The Venus Flytrap (Dionaea) is the most spectacular of the meat eating plants. The leaves of this carnivore consist of two parts that can close. When an insect or small spider is touching the tactile hairs when eating from the nectar present on the leaf surface, the folding mechanism is activated. The two parts of the leaf will close within the blink of an eye. ‘Bars’ prevent the victim from escaping. However, the plant cannot be fooled. To be sure that the prey is present, it must touch the six tactile hairs of the leaf twice. When touched once, the leaves will not close.
Friday, 26 March 2021
Be eaten behind bars
Wednesday, 24 March 2021
Cyanotrichite in a prehistoric turquoise mine.
In the autumn of 2015, we went to recognize the Turquesa mine, also known as Mas de les Moreres mine, with the help of our colleague Jordi Sorribes. This mine is one of the only two known prehistoric copper mines in Catalonia. The other is also found in El Priorat, in La Solana del Bepo, Ulldemolins, an open-pit exploitation of azurite and malachite (Lagarda, 1986; Rafel et al., 2017). A series of archaeological excavation campaigns have been carried out at the Turquoise mine in successive years from 2012 to 2015.
At the end of 2015, a team of archaeologists from the University of Lleida (Catalonia), led by Dra. Núria Rafel, an archaeologist and professor of prehistory at the same university, worked on the excavation. In this short period of time, and with help of an excavator machine, they uncovered this mine, to document it and take samples of the site before covering it again (Cabós, 2015). The mine is located within the Montsant Natural Park and is protected as a Catalan cultural heritage. For all this, we limited ourselves to recognizing the place and looking for the earthworks around the mine, where we found blue and green spots of all shades (azurite, possible variscite and turquoise and other species pending to identify). But in one of the specimens, when we broke it, we saw some sprays of a different blue colour, very intense, when observed under the microscope it presented small blue aggregates formed by fine needles, it must be said, very aesthetic.
Tuesday, 16 March 2021
Purple Rain
Thursday, 11 March 2021
Black rust
Black rust is a disease that only occurs on wheat. It is caused by a fungus, Puccinia graminis. Puccinia is a genus of the order of the Rusts (Uredinales). The telia, in which the teliospores* are formed, are black. There are also other rust diseases, such as the yellow and brown rust, but the black variant is the most aggressive. The first sign that wheat has been contaminated with it, is a type of red, rusty blisters on the stem. Then the wheat grains shrivel, the stem bends, and eventually the plant dies and turns black.
Tuesday, 9 March 2021
Aeolosoma - The strangest worm in the world?
Friday, 5 March 2021
Green fluorescing nucleus
Desmids are unicellular micro-organisms belonging to the green algal families of Mesotaeniaceae and Desmidiaceae. They occur in standing freshwaters. The Desmids on the images are found in a fen in Limburg, the most southern province of The Netherlands.