I will say this: this book explained something saw and did not understand in the 1980s. All the toads and lizards disappearing in the forest where I grew up. Just the few quiet dirt roads with less than one car in an hour can wipe out communities of slow moving animals.

Well. This book was way less fun than I thought it would be. The opening anecdote had me thinking it would be part fun facts as well as sadness of animals. But it was about 85% misery by weight. Some good news and fixes, but just very grim. It was a good book but it made me very sad.

Unusually, I got to start an article about a tree today. Pinus stormiae used to be considered a variety of the Arizona pine, but got species rank in 2024. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_s...

At the top of every Wikipedia page there is a link to see the history. A list of every edit by every editor. So you could see that Utah penstemon looked like this before I started working on it this year. Very short and no references. en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...

Don't step on any plant if you can help it. Yeah, plants cover the earth. Yes, grass mostly recovers, but it feels wrong to me when I see people just stepping on a plant as if that is fine. Watch where you put your feet people!

Mildly frustrated by the abbreviation "Misappl." I have seen it used with some botanical synonyms and I found a brief glossary definition. "Designation of a name that has been or is incorrect in that it is not applied correctly to the taxon in question."

Right. Going to indulge slightly in some Wikipedia editing while slightly drunk. Cider and working on penstemons. Then house cleaning, I promise

Alpine sandwort (Cherleria obtusiloba) blooming in July atop Cottonwood Pass. Nice little plant. Unfortunately the Wikipedia article is what we call a stub. Very short giving almost no information.

Since I am obsessed with plants everywhere, let's talk Queen of the Andes. It is a giant, giant plant that does the bloom once and die thing. Usually after 40 or more years. And it is pollinated by Andean hummingbirds. In the same family with pineapples. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puya_ra...

You don't have to edit a Wikipedia article directly to fix a problem. Leave a comment on the article's talk page explaining the problem and/or pointing at a good source. As an editor, if a comment is clear I will work on fixing things in response to them or explaining what is going on.

If you have a request for a plant (that is not a moss or algae) article, reply here or on my Wikipedia talk page. I will make an attempt on any plant species, genus, or family. #Wikipedia #NativePlants #Botany

Because of reasons, I have decided that I am going to prioritize destubbing the penstemons of Colorado over working on the whole genus. I will get to the other ones eventually. Though I expect I will be distracted by the bajillion other articles that also need attention on Wikipedia.

I forgot a critical cable for my external drive so OS experimentation will have to wait. In the meantime there is another penstemon species with an article. Still needs some detail about what other plants can be confused with it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penstem...

Imaginary roommate, "Hey, MT, glad you stopped editing Wikipedia. Ready to go out and meet some people on your day off?" *Finishes making tea, heads back to the computer* "Hey, no you need social interaction." Pffff. What I need is some taxonomic agreement on what is or is not a ponderosa pine.

I like the seeds of Rocky Mountain ponderosa pines. Funny enough right now Plants of the World Online regards this as a separate species as Pinus scopulorum. I grew up with this as one species from the Rockies to the Pacific.

As an example here is a very basic page for Baker's alpineparsley. This took me about four hours today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreoxis...

I just did a rough estimate. If I did not have to work I could finish adding every species of plant to Wikipedia in just... 1,095 years.

And this is why I will obsessively go through every synonym listed on POWO on Wikipedia. I just found that ''Epipactis distans'' was an article. Turned that into a redirect because, no not a valid species.

I'm finally happy with the description of the tea plant in Wikipedia. Now all I have to do is all that other stuff. Check all the citations, find cites for the rest, maybe find out what animals eat it...

Dieser Morgen ist perfekt. Ich trinke Tee und schreibe in Wikipedia über Tee.

This is the cost of LLM generated garbage. Today, instead of doing more useful additions to articles, I had to participate in a deletion discussion and figure out that sources did not exist because they were procedurally generated for an editor who then created a garbage article.

I don't just work on Rocky Mountain wildflowers. Sometimes I look at an important plant species and say, "Well that's a mess and I cannot ignore it." Working on the tea bush today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelli...

Only nine penstemon articles left to write for Colorado. I'm also working on some of the existing articles as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penstem...

Sooooo...... I went to one of those farmer's market thingies. I bought too expensive apples because I like trying apple varieties. I rather like Firecracker, but is it normal for them to taste quite different on opposite sides? Not in a bad way, just in a "this could be a different apple" way.

In the book of Mtbotany, thou shall not suffer an ailanthus tree to live outside its natural range.

Ehhhhh. I don't know if I want to research this or not. I just read in the book "Sex in Your Garden" by Angela Overy that wasps favor darker colored flowers and I'm like... "Really? Do you have research backing that up because it sounds speculative, especially the dusky penstemon."

@tkingfisher.com et al. You need to see this picture.

Redwood canopy recovery, five years after a crown fire. 🌲🔥 #CZULightningComplex

And yes, I am the same MtBotany, I just went extra goth because October. Edward Gorey icon and a public domain bit of monkshood art for the banner thingy. 'Tis the season for wearing all black to farmers markets and draining the lifeforce out of someone pale.

The only article about a columbine that I created. I started it in May this year and came back to it to add a short description of the botanical varieties. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquileg...

A neighbor gave me garden tomatos.

Meh. I was barked at by an off leash dog while walking through a park today. If your dog barks at people you really ought to keep it on a leash at all times in public. This ought not to be controversial.

When I say, "Let's hang out," this is totally what I mean.

I feel so weird editing Wikipedia pages that are not about plants. But @quoteinvestigator.com published this investigation and it could have been days of wrongness if I didn't fix the five articles. Still, I might need a cup of tea and a little lie down to recover. ... The horror! The horror!

All the vascular plant people when confronted with a moss: "Well, that is certainly a very mossy moss. Yes, very green and, um moss-like. I like its, umm... texture. Yes. ... I don't have to identify it, do I?" Like mere mortals confronted with almost any plant except a rose or an oak.

Photograph I just added to the Wikipedia article on western red columbine (Aquilegia elegantula). Thanks to @alanrockefeller.bsky.social for sharing nice photos en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquileg...

My feed is more ------------- OMG: Flowers! ------------- Botanical paper ------------- Bad science article retracted ------------- Book I'm reading ------------- Lookit: Tree! ------------- Botanical paper ------------- Repost of Doom ------------- GIR: I'm gonna sing the doom song -------------

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I did not check to see if that soda was caffeine free and so now I feel like a hyperactive hummingbird. *Dilated pupil noise — Bzzzzzzz* I can see infinity! Edit all the Wikipedia articles!

For me Wayback is about research. I see a dead link as a reference on Wikipedia and I use Wayback to figure out if the source is any good and should be preserved with an archive link or if it needs to be replaced. #Wayback1T

The opening story about Cliff swallows evolving to be better at avoiding vehicles is so striking it makes me want the unthinkable: to edit a fact into a non-plant article on Wikipedia. 😱

Yet another penstemon article. I only need to finish 10 more to have Colorado covered. Though I need to rewrite a bunch of the ones that already exist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penstem...

What plant is missing on Wikipedia? Or effectively missing? Like you, the person reading the words coming out of my keyboard, who goes to Wikipedia and is disappointed by how thin the information is in the article?

The past really is a different country. Reading "Orchids: The Royal Family of Plants" from 1885 and was mildly startled by the line, "Upon the banishment of heathen mythology by the spread of Papal civilization..."

Wikipedia is a bit like the "Anyone Can Cook" line in "Ratatouille". It is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and a great editor can come from anywhere, but most people will not be great editors. They lack the time, the drive to become great, or just fundamentally do not understand verifiably.

Pollination in Magnolia is often by beetles, but other insects may contribute. Magnolia ovata is a night-blooming, thermogenic & beetle-pollinated species. The 1st night, the stigmas are receptive. Flowers close in the day & open the 2nd night in the staminate phase. #Magnoliaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

A pair of books about tigers preying on humans. One where it seems a tiger was angry and possibly was punishing humanity and another where a tiger was treating humans as food without any particular hatred. Both are great reads, particularly for authors.

Wow. Those were definitely not fireworks. And much deeper than the usual gunshots I hear and more of them, nine total. But fairly distant so I am going to turn over and go back to sleep.

Interesting. Short mention in a book about toxic plants that poison hemlock seeds were added to anise. I would like to know more about how common it was to adulterate anise seed with poison hemlock but so far I have turned up nothing. Not sure if the snippet of info should go into the Wiki article.

Just learned about Adoxa moschatellina. It was an evolutionary loner, by itself in a family, until 2018 when a second species was described Closest relatives are the honeysuckles.

And now with an iNaturalist photograph. Thanks to Athena Philips.