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Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com

141–150 of 224 posts

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#141
Plant(ing) related: I planted 100 trees in my tiny back yard, creating a pocket forest / Miyawaki forest - a technique encouraging fast growth through dense planting (3-5 trees / shrubs per square meter). Routed my gutters into a swale along the tree line - looking forward to watching a forest appear over the next decade.

https://www.creatingtomorrowsforests.co.uk/blog/the-miyawaki...

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#142
As a child of an entomologist turned botanist and another naturalist, who grew up in our home library full of assorted atlases, monographies and other odd books, I often learned the Latin names together with the respective common names, and it's amazing how it sticks. Being able to look at a random plant and say I don't know what it is exactly, but it's definitely labiaceae, is something I will always appreciate. Only recently my father sent me a video of a dormouse making themselves at home at a friend's cottage and my brain said "Glis glis". How I remembered it, I have no clue. I'm an IT person.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#144

As a child of an entomologist turned botanist and another naturalist, who grew up in our home library full of assorted atlases, monographies and other odd books, I often learned the Latin names together with the respective common names, and it's amazing how it sticks. Being able to look at a random plant and say I don't know what it is exactly, but it's definitely labiaceae, is something I will always appreciate. Onl…

My young daughter can identify a whole host of native species by their scientific names and it absolutely floors adults who catch her doing it. Our house is a plant nerd house so she just picked it all up on her own and enjoys it as a small component of her life.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#145

I've recently taken to learning about plant identification, it's interesting to make observations about all the flora you see walking about. Will need to note these books for later!

Me and my wife we talking about A/R glasses the other day and we both agreed that one of our number one use cases would be having the camera actively identify plant species when taking a walk or hike. Not every time it sees a plant obviously, just when a new species is identified along the way.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#148

As a child of an entomologist turned botanist and another naturalist, who grew up in our home library full of assorted atlases, monographies and other odd books, I often learned the Latin names together with the respective common names, and it's amazing how it sticks. Being able to look at a random plant and say I don't know what it is exactly, but it's definitely labiaceae, is something I will always appreciate. Onl…

One of my father's coworkers (environmental health & safety) was an entomologist. I wonder how much of her work was in forensics.

Our family is Catholic, and Mom hates Latin, so as a reactionary I absolutely love it. As a child about 10 years old, I began to collect books called "Field Guide" such as Field Guide to Spiders and Field Guide to Butterflies and so forth. These were wonderful, glossy illustrated handbooks, and while the only field trips I made were into our suburban backyard, we saw a quality mix of flora and fauna because of Dad's gardening and our proximity to a canyon.

And the index would have all scientific names listed, and so I set myself to the task of memorizing as many as possible. I hardly recall any today, except apis mellifera and mosca domestica but I can tell you, it was really influential for my social life at recess to be blurting out the Latin names of creepy-crawlies. Harry Potter was still at least 15 years in the future, then, and none of the girls showed interest in field trips.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#150
post #13

> "at the time, he was probably mostly thinking of “white European cultures”, and while we can acknowledge how backwards and fucking goofy this is now, we can still admit that Linnaeus’ ideology was simply flawed like his time and NOT throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water" In the 18th century someone living in Europe making science books would definitely be using Latin, maybe French if you were a modernis…

Agreed. The author in question (Linnaeus) was from Sweden and professor at a Swedish university (Uppsala). Latin was used across the board in "traditional" sciences in northern Europe at that time and in fact the distinction of disciplines was not as clear as it is today. Linnaeus was a professor of medicine formally but focused on botany. He traveled a lot and had many international "contacts", especially in the Net…

I'd also recommend "Scientific Babel How Science Was Done Before and After Global English" by Michael D. Gordin [0]. It goes into detail about which languages scientists have used over time.

[0] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo145049...

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