trying to make the original bleak winter photograph look softer - less camera like
The Marsh Like Middleground Is Not Cattail - It Is An Invasive Species
Cryptic invasions are a largely unrecognized type of biological invasion
that lead to underestimation of the total numbers
and impacts of invaders because of the
difficulty in detecting them. The distribution and abundance of Phragmites australis in North America has increased dramatically over the past 150 years. This research tests the hypothesis that a non-native
strain of Phragmites is responsible for the observed spread. Two noncoding chloroplast DNA regions were sequenced for samples collected worldwide,
throughout the range of Phragmites.
Modern North American populations were compared with historical ones
from herbarium collections. Results indicate that an
introduction has occurred, and the
introduced type has displaced native types as well as expanded to
regions previously not
known to have Phragmites. Native types apparently have disappeared from New England and, while still present, may be threatened in other parts of
North America.
for more go to:
Dutch West - Cast Iron, smoke burning wood stove
I have rhapsodized before about this lovely stove which does yeoman's duty in colder weather in heating our 'entrance way' area (serving as a 'mud-room' as they would say in New England) for this later add-on to our old log house - logs cut and hand-hewn with an adze by a Finnish immigrant back in the early 1900s - was ill designed to be heated from the main part of the house. The smoke-burning catalyst in the upper-middle of the stove, in general does a great job in squeezing the last bit of combustion from the smoke so that in looking up at the chimney outside the house all one can see is rising heat waves rather than the usual billowing smoke that accompanies a burning wood fire.
[to be complete open though, there are times when condition of wood, stove temperature, and just general gremlin like atmospheric conditions that the catalyst does not work well and the fire smolders and I have to open the by-pass flue and let the fire gradually build - some times for several hours - to a hotter temperature in order for the catalyst to work efficiently when I divert the damper back]
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