A few weeks ago I learned that the “apple a day” thing started as propaganda to encourage people to eat excess apples during prohibition because they could no longer be made into hard cider.
I also learned that a lot of trees naturally shed their branches (cladoptosis) when they deem them an inefficient use of resources. We don’t have to prune trees to keep them healthy; we only prune them to satisfy our own aesthetic taste.
It takes 40-50 gallons of maple sap to make a gallon of maple syrup.
Today I learned that a few factors trigger the change in color that gives us fall leaves. Changes in temperature is obvious, but changes in moisture and the amount of light affect the process as well.
What was really interesting to me is that it’s not necessarily an addition of some chemical that changes the leaves from green to red, orange, and yellow, but the removal of chlorophyll. As the weather and amount of daylight changes, trees, halt the process of nutrient production via leaves and the chlorophyll that masks these brilliant fall hues disappears. This process coincides with the tree slowly shedding its leaves as they are effectively dead wood (pun intended) if they are no longer photosynthesizing.
Today I learned that the tree whose bark sheds into red paper ribbons is called Manzanitas (Spanish for tiny apple). Species of Manzanita belongs to the genus Arctostaphylos (Greek for bear grape), alongside three species of Bearberries. Manzanita grow in the chaparral; Bearberries are adapted to arctic and subarctic climates. I wonder when in time the two groups diverged–their respective climates are so different. Living in California, I’ve seen Manzanita my entire life but never knew what they were called. The hills behind Orinda are covered in a handful of species, both tree-sized and in low shrubs.
I also learned that there are only eight species of bear, and six of them are endangered. For some reason both parts of that statement shocked me, though it makes sense for there to be so few species and individual bears–it seems to be the fate of most large mammals in the modern world.
Brown, Black, Asiatic Black, Andean, Panda, Sloth, Sun, Polar.
250 Million farmers and laborers protested against new anti-worker laws in India on the 26th. I’d venture to guess this is the biggest protest in history.
Kat White 