Skunk Cabbage Can Generate Its Own Heat

If you time your skunk cabbage adventure just right, you can warm your finger inside  the teardrop shaped plant.  How does the skunk cabbage do this?  Just like those insulated gloves that keep your fingers warm on the coldest winter day, the hood, or spiral leaf that curls around itself, keeps the air space inside the hood that protects the spadix warm.  Keep an eye of the temperature, however. Skunk cabbage can turn off their heat if the temperature drops below freezing. Since they can't compete with this degree of cold, they do not try.  But when the air is above 32 degrees, the spadix, or the spike-like bud that is covered with fuzzy flowers that never bloom,  can produce a temperature of 70 degrees by drawing on the starches in the roots.
Read More About It!
Skunk Cabbage, Sundew Plants and Strangler Figs: And 18 More of the Strangest Plants on Earth by Sally Kneidel
Did You Know? Skunk cabbage can have roots as long as a foot and live for a hundred years? You may be smelling the same plant that the American Indians used for soups, stews and medicine. Or that  young, mischevious  tribesman may have kicked the same plant you did while running through the stream to spread its smelly odor. 

Curious About Human Nature

This blog entry deviates from the Nature I like to talk about. It focuses today on Human Nature. But there comes a time when even a non-political person like myself must speak out. Having taught reading and English to high school students in a racially mixed suburban/urban setting, I find the opposition to President Obama's desire to speak to America's children and to encourage them to write letters suggesting ways to improve our country an abominable condemnation on our society. I am not sure these words fully convey my utter amazement that the media portrays these naysayers as rational objectors. If not, let me reiterate my disgust. I spent 36 years teaching these young adults who found coping with their lives (and I am referring to poverty and all its pitfalls) not only difficult but intolerable, who did not understand that education (besides a sports scholarship) was the way out and up. I know reaching these children by any means is the most important goal. Having said that, I find it deplorable that any teacher, any parent, and caring adult could find fault with the President's plan.

Where are all the other voices who value the President's no-nonsense approach to getting the job done, whether it be education or health care?