Various misses cultured for weeks on a grow rack. I *think* the species in the foreground is creeping feather moss. I love the capsule diversity among moss species. Capsules are the tops of the stalks.

A single moss plant. We usually see moss as a colony either with or without stalks. The most persistent part of the life cycle is the one without a stalk - the "leafy" bit at the bottom of the one pictured. It's the gametophyte. All its cells are haploid, just 1 set of chromosomes, and it will make the sperm or egg cells. Fertilization results in a diploid structure called the sporophyte, the stalk with a bulbous capsule at the top. All of these cells have 2 sets of chromosomes. The capsule will make spores by meiosis. Those haploid spores disperse to grow new gametophytes!

#mossmonday ! Highlights from #moss lab a few weeks ago for Plant Anatomy. The students wander campus in search of 2 different types of moss. We use what they bring back to talk moss anatomy, life cycle, ecology, & 🌱 evolutionary history

My San Pedro cactus survived and thrived! When life gives you 3 feet of San Pedro cactus, you share it as littler plants! I love seeing the vascular ring get thicker and woody farther from the growing tip.

Cochineal scale on San Pedro cactus. Scale looks like multiple dots many with a red center surrounded by a cream-colored ring.

Two-foot tall San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi) in my windowsill.

My San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi) has scale... and it's so cool!

Likely cochineal scale, these insects cement themselves on the stem and vampire the sap. These suckers have been used to collect red pigment for a natural textile dye.

I'll gently clean them off my cactus now. 🌾🌱🌵

Thanks! It's been a perfect season for a good falling down joke😀

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You, too! It's going to be fluffy with lots of snow. I can add ☃️ to that list 😀

Icy pond leading to a snowy bank of trees. A snow-covered barn peaks through the trees.

Me laying spread-eagle on the icy pond. I didn't fall... hard.

Mike-also-likes...
... ice on the pond. First time in 9 years that it's been thick enough to walk on. #ice #ididn'tfallyoufell #pond #barn

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Door mat that reads "Hold on We're probably not wearing pants"

While true that Mike Likes Plants, Mike-is-ambivalent-to-pants.

Welcoming an optimistic 2026 full of gratitude for family, friends, and our farm.

Excellent! There are some small lichen on this roof, but they're hard to see in this picture.

Moss are great examples of the plant alternation of generations. Each tiny plant has only one set of chromosomes. Their microscopic sexy parts are at their tips.

Water splashes sperm from male tips onto female tips. After fertilization, the resulting cell divides and develops into a stalk with a capsule (absent today). The capsule will make spores that will germinate into the next generation of tiny plants.

Macro picture of a bright green colony of moss. This clump of tiny plants have their microscopic sexy parts at their tips. Water splashes sperm from male tips onto female tips. When these fuse, the resulting cell divides and develops into a stalk with a capsule (absent in this picture). The capsule will make spores that will germinate into the next generation of tiny plants.

Scattered tufts of green moss on black asphalt shingles of a shed roof. Perspective looking up the roof surface near shingle level. Each tuft is an island of individual moss plants in the gametophyte generation. That means each little plant started from a spore with one set of its chromosomes.

Islands of tiny moss colonies called to me this #mossmonday.

Each clump is an island of tiny plants that started from tiny spores. I wonder how related they are. Are the colonies cousins to one another? siblings? clones from chunks of earlier colonies? Each is possible.🌾🌱

That is wonderful! 🍻

#Humuluslupulus is dioecious, having a separate plant with male flowers from the plant that makes female flowers. It's the female flower you see above and that makes the bitter, interesting flavor molecules in the dusty yellow resin. How does a raw flower taste, you ask? BITTER! 😂

Flowers of the common hop, Humulus lupulus. Go ahead, say that one out loud for fun! Multiple green, cone-like flowers hanging down in the shade of their own leaves on a trellis. In the background, there is a bonus luffa fruit, long and green like a zucchini. Also in the background is an unopened, yellow luffa flower. We grown hops as a perennial on a trellis for shade. I happily harvest the little flowers for tea.

Close-up of a female hop flower with the yellow resin dusting the bottoms of the light green leaves. These flowers contain many secondary metabolites that give beer its bitter flavor. Different cultivars contribute other flavors, some more citrus while others a bit more funky. Some cultivars smell a bit like Cannabis sativa, which is also in the same plant family. This is the H. lupulus cultivar 'Nugget'. It grows well in NC.

A white bowl of light green hops flowers like a bowl of very soft, green pine cones... of the Grinch with his hair brushed up into points. I'm too lazy to brew beer, but I will use these to make a relaxing tea in the evening.

Humulus lupulus! Expto patronum! Shazam!

I love the scientific name for #hops. I harvested these back in September, but the pointy green hop flowers remind me of the Grinch today. Their alpha acids flavor and preserve beer. But I'll make sleepy tea from these. #smallfarmlife 🌱

Homer, an undergraduate research in my lab, working under sterile conditions in a laminar flow hood. When working with plant-microbe interactions, you want to control the kind of microbes you're working with. This means surface sterilizing seeds, pots, and deep sterilizing soil.

Here, Homer is placing his pots in a growth chamber so he can control light, temperature, and humidity as his cotton plants growth and an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) colonizes the cotton roots.

After the first replication, he's seeing subtle differences between this plants with AMF and plants without AMF as they are challenged by another treatment. The plants he expects to look nice are a lovely green.

While most students are looking forward to winter break, my #undergraduateresearch student is eager to take one more week of data. Homer Drexel Short's enthusiasm and curiosity are inspiring. He's testing connections between cotton and a fungi friend found in the soil. #gossypiumhirsutum

I'm glad you asked! These are a singled-celled eukaryotes in the genus Tetrahymena. They move by beating hair-like cilia. We used them as a model for gobbling up solid particles of black dye. You can measure how quickly they make internal dyed food vacuoles!

Yes! I'm scoping out places on my school's campus to do the same 😀

Asimina triloba are river trees that grow in largely in clonal stands in the wild. Growers have released cultivars selected for flavor, larger fruit, and smaller seeds. These are propagated by grafting scion wood to seed-grown root stock.

Book cover of Pawpaw: In search of America's forgotten fruit by Andrew Moore. Pawpaws are known by various names in different states, but I like Indiana banana the best. They are a native fruit to North America. Fist sized fruit have green skin and creamy-to-yellow pulp. Sweet tasting, sticky, and tropical in flavor.

A cluster of pawpaws on one of my trees.

Three ripe pawpaws balanced precariously in one hand - together these fruit dwarf my big dude hands.

Ripe pawpaw cut in half to reveal the creamy-yellow, sweet, custard-like pulp. They were ripe in August, and I can't wait for the harvest next year.

Finally finished #Pawpaw: In search of America's forgotten fruit. Love the connections of this North American native fruit to places and people - connections to #ethnobotany, #botany, and YUM. We got the first #Indianabanana on my farm this year! #Asiminatrioloba #smallfarmlife

Preach!

This speaks to my heart!

Gallon Ziploc bag of white corn kernels on a kitchen counter. A corn cob with kernels attached in the foreground. It's an heirloom cultivar called Hickory Cain.

Seems silly not to share a sample of the harvested corn. It's an heirloom cultivar named Hickory Cain.

A burned garden patch showing bits of blackened, charred wood over soil. Tiny green seedlings of an amaranth species and morning glory (Ipomea tricolor) rose from the ashes making a thin carpet of green a week after the fire. I didn't find any information in a lazy search connecting fire adaptation to either of these plants. They might have just taken advantage of the empty space.

A close-up of the heart-shaped cotyledons on the morning glory seedlings. If they look familiar to you farmer types out there, it may be because they look like sweet potato seedlings - they are in the same genus! That is, if you start your sweet potatoes from seed instead of slips. Hey, you do you! I love the distinctive leaf shape.

Corn seedlings 3 weeks after planting and hoeing the amaranth and morning glory seedlings between rows. Some of the rows still have the 'weed' within row. The corn was outpacing them, so I mostly left them.

Just shelled this year's flint #corn!

Now thinking back to the fire I set to burn the weeds (too lazy to hoe) and an amazing carpet of #morningglory and #amaranth seedlings that followed. A little hoeing ain't bad.

I'll grind, separate the #flintcorn into winter flour and grits
#smallfarmlife

Student: Are we going to do more labs like this? Because this was a lot of fun!

#cellbiology teaching win! My heart swells when students love a classic #tetrahymena feeding lab.

#undergraduateresearch

We grow a little every year. I love this hibiscus!

Corn smut is a fungus that grows on the ears of maize. It's largely been bred out of our commercial fields, but you can still find some here and there. It grows on several of the heirloom maize varieties I grow for flour... and I'm stoked when I find it! The fungus makes grey, smooth, and enlarged galls from the corn kernels. I love making huitlacoche soup from the immature fungus. Sadly, I'm too late. The galls have burst to release the black fungal spores. Better luck next year!

Hey... you wanna see some smut? #cornsmut! I love finding the immature fungus on my corn because it makes AMAZING #huitlacoche soup.

Too late for this one - the mature fungus burst black spores all over the top of this cob.

Large mossy rock along a sparkling creek from the perspective of sitting in the water.

Starting the week with peaceful thoughts as I look back on a refreshing dip in the creek this hot summer. #mossmonday #moss

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