Terrarium

I've set up a little terrarium in an old aquarium--yes, also squeezed into the bathroom, along with the propagating ferns. There is something fascinating about them, the way they form microcosms. I've planted an Asplenium bulbiferum (hen and chicken fern, on the top left of this image) which grew from an adult plant in my garden, mosses, liverworts, lichens, and some Utricularia gibba in the "lake".

Incidentally, if you're interested in setting one up, there's a good trick to keep the water fresh. Before putting anything else in the tank, put in a layer of charcoal (best obtained from a aquarium shop and used for aquarium filters), then follow that with the sand, rocks, soil, etc. This limits the growth of anaerobic (ie, stinky) bacteria.

There. The perfect bathroom decoration. Better Homes and Gardens will be beating down my door.

Sigmund Freud, Ringtails and Mr Behemoth

I am feeling thoroughly guilty about having neglected my blog for so long. I plead work, uni exams, post-uni exams relaxation, and generalised pottering and time wasting. At least I'm feeling relaxed. (And my uni results have made me a very happy person! Biology is bliss.)

A couple of bits of news. Firstly, I have a CD coming out this month. It's from my previous incarnation as a playwright/librettist. The last major work I wrote (with composer Andrew Ford) was "Night and Dreams: the death of Sigmund Freud", which toured the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals earlier this decade, performed by tenor Gerald English. ABC Classic FM made a studio recording, and now it's being released by Decca. You can read about the piece here and see the nice things the press said here.

If you happen to want to buy the CD, you can order it from Buywell Just Classical.

Also, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, if you're unfamiliar with his work. Ben Popjie (aka Mr Behemoth) is a Melbourne writer and comedian with a fine line in brutal and well-wrought satire. He's started a new blog on Blogspot: Ben Pobjie's Wonderful World of Objects and also writes a weekly column for New Matilda. Ben's wit regularly has me chortling, and his political perspectives are astute.

And just to ensure that I'm not entirely off-topic with this post, a photo of a family of ringtail possums that lives just outside our back door. I took this photo after my husband attempted to remove the bougainvillea growing there (a non-native plant... pffft), without our realising that they had begun building a drey in it. They were indignant, as you can see. Needless to say, the bougainvillea is staying.

Earth Stars

These fungi, Earth Stars, are of the genus Geastrum. They popped up in our garden this week. It's a fine time of year for fungi at the moment. We've counted ten or so different species within a few square metres of our front door.

The star-like structure at the base of the fruiting body originally covered the ball, but then splits open. It's a type of puffball. The ball holds the spores, and when disturbed, puffs out a mist of spores through the central pore.

I've not been posting much--or at all!--lately, because I've been hugely busy with work, study and familish stuff. Uni is going really well. I'm just loving biology to pieces. I feel like I've come home.

Utricularia gibba ssp. exoleta

I collected some Utricularia gibba ssp. exoleta--Floating Bladderwort--from a dam in Wyee on the NSW Central Coast over a year ago, and have been cultivating it in an open fish-tank in the back garden ever since. Looking at the bladders under the microscope is a wonderful experience, because they're such delicate and efficient structures. They open and draw in some of the surrounding water, then close again to digest the tiny microscopic creatures sucked in with the water. Thus, they're carnivorous plants, but very different from more famous carnivores like the Dionaea muscipula , the Venus Fly Trap.

While I was looking at some today, I found myself wishing that I had a camera attachment for my microscope, and then wondered how it would turn out just with regular macro photography. Quite well, it transpires!

The "stems" are actually stolons, the "shoots" from the stolons are modified leaves, and the bladders grow off the leaves.

To give you a sense of scale, the bladders (or traps) are only 1 to 2.5 mm long.