Monday, July 01, 2013
Plants like sun.
After two weeks of cool rainy weather, we finally got some sun. Lord, what a difference!
Every morning I go out and chop some weeds, partly for the pride of a semi-neat yard, mainly for the exercise. So I have a good daily sense of what's going on in the world of plants. During the two weeks of rain, the grass grew slightly but the weeds and clover remained uninterested. I didn't have to do a lot of chopping...until....
Yeah, the cartoon may be stretching it a tad, but I'm trying to see the world from the photosynthetic viewpoint.
Sun also activated the spiders. They built dozens of webs in seemingly impossible places, leaving me thoroughly silked up by the time I finished chopping weeds. How do they span the 15 feet from the bushes to the house, with no wires or branches above the span? There's no wind today to carry them sideways. Do they web down from a branch and start swinging wider and wider until they hit the house?
= = = = =
Much later update: Turns out that spider 'flight' has been a mystery to many observers, and it's just now been figured out. Spiders are able to send out their silk with an electric charge, of the same polarity as the underlying soil, so the silk flies upward as it shoots out. Thus a tendril can be sent out and up to the nearest wall or branch. The mechanism of charging is still unknown. It could be imparted by muscle or nerve cells, like the electric eel's battery, or it could be chemical, as in producing the silk through a reaction that leaves it ionized.
Yeah, the cartoon may be stretching it a tad, but I'm trying to see the world from the photosynthetic viewpoint.
Sun also activated the spiders. They built dozens of webs in seemingly impossible places, leaving me thoroughly silked up by the time I finished chopping weeds. How do they span the 15 feet from the bushes to the house, with no wires or branches above the span? There's no wind today to carry them sideways. Do they web down from a branch and start swinging wider and wider until they hit the house?
= = = = =
Much later update: Turns out that spider 'flight' has been a mystery to many observers, and it's just now been figured out. Spiders are able to send out their silk with an electric charge, of the same polarity as the underlying soil, so the silk flies upward as it shoots out. Thus a tendril can be sent out and up to the nearest wall or branch. The mechanism of charging is still unknown. It could be imparted by muscle or nerve cells, like the electric eel's battery, or it could be chemical, as in producing the silk through a reaction that leaves it ionized.Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 9:45 AM
