jtotheizzoe:

Episode Extra: A Flower’s Electric Field

In the “Electric Buzzaloo” episode I did on YouTube, I showed you not only how bees find flowers using UV vision, but also mentioned that they can sense a flower’s electric field. What does that look like?

This image captures the slightly negative electric charge that most flowers carry since they’re literally grounded. After being visited by one bee, it sheds some of that negative buzz to the positively-charged pollinator. If another bee comes along, it won’t be attracted to the less charged (and less nectar-filled) flower.

This maximizes a bee’s chances of visiting fresh flowers and not wasting their time at an empty well. Read more at Nature News.

Bee sure to check out the full episode on YouTube.

Weeds are weeds only from our human egotistical point of view, because they grow where we do not want them. In Nature, however, they play an important and interesting role. They resist conditions which cultivated plants cannot resist, such as drought, acidity of soil, lack of humus, mineral deficiencies, as well as a one-sidedness of minerals, etc. They are witness of man’s failure to master the soil, and they grow abundantly wherever man has ‘missed the train’ – they only indicate our errors and Nature’s corrections. Weeds want to tell a story – they are nature’s means of teaching man, and their story is interesting. If we would only listen to it we could apprehend a great deal of the finer forces through which Nature helps and heals and balances, and sometimes, also has fun with us.

Weeds And What They Tell, by E. Pfeiffer (via fuckyeahpermaculture)