Since the Okanogan country is so big, our botany class could usually plan alternative field trips to avoid unpredictable bad weather, sideskirt road detours or just head for the best displays of flowers on that particular day. But one day the entire region was blanketed in wildfire smoke that had blown in from the next county.

No alternatives to the smoke.

There were no alternates to our planned hike to a wetland. And so the class went to a bog in a deep valley near the Pasayten Wilderness.

Well, it really wasn’t a bog.  It was a poor fen, which is a bit of minutiae that nobody but a wetland scientist would care squat about. Read on →

A botany student heard that some sensitive plants growing in a headwater seep were holding up a timber sale, and wished that he might see them. Another botanist told him where these plants, called Victorin’s grape-ferns, could be found. He visited the spot where the plants were growing on an isolated lens of serpentine soil, and wanted to know what their scientific name was.

Fortunately, he had a botanical flora in which to match the name to the appearance of the plant. Unfortunately, no names matched the pictures in the flora. Read on →

Now there is Evolution by Accident?

This is a great concept that may open a few people’s minds a bit. Particularly scientists. It is a sign that scientists are finally getting beyond Darwinian dogma in their publications.

The F-pilus (or sex pilus) is a stellar example of this process from the microbial world.

There are these two bacteria, see, one “male” (F+) and one “female” (F-). You can tell them apart because one has a pilus (a microbial penis). The pilus is basically a stick of DNA with some genes. I know you don’t believe me, so here is a picture from a microscope:

F+ microbes have a special purpose in life that F- do not.

Read on →