History

And if you succeed at that fraud—because, realistically, no one is going to check—the deadlines don't stop coming and that temptation is always there. You need another grant, you need another publication, another pilot study, on and on and on.

Mantle, Peruvian, Paracas-Nasca, South CoastEarly, Intermediate Period, Phase 1AD 1-100, Peru, South Coast.

Design: rows of shaman figures with heads thrown back, worked solidly with wool.

Camelid fiber plain weave embroidered with camelid fiber in stem-stitch, 142 x 241 cm (55 7/8 x 94 7/8 in.)

these are images from a 1930s pamphlet that endorsed kudzu, entitled "stop gullies: save your farm"

It was disturbing to say the least.

Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead – a worthy woman... ...I would say "how lucky am I"

Father in heaven who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water... ...Who would then transform me from a man to woman? Were I only to have merited this being so graced by goodness...

What shall I say? why cry or be bitter? If my father in heaven has decreed upon me and has maimed me with an immutable deformity then I do not wish to remove it. the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure and for which no comfort can be found. So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground. Since I have learned from our tradition that we bless both, the good and the bitter I will bless in a voice hushed and weak: blessed are you [HaShem] who has not made me a woman.

I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.

@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.

Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches

And THEN.

I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.

HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.

I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."

Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.

I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.

It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research

There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA

Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."

The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.

It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.

I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.

Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.

The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.

@motherfucking-dragons

it's called the Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant and there are, in total, 11 known sites where it still grows.

in general i'm feral over the carnivorous plant variety of the Southeastern USA. we have SO many super-rare carnivorous plants!!!

I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.

The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.

Well, several reasons. As y'all may know, bamboo is stronger than any wood, and therefore it makes a fantastic building material.

The Cherokee used, and still use, river cane to make fishing poles, fish traps, arrows, frames for structures, musical instruments, mats, pipes, and absolutely gorgeous double-woven baskets that can even hold water.

Here's some distinguishing traits I've observed myself:

River cane has a really full, bushy, leafy look that makes it really hard to recognize as bamboo from a distance, because the stems are harder to see. The shape of the individual cane with its branches and leaves is narrow, because the branches spread out very little, but the foliage is DENSE. It's like a plume.

River cane is stronger, denser and heavier than invasive bamboos I've seen.

River cane stems are always green all the way around, no yellow (unless the plant's been dead for a good long time)

River cane stems feel smooth like plastic to the touch. The common invasive bamboo I've seen here, when you run your hand upwards along it, the stem feels awful like sandpaper.

The biggest way to distinguish them: River cane grows 6-4 feet tall when it's in little patches, and up to 10-12 feet when it's in a large size patch (like, the size of a backyard) It is known to reach up to 15 feet tall nowadays and historical records claim heights of 30 feet or more in fertile river valleys. I really want to stress that it's RARE for it to get big. A canebrake will almost always be many times wider than it is tall (sometimes they grow in very long strips along fence rows)

The best time to look for it is in winter before things leaf out, because it's evergreen and grows in dense masses, making it easy to spot.

Some more cool stuff i've found out—River cane was a common food of bison! Earliest European settlers reported canebrakes so big that "100 bison could graze on a single canebrake." Apparently it used to make extremely high quality forage for livestock, before it was mostly destroyed.

European settlers apparently set their pigs loose in the canebrakes purposefully to destroy them, because the pigs would root up the nutritious rhizomes and kill the plant. Thinking of the relationship between Bison and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Eastern Native Americans and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Plains Native Americans and Bison...it seems like a pattern, huh?

In the case of both bison and canebrakes, they were a fundamental part of their ecosystem, and fundamental part of the indigenous cultures that used them for every material, their musical instruments, their homes, their most advanced arts, and even food (Rivercane shoots are edible just like other bamboo, and supposedly the seeds are edible too!) but European settlers purposefully destroyed the species almost completely. I can't help but wonder if there was a similar motivation.

Books that talk about Rivercane:

Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry by Sarah H. Hill talks about rivercane a LOT and gives tons of details of its uses and history.

Saving the Wild South: The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction by Georgann Eubanks has a whole chapter about Rivercane.

Venerable Trees: History, Biology and Conservation in the Bluegrass is a book about Kentucky, but it talks about rivercane's importance including its relationship with bison. It's only a couple pages out of the whole book but it's still great information.

By the way, though, if you read any very early European account of Kentucky, the word "cane" is everywhere. It's just such a nondescript word it's hard to realize its significance.

On a more personal note...god, I love this plant. Here's another photo I took. When you're in the canebrake, it feels so cut off from the rest of the world; it's shaded, quiet, cool, and someone 10 yards away couldn't even see you.

i actually talked to my neighbor that I learned owns the canebrake. She had no idea what it was but she was excited to learn about it! It was a lovely conversation.

Apparently, she knew I had been down there a bunch of times and thought nothing of it. She said "Yeah I told my husband, If you see her down there, just leave her alone she's doing her thing." In the most sincere way possible, God bless this woman

She said I could transplant all I wanted, too. This was great! ...but I quickly learned how RIDICULOUSLY HARD it is to transplant from a canebrake of this size. The rhizomes are so big and tough, a shovel can hardly get through them, and unless you're at the edge of the canebrake, there's a thick mat of them going every which way. I was driving my whole weight down on this shovel and it kept just denting the rhizome and glancing off.

I did get some transplants but each one took like half an hour because I was fighting for my life!

Also, with a canebrake this size, it doesn't grow little canes that will later become bigger—it shoots up tall canes in a single season. The youngest canes, more accessible and toward the edge of the canebrake, were significantly taller than I was. I cut the top off of one transplant for ease of handling—I had a pair of hand pruners with me that were usually perfectly useful for small limbs, but I could barely get these things through the cane, it's just so strong and dense.

Here is some YouTube videos that talk about river cane!

Roger Cain of Keetoowah/Western Band Cherokee shows and talks about Rivercane. This video has a BIG canebrake, the mature canes look as if they could be 15ft tall, but he says it's only a fragment of what they used to be!

Stan the River Man visits a Canebrake in Northern Kentucky. This channel only has 22 subscribers, I feel like I've discovered a rare and priceless treasure

River Cane Renaissance, Episode 1. This guy has devoted a large part of his life to studying Rivercane and now works with the eastern band Cherokee to try and bring it back.

Chattooga river conservancy video on Rivercane, haven't watched the whole thing myself but it looks really good and detailed

This is exactly what you think it is.

For privacy reasons, I share details online of my real world activities only reluctantly, and not very often. But don't be bamboozled into thinking I have forgotten the Canebrakes. It's exactly the opposite.

I have done a lot of networking and made a lot of contacts. I am not alone. There are other people with a story exactly like mine: first, they heard an offhanded mention of forests of American bamboo, which shattered everything they thought they knew about their environment. Next, they became crazed with fascination, searching for knowledge with insane ferocity. Then, they realized that river cane is not only a plant, it is a keystone species symbiotic with indigenous cultures for thousands of years, and it was almost destroyed due to the subjugation of its habitat and the genocide of its caretakers.

The canebrakes' devotees have been working tirelessly to compile every single scrap of information on canebrakes that exists in writing. Every record, every primary source, every historical mention, every comment and conjecture. I have been given access to some of this priceless treasure trove. The wealth of information is amazing, but even more amazing is how much is still unknown.

The history, properties, and ecological importance of the canebrakes is so much more than I imagined.

For example, the massive amounts of seeds produced by huge canebrakes in flowering events fed the passenger pigeon flocks. Likewise the Carolina parakeet was also dependent on canebrakes, and the extinct Bachman's warbler was a canebrake specialist. The destruction of canebrakes could be responsible for why these birds went extinct.

Canebrakes were absolutely fundamental to the indigenous peoples of the Southeast, providing for their every need. Food, shelter, containers, tools, music and art. The settlers foolishly thought the indigenous peoples were not "advanced" enough for metal tools, but in truth, they already had a material superior to metal. River cane by weight is stronger than steel. You can make knives and blades out of it.

I am excited for the future. It seems like momentum is building to save the river cane and bring back the canebrakes, and I am hoping to join together with all the other like-minded people to accomplish this task.

excuse the block of text ID it's hot outsid.e

Please for the love of all that's sacred tell someone who knows this stuff to get to Savannah Georgia, there are so many patches here that experts online cannot identify and think are an undescribed species.

Here's a petition to protect at least one of the canebrakes here

The entire plant does not need to flower at the same time, so you might need to look. Also size does not matter. The plant can be 8 ft tall or less than a foot, it can still flower.

[image description start. Four photos of native bamboo flower buds, each a dark purple color, emerging from tan stems. Image description end.]

And some of them, are flowering literally three times in a row! One tiny plant we found, less than 4 ft tall, flowered and produced seed in February of 2025, then again in September 2025, and now again in February 2026!

Other taller stocks like the ones shown above, for sure flowered in February 2025, and from the seeds still clinging to the plants, they probably did it again in fall as well, but unfortunately I wasn't able to check on them because a storm knocked a bunch of tree branches into my path to get to them. And now they are flowering again, for at least the second year in a row!

Get out there and look for flowers and flower buds! If you are further south or towards the coast, you will likely find Arundinaria tecta, which is what I have picture of! (You know, unless it turns out to be another species that has not been described yet, which is possible)

Very fascinating that it flowered again in the fall and then the next year. I have observed it to do that in a couple of canebrakes, I'm not sure if the plant just keeps going until it dies, or what.

When the pollen is produced, maybe you could save some to test and see if they can be hand-pollinated? (and how long the pollen lasts in storage). Im not sure if anyone has tried hand pollination.

The further north you are, the later the flowering will happen- here in Kentucky, you should look in April-May and if there are seeds they will be ready in June

This Yoruba bust (or Ife Head) is dated to the 12th-14th centuries.

This misunderstanding also deeply, unfortunately, and inaccurately mischaracterizes traditional arts in African cultures as being “less developed” for being more stylized, as if they cannot figure out realism due to difficulty (lmao?), which simply is not the case.

i am not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies' and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf

Start of the workshop: the teacher was telling us about how certain bugs are going extinct and how changing our gardening tactics would help to stop that.

End of workshop: same teacher tells us how to get rid of a specific type of larva in an "eco-friendly" manner.

I get confused. I ask why that type of larva needs to be exterminated. The teacher looks at me like he's never even considered that question before. "Because they make your lawn sparser," he finally says.

I point out that the larva he's talking about is the larval state of one of the bugs he mentioned was going extinct at the start of the workshop.

Put it in the freezer with the lid loose, and come back and tighten the lid after it's frozen.

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

eBird (birds

Merlin (birds)

citizenscience.gov (big project database, US-based)

iNaturalist (nature)

MapSwipe (collaboration between several Red Cross organizations and Doctors Without Borders, update vital geospatial data) Smithsonian archives (transcriptions, many subjects)

Cornell Bird Lab (birds)

FoldIt (folding proteins)

Fathomverse (sea animals)

Project Monarch (butterflies)

In person

Bioblitz (nature) Species watch (species) Audobon Society (birds)

Also:

This stuff makes a huge difference.

Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.

So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead

I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.

From their website:

Data Everywhere

As a matter of fact reading silently might’ve been seen as a sign that someone was an incredibly heavy reader such as with Ambrose. The reason being that one of the reasons vocalized reading was the norm had to do with how people wrote texts like it was pretty common for there to be irregularities with the script or especially that it was highly common for writings tonothavespacesinbetweenwordssoreadingoutloudfeltlikeamorenaturalasawaytomakeouttheindividualwords. An incredibly ‘veteran’ reader like Ambrose (Augustine also mentions Ambrose could read quickly) might develop mental shortcuts letting them more easily pick part the individual words that had been squished together and in doing so simply gradually drop the habit of reading out loud because it wasnt an aid to them any longer. In Latin Europe this changed when Irish monks in the late 7th century developed the practice of writing with more uniform letters as well as separating different words by leaving blank spaces between them. This slowly spread to the rest of Latin Europe (at least with the monastaries) until it finally became the norm in the 12th century, just in time for the explosive importation of scientific and philosophical literature from the Arabic world which was nice.

also apparently this rock art dates across multiple periods spanning thousands of years? but i couldn't find much detail on that so i can't give specifics

but yeah, this isn't just a memory of giraffes, but of giraffes now absent encountered by people just 2000 years (the difference between the late roman republic and today) out of the ice age, in a climate unfamiliar to any of the hundred billion people born since the desertification of the sahara drove the ancient egyptians to the nile, near the start of the agricultural revolution

the time between this and the birth of the sahara was nearly as long as the time between the birth of the sahara and now, in which all recorded history is contained, and all languages we can recognise at all - the language and culture of these people would be totally alien to current libyans, twice the difference between the oldest european language and english, predating all but libya's mountains!