Someone made a meme video about them?!

 

Golly gee!

I feel... weirdly honored?

More of aridland wildflower tray

Those big grasslike things in my last post about these have metamorphosed, developing spikes. Highly confident they're Navarettia hamata because no other angiosperm from Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area (where I collected the sand) seems to have spikes like that. The small spineless grasslike thing in the middle of this pic seems to be Linanthus dianthiflorus.

The succulents have gotten bigger but seem to have done nothing of much interest. Despite being annuals, they seem to be capable of asexually reproducing via stem fragments and detached leaves. I wonder if I can perennialize them by forcing them to regen from leaves too frequently for flower production (and thus blooming-related programmed death) to occur? After all, Physcomitrium has been perennialized in a very similar way (namely, being repeatedly ground to a pulp so often it can't make sporophytes). Also, I suspect that at least some of them may be invasive Crassula like C. tillaea.

Leaf propagation'll be a pain though. The leaves don't detach easily, and the stem is prone to snapping. In any case, at least one of my detached leaves is getting bigger, so fingers crossed!

Whatever this (and the unidentified thallus I mentioned Nov. 10) was have both died of dehydration. Several of the grassy spineleaves also show purple pigment as a result of heat stress. Look, I'm life-threateningly depressed, okay?

I also yanked out the probable Erodium on an impulse. Wish I kept it alive long enough for it to mature, but my depression seems to be making me uncontrollably impulsive.

Also this thing popped up a while ago. My god, those cotyledons are huge! (The cotyledons are the largest leaves in the pic if you 're wondering.) They look eerily similar to Pholistoma membranaceum cotyledons but the true leaves look different from that species. Some other Boraginaceae seem to have similar seedlings; I've tentatively ruled out various Cryptantha, Phacelia, Emmenanthe, Pectocarya, Amsinckia, Eucrypta, Borago, Heliotropium by searching various websites and looking at whether the cotyledons and/or true leaves look the same as the ones in my photograph.

Interestingly, the oval things at the tips of the cotyledon have remained more or less the same size as they were during germination whereas the rest has gotten steadily longer. The long part's the petiole I think?

(Permanently) noniridescent gametophyte morphospecies gets another glamour shot

 

I just love the way this morphospecies seems to be permanently solitary whenever it hasn't been injured in a way that makes it produce additional meristems.

Solitary specimens also seem to stop growing once they reach Harmonia axyridis size, but seemingly make no attempt to reproduce unless I slice them in half or otherwise injure them.

Perhaps these habits may imply that it isn't biologically adapted to having a long gametophyte lifespan and that my gametophytes only became longlived because they're a unisexual clone (in other words: I suspect that in the wild the gametophytes of this sp. quickly fertilize each other and then die of fertilization-induced programmed death, as is usual for ferns). I read in a paper somewhere that most if not all ferns develop unnaturally long-lived gametophytes if artificially prevented from producing a sporophyte, and that most if not all such gametophytes can be clonally propagated via fission.

Three papers on the subject of insect "tameness"

I've always wondered why aphids have a tendency to completely ignore predators right next to them and why aposematic insects are often as easily frightenable as nonaposematic ones. My curiosity has been sated!

The economics of escape behaviour in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum

Predator foolhardiness and morphological evolution in 17-year cicadas (Magicicada spp.)

Hidden in plain orange: aposematic coloration is cryptic to a colorblind insect predator

Bonus:

De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation

(Now I'm really tempted to mess around with mutants of my own. I wonder what kinds of weird shapes/behaviors I can selectively breed into Asterella.)

Phenotypic plasticity of the iridescent fernthing

Here are some specimens grown under relatively high lighting. The iridescence is of course nearly gone, but also note that the "leaf" edges are both smoother and more evenly gemmiferous.

I also noticed an uninvited angiosperm sprout just germinated in the cup the ferns pictured above were in. Its curly leaves stop being curly when it's unwilted.

Imperfect photo time: more phenotypic plasticity! The first one below was so close to being perfect but the color's slightly off and there's a bit of subtle fisheye distortion.

Aridland microflora I collected as seeds last spring

 I'm too sad to write a proper caption but the wavy-leaved one in the first pic appears to be invasive Erodium and the succulents appear to be Crassula connata. There's also a tiny thallus in the last pic.

Halloween update

 

The Asterella continues to rot so I have cut it into pieces (to excise the brown parts) and lowered the ventilation. I suspect the deventilation will make things worse but I guess it's still worth a try?

Not like I can think of any better ideas.

Edit: had a better idea, namely not lowering the ventilation. I'll give it a few more months of high ventilation now that the air temps have dropped; if it still doesn't start growing at low air temps then I'll deventilate it. Having a control variable is always delicious.

Edit 2: even better idea. What if I put two in a lidless container and two in a sealed container? Twice the control variable!