#soccent

THIS TREE FEEDS MILLIONS. American Holly.   Think of a tree.  Its big.  When a tree blooms it is a 3 dimensional tower of pollen and nectar.  Some of the best collecting I have ever had has been off of Ilex opaca (Andrena-o-rama). Each tree is a single sex, so to produce seeds/berries (or at least a lot of them)  you have to have both males and females to provide pollen and nectar AND you have to make bees switch between sipping nectar and gathering pollen.  If I were me (this is the beer I am drinking talking) I would want to track the economics of the energy the tree is pulling from the earth and sky, giving that to a bunch (thousands on a big tree) of bees and having them inject all that pollen and nectar (cum-energy) into the earth and the nooks and crannies of the surrounding woods.  What's the big picture here...just seeds and baby bees or something grander a sharing of the earth's wealth via biodiversity socialism?  Specimen and picture by Helen Lowe Metzman.      

Interdependency + ciclical flow of resources + cooperation + diversity - More explanation:

On 8 February 2011, Colonel Joe Osborne, US Army, who was at least at the time the Director of the Irregular Warfare Directorate at SOCCENT made a presentation to the 22nd Annual Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict Symposium & Exhibition put on by the National Defense Industrial Association.  Though the presentations to the unclassified conferences, of which this was one, are not posted immediately, its safe to assume this had been posted prior to January 2012.  One of Colonel Osborne's backup slides notes the acronym JSOTF-GCC (the entire presentation can be downloaded here).  A lot of the time these things aren't "acknowledged" to the press, because no one knows to ask.  Not being acknowledged and no one asking about it are two completely different things.