Emily, Lioness, Cottonwoods, Trees, Etc.

This is my botany buddy, Emily, with a stuffed lioness. That lioness just hangs out in the hallway next to the refrigerator and a filing cabinet and a bear. I could only just bring myself to touch it with a fingertip, because it was too strange, too strange a dead thing.

This is what the cottonwood trees on campus are doing these days:

Aren't they beautiful? Just after I thought to take this picture, I took a shortcut through the chemistry building and was met, as always, by the oddly sweet, rotting cut flower smell of the business of chemistry being done. Those two things--the smell of the chemistry building, the cottonwoods' gold leaves--seem oddly equivalent to me.

And in botany this week, there was this disconcerting thing:

That is a wooden box filled with blocks of wood from forty-eight different tree species. Each block has a label attached that gives information about where you can find the tree, what its characteristics are, how much a dry cubic foot of each tree weighs, and suggested uses for the wood.



Turns out that Idaho white pine is good for matches, siding, knotty paneling, mouldings, millwork, wood carvings, etc.

You can learn something new everyday, if you choose.