With Bank Holiday travels (and traffic jams!) in prospect Dr M says: Let’s play that classic travel game “eXtreme botany through the car window!”
As the car speeds along, and the motorway verges spin by, you ask “What’s that yellow plant? Oops missed it! How about that white one? And the blue…?”
It’s fun (and need not be dangerous, see below!), but it’s also proper eXtreme botany, and you can surprise yourself with how many plants you can ID to family or better, even from a distance of 5 metres or more and just from the jizz of the plants.
The jizz of the plants is the appearance, colour, texture, habit of the plant, anything that helps you work out what it is just from the look of it.
Sometimes the jizz of the plants includes elements and features difficult to put into words, hence the term “jizz of the plants”. (note to self: there’s a song or even a YouTube video there, watch this space).
Surprising what you can ID even at 70 mph in the fast lane, but sometimes the traffic jam is a welcome opportunity, allowing a closer, more relaxed (if that’s the right word for a traffic jam!) view of the plants.
Well now, thanks to Dr M Goes Wild, you can play this game in the comfort and safety of your own home, office, toilet, cafe, playground, hillside or wherever you happen to be watching.
Of course the game demands proper adherence to appropriate Health and Safety procedures, fix your camera on a stand and use automatic shutter or make sure someone else is driving and do not distract the driver with botanical quips, queries and questions, you know it makes sense!
So check out the following images and see what plant families, genera and species you can spot on Dr M’s recent motor excursions.
Click on each image once, then a second time for much more detail:
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- 19th March: what’s this white plant, and the pink one next to it?
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- 9th April: what’s the white plant? (Hint: woody again!)
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- 16th April: what’s the yellow plant? (Hint: it’s woody and kissing is in season!)
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- 16th April: two yellow, two white?
Then why not pop into the services for a break and check back soon for the answers!?
Dr M would like to take this opportunity to assure his viewers that there is absolutely NO substance (i.e. zero percent or cero por ciento for Dr M’s increasing number of Spanish viewers) to the rumour that he, Dr M, has been known to pull over on the central reservation of the motorway and force his students to get out and ID the salt tolerant species (such as in photo 1 above) flourishing there (check the full story here).
Finished in the services? OK, find the answers here, have a nice trip!
Photo credits: #1 Giles Reynolds, 2-4 Dr M.
April 18, 2014
