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 The photos in this post were taken in woods or fields nearby our home. We're blessed to have so many exhibits of creation close at hand. Enjoy!

 Above: Japanese beatles Below: Aphids feasting

All photos copyright Daniel James Devine 

 Ya'll give a welcome to Evan Devine, my brother who helped post this entry (Daniel is just doing the writing). He'll be the regular "picture guy" around here for awhile, posting both pictures I've taken and interesting science stuff from the net. Evan's first series of images will be "Memories of summer," which is a artsy way of saying these are the pictures I never got around to posting online until now. That is, I made Evan do it.

The photos in this post are from Pinhook Bog, a peat bog in northern Indiana that is part of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (a nat'l park bordering Lake Michigan.) A peat bog is a water basin with no outlet that has grown enough moss, plants and shrubbery to form a floor of peat stable enough to walk on or support small trees. The water is more acidic than a regular pond, so bogs host a variety of unique and often rare plants. The picture above is of blueberries, which grow prolifically in the bog (the previous owners of the land Pinhook Bog sits on sold them locally every summer, and one year made $1000 at 50 cents a pint.)

Below are pink ladyslippers.

 If I remember correctly, the flower above is from a pitcher plant, and the plant itself is below.

 Below is honeydew. Three types of carnivorous plants grow throughout the bog: Pitchers, honeydew, and bladderwort. My photos of the bladderwort didn't turn out well, since the plants grow underwater, but the species is fascinating: It uses a special trapping mechanism with a hair trigger to capture small underwater insects.

What else grows in Pinhook Bog? Tamarack trees, sphagnum moss, poison sumac, yellow-laced orchids, cattails, arrowroot, and many other species. One thing that doesn't grow in the depths of the bog (wonderfully): mosquitoes. The water is too acidic.

 all photos copyright Daniel james Devine.

It's high time for some spring color on these pages. The following photos are courtesy of the Devine Front Yard. Enjoy. (Geographical location: Northwest Indiana)

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A few weeks ago you may have heard about the December 2005 expedition to the Indonesian island of New Guinea, which, led by Conservation International (CI), uncovered several new animal and plant species. Penetrating deep into the forests of the Foja Mountains, a team co-led by Bruce Beehler and Steve Richards found a pristine environment that has rarely been visited by humans--including the local natives, known as Kwerba. Beehler is an ornithologist (bird expert) and vice president of Conservation International's Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation. While Beehler did not respond to my interview request, I did get permission to publish photos of the species documented on this expedition.

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ScienceDaily has a brief article about how plants reject self-pollination or pollination by other closely (genetically) related plants of the same species.  Once pollen, representing the plant's male reproductive organs, reaches the pistil of the plant, it implants itself and grows there as a pollen tube, with the goal of reaching the ovule, the female side of things.  If the pollen is recognized en route as belonging to a near cousin, some plants release a toxin which effectively stops the pollen tube in its tracks, preventing the too-similar genetic code from producing serious mutations in its offspring.  Enemies to evolution, those plants.

Researchers have just figured out that you can inexpensively slow down and speed up light signals in an optical fiber--a discovery that may manifest itself in improved fiber-optic communications.  Light signals normally travel at 186,000 miles per second, and in order to be stored or routed they must be converted into slower electrical signals, an expensive process.  A cheap technology that could slow light down might eliminate much of this conversion.

For all you lovers of herbal health products:  A scientific study has confirmed that the plant butterbur (Petasites hybridus) is as effective as a common antihistamine (Telfast 180) at treating hay fever (intermittent allergic rhinitis, or IAR).  Butterbur is also said to be useful for bladder control and the prevention of migraine headaches.


I'll be out of town for a few days, so posting may be a bit intermittent.
Meanwhile, buy your butterbur here.

I was in Oregon and Washington last month sightseeing (and friendseeing) and like all good tourists I took plenty of pictures.  I debated with myself about whether to post all the decent ones online or whether to just do a dozen or so or maybe just 1.  Happily, I've come to a sensible conclusion, and decided to post a few of the best plant shots.  If I was a botanist I'd probably know all the names of these, but since I'm not, you'll just have to enjoy the colors.  --Unless you know the names yourself, in which case I hope you share them with the rest of us.


Perfect symmetry.  Northeast Oregon.


Skullcap?  Wallowa Mountains, Northeast Oregon.

The pictures below were taken near Mount St. Helens, and I'm pretty sure the first is a variety of Indian paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea), also called painted cup.  I found this flower at the Wallowa Mountains too, although the Wallowa version was orange.


Castilleja coccinea


Probably wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) or related species.  These flowers enhance soil fertility by converting nitrogen in the air into a usable form.  They thrive in open, dry environments.  Mount St. Helens is framed in the background.


Down-to-earth look at moss.  Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

It wasn't raining at Mount St. Helens but these plants had captured dew drops in the center of their leaflets. I'm not so sure the dull brown object at bottom is a rock.

It's a little-known fact that tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton absorb as much CO2 from the atmosphere as all other plant life combined. This makes a huge impact on the "greenhouse effect", which is said to be caused by high levels of CO2 (carbon dioxide), a gas constantly on the move as it is exhaled by humans and animals (and mega-producers such as volcanoes) and converted back into oxygen by plants through photosynthesis.

A new study using NASA satellite technology shows how phytoplankton numbers dramatically increase and decrease during El Niño and La Niña years.  The information is important not only because of how gas levels affect the climate but also because phytoplankton are the foundation of the ocean food chain.

A new species of bacteria has been discovered that uses photosynthesis, even though it lives at ocean depths (a mile and a half down) where no sunlight is present.  It grows near 700+ degree (F) hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor, which actually emit miniscule amounts of light--enough to keep the bacteria alive.  This species is "the only photosynthetic organism in nature known to use a light source other than sunlight."

I've been wanting to post some pictures from my recent trip through Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, among others.  So I thought to myself, why don't I?  And then I did.  I won't give a detailed description of everything we saw, since it would either take too long or bore you to death; instead I'll post just a few of my favorite shots.  For example, passing through Tennessee we took a nature walk and happened upon the Grinch, who was sleeping under a log.  We didn't wake the poor guy, but I did take a close-up to prove we saw him:

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Now, I've already posted tons of Iwo Jima Reenactment photos here, so I won't load this entry down with more of them.  Texas in general was pleasant, although it was cool and rainy, but I expect coolness is a nice respite for Texans.

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Texan countryside, north of San Antonio.

click to enlargeWe saw quite a few snakes as we drove through Louisiana.  And somewhere along the Alabama coast we took a walk on the beach, where the water was warm enough to wade in comfortably.  I was able to get a great shot of six roosting brown pelicans.

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Meanwhile, in Mississippi we stopped at the Stennis Space Center, where NASA rocket engines are tested, like the one below.  Luckily, my brother was available to demonstrate scale.

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In Mobile, Alabama we took a couple hours (which sounded like a long time) to tour the USS Alabama, a retired battleship that has been converted into a museum.  The two hours were up before we knew it, and we still hadn't gotten through the whole thing.  Warships, these days, are cities unto themselves. 

A 5" missile hoist.  Here the crew loaded the 5" projectiles into the hoists, which elevated them to the guns.

The Dentist.

The operation room.

The brig.

I do not have a picture of the ice cream parlor.  Sorry.  Boy Scouts and other groups can arrange to have overnighters on the ship, sleeping on bunks like the sailors did.
It was rainy when we toured the ship, and on the shore at the museum site were various other military craft, tanks, planes, etc. (Plus a tourable {no, that's not a word} submarine).  Here's a picture of the parking lot (yes, the parking lot) just because it turned out.

Finally, on the way home we stopped through Tennessee, where I found some clumps of moss that were just begging to have their picture taken.

If anyone out there can identify the above species of moss, drop a comment.

all photos copyright Daniel Devine