Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Aquascaping is the craft of arranging aquatic plants, as well as rocks, stones, cavework, or driftwood, in an aesthetically pleasing manner within an aquarium—in effect, gardening under water. Aquascape designs include a number of distinct styles, including the gardenlike Dutch style and the Japanese-inspired nature style. Typically, an aquascape houses fish as well as plants, although it is possible to create an aquascape with plants only, or with rockwork or other hardscape and no plants.
Death traps that seduce insects, frogs and even mice with juicy-looking flesh and sweet nectar and then melt their bodies with acids, carnivorous plants are deceptively beautiful and totally fascinating to watch. Though some botanists once thought that carnivorous plants caught insects purely by accident, we now know that they evolved a taste for flesh often out of necessity, growing in places with nutrient-poor soil. These 7 types of carnivorous plants stand out for their unusual trapping mechanisms or bizarre eating habits, like one that happily consumes the droppings of small animals.
1) Mouse-Eating Pitcher Plants
Jug-like plants half-full of rainwater, acids and enzymes, pitcher plants secrete nectar along their rim to lure in prey – typically insects and the occasional amphibian. But sometimes, they have an appetite for food of a larger and meatier variety. A newly-discovered species named Nepenthes attenboroughii, named after the British naturalist and television host David Attenborough, has been known to eat not just little mice but also larger rats. Their pitchers can be as large as a football and are often found to contain giant centipedes and spiders up to four inches long.
2) The Beautiful and Deadly Sundew
Covered in dewdrops that sparkle in the sun, Drosera – commonly known as sundews – are beautiful ornamental plants. They’re also deadly, attracting insects with that ‘dew’ on the tips of their tentacles and then trapping them with the sticky mucilage, releasing enzymes to digest them. It can take up to fifteen minutes for the insect to die. The nutrient ‘soup’ that is left behind by the dissolved insect is then absorbed into the leaves of the plant. All species of sundew are able to move their tentacles , bending in toward the center of the leaf to bring the insect into contact with as many glands as possible.
3) Pitcher Plant Eats Shrew Poo
The Giant Montane Pitcher plant, Nepenthes rajah, is the largest meat-eating plant in the world. It’s big enough to trap rats – though it doesn’t do it very often. But there’s another taste it prefers to that of meat: poop. Specifically, the waste of the tree shrew.
When there aren’t enough bugs around, Nepenthes rajah is perfectly happy serving as a toilet for the tree shrew. It uses nectar to lure the shrews close and then collects their waste in its giant pitcher. Scientists believe that the plant’s pitcher has evolved to this perfect tree shrew toilet size specifically for the development of this strange symbiotic relationship.
4) Butterworts: The Flypaper Plant
Members of the genus Pinguicula have a special ability: trapping insects on the surface of their leaves just like flypaper, liquefying their prey and then absorbing it. Commonly known as ‘butterworts’, these plants form pretty stemless rosettes, sometimes growing a single blossom on a long stem. Many can cycle between being carnivorous and non-carnivorous depending on the season. These plants have specialized glands scattered across the surface of their succulent leaves that produce visible wet droplets, which draw in bugs like mosquitoes that are in search of water. For the unfortunate bug who chooses to land upon this little plant, struggling is not just futile, but counterproductive – it causes the insect’s body to come into contact with more sticky glands which trap it even further. Like the poo-eating pitcher plant, butterworts have learned to take what they can get: they also digest pollen that lands on their leaves.
5) Bladderworts: Deceptively Innocent
They look like ordinary aquatic plants, and even have lovely little yellow flowers that sprout forth above the surface of the water. But Utricularia – also known as bladderworts or bladder traps – have extremely sophisticated traps that can even pull in slippery, wriggly prey like tadpoles. Along its long stems, generally submerged in pond water or lying in damp boggy soil, bladderworts have little pouch-like traps which, when set, are under negative pressure relative to their environment. When their ‘trapdoor’ is triggered by potential prey, the water surrounding the trap is sucked in, and when full of water, the traps ‘close’. This trapping mechanism makes it possible to catch larger prey, slowly sucking in a tadpole by its tail and ingesting it bit by bit. Mosquito larvae, nematodes and water fleas are also common prey. Bladderworts grow all over the world in virtually any wet environment, and even sometimes grow in the damp bark on trees in South American rainforests.
6) The Cobra Lily
Typically found in streams or bogs fed by cold mountain water, the Cobra Lily (Darlingtonia californica) – also known as the California Pitcher Plant and the Cobra Plant – is a rare find, and difficult to cultivate. Its tubular leaves are arranged in such a way that from certain angles, the plant resembles a cobra about to strike, tongue and all. Unlike other pitcher plants, the Cobra Lily doesn’t collect rainwater in its pitcher. It actually regulates the amount of water by pulling water up out of the soil through its roots. Once an insect is lured inside, lubricating secretions and downward-pointing hairs prevent them from escaping, and translucent ‘exits’ that aren’t actually exits at all seem to taunt them in their final moments. Once the insect gets tired of trying to escape, it falls down into the water and drowns.
7) The Venus Flytrap
The star of the show – the carnivorous plant with the most dramatic meat-eating reflexes – is, of course, the Venus Flytrap. Beetles, spiders, ants and grasshoppers make up the majority of the Venus Flytrap’s prey; interestingly, a number of small holes on the plant’s surface allow small flying insects to escape because the nutrients they contain are not worth the energy expended in trapping them. When open, the trap’s lobes are convex, luring insects with juicy-looking pink flesh. When trigger hairs on the surface are stimulated, the trap clamps shut, forming a concave cavity, and as the insect or spider struggles, the lobes press together even tighter, sealing hermetically and forming a ‘stomach’ to digest the food. Venus flytraps have occasionally been known to eat larger prey such as frogs.
Those cool trees looks weird, the shapes which it took during the time. As you can see those trees had merged with some objects and now it presents a wonderful pictures, worth a thousands words. Take a look at those cool pictures of those cool and weird trees with objects which were owned by trees.
So, the picture above is a common sight of the yardlong beans being sold in fresh market in almost around the world. This beans really is quite a popular delicacy in some places such as my hometown which is Taiping. If you've never eat yard-long green beans, you're missing a real treat. I've been eating them since I was a child and never loathe with it. They are actually among the sweetest and most tender of the bean varieties. You can pick them, wash them, put them in a pot of boiling water and add some seasoning, and 10 minutes later serve them to your family. Yard-long green beans grow from 30 to 36 inches long but are best at about 12 inches. They are also call asparagus green beans or Chinese green beans.
Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis is a legume cultivated to be eaten as green pods. It is also known as the yardlong bean, bora, long-podded cowpea, asparagus bean, snake bean, Chinese long bean or Kacang Panjang if it's in Malaysia. Despite common name, the pods are actually only about half a yard long; the subspecies name sesquipedalis (one-and-a-half-foot-long) is a rather exact approximation of the pods' length.
This plant is of a different genus than the common bean. It is a vigorous climbing annual vine. The plant is subtropical/tropical and most widely grown in the warmer parts of South Asia, Southeastern Asia, Malaysia, and Southern China. It prefer hot and humid surroundings but some species can thrive in colder climate yet still sensitive to frost. A variety of the cowpea, it is grown primarily for its strikingly long (35-75 cm) immature pods and has uses very similar to that of the green bean. The many varieties of yardlong beans are usually distinguished by the different colors of their mature seeds. Some are cream colored while others are dark purple like a species that I've plant on my yard on following pictures.
Wrinkled mature beans which are no longer tasty to eat but suitable to be used as seeds supply. At this stage, you can actually see the seeds inside it when exposed to the sunlight.
Some newly collect 'Kacang panjang' seeds that I don't know exactly which species does it belongs.
Notice the difference between newly picked seeds on the left and dried seeds on the others.
The pods, which can begin to form just 60 days(or less based on climate and soil condition) after sowing, hang in groups of two or more. They are best for vegetable use if picked before they reach full maturity; however, overlooked pods can be used like dry beans in soups. When harvesting, it is important not to pick the buds which are above the beans; since the plant will set many more beans on the same stem. This plant takes longer time to reach maturity than bush beans; but once producing, the beans are quick-growing and daily checking/harvesting is often a necessity. The plants will produce beans until frost in 4 climate zone and continue throughout the year in tropical climate(with intensive care).
Four days after sowing in polystyrene cup.
After about 2 weeks, the plants are well-established and climb rapidly on that blue 'tali rafia'. In this picture, I've actually plant 2 individual plant in each hole for better bean produce.
Approximately 5-6weeks after sowing, I was impressed by the amount of 'kacang panjang' it produces but quite frustrated with pests invasion that happens occasionally(like in that pic).
Uses
The crisp, tender pods are eaten both fresh and cooked. They are at their best when young and slender. They are sometimes cut into short sections for cooking uses. As a West Indian dish it is often stir-fried with potatoes and shrimp. They are used in stir-fries in Chinese cuisine. In Malaysian cuisine they are often stir-fried with chillies and shrimp paste (sambal), used in cooked salads (kerabu) mix in curry dish or cooked in endless variation of recipes. Another popular and healthful option is to chop them into very short sections(like the picture below), then fry them in an omelette. maybe you can eat it raw just like I always did with rice and other side dishes. Sometimes, I prefer to eat it with dippings like budu, cencaluk or sambal belacan to add more flavour to it.
Chopped long beans ready to be cooked.
Nutrition
They are a good source of protein, vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, iron, phosphorus, and potassium, and a very good source for vitamin C, folate, magnesium, and manganese.
In a serving size of 100 grams of yardlong beans there are 47 calories, 0 grams of total fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 4 mg sodium (0% daily value), 8 grams of total carbohydrates (2% daily value), and 3 grams of protein (5% daily value). There is also 17% DV vitamin A, 2% DV iron, 31% DV vitamin C, and 5% DV calcium. (Percent daily values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. Individual daily values may be higher or lower depending on individual calorie needs.)
