Ooooh, fascinating!

Haha So True!

If you don’t mind sharing, please do!

I looked a bit more into it and discovered that some people do use UV lights for inducing stress responses on plants. Most of what I found is from cannabis growing communities that make use of the UV light to increase the potency of the plant. I don’t know how effective that is, but that did signal to me that some shops might sell UV lamps as grow lamps.

An example of a specific lamp I could find is the MIGRO UVB 310. If you follow that link and look through the images you will see that the bulb is clearly labeled with “UV BOOST”.

These lamps are meant to be used as supplemental inputs to stress the plant. It is not very likely that you ended up with such a lamp by mistake as it is still a niche type application. But it is good that you are making sure.

Does the bulb have some model written on it? If you tell us the specific model we may be able to find the properties of that light.

There is a good chance that you do not have a “UV lamp” but instead a purple grow light that does not emit a lot of UV. The purple grow lights have an emission that is tuned to the regions of the spectrum for which green plants absorb the most light - so, the lamp emits mostly in the blue and red, which is why they look purple. There is no need to worry about that light, it is perfectly safe.

If you do have a UV lamp and are using that lamp for a plant: Then we really do need more information to estimate the level of risk. Chances are that, if that UV lamp is harmful to you, it is also harmful to the plant, and it is better to swap it for some other type of lamp.

It is not very likely that you are using a one of the more dangerous UV lights - like a mercury-vapor lamp with a quartz bulb - which will produce smelly ozone and can burn your eyes if you stare at them. Those lamps tend to be specialized items that you are unlikely to end up with by mistake. More common lamps would be the blacklights with common variants that produce 365 nm or 395 nm light. Continuous direct exposure of moderately intense 365 nm carries a low risk inducing skin cancer and is better to avoid. 395 nm is relatively safe but I would still not want to expose my skin continuously to it as it may still cause oxidative stress to the skin. These are used ornamentally for making things glow, but they are not the best choice for plants.

Very cool!! My opinion is that it is a thin gila monster

I found another image of a Gila monster with a similar color pattern - with the small black dots inside hexagonal orange patches: https://btarboretum.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20230410_102910-1536x1536.jpg

Certainly a fun fact 😄 Reminds me of the painful sandspurs that stick one’s feet while walking through the beach.

Good question. The green pigment is biliverdin, which is a product of the breakdown of heme. But more specifically I am not quite sure, I’ll have a look.

I have found this open access article from 2020:Taboada, Carlos, et al. “Multiple origins of green coloration in frogs mediated by a novel biliverdin-binding serpin.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.31 (2020): 18574-18581.

This article goes into more specificity about the protein that binds the pigment and allows it to become concentrated inside of the body and bones. In this article they point out that green is a difficult pigment to make using vertebrate biochemistry. Multiple frogs have evolved in parallel this mechanism to sequester the green biliverdin within the body, develop a translucent skin, and become green this way (for camouflage).

However, the common milk frog is not very green. It could be that the biliverdin-binding protein is a trait that is derived from an ancestor and is now vestigial. In the cited article, near the end, they do include a section “Other BBSs Functions”. In this section they point out that some frogs with green bones do not look green, and suggest that the protein could be involved in inflammation pathways and behave as an anti-oxidant. But nothing conclusive.

I quickly skimmed for other recent papers but I can’t find anything conclusive.

Careful. Big Taxa doesn’t mess around.

Thank you very much!

Hey, thanks a lot! I agree with your assessment.

I spent some time looking through pictures and these Verticillium photos were the best matches I could find:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Conidiophore-bearing-conidia-heads-A-and-microsclerotia-B-of-Verticillium-dahliae_fig1_228109106

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/tomatoverticilliumwilt-190413061822/85/Tomato-verticillium-wilt-8-320.jpg

http://ephytia.inra.fr/en/I/7133/Verticillium481

But that Acremonium certainly looks like an even better match. And you are completely right in pointing out that the arrangement seen in my image is irregular whereas the Verticillium images show a more regular symmetric relationship between the condiogenous cells (term of the day for me).

We are a thriving amphibian community

I am very happy you enjoyed it! Thanks :)

Awesome work! Upgraded. Thank you!! 😄

I think that the videos on ginger and turmeric from “Self Suficient Me” have valuable information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE32IxRIgow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFHQir72ams

I have experience growing small plants of ginger, turmeric, and galangal in pots - if I bury the store-bought pieces in soil mix I get young plants with no problem. Unfortunately my luck ends there, because I don’t have the space nor access to the weather to grow large healthy plants, and eventually they do stall when winter comes.

Here are some that come to my mind: Epazote, ramsons, nopal, chaya, sour orange, turmeric, many gingers, galangal, Sichuan pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, mamey, black sapote, guaya (Melicoccus bijugatus), jícama

Hahahahaha

Aah, congratz!! :D

Beautiful!

What does “rebloom” mean? Did it bloom twice in one year?

Aaah, got it now 🤣

I’m happy to hear that! It is not so easy to rescue weakened wild animals, so you must have done a very good job in getting the conditions right 👍