Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Avoiding the Blade





In the spirit of Yogi Berra's "You can see a lot if you look," I took a walk around the school building after work and saw four kinds of wildflowers and a fungus below the trim level of the recently mowed lawn. These species usually grow anywhere from 4" to several feet tall when not threatened by lawnmowers, but when the lawn is mowed regularly, they "learn" to bloom while still short. Very clever. I wonder if this is a response to a history of grazing. In the case of the fungus, which doesn't really bloom, it's probably a coincidence that it had only gown this tall since the last mowing and will undoubtedly be destroyed by the next one. If lucky, it will release spores before then and there will be lots of young ones in the next cycle.

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