostly been running in Briones and Strawberry Canyon recently. (If, for real, you do feel like sending me a map: Alexis.madrigal@gmail.com)
Do you have a favorite running trail? I’ve been mostly running in Huckleberry (shh…I know it is discouraged) and Redwood Regional.
In Briones, i do various loops from the Bear Creek Staging Area. They are all pretty nice, tho it is getting pretty hot out there and it’s pretty exposed.
Near Redwood, I like starting on the Sequoia-Bayview, then popping through Big Trees over to Redwood through the Bowl onto the West Ridge and on to the French… tho admittedly, I have not done that one for a while. Now’s the time tho! Since it stays cool
I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on Barbara McClintock. Plant biologists tend to have a chip on their shoulder about how often the field is overlooked by the Nobel committee, so for many of us McClintock holds a special place in our hearts. I visited Stockholm in 2008 and dragged my friend to the Nobel Prize Museum. This was shortly after James Watson had outed himself as a racist, and the museum had obviously de-emphasized his prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA (Crick and Wilkins as well, as collateral damage). But there were a few displays about McClintock's work, kind of like an unproblematic substitute? It really felt like McClintock had the spotlight all to herself for a moment! You could even buy bookmarks with ears of corn at the gift shop.
I am now also curious about the color variation you observed in the mariposa lilies. I assume the pigment is an anthocyanin, and lots of things can affect anthocyanin production - sunlight/radiation, temperature, the nitrogen content in the soil. Some flowers change color after they are fertilized (perhaps because they no longer need to attract a pollinator?). If you learn more, please share it with us! I see similar variation in the color of the California poppies that grow in our front yard, but I also haven't been able to find much info on what factors may be behind it.
Ah, Watson. Writing about that revelation was the first time I encountered literal nazis on the internet (Stormfront, etc). They were so happy about all of it. Little did I know that it would be such a recurring feature of internet life. (I also do not think Watson is alone in those views among that cohort of scientists... I had a couple other encounters early in my career with folks who made me really ... wonder.)
As for McClintock—what I've been trying to wrap my head around relates to some of what you're saying. She was clearly a brilliant and dedicated scientist, as well as an independent thinker about many things. I encountered her in Evelyn Fox Keller, like a lot of people. And then I read some of Nathaniel Comfort's work about her, which tries to be extremely mythbusting about what she did and did not do. Like... WAS SHE RIGHT about her central discoveries and theories in the early 1950s, and did science really just reject her for reasons A, B, C or was the truth more complicated. Of course, the answer is the latter for him. As time has gone on, it seems as if more and more of her instincts about what cells could do have turned out to be right, and now there's even a second (or is it third) reevaluation that's been on. Most of it is the type you're talking about—pure hagiography and like turning her into a Frida Kahlo for science—but there are other strains of it. The one I'm most interested in is the views she held on cell competency, which I see echoed in biologists like Michael Levin, and her emphasis on the complexity of organismal development being important to evolution. I have been going to the lecture notes from later in her life (like 1971) and it is fascinating.
"Prediction: Studies of eukaryotic organisms, from all points-of-view will produce very great change in concepts regarding: nature of 'mutations'; nature of evolutionary processes; the nature of programming mechanisms during development; the nature of homeostatic mechanisms; the vast amount of symbiosis at all levels of organization—the oneness of nature in general."
Or take this one line, which (again this is lecture notes) I take to be about the similarities between genomes in terms of their "parts list."
“Any organism can make any other organism. Enzymes much alike; they are only the tools, putting together and taking apart where energy and speed required.”
Any organism can make any other organism. It puts a fascinating spin on that "we share 90% of our genome with cats" kind of stuff. And, for me, at least ... it highlights aallll these other things that are going on, outside the coding genes, in the interrelated networks of actors up and down the scales of life.
Anyway, HELLO MORNING COFFEE. HELLO AMY. It is 7:32am! Please forgive the three-hundred word comment.
The inverse of the westminster dog thing has always been kind of interesting to me, like, what's the most mutt-y mutt, the eigen-dog in the space between all those dogs? My nomination would be the yellow mutts you see wandering around most of latin america. 30-50 lbs, never know if they're friendly or bitey, largely a product of how kind the neighborhood is to it.
Haha! This is exactly right. Gotta have stubbyish legs and be the exact color “nondescript.”
I will give an honorable mention to the Greek street dogs. The thing I loved most about them was that they always seemed to have their own agendas. You’d see then hanging around until some thought occurred to them and then — TROT off to some rendezvous or task known only to them. Such a different life from the dogs who only know how to take direction from a person!
We do go to the mountains every year☺️
I too am another Calochortus fan! So many cool ones to seek out in the Bay Area. You may enjoy this talk from a UC Berkeley grad student: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMNDQUTxxkQ
Woah! That is awesome. I literally cannot wait to watch that talk. Now I have something to look forward to at the end of the day. What a cool talk. Even the slides are a wonder to look at. Thanks, Peter.
I love the way the petals become little upright tubes. I had no idea!
Watching flowers die is something of a hobby of mine
Beautiful collage. Would be fascinating to see the luminescent designs as the bees see them.
You know, that just sent me looking… and I found this delightful page! http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html
There is a Welwitschia housed in the greenhouse at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, it has it's own special box of soil. It's leaves spread off the box and onto the floor. Apocryphaly, a maintenance staff once "trimmed" its leaves thinking they were waste on the floor, cutting literal decades of growth away. I have heard that the rare plant collection is facing the threat of a massive redwood tree that hovers over it and whose limbs are failing, word amonth the arborist community is of a daring helicopter assisted pruning/removal operation.
Oh my gosh. I need to go pay my respects! Just in case someone gets a little frisky with the trimmers.
Where might one try to find out more about the helicopter rescue? That would be an extremely fun newsletter edition.
I too was just in Rocky Mountain National Park and was charmed by the Mariposa lilies! They are so different than all of the other wildflowers!
The first time I saw one (different species, in Mt Diablo in California) — it felt miraculous. They just come out of nowhere with this super saturated pigment, almost like a desert orchid
Have you gone to Ring Mountain park on Tiburon to see C. tiburonensis? It is stunning!
I haven't, but I have it on my local hike plan list. (Also, I started listening to the talk for a couple minutes and it is SO on point. Thank you for delivering me the talk of my dreams!!)
Worth checking out Ring Mountain, even if it is too late this year to see that Calochortus in bloom. There are lots of serpentine outcrops with really interesting endemics, and stunning/unusual views. Glad the talk video is on-point!
Calochortus gunnisonni.
One n, two iis
Two n, two iis
LOL. 3 n's and 3 i's!