We had a blizzard this week. It's bitterly cold right now. I was trying hard to think of good reasons to have left the Pacific Northwest, and this is about the only thing I came up with: Devil's Club.
They're big. They're prickly-spiky-thorny. They're evil. You did not go blindly charging through the lush green brush in the woods unless you wanted to risk tangling with knives and needles.
I might be willing to trade sub-zero snowstorms for Devil's Club, though.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
The UK is currently in the grip of the longest period of sub-zero weather in thirty years, and it looks set to stay cold for another week. Rather than get hysterical about the lack of grit on our roads, I thought about all the fun science opportunities the arctic weather has on offer!
Supercooling…
my fiddle, trying to get atop a Beethoven Trio
__________________________________________________________________
The last month or so I've been pondering what to photograph, as I walk around town, to convey the disturbing wierdness of the weather we've had these last months in Vermont. I live…
and yet more photo spam:
Last week it was cold. It was warmer at the weekend. But this week it is cold again. Though as RC points out, its not going to be the coldest winter for a millenium.
We went rowing tonight. Oddly enough we were the only crew out. We had to stop past the Elizabeth way…
We had a seminar from Marco Restani of St Cloud State University yesterday — he's a wildlife biologist who talked about Tasmanian Devils. Just a little tip: don't ever invite wildlife biologists or conservation ecologists to give talks. They are the most depressing people in the world, and they…
PZ -- you are a very ill individual, dude. Science and all that, old bean, but that thing looks like it would admire to take large parts of one's corpus with it, for fun. Take the snowstorm. Srsly.
Expletive, that thing looks evil enough to grow in Missouri.
Devil's Club is a sacred plant for the First Nations people of the North West Coast. It teaches you to be aware in the forest......It is part of the ginseng family and has a reputation for increasing physical ; mental and spiritual prowess.
When I spent time in Kitkatla....an isolated FN village on the NW coast, I was told by the chief and medicine man that the leaf-stems were peeled and chewed on by old people to "make them feel young"".........
I have experienced the spines in my hand though.......I grabbed one to stop me sliding down a scree on ball=bearing-like pebbles, undoing an hour's climb........When I got back home, hours later, my hand looked like a blown up red rubber glove and was throbbing with intense pain......powerful stuff......
Devil's Club is a sacred plant for the First Nations people of the North West Coast. It teaches you to be aware in the forest......It is part of the ginseng family and has a reputation for increasing physical ; mental and spiritual prowess.
When I spent time in Kitkatla....an isolated FN village on the NW coast, I was told by the chief and medicine man that the leaf-stems were peeled and chewed on by old people to "make them feel young"".........
I have experienced the spines in my hand though.......I grabbed one to stop me sliding down a scree on ball bearing-like pebbles, undoing an hour's climb........When I got back home, hours later, my hand looked like a blown up red rubber glove and was throbbing with intense pain......powerful stuff......
@ Luise Grav
". . . and has a reputation for increasing physical ; mental and spiritual prowess."
In a purely Nietzschean "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." manner, I'm guessing.