The Biosphere Blog

This post is of updates of three previously mentioned trees: a Si-Hong which featured in What Would You Make of This Tree?, first posted on 1st October 2024 and with a follow-up on 13th December 2024 here; and, two cuttings which featured in Miraculous… more »

This is a little post for the people who subscribed because of the Carbon Dioxide Narrative series. Thank you. The graph below was published in The Washington Post on 19th September 2024, in the article “Scientists have captured Earth’s climate… more »

Following the Lone Pine article, two pals have since shared their own sightings in Victoria of this magnificent tree. How could I not do a followup and help spread the word?! Local pal Sandra was first, seeing a tree here, at Bemm River in Victoria.… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 4th June 2025. Science has been corrupt(ed) for ages. I can’t point to a specific decade or even century, but I know I’ve been jaded since the 90s, and I came… more »

This post is a follow-up to this one on the discovery of a bacterial phylum 20 metres underground, and about the significance of this. Fair warning: this post will be full of generalisation and speculation, for the simple reason that a) not much is… more »

Today, 25th April, is the 110th anniversary of the first military action seen by Australian and New Zealand troops on this day 1915. The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) suffered heavy casualties when they landed on the Gallipoli… more »

Introduction Michigan State University put out this press release on 7th April 2025, on the discovery by Professor James Tiedje, in both its Department of Microbiology, Genetics and Immunology, and Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, of an… more »

Introduction Plants are so incredibly diverse in their morphology, that it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more descriptors in botany than in zoology, biochemistry and microbiology combined! (And that is truly saying something.) Every minute… more »

This is a follow-up post to Bee Hotel! which came about because of this post on leafcutter bees. But firstly sincere apologies to Sandra the maker of the magnificent hotel, for taking this long to get it established. Truth is, I found the perfect… more »

Back on my other site I wrote about making your own cactus/succulent mix, which isn’t relevant here. But in it, I very briefly mentioned the lithotrophs, which are. By way of background, I wrote there on the use of sand over poultry grit: Coarse… more »

Just a quick update on the two cuttings here. First the stronger, flourishing Silverhill: Four weeks ago I wrote that “I will swear blind I saw the teensiest unmistakable shape of a Silverhill jujube fruit", that disappeared sometime after a… more »

The latest xkcd comic is this one on stromatolites: (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. I had plans to write about lithotrophs (the microbial ‘rock-eaters’), but couldn’t believe the… more »

This little fellow never got the message to elongate! Complete with active ant pollinators. I didn’t even notice them until processing this photo! They are collecting the nectar from the nectary disc of the last remaining newly-opened flower - the… more »

Last December hubby and I had a wonderful time exploring the NSW Riverina area. If we hadn’t parked where we did in Narrandera (to visit the Tiger Moth Memorial) we would never have discovered this amazing tree, which we simply call The Narrandera… more »

Chinese jujube is notorious for not striking from cuttings - as are Japanese maples! Of course I had to try, and did, and have, becoming less and less interested and more and more uncaring about it as the years rolled by. But still kept giving it a shot… more »