The Biosphere Blog

This season we will have: GA 866, a large ovoid-shaped fruit about 5 cm long, and with a very high sugar content. Mid to late-season ripening. Good for both fresh eating and drying. Honey Jar, small but with a very juicy crunchy taste. Very early-season… more »

Updated: The Si-Hong from This Previous Update of This Post This all began on 1st October 2024, when I first mentioned this little Si-Hong: Which by December that same year looked like this: In that post I mentioned how its sole mother fruiting branch… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 13th April 2026. (This article is loosely based on one originally published 15th March 2019 here on an animal breeding blog I wrote from 2017-2019. Every… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 13th April 2026. Have you ever heard or seen tawny frogmouths, boobooks, or barking owls at night (we do!)? This post is for them, with much thanks to NP for… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 13th April 2026. When you have fruiting trees, or grow other food, or have chickens, or feed wild birds, you are inevitably going to attract rats and mice.… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 2nd April 2026. By far the best all-round pest control method is to simply exclude them. This is of course often easier said than done, but for many many… more »

(This article was originally posted here on The Wollongong Nursery Blog.) First published here 11th April 2026. Smile! This is a Suimen jujube leaf, 100% a legit photo taken by me and not AI. (That I need to say that at all is so depressing….) This… more »

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 »