nettle

The first thing this fungus does to its newly infected victim is to take over the insects mind. A zombie is created. the insect is forced to climb up and up. Eventually stopping, it latches on as tight as possible to the nearest branch. The insect will never move again.

Now the processes can really start, the fungi fully devours the insect interior. using the energy gathered, long spore producing structures are extruded out of the insects body.

like little ships sailing to colonise new land, thousands of spores float away on ever drifting air currents. the cycle continues

Found in New Zealand

Tree species: rimu, Dacrydium cupressinum

Wasp species: german wasp, Vespula germanica

Fungus species: genus and species currently unknown by me, any info would be much appreciated.

Found this in a tourist magazine. Oh the things you can trademark

MRS. C GREN (Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Cells, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition.) is an acronym I learnt at school to categorise things as living or non-living. If something does all of these it is considered alive.

My teacher told me cells are included to categorise fire as non living (as fire fulfills all other requirements).

Even after finishing school I am still annoyed by this requirement. Cells are the basic unit of life. So cells need to be alive to be cells, but you also need to have cells to be alive, in other words you need to be alive to be alive, not very useful for determining if things are living or not.

So I propose an amendment, remove C and add E - for ability to Evolve. Fire cannot evolve, but I see evolution as an essential requirement for all forms of life.

Much more elegant.

Also as a bonus, MRS. GREEN is a nicer acronym and I think its easier to remember.

Were you taught a better acronym? Or perhaps do you have an even more elegant idea?

Floss things get a lot of rep for working well, but looking bad, sure we appreciate function, but here's some floss games that feel AND look good. These games are optimized for mobile, often polished to a tee, AND have the looks.

All links are for F-Droid

Tell me any more open source Android games you think look Amazing (on F-Droid or not).

Key: EXGL - extremely good looking

My favorite's:

• Super Retro Mega Wars - play retro games like Tetris, Snake, Atari breakout and space invaders, in style! EXGL

• TriPeaks - beautiful pixel art tri-peaks solitaire. EXGL

• Lato - more of a demo than a polished game, but still very fun to ski from peak to peak, and its gobsmackingly beautiful (heavily inspired by Alto's Adventure). EXGL

• Xeonjia - slide around on ice in this polished pixel art RPG

• Fruity Game - perhaps not conventional beauty, but as you merge fruit you will realise it is art of the finest order

• Libre Memory - a gorgeous app to play memory, with a creative "very hard" mode, bringing a whole new level to classic memory

• gauguin -a unique sudoku like game that's a lot of fun

• Flowit! - a puzzle game with fantastic level design

• Ricochlime - ricochet through your enemies defences

• Antimine

• fancy customizable minesweeper.

Other games which are also fun but aren't (imo) as polished and/or good looking as the ones above, or just aren't for me:

• Feudal Tactics - a fun strategy game, its pretty great, except it looks really bad (though the MS paint like looks do carry some charm)

• Vector Pinball -very fun pinball with great sound design

• Ball2Box - put the ball In the box

• RuamBaller - fun pixel art galaxian like game (bit to easy though)

• SUD🩷KU

• LibreSudoku

• Mindustry - looks great, though I haven't played it much, so that's why its here (may be moved to my favourites soon)

• BlastOff - guide your rocket to space through debris

• Astroids revenge - I nearly deleted this game because the default android controls suck, until realising better controls are hidden in settings, why.

• 2050 - 2048 but circles, fun and creative take on 2048 but the visuals are a bit lacking

• pixel wheels - looks are great but the controls are pretty bad (imo).

• unciv - civilisation building game, I haven't played this yet but once again it looks fun

Honorable mentions:

• GLXY - simple and quite elegant space gravity simulator (I love it but it's probably not what people reading this list want)

Hope you found a game you like!

Edit: added unciv and feudal tactics

Found this weird ant on our table, it has a very big head. Does anyone know what type of ant this is? (Found in New Zealand). Im guesing because of its large mandibles its probably not a worker ant instead perhaps its a soldier.

Also I just learnt the different forms of an ant (queen, worker, soldier) are called castes.

Heres my tier list of open source android apps, I have only included ones i feel I have used enouph to understand.

Please tell me any of your favorite open source apps as I would love to hear.

S tier- OpenCalc, firefox, thunder, organic maps, Aegis authenticator, wikipedia, F-Droid, Clock.

A tier: open camera, fossify suite, k-9, termux, simplenote, Acode, pie launcher, translate you, lavendar photos, Heliboard,

B tier: gallery (by iacoblonut), peer tube, simple keyboard, floris board (might be higher if it used haptic feedback interface by default), unexpected keyboard (would be S tier if shift did not carry on selecting text once released).

C tier: FreeDcam, libre camera, geo notes, free paint.

Checkout my post of my favourite Floss android games here

Edit: after using the apps some more I have:

• moved "translate you" from S to A tier due to no offline translation

• added lavendar photos to A tier (my new gallary of choice)

• added Clock to S tier (a much better Foss clock then fossify clock)

• added Heliboard to A tier due to recomendations below (my new main keyboard)

And added a link to my post about my favourite floss android games.

About a year ago I rescued a native Earina autimnalis orchid that had fallen on to the road. I placed it on a tree with some sphagnum moss behind and watered it occasionally.

I was worried it wasn't happy, but then new shoots started growing, and before I knew it, flower spikes emerged!

A conservation friend of mine, who has cared for native orchids, said she's never seen them flower in captivity. So I wasn't expecting much from the spikes.

Then today when I checked how the orchid was doing, It was flowering with some of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen :).

Yesterday as I was walking through the bush collecting seeds, I was suddenly caught by a strange vine that ensnared my leg.

While it may look like your traditional vine, a climbing stem with many leaves attached, its a fern, and the entire "vine" is just one gigantic leaf stretching from the forest floor to the tree canopy.

Mangemange is a fern native to new Zealand. Its from the genus Lygodium.

Its stem (rhizome) grows along underground, almost like a long root. Every few meters a new leaf (frond) spouts from the rhizome.

The leaves emerge from the ground twisting and turning, desperately trying to find something to latch onto. At the same time pinnae form on the leaf stalk (rachis). Pinnae look a bit like normal plant leaves but they are actually just leaf segments. The pinnae provide the energy for the frond to grow even longer.

Once a target tree is found, the frond starts wrapping around it, slowly climbing upwards, making new sets of pinnae every few meters.

Continuing climbing, the frond often reaches the forest canopy. Once in the canopy, fertile pinnae start growing and spores are produced. The spores are then carried away in the wind, to new lands unseen.

And once again a new mangmange can climb to the sky.

This is the first post in a series of posts, that I'm going to make about weird and wonderful ferns and fern allies. If you have any weird ferns (or weird fern allies) that you would like me to write about, feel free to suggest them. Or post your own or wonderful/weird ferns in this community!

Here's my current record for most ferns growing on top of each other!

A tree fern called a ponga (Alsophila tricolor) forms the base, growing on this tree ferns trunk is a hen and chicken fern (Asplenium bulbiferum).

Hen and chicken ferns grows little bulbils (baby ferns) on its fronds, when the bulbils are old enouph, they drop off to become a new hen and chicken fern.

These bulbils make up the final layer of ferns of my fern stack, making it a magnificent 3 layers of fern.

Here's my current record for most ferns growing on top of each other!

A tree fern called a ponga (Alsophila tricolor) forms the base, growing on this tree ferns trunk is a hen and chicken fern (Asplenium bulbiferum).

Hen and chicken ferns grows little bulbils (baby ferns) on its fronds, when the bulbils are old enouph, they drop off to become a new hen and chicken fern.

These bulbils make up the final layer of ferns of my fern stack, making it a magnificent 3 layers of fern.

Dendrobium cunninghamii, in Puketi Forest, New Zealand. In full bloom :). Its indigenous Maori name is Winika and a Maori canoe (Waka) is named after it

"In the fork of the tree grew a type of orchid known as ‘te winika’ which blooms with masses of white and green star-shaped flowers, evoking the huia feathers worn by high ranking rangatira (chiefs). This led to the auspicious name being given to the waka taua, that served Maaori royalty for many purposes, from transport to ceremonial duties."

-50 years of majestic waka at Waikato Museum Source

Image by me

I found this while walking through the Bush it was on the track with its exuviae right next to it. They are bloody deafening at this time of year but I still love to see them. Unfortunately I couldn't get any photos with the eyes properly in focus (as well as the exuviae) and my dog was desperate to carry on walking so this is the best I got.

Edit: spelling