The Weather Detective by Wohlleben
Ref: Peter Wohlleben (2012). The Weather Detective. Penguin Publishing.
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Summary
If you enjoy gardening and spending time in nature, you can manage perfectly well without bulletins updating you constantly about the weather. We can glean most of the same information from clues around the garden, from the animals and plants in our local area; in fact, even from the inanimate environment. Whether it’s forecasting what’s ahead or assessing current weather events, whether it’s insect infestations or when it’s safe to say a season has started or ended, you can read all of this data from your garden much more accurately than any newsreader from a teleprompter.
This guide will help you to decipher the vast quantities of information you can glean from your local environment and especially your garden. You can become your own nature expert.
With the exception of the unique life forms living in the depths of our oceans, our planet is home to three forms of life: plants, which feed on sunlight; animals (including humans); and fungi.
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1 WHAT WILL THE WEATHER BE LIKE?
Forecasts up to a week in advance are ~70% likely to be true. There is a 90% success rate for those 24 hr ahead.
“Red sky at night: shepherd’s (sailors) delight”: Occurs because the sunbeams stream in low through the atmosphere from the clear skies in the west and light up the clouds slowly drifting off to the east.
“Red sky in the morning: shepherd’s (sailors take) warning”: The sun rises in the east, where the sky is still clear, and shines onto the clouds gathering in the west, which will rapidly spread and fill the sky.
Dense cloud cover in the winter reduces heat loss at night and prevents temperatures from dropping as severely as when there are blue skies.
If a low-pressure area emerges, the air literally becomes thinner (as in a tire if you let some air out). The water vapor cannot dissolve completely in this thinner air and becomes visible in the form of clouds. An early harbinger of a bad weather front is the appearance of artificial clouds, i.e. the condensation trails of airplanes (contrails). If these don’t dissolve, that means humidity is on its way, and with it a low-pressure area. The sky will soon cloud over.
The weather always changes when the clouds approach from a different direction to that of the wind at ground level, which can lead to the appearance of beautiful, small, fluffy clouds.
Birds of prey use the upward lift of a thermal to soar for hours without a single wing stroke.
Every heavy raindrop was once an ice crystal or a large snowflake. If the flake doesn’t melt on its way down to Earth, it will be snow.
When the air gets more humid, suggesting rain is on the way, certain flowers react with a precautionary measure, closing their petals protectively over their interior.
For small insects, air has the same resistance as water does for us humans, giving them a certain buoyancy.
Meteorosensitivity: Human sensitivity to changes in air pressure, such as suffering pain or discomfort.
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2 IS IT WINDY OR COLD?
Night temperatures on the moon plummet to –256 °F, while during the day the thermometer climbs to 266 °F.
Temperature extremes on Earth are 158°F in SE Iran and −98°F in Siberia.
The more water vapor the air contains, the colder you feel at the same temperature, because water is a better conductor than air and therefore your body heat dissipates faster.
Larger representatives of the insect kingdom, such as ladybugs and flies, need to come up with another solution in winter. They drain their guts to reduce as much as possible the quantity of nuclei around which ice could crystallize, but they cannot completely purify their body water. This is why they produce glycerol, a substance that significantly lowers the freezing point of the body’s liquids.
Winter Cluster: A grouping of honeybees that maintain a core temperature of 77°F in winter.
Bees only leave the hive at temperatures above 54°F.
Stridulation: The orchestral backdrop of chirping insects.
The warmer it is, the higher the pitch of the chirping.
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3 RAIN, SNOW, AND HAIL
The life-sustaining water that floods our planet is likely to have originated from comets, which traveled through the universe like dirty snowballs and, veering off course, crashed into the Earth.
You can see much more clearly into the distance after the rain has given the air a “deep clean,” because there’s no haze from dirt particles blocking the light rays.
While grass allows water into the ground even with a light shower of <1 gal/sqft, moss soaks the rain up like a sponge. Like spruces, moss returns the moisture to the atmosphere, forming a barrier that is only overcome by precipitation of >3 gal/sqft. 3 gal/sqft sounds like a lot of rain, and indeed it has to be a good shower for this much to accumulate. In hot summers, that should be enough for your plants for a week.
If when you press a clump of soil between your forefinger and thumb, the stickiness test reveals dry, crumbly soil, then it’s time to water your beds. Although the specimen only shows the condition of the upper inch, it is likely to be a similar picture deeper down, around the plants’ roots. The underlying soil layers are not important for plant irrigation.
Plants that have to make an effort to find the water they need tend to grow much deeper roots.
Rainworms: Worms that build tunnels lined with mucus that stretch down to 10’ in depth. During rainstorms, these fill up with water, meaning the worms face suffocation. To avoid this, they slither to the surface as fast as they can.
Our crops are bred to grow faster, and they are accelerated further by being doped with fertilizer or compost. This leads to tall, fragile stems that are insufficiently woody and therefore unstable.
Ombrochory: Seeds are dispersed by rain falling on the mother plant.
Hailstones: Formed in cumulonimbus storm clouds, where water accumulates around small particles and then freezes. In normal conditions, these lumps would quickly become too heavy and then fall to the ground as small snow pellets, or graupel. Within these tall, towering storm clouds, however, there are strong wind currents that pull these kernels up a couple of miles, letting more and more water accumulate and freeze. Higher up in the cloud, the wind drops, so the hailstones fall down again into the stormy zone, where the updraft again thrusts them upwards. The more violent the thunderstorm, the stronger the winds and the more frequently this up-and-down process is repeated, and the longer it takes for the hailstone to become too heavy and finally drop to the ground. Small hailstones melt on the way down and splash onto the grass as particularly fat raindrops, while larger ones (up to the size of a football!) remain as lumps of ice on impact.
Fallen snow contains a lot of air, which blankets the earth very effectively against the cold. The thicker the snow cover, the greater the warming effect. The soil remains frost-free even at air temperatures of below 50°F. If the temperature then rises above 32°F, the rain, together with the melted snow, can sink directly into the ground.
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4 SUN, MOON, AND STARS
Astrology: Interpreting the future on the basis of the constellations.
If you have a camera that allows you to adjust the shutter speed, then you can capture a long-exposure image showing the rotation of the Earth. Mount the camera on a tripod and point the lens at a section of the night sky, ideally due north. Set the exposure for as long as possible, hours if you can. Sometimes there is the option for a remote shutter release, meaning the shutter is only activated when pressed again. The resulting photo shows the stars as curved lines arching through the sky, because the Earth (and with it your camera) has spun on its axis beneath them while the image was being taken. The longer the exposure time, the longer the tracks will run in an arc across the sky.
Milky Way Galaxy: (takes its name from its whitish appearance).
Together with the stars in our “neighborhood,” our solar system (and with it you and me) is careering through space in a huge circular orbit around the center of the Milky Way, at a speed of >500K mph.
Meteoroids (‘Shooting Stars’): Bits of dust and rock that are hurtling through the universe and that burn up as they pass through the Earth’s atmosphere; ~10,000 tons fall to Earth per day.
Perseid Meteor Shower: The annual August intersection of the Earth with the comet Swift-Tuttle, in which hundreds of shooting stars are visible every hour.
The moon and the Earth both orbit around a common center of gravity. The moon exerts a pulling force on the sea, creating a small bulge, or wave peak, of about a foot. On the side of the Earth facing away from the moon, a second wave peak is formed, but here it is created by centrifugal forces—the outward pull felt by a spinning object like a carousel. As the Earth spins throughout the course of the day, the wave bulge moves across the surface of the Earth, always on the side facing the Moon, and so does the corresponding bulge on the opposite side of the planet. And so the water washes up higher on the beach or pulls away from the shore as this bulge passes by. The rise of the seabed towards the coast means that a minuscule wave bulge might be exacerbated by a dozen feet, depending on the terrain, so that when the tide is in, for example on the North Sea coast, a stretch of beach two miles deep can disappear beneath the salt water…The moon’s gravitational pull also effects the Earth’s crust. Over the course of the day, your garden can bob anywhere between 24-32” up and down without you noticing it.
Whether menstruation is affected by the moon remains unconfirmed (the menstrual cycle is usually between 28 and 35 days, while a lunar cycle lasts 29.5 days). A link was suspected in ancient times, hence the word “menstruate” derives from the Latin mensis, meaning “month.”
There are countless possible mnemonics to remind us of the sequence of the planets in our solar system, from “My Very Easy Method Just Shows Us Nine Planets” to “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” Each word’s initial letter stands for a planet: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
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5 SUNSHINE AND DAYTIME
Inside our sun, ~500-600M tons of H are burned per second,
If the Earth were the size of a cherry, the sun would have a diameter of 5’ and would be 500’ away.
Sunspots: Appear dark because these are the points where the sun’s surface is slightly cooler. They are a sign of an overall increase in sun activity: the more spots, the more radiation the sun emits, and the warmer we feel. It’s a cyclical process with more and more sunspots appearing over a period of several years, only for them to gradually disappear at the end of the cycle. These cyclical periods seem to last ~11-yr.
Compass: If you point the hour hand of your watch towards the sun, then south is always between the hour hand and 12 o’clock. (During the summertime, when our clocks shift forward an hour, 12 noon should be replaced by 1 p.m.) At 12 noon, the sun should be exactly in the south and thus be at its highest position in the sky. Should.
The sun takes a while to heat up the air, so that the day’s maximum temperature is reached only 2-3 hr after the sun is at its zenith (~3 pm).
The basic message of male bird melodies for rival males are: “Watch it! This is my patch!” Directed at females, the song is his way of promoting himself as a strong and virile mate. That is why most species don’t sing in concert.
Linnaeus planted a very special flower bed in the Uppsala Botanical Garden. He arranged the plants in the shape of a clock face, dividing the bed into 12 segments. In each section, the flowers opened at the appointed hour, enabling passersby to tell the time. However, the clock didn’t function quite as intended, since the plants finished flowering after a few weeks and had to be replaced constantly.
Pumpkins and zucchini kick open their flowers at 5 am. From 8 am, the marigolds spread out their petals, and the daisies follow at 9 am. When the sun is at its zenith in the south, midday flowers (Mesembryanthemum,- ‘ice plants’) open their blossoms. Between 2-3 pm dandelions start to close up, and by 3 pm, the gourds have finished for the day. At around 6 pm, poppies also shut up shop.
Sundial: Placed at the midpoint of a large semicircular dial is a stick (‘gnomon’). When properly aligned with the points of the compass, the shadow of this gnomon passes over the clockface throughout the course of the day. The shadow’s progress around the dial corresponds with the sun’s position in the sky, so you can read the time from the shadow cast on or between the numbers on the dial. If you want to read the exact time, you will have to add or subtract a few minutes depending on your position relative to your local time zone, and then add another hour during the summer.
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6 THE SEASONS
In purely astronomical terms, the seasons begin and end on March 20 (spring), June 21 (summer), September 22 (autumn), and December 21 (winter). The vernal equinox on March 20 and the autumnal equinox on September 22 are the two dates in the year on which day and night are equal in length.
To prevent the ground from losing heat, it is usually enough to lay a thin fleece cover over the plant—as you would for protecting perennials.
Trees and shrubs stop growing taller in the summer and start working internally towards improving stability. Applying too much fertilizer (N fertilizers are especially dangerous) can wreak havoc. Doped up, the plants just focus on growth at the expense of stability, so that in autumn they are not ready to start lignifying their cells in time—that is, turning them to wood. A hard frost overnight is enough to freeze the immature shoots and turn them brown. This can spell the end for a young specimen.
Hair Ice: Forms on dead branches of many species of broad-leaved trees, lying on the ground, and looks like a fur of the most delicate ice threads. These “hairs” are very close together and can be 2” long. If you touch them, the fluffy structure melts into pure water. This rare phenomenon is caused by the fungi working away inside the branches. After a relatively warm, wet period in winter, the sky sometimes clears at night, and the temperatures fall below freezing point. Warm and wet—these are the ideal conditions for fungus. Inside the wood, the fungus is well insulated and it produces some warmth at the same time. Fungi breathe as they function, and this exhaled breath escapes through the pores in the wood, where the vapor immediately freezes. The hair ice becomes longer and longer until the wood cools down and the fungi stop functioning.
The start of summer is marked by flowering grasses in the meadows.
8 of 10 young animals will not live past their first year of life.
Indian Summer: A return to summery conditions during autumn.
Annual Plants: Survive the winter in the form of seeds (all other species store their winter reserves in their shoots or roots).
Sedentary (‘Resident’) Birds: Non-migratory bird species that remain with us all year round.
Annuals: Plants that freeze to death with the first overnight frosts. They live through the cold season only in the form of seeds. As these contain hardly any water, they can survive below-freezing temperatures unharmed. In order to be able to burst back into life in the spring, each seed contains reserves of energy in the form of oils and fats.
Perennials: In winter, like deciduous trees, they withdraw reserves from their leaves, but herbaceous perennials go a stage further and let the green stems die back, too. During the summer, nutrients are stored away in the roots, so that enough energy is available for them to grow back in the coming spring. Perennials have a decisive advantage over annual plants: they can rocket into action as soon as the temperature warms up in spring and achieve a height advantage over the annuals, which have to start as tiny seedlings, gaining height slowly and with great effort.
Plants react to stress by ratcheting up reproduction, because they fear that if they are exposed to any further strain, they will not be much longer for this world.
Normally, the winter in mainland Europe is characterized by highs that bring clear skies and brisk, cold air.
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7 LIVING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
On a hot summer day, a large, mature deciduous tree consumes up to 105 gal of water.
Stomata: Tiny pores on the undersides of leaves through which trees breath. And just as we breathe out, and lose water as we exhale, so do trees (except that their exhaled breath contains a lot of O). When they sense that it’s getting too dry, these pores start to close up. Water consumption levels can be greatly reduced by this means, but the tree’s ability to photosynthesize is now also considerably reduced.
If the need for water is too high, a tree can also discard some of its foliage. This emergency measure is often observed in hot summers in July… The right time to water a tree is when it begins to discolor or even discard some of its foliage in the middle of summer.
Grass plants live on in their dense roots and start again with new shoots after the next rainfall. It is normal to see your lawn turn yellow during a hot spell; it will recuperate at the next rainy opportunity. It is therefore unnecessary to water, unless it’s especially important to you that the lawn is always green.
Gall Mite: Arachnids that cause abnormal growths on the leaf through their sucking action, producing deformities and sometimes reddish pimples for their nests. These make a cozy summer home for the larvae, which are less than 0.007” in size. They can be a considerable nuisance on blackberry bushes, though. The larvae happily take up residence in the unripe fruit: the infested area won’t turn black in color and is unfit for consumption. These berries are sadly best disposed of.
The survival strategy of many long-lived plants is tolerance.
Avoid mollycoddling our plants by watering them too regularly. Water them rarely, but when you do, really give them a thorough soaking.
To properly saturate the dried-out root bowl of an average mature apple tree takes around 175 ft3 of water.
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8 ASSESSING YOUR SOIL QUALITY
Loam: A combination of all three soil types (sand, clay, and dirt). This ideal soil mix retains water and nutrients, it is well-aerated, and, as long as there is sufficient humus, it makes for fertile growing conditions.
When animals and plants die, or they drop excrement, leaves, or fruit, this organic matter is broken up by soil organisms as they eat and excrete. The brownish-black matter that remains is called humus. Humus contains an average of 60% C, almost as much as lignite, or brown coal.
A garden of 11,000 sqft (a quarter of an acre) can pack away up to 1 ton of CO2 per year…You can tell how well under way this C storing process is in your soil from a single spade full of soil. From the ground (turf) going down, the earth changes color from dark to light. The C content in the soil corresponds with this color spectrum, decreasing in quantity from top to bottom.
Nutrient-Recycling Process: Animals gnaw and grind up leaves and stalks, digest them and excrete them, often with mucus. These herds of tireless garden helpers include earthworms, snails, mites, springtails, and nematodes. Their output—crumbly, porous humus—retains water well and is crucial for soil fertility. This humus, meanwhile, is needed by two other groups: fungi and bacteria. They could also get by without the preparatory work undertaken by their underground neighbors, but they are better able to consume and extract nutrients from the munched up, pre-digested material. In terms of the number of individuals, the largest group is bacteria. Three-hundredths of an ounce of garden soil can contain >100M microorganisms. There is almost no organic substance that they can’t decompose, thereby ensuring that every living being returns to the cycle of nature after death. It is when these tiny organisms process the dead vegetable matter that CO2 is released again from being stored in the plant’s cells. In natural ecosystems, however, some of the humus reaches deeper soil layers, where the living and working conditions for bacteria are less favorable. This preserves the humus and with it the C. The last group of the soil residents is a bizarre one: fungi. These organisms belong to neither the plant nor the animal kingdom. Like animals, fungi do not photosynthesize, but rather feed on the organic matter of other organisms. In many species, the cell walls consist of chitin, like the exoskeleton of insects. The fruits of many species are particularly conspicuous—the umbrella-shaped mushroom or toadstool with a stem and cap—but these are no different in function to apples on an apple tree. Countless spores flutter from these fruits, to be transported away by the wind or by animals. The actual functioning part of the fungus is toiling away out of sight below ground, with its threadlike filaments weaving through the upper layers of soil. Three-hundredths of an ounce of earth can contain up to 330’ of these minuscule filaments. Certain species, such as porcini or birch bolete, collude with trees to mutual benefit. The fungus weaves itself around the tree’s roots and, like a ball of cotton wool, soaks up water and minerals from the soil, to pass on to the tree. In return, the tree excretes a sugar solution to nourish the fungus.
Mycelium: The main body of a fungus; a web of threadlike filaments.
Fungus can sometimes lead to discoloring of a lawn. Where the mycelium is alive and traversing through the soil, the grass above is often considerably darker, stronger, and healthier than in areas without colonization.
An impaired pore structure is found below the first 8”. Paradoxically, the top layer is usually fine, although it has borne the weight of heavy machinery. The reason that this layer is more porous is the frost. When the ground freezes, together with the recent rainwater it contains, it is only the upper 4-8” that freezes. As the ice expands, it breaks up compacted soil, opening up cavities and leaving the topsoil better aerated.
Voles tend to burrow at shallow depths and rarely descend lower than 20”, while moles tunnel down twice as deep.
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9 NATIVE FLORA AND EXOTIC GUESTS
Chlorophyll: A Mg-containing HC; one of the substances that enables photosynthesis to take place. All leaves contain this green substance, which helps plants exploit light energy.
Light is composed of many different wavelengths on a spectrum from UV to IR. Not all of these wavelengths are used during photosynthesis, however, so any light that the plant doesn’t need is reflected in its leaves. Green is the color that is filtered out, the electromagnetic waste product. The green wavelength is all that remains of the sun’s rays after the other wavelengths have been absorbed.
Whether it’s to escape climate change or to access new habitats, one thing is absolutely certain: no plant or animal stays in the same territory forever.
Neophytes: Introduced flora.
More than half of the total area of Central Europe is used for agriculture, mostly in the form of arable fields.
According to the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture, a single ragweed plant produces up to 1B grains of pollen, which have a much higher allergy potential than grass. Since ragweed is a close relative of the sunflower, it can’t be weeded out from sunflower fields, meaning that its seeds often end up in bird food. These seeds are then left behind in your garden and can germinate at any time over a 40-yr period. If feeding birds in winter, look for the words “free from ragweed seed” or similar printed on the bird food label. This offers some protection for the future at least; it remains to be seen how much damage will be wrought by the bird food time bombs of decades past.
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10 FUR AND FEATHERS
In the animal kingdom, territorial boundaries are only observed by members of the same species.. Most songbirds require >2.5 acres per breeding pair. The bigger the species and the more specific their feeding needs, the farther the boundaries of their territory will extend. The great spotted woodpecker, for instance, feeds on ants and the insects that live in dead wood, and requires a territory of 74 acres. The reclusive black stork preys on a territory of ~25,000 acres… Of the mammals, mice have the smallest territories, coming in at an area of 100 sqft. Squirrels’ territories measure about 10 acres and a fox needs a territory of at least 50 acres for itself and its offspring.
Human and animal territories differ in one major sense: while our fences remain a valid boundary every day of the year, most animal species actively mark out a territory only when they’re breeding or rearing young.
Martens: The marten’s preferred method of marking its territory can have far-reaching consequences for those affected. These mammals signal their hegemony over an area by spraying it with a fluid secreted from their anal glands. In the area where I live, the engine of a car parked in a driveway is one location often marked in this way. The residual heat of the switched-off engine makes for a warm, dry hiding place: what could possibly be a more cozy den? I have found that provided you always park your vehicle in the same place, not a lot will happen; the new resident may drag in some comfy padding—a little soft furnishing, if you like—and every now and again, you might come across a few shreds of mouse, remnants of the marten’s dinner. Running the car won’t interfere with any of this activity, but should you decide to stay overnight at a friend’s or relative’s, and you park your car in front of their house, that’s a different matter entirely. This territory might well belong to a different marten, and the only scent that should be present in this territory is his own. When you park your car, you introduce the scent of a rival, a rival that has had the audacity to leave its own mark. This perceived invasion makes the marten see red, prompting an attempt to eradicate the interloper’s scent with an aggressive physical response. Rubber tubing is a particular target for these attacks, and an incensed animal will sometimes claw and bite at the bumper. If vital components are destroyed in the process, the engine can fail completely by way of an “act of nature” that generally isn’t covered by insurance… The only remedy is to wash the engine and take defensive measures.
Earwigs: Eat aphids and damage vegetable plants by riddling their leaves with holes.
Cane Toads: Introduced to Australia. Their intended deployment was pest control on sugarcane plantations; they were invited to devour the beetles that were demolishing these sweet stems of sugar. Upon release, the toads rejected their allotted task and started to interfere with the native wildlife instead. The secretions released by the toad’s glands are lethally poisonous to amphibian-eating animals, such as goannas and snakes.
Predator and prey populations influence one another, and ebb and flow in waves that crest at different times.
Animal population is always at its lowest ebb in spring, right after the icy temperatures of winter.
Aphids: Reproduce asexually in spring, with female aphids giving birth to live young without the need for fertilization, a much more efficient solution than entering an elaborate romance with a member of the opposite sex. Each female is capable of producing up to six new offspring per day, depending on the amount of food available.
Nest Boxes: A manmade bird nest that emulates a hole in a tree trunk.
Asian (‘Harlequin’) Ladybug: Introduced as a form of biological pest control (insecticide) in France and Belgium.
When in doubt, one simple rule applies to mammals: leave the animal exactly where you found it. The baby’s mother is usually nearby, is looking after it, and is teaching it how to become independent. You should only attempt to help if the baby clearly looks underfed or if there’s still no sign of the mother after several hours.
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11 EXPERIENCING NATURE WITH ALL OUR SENSES
When a houseplant produces unusually long shoots and its leaves turn yellow. This means that the room isn’t light enough—and this can affect your health, too. If the level of light remains below 2,500 lux (the amount of light in the garden on a dull winter’s day) for an extended period of time, it can lead to seasonal affective disorder… Being in a badly lit room is like being in a permanent state of winter. To prevent this, you should make sure that the rooms where you spend your days are sufficiently well lit and that you go outside regularly,
Moths: Use celestial bodies to orientate themselves, navigating by flying at a constant angle to the moon. The moon’s great distance from the Earth means that, as the moth travels forward, it seems to stay at a constant angle relative to the moth’s flight path, making night flight a piece of cake. Or at least it should. For these little pilots, our artificial lights shine as brightly as the moon, but with one vital difference: they’re much closer. When a moth flies past a light bulb—a mysterious, false moon—it finds that suddenly the light is behind it rather than in front of it. The insect then believes its flight path to be crooked rather than straight. The moth changes its direction so that it can continue flying parallel to the “moon,” but instead follows a circular course around the light source, culminating with the moth crashing into the lamp.
You should close your blinds or curtains as soon as you switch on your lights after dark.
Night lighting changes the species composition on the ground around the light—and this change may be permanent (Exeter U. researchers).
Fireflies: Bioluminescent beetles produce light from their abdomens to attract a partner. The lights seen flying through the air belong to the male fireflies who take flight in search of females. These females also illuminate but sit on the ground, as they’re unable to fly, which makes it easy to tell the difference between the two sexes, even at night. Two different species of firefly are responsible for this impressive sight: the Central European firefly (Lamprohiza splendidula) and the common European glowworm (Lampyris noctiluca).
Trees: Warn one another about insect attacks by giving off a chemical distress signal. This message prompts trees of the same species to produce defensive chemicals that are then stored in their bark. Researchers now believe that most plants communicate with others in their species.
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12 A RETURN TO NATURE
Fungus becomes active and starts spreading its filaments through garden furniture when the moisture of the wood reaches ~25%. Roughly speaking, there are two different types of fungus: brown rot and white rot fungus, each of which feasts on different components of the wood. Wood is formed mainly from cellulose fibers and lignin in a structure rather like fiberglass. The fibers are coated in resinous lignin, which helps keep the wood cells hard and flexible. White rot fungus is a lignin devotee and gobbles it up until white, fibrous pieces of cellulose are all that remain. Brown rot fungus works the other way round. Its favorite meal is cellulose: the leftover lignin deepens the brown color of the wood and makes it crumble away.
Constructive Wood Protection: A method for stopping fungus that keeps wood moisture content <20%.
For every 35 ft3 of air, there are ~1,000-10,000 spores- ten spores in every breath we take (Mainz Researchers).
If you want to get rid of fungus without using chemicals or protective paints, you should dry it out.
Certain woods, which include oak, larch, Douglas fir, robinia (false acacia), teak, and eucalyptus have an innate resistance to weathering and last for many years, even in damp conditions.
Mast Years: Years in which Oak and Beech woods fruit a particular abundance of fruit; occurs every 3-5 years. These years are called mast years because in centuries past, domestic pigs were sent into the forest to gorge on acorns and beechnuts before being slaughtered in winter for truly flavorsome bacon.
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Misc Quotes
“For a great many species today, “fitness” means the ability to get along in a world in which humankind has become the most powerful evolutionary force.”
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Terminology
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Chronology
Summer, 2003: Europe experiences an extremely dry heat wave that severely diminishes groundwater stocks (Weather by Wohlleben).
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