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The Tropicalist - Looking for Home, One Plant at a Time
Small Latin and Less Greek
Grobalization
June 13, 2019

Small Latin and Less Greek

The scientific names of plants are given in Latin, a language spoken by no one. This could be one explanation for the common phenomenon of plant blindness in humans.

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 1
The Jungle
March 7, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 1

What we can learn from the ones who don’t move.

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 2
The Jungle
March 8, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 2

The sal tree makes many appearances in the great Indian epics and is also represented by the nymph of the sal tree or Shalabhanjika. She is a woman so fertile, plants flower as she walks past them. And she enjoys a cigarette every now and then.

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 3
The Jungle
March 11, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 3

One of the nice things about settling down is the feeling that we’ve reduced our universe of possibilities, and so it’s easier to make plans. Some people say that the ability to anticipate is what makes homo sapiens unique. But a tree makes plans too, a plan of how it is going to grow over the course of its life.

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 4
The Jungle
March 12, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 4

When Plan A doesn’t work out, ya go to Plan B. But trees can do you one better, alright?

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 5
The Jungle
March 12, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 5

Genetically speaking, no, a dipterocarp is not an individual tree—although it appears to be one. Who the tree is at the beginning of its life is different from who it is at the end. A tree is not a tree but many trees.

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 6
The Jungle
March 14, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 6

To die is the price we pay to be ourselves.

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 7
The Jungle
March 15, 2019

How to Be Rooted in One Place, Part 7

Can you really have a community when you don’t have roots? Is virtual interaction an equivalent substitute to real life interaction?

Trop Picks: Sarracenia purpurea
The Jungle
May 15, 2018

Trop Picks: Sarracenia purpurea

Why do we have a hard time getting our heads around the fact that carnivorous plants like Sarracenia purpurea are temperate?

Trop picks: Phalaenopsis venosa
The Jungle
October 30, 2017

Trop picks: Phalaenopsis venosa

To take this photograph of a Phalaenopsis venosa in flower in Sulawesi, I had to climb up on the shoulders of a hardy guide. A minute later, as I got back down on to what I thought was solid ground, I fell through a pile of debris on the forest floor into a deep hole. Luckily, I grabbed onto a nearby root, so I was not lost forever, although I did lose my lens cap.

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