orchid
bioephemera | December 26, 2009
Orchis Nodulosa
Kate Street
The delicacy of Kate Street's pencil drawings belie their sinister undertones: a garden of chimeric orchids flowering with skulls, intricate skeletons of birds perching on leaves, tuberous roots that are half heart and half honeycomb. Her installations, on the other hand, pull no punches. In Bird in the Hand II, disembodied hands clinically display the fragments of a dissected bird.
Street told London's Timeout.com,
My interest in nature is how we like to classify it and manicure it and make it perfect. I like Dutch still lifes of flowers and animals because…
grrlscientist | November 30, 2009tags: new species, biology, botany, orchid, tiniest orchid, Orchidaceae, Platystele, Lou Jost
A close-up of the world's smallest orchid, at just over 2mm from petal tip to petal tip.
Image: Lou Jost.
The world's smallest orchid was discovered recently in a mountainous nature reserve in Ecuador by American botanist Lou Jost. Dr. Jost, a former physicist, now works as a mathematical ecologist, plant biogeographer and conservation scientist, and is one of the world's most expert orchid hunters. In the previous decade, Dr. Jost discovered 60 new species of orchids and 10 other new plant…