Change the World Wednesday – 4th Jun

This year is really rattling along; June already!

Two CTWWs ago we talked about junk mail. I found this comparison a couple of days ago, it tells a story.

In the interests of conservation and saving paper, why can’t the government pass the same laws for your street or post office mailbox?

Last week’s CTWW, it turns out my milkweed isn’t, but I will keep looking. The story doesn’t end there.

We have a saying here in Brazil. “O Brasileiro não desiste, nunca!” The Brazilian doesn’t give up, ever!

Very applicable, especially with the FIFA World Cup only eight days from kick off.

While I am not Brazilian, I have embraced many Brazilian ideas. My friends say that I am quase (nearly) Brazilian.

So, I’ll keep looking for milkweed.

I just love butterflies, especially the regal looking Monarchs.

Some butterflies I encountered in Bolivia

I saw many more, and I have just realised that most of my travel photos are locked in my old hard drive. I couldn’t find the butterfly that I was looking for.

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On with this week’s CTWW.

Yes, here in Brazil we are at the end of autumn and the weather is definitely cooler than our 40ºC+ days of summer.

This week, plant something edible. Plant in a garden, raised bed, a container, etc. If you don’t have space outside, consider herbs or lettuce in a small pot placed in a kitchen window. Try placing some seed potatoes in the ground (dig a small hole and drop them in) … then sit back and watch them grow. If you’re moving into autumn, consider planting a fruit tree or perhaps a nut tree. The idea this week is to plant food.

 

OR …

If growing food just isn’t going to work for you, please offer other ideas for enjoying local, organic produce.

I am always planting something edible. Not specifically this week, but for me it is an ongoing process.

Usually the plants that find their way into my paint tins are self grown from scraps in the compost heap.

Orange seedlings sharing the tin with a tomato plant

Like the orange seedling above. I just noticed a second seedling has sprouted on the left, this week I will transplant it (my CTWW for the week) into its own tin.

My passion fruit vines have stalled for the winter, but they are well established and in the summer will spread all over, hopeful with a bumper crop of passion fruit.

It appears too late for my tomatoes to come to anything

But plenty more seedlings will sprout between now and then.

The parsley I planted last year, is now well established. I have two pots outside the kitchen door and it features in many dishes.

Curley Parsley

The parsley are the only seeds that I have bought.

Sadly, the attempts to grow pineapples from cut crowns has faltered. They got to the size of golf balls and ripened then rotted.

The goiabeiras (guava trees) have fruit, one for the second time; but they too have gone to sleep for the autumn. I have great hopes for them in the spring and summer months. The same for my acerola (West Indian Cherry), it hasn’t begun to flower yet, but I feel it will in the coming season. Acerola are great mixed with orange juice, but you do need sugar, they are mouth-puckering sour. While they are the size and shape of a cherry, they are not at all cherry-like in taste, but have an incredibly high Vitamin C content.

This week I will turn over the compost heap, who knows what treasures I will find sprouting within?

That about does my garden update.

Make you Fink on Friday

Reblogged from: Perspectives on life, universe and everything

Funeral of the last butterfly

I was invited
to the funeral
of the last butterfly
All the birds were there
Insects made a wreath
Queen bee sung a melancholy
Grief too great to bear
Colours already left
Now the last butterfly gone
Everyone felt so lonely
Earthlings were alone
Far away in the sky
a thunder cloud
lightning strike,
a Phoenix flew in
Tears in its eyes,
sprayed on butterfly wings
Butterfly come to life
In all our hearts
Light of her soul
removed despair
Humanity wake up
When would you care
Planet is for all
We have to share
Might won’t work
win if we dare
Extinction of plants
Insects, animals all admire
Greenery in gardens
Fields and shire
Everything could go
If we don’t spare
Consume less,
Don’t scare
Nature, heavens
Water, our own air
Wind may blow
So does rain
Last butterfly
may flutter again
I wish, hope and pray

—o0o—

Nature Ramble

This week we have a look at the beauty of the world’s largest butterfly and learn about its impending doom as a result of the palm oil industry.

To lose such beauty would be nothing short of criminal

World’s largest butterfly disappearing from Papua New Guinea rainforests

Rare Queen Alexandra’s birdwing is losing habitat to logging and oil palm plantation

Queen Alexandra’s birdwing butterflies are already on the endangered species list, and rapidly losing their rainforest habitat. Photograph: Mark Stratton

How large does a butterfly have to be before anybody notices it is disappearing? In the case of Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Queen Alexandra’s birdwing, the answer is enormous.

The world’s largest butterfly boasts a 1ft (30cm) wingspan – imagine the width of a school ruler – yet few outsiders in its rainforest home in Oro province in northern PNG have ever seen it. It’s a scenario unlikely to improve as oil palm plantation and logging remorselessly devours this endangered butterfly’s habitat.

Edwardian naturalist Albert Meek first recorded it in 1906 on a collecting expedition to PNG. The fast-flying butterfly frequents high rainforest canopy so Meek resorted to blasting them down by shotgun. The Natural History Museum taxonomically allocated his buckshot-peppered specimens into the birdwing genus (a tropical grouping possessing super-elongated forewings) and named it after Edward VII’s wife.

Because of substantial sexual dimorphism it took some time to correlate males and females as the same species. The females are velvety-black with cream patches and bright yellow abdomens. They are almost one-third larger than the males, which are iridescently patterned gold, turquoise, green, and black.

It is not clearly understood why the butterfly grows so large but its lack of predators due to its unpalatable nature is certainly a factor.

Queen Alexandra’s eggs are laid on the poisonous leaves of a tropical pine-vine called aristolochia, found in Oro province’s rainforests. Emerging caterpillars feeding on aristolochia ingest its toxins throughout all stages of growth until they pupate into chrysalises. Red hairs on the emerged adult butterfly’s thorax warn predators that it remains highly toxic.

Their biggest threat, however, remains progressive habitat clearance. Queen Alexandra’s have lost much of their range across Oro province’s coastal plain and are now condensed into a small stronghold on a remote plateau called Managalas.

“Its habitat is being destroyed by oilpalm expansion and coffee and cocoa growing,” explained Eddie Malaisa, wildlife officer for Oro provincial government. “I’m very worried about this butterfly’s future because on the lower plains I know of only seven isolated blocks where it’s found but these are small patches of rainforest between 100-200 hectares surrounded by oil palm”.

Ironically, weakening regulation set up to protect them may be the butterfly’s best hope for survival.

Queen Alexandra’s are currently classified as an appendix 1 species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which prohibits their trade as specimens for overseas collectors. With no legal trade, an illegal black market keep the specimens in demand. In Winged Obsession: Chasing the Illegal Trade (2011), journalist Jessica Speart tells of a jailed butterfly trader who was offering pairs of Queen Alexandra’s illegally smuggled out of PNG for more than $8,500 (£5,400).

She estimated the global butterfly smuggling trade to be worth around $200m(£127m) each year.

Malaisa believes downgrading Queen Alexandra’s Cites status (to appendix 2) to allow a controlled limited trade would incentivise poor subsistence farmers to protect the butterfly’s habitat by allowing them to sell an agreed quota of specimens.

“What is worse? Legally trading a few butterflies or removing Queen Alexandra’s habitat forever,” asks Malaisa.

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Kids with a male (left) and female

Image credit: BocaAberta

Nature Ramble

A small collection of coloured insects…

How many of these have you seen?

Calotropis gigantea

Chilean King Cricket (Cratomelus sp.)

Four-lined plant bug (Poecilocapsus lineatus)

Iphiclides podalirius

Jewel beetle (Sternocera aequisignata)

England’s Milkweedbug (Oncopeltus fasciatus)

Real Red Jewel Beetle (Torynorrhina flammea)

Zygaena fausta Moth

You want to see more? Then visit here

Make you Fink on Friday

Butterflies!

We often see them, but do we ever think about them?

They’re crazy creatures, they don’t fly, they flutter; they flutter seemingly aimlessly and happen upon a flower more by chance than design.

Leaf Butterfly extinct in Singapore

Generally they are beautiful in their resplendent colours, like this Leaf butterfly (Kallima limborgii amplifura) from Singapore. In nature this one is extinct, but lucky to be bred still in local butterfly farms.

But…

.At a recent International conference of butterfly experts, it was confirmed that many butterfly species around the world are either endangered or extinct. – R.I.P. Maderian Large White

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No one really thinks that even butterflies can succumb to extinction. Extinction is not the exclusive domain of dinosaurs and white tigers. All species are subject to this indignity.

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Why do butterflies become extinct?

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The usual reason… man!

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Insecticides, agricultural practices, deforestation, loss of habitat, global warming. Many reasons, but generally they boil down to ‘man’.

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Then sometimes there is good news:

Rare UK butterflies ‘bounce back’

The grizzled skipper was one species that benefited from the weather conditions

Record-breaking temperatures and dry weather in spring has led to an increase in the numbers of many species of rare butterfly, a study suggests

The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and charity Butterfly Conservation said the weather had provided “perfect conditions” for “spring specialists”.

Their study was based on assessments of over 1,000 UK butterfly habitat sites.

Duke of Burgundy

Species that did particularly well included the Duke of Burgundy butterfly – listed as threatened in the UK.

Long-term, this species has declined by more than 40% in the last 30 years.

It found that the species bucked that declining trend between 2010 and 2011, increasing in numbers by 65%.

Spring butterflies fared particularly well: numbers of grizzled skipper rose by 96% and the pearl-bordered fritillary population leapt by 103%.

The much colder weather in the summer was, however, very bad news for more familiar garden species, including the peacock, small tortoiseshell and common blue.

The populations of all three of these species fell significantly.

Source: BBC News Read more