Big Bluestem roots
Good deep roots make a difference. The photo to the right is from the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, and it shows how deep and strong and tangled the roots of the prairie bluestem are. It’s impressive how robust prairie ecosystems are, and we rip them up and replace them with Kentucky Bluegrass, which has the most pathetic shallow mat of a root system. See?
My mother is in the hospital right now — she’s been declining for years, but she keeps bouncing back because she has deep strong roots. I’ve taken her for granted for my entire life, because she always perseveres. I’m hoping she pulls through this time, too.
Best wishes to you. I hope your mom recovers to be with you and your family for many more years.
^ Seconded 100%.
Best wishes to her PZ and yes. Amazing monocotyledon roots there.
Andropogon hallii (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andropogon_hallii) I presume?
When you think about how hard soil can get, (esp here in South Oz in Summer) and how roots can push their way thrugh them and the sort of environments trees and grases and plants geenrally can manage to grow in and into and all that. Yes. Toughness indeed.
Respect.
I hope your mom is ok PZ. I recall my mom’s several bouts with lung cancer. She was resilient and bounced back twice.
Tobacco plants have relatively shallower roots: https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/faowater/images/Topics/Productivity/Crop-Information-tobaco2.gif
But when they set up shop in your lungs over time they can take quite deep roots with COPD/emphysema and/or cancer.
All the best. My mum’s been declining too, but I’m laying odds she’ll see me out. Tough old broad. Latvian peasants, my lot. But the men don’t seem to have quite the staying power.
All the best, PZ. I hope your mum gets better.
Louis
Hope your mom gets better PZ
Hoping for the best for your mother.
Not directly relevant to this post, but I thought this paper would be of interest to people who read this blog: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/use-and-misuse-of-evolutionary-psychology-in-online-manosphere-communities-the-case-of-female-mating-strategies/19522B41CF67DFF9F66D919E1F843CCC
I hope your mother pulls through too PZ.
I second (3rd, 4th, …, nth) all of the above wishes for a healthy recovery of your mum, PZ (n = 9 at the time I respond). Having said that, I just noted that my mum died one week before you were born. (I’m going to get EMDR for that trauma in the coming week — very skeptic about its effectiveness.)
Send my love to your mum.
Best wishes for your mom. I sat behind her (& your sister?) in Seattle years ago. She seemed lovely and was very proud of you.
My thoughts with you and your Mom, PZ.
Take care.
Wishing your mother a speedy recovery.
The good news this morning is that she’s doing better today. She’s pretty good about bouncing back from setbacks.
Well, that is good news. She must have deeper roots than these plants!
Best wishes to you and your mum PZ, old age is not for the faint-hearted.
@14 Hooray!
According to Ken Burns in his 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl, the massive plowing-up of the Great Plains’ deep-rooted buffalo grass resulted in America’s decade-long ecological disaster of the same name. Now mega-agricultural firms in the same region are exploiting the millions-year-old Ogallala Aquifer to exhaustion. But not to worry–eventually there will be many fewer mouths to feed as a result. We never learn.
Best wishes for/to your mother, PZ.
Actually, at first, I didn’t. It’s so tiny that I didn’t notice it next to the others.
Thinking you you and your family. It’s so hard seeing your parents age. Hope she’s on the mend quickly.