The Great Lunar Orchid & The Giant Moon Moth

[Subrosa]

Originally Posted by Fernando

Nope.
Tolerance goes from top to bottom (no pun intended).
Tolerance converts refugees to illegal immigrants.
You can be tolerant with your neighbour’s loud music when you know it's a birthday party. That's all.


I'd never dare to compare my poor writing with Conrad's.

Yet you dare compare your understanding of the definitions of words with me..... I can't understand how anything I've posted could hurt your feelings so. I would be happy to send you a copy of Roget's thesaurus to help clear up your misunderstanding of the definitions we've chosen to use.

[Fernando]

S'dia shaya, vai dom. I'll never dare again.

[Subrosa]

Originally Posted by Fernando

S'dia shaya, vai dom. I'll never dare again.

So you're not interested in increasing your knowledge for nothing more than the trouble of reading a free book? I will never accept that attitude, but I can easily tolerate it.

[Moon Moth]

I wonder ~ what are the freudian implications of my use of the word “more”?

Should I shape my verbal oddities to suit a blander diet? Perhaps, but I am very busy, and I think the rest of the world's opinions are not my responsibility.

Besides, bovine is not my style.

That said, I have a little confession to make.... your choice of the word “more” is choice in more than one way.

For it requires me to respond “on topic” ~ a little “more”.

And I think that you are not so intellectually primitive as to censor the newcomer's (at least) equally fun response to your fun monkey chatter.

?

The truth is that I really like humans.

I think the different yardsticks that people use are often funny, and rarely straight.

Monkeys with a tool bag full of wonkeeyardsticks.

But they know exactly what to do with each one.

Because these are mass-produced factory yardsticks.

Hardly anybody actually remembers the craft of making their own yardstick, these days.

So I once found a tree full of macho monkeys who like to play with each other yardsticks.

Monkeys chatter, it is their nature ~ but after considering the nature of their chatter, I decided that these monkeys weren't bad, and would be plenty of fun, with a little help from me.

Playing with yardsticks can be fun.

I haven't been doing it often enough recently.

But I am a lunatic.

So, in response to your “request” for a discussion on the subject of “mores”, I am going to teach you How to make your own Yardstick.

And with that lovely pomposity of introduction ~ let us have a 'rational' (or at least, 'fun') discussion on the topic of “mores”....


River Valley the Satyr

?

---------- Post added at 06:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:32 AM ----------

PS ~ I'll return tomorrow (probably) and complete this post.

[Orchid Whisperer]

Originally Posted by Moon Moth

PS ~ I'll return tomorrow (probably) and complete this post.

Thanks for the warning.

Plenty of time for me to
(1) open your user profile,
(2) drop down the user lists menu, and
(3) add you to my ignore list.

No time available for whack-a-doodles.

[Subrosa]

Originally Posted by Moon Moth

I wonder ~ what are the freudian implications of my use of the word “more”?

Should I shape my verbal oddities to suit a blander diet? Perhaps, but I am very busy, and I think the rest of the world's opinions are not my responsibility.

Besides, bovine is not my style.

That said, I have a little confession to make.... your choice of the word “more” is choice in more than one way.

For it requires me to respond “on topic” ~ a little “more”.

And I think that you are not so intellectually primitive as to censor the newcomer's (at least) equally fun response to your fun monkey chatter.

?

The truth is that I really like humans.

I think the different yardsticks that people use are often funny, and rarely straight.

Monkeys with a tool bag full of wonkeeyardsticks.

But they know exactly what to do with each one.

Because these are mass-produced factory yardsticks.

Hardly anybody actually remembers the craft of making their own yardstick, these days.

So I once found a tree full of macho monkeys who like to play with each other yardsticks.

Monkeys chatter, it is their nature ~ but after considering the nature of their chatter, I decided that these monkeys weren't bad, and would be plenty of fun, with a little help from me.

Playing with yardsticks can be fun.

I haven't been doing it often enough recently.

But I am a lunatic.

So, in response to your “request” for a discussion on the subject of “mores”, I am going to teach you How to make your own Yardstick.

And with that lovely pomposity of introduction ~ let us have a 'rational' (or at least, 'fun') discussion on the topic of “mores”....


River Valley the Satyr

?

---------- Post added at 06:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:32 AM ----------

PS ~ I'll return tomorrow (probably) and complete this post.

Or perhaps you could start a discussion about orchids?

[epiphyte78]

Moon Moth, a while back on Netflix I couldn't help but watch Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. I had a *few* technical issues with the movie.

I also watched Cosmos on Netflix. Neil DeGrasse Tyson showed a picture of Angraecum sesquipedale and said that its pollen is located at the end of its very long spur. The moth uses its long proboscis to reach the pollen? So where's the nectar?

Bees direct each other to flower patches by dancing. The better the flower patch, the longer/harder the bee dances.

Humans dance too, but not necessarily to direct each other to flower patches.

I don't think that moths dance to direct each other to flower patches.

What about slugs? Do they dance? They certainly leave mucus trails. Bob happens to find Sarah's mucus trail. Her trail informs him that, if he follows it, then he might be able to find some nice new orchid roots to eat. Is this fact or fiction?

I have an orchid growing on a potted Ficus tree. It's Ficus macrophylla and the orchid is Dendrobium delicatum. Both of them are from Australia. My favorite part is how the orchid's roots are intertwined with the Ficus's aerial roots. They've been together for over a decade now. That's a lot of intertwining!

I don't think that this orchid naturally grows on this Ficus. So the combination is fictional?

There are around 20,000 different species of epiphytic orchids... and a lot more different hybrids. How many different potential hosts are there? I wonder which combination of orchid and host would make me the happiest. If I was a bee, which combination would make me dance the longest/hardest?

If you're interested, here's a list I made of some hosts that orchids naturally grow on. Orchids grow on a really wide range of hosts.

I think orchids are so diverse because they produce so many seeds. A single seed pod can contain around a million seeds. Each tiny seed is a different combination of traits. The seeds are so small because they don't contain nutrients like regular seeds do. Not being weighed down by nutrients allows the wind to carry the orchid seeds really far. But it means that, in order to germinate, the seeds need to be nourished by the right kind of microscopic fungus.

The fungus takes up residence inside the roots of the orchid. The orchid and its fungus trade different types of nutrients with each other. Plus, the roots provide a pretty cozy place for the fungus if there happens to be a long drought. Clearly it's advantageous for the orchid to help the fungus.

We say, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you". Well yeah. But doesn't that seem like a pretty low standard? We should say something like, "Help the hand that feeds you". Or something better.

Orchids understand that all progress depends on difference. More difference means more progress. Unfortunately, we humans still haven't figured this out. People like to promote diversity but I know for a fact that they don't understand what diversity is good for.

Thanks for sharing your story. I hope your mind will continue to be a good host for orchids!

[Moon Moth]

Hello

I hope you will excuse the late reply, has been a busy week.

EPIPHYTE ~ your post was fascinating.

Australia is described as an "old" country due to the fact that the continent has been quite tectonically stable for quite a while. The result is that the land and soils are highly weathered. This ecological stability was upset when a minor ice age created a land-bridge to South-East Asia, and a new influx of people arrived. These new-comers brought the practice of fire-stick farming with them ~ a controlled burn of an area to produce cooked suppers without needing to hunt. And this unleashed a dramatic change in this ancient and stable ecosystem.

The green parts of the continent changed from a rainforest-dominated landscape to a dry harsh scrubby sclerophyll (i.e. "tough") semi-arid type of forest wherein many species now rely upon fire in order to reproduce.

Evolutionary speciation events occurred dramatically and quickly ~ the MYRTACEAE spread out to become the populate flora of Australia.

Living in the canopy where a coninuous supply of groundwater is not present, most epiphytic orchids were naturally suited to manage the change in new climatic conditions (i.e. The Amazon Rainforest produces a significant portion of its rain by transpiration, and most trees transpire more than 90% of the water they uptake ~ removing trees can alter rainfall patterns dramatically). The orchid appear to have exploited the open ecological niches and spread to produce astonishing variety. The dry eucalypt forests of Australia feature some of the most spectacular orchids.

Fig species are also common and a defining feature of Brisbane, which city is nestle in a wide bowl-shaped valley created by a ring of mountains and filled with rainforest fragments.

The result is that we have very ancient orchid species in our wet forest ecosystems, but most of the species in the classic "Australia bush" are very new species of plants.

Thanks for the fascinating post, EPIPHYTE ~ and I hope my reply has enriched you in return.

Actually, at present in am very interested in lithophytic orchids. Vast amounts of money is being spend designing vertical gardens with complex and expensive hydroponic system.

It seems to me that every city is situated in a landscape with (at least some) cliff-faces. These would represent a range of different types of rock substrates and each type of rock face in the landscape will already have a community of plants evolved to survive on its sheer, waterless surface. By looking at each species of cliff orchid we can correlate microfeatures of topography and climate ~ matching orchid to surface grooves and shade levels, etc.

We can then design building with these "surface grooves" and "shade features" (etc.) in order to cause these orchids to naturally occur on our buildings. We can decide exactly where the orchids (and other plants) will "naturally" occur by choosing where we place the "cliff face" features needed.

Orchids that grow on limy rocks will be appropriate candidates for concrete surfaces, and so forth with sedimentary rocks (etc.)

People who understand orchid and can track down this information for their local species are the people who will determine the orchid diversity in our new sylvan cities.

You folk are very important.

If you leave it to the normals they will have boring monocultures covering their building ~ and confusion at the idea they could have orchids through these skyscraper cloud gardens.

Anyway, I shall edit and proof read this post, when I have a little more time.


RiverValley the Satyr