Gavin's Miscellany
Personal encyclopedia and learning curriculum119 entries

Category

Natural World

Plants, animals, and resilient forms of life Gavin has noticed, currently centered on local weeds, animal perception, intelligence, and extremophile survival.

Topics

Plants & WeedsLocal plants, weeds, adaptations, and the practical ecology of what grows underfoot.3Animal BiologyHow animal bodies, senses, and nervous systems solve problems in very different ways.2Microscopic LifeTiny organisms and survival strategies that make ordinary ideas about life feel too narrow.1

All Entries

Plants & Weeds

  • California YarrowCalifornia/common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a spreading perennial with fernlike aromatic leaves and flat clusters of tiny flowers. It occurs naturally across California and is useful as a lowwater meadow or groundcover plant; its flowers attract bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects.
  • Festival™ Raspberry CordylineFestival™ Raspberry Cordyline is a compact, basalbranching cordyline grown mainly for its arching burgundy leaves edged in bright raspberry pink.
  • Puncturevine / Goathead BurrsPuncturevine (Tribulus terrestris) is a lowgrowing annual weed whose fruit breaks into hard, viciously spined burrs goatheads. The burr is not an incidental annoyance: it is the plant's seeddispersal system, hitching rides on feet, paws, tires, and machinery.

Animal Biology

  • Octopus IntelligenceOctopus intelligence is interesting precisely because it is not vertebrate intelligence in an eightarmed costume. Complex learning and flexible behavior evolved here in a lineage separated from vertebrates by more than half a billion years.
  • Why Cats Have Vertical PupilsA cat's vertical pupil is not simply a better light valve. Its shape is strongly associated with a particular ecological niche: small, lowtotheground ambush predators that are active across a wide range of light levels.

Microscopic Life

  • Tardigrades and CryptobiosisTardigrades are microscopic eightlegged animals whose famous toughness mostly comes from a specific trick: some species can suspend ordinary life when their environment becomes unlivable.