Berry Go Round #44

Welcome to the September edition of Berry Go Round, the blog carnival devoted to posts about plants. My blog might seem like an unusual choice for hosting a carnival based on plants. After all, this is nominally a birding blog, and I rarely write about plants. However, plants ought to be of interest to birders since they are necessary for the life of birds. Fruit trees feed many bird species in the autumn and winter, and herbaceous plants set seeds that birds eat through much of the year. Most birds eat insects at some point in their lives, and many of those insects also depend on plants for food in their larval or adult stages. That leaves aside such benefits nesting locations and materials and shelter from the heat of summer or cold of winter.

Jessica Budke at Moss Plants and More reviews a study on moss reproduction in Hot off the Geothermal Presses and finds moss imagery on Postcards.

At Reading History in the Green spaces of Berlin, common sea-buckthorn is suggested as a resource for foragers in Sea-buckthorn: suncreen for astronauts and superfruit for all!

Marc Cadotte at The EEB and flow summarizes talks presented at the recent Journal of Ecology Centenary symposium in BES day 2: Plants, plants and way more plants.

The Phytofactor offers Don't drink water - green Lake Erie edition, which advises against drinking from a water body that is full of algae due to its toxicity. (Algae was historically associated with plants, but it is no longer considered a plant.)

Finally, for my contribution, I wrote a post on White Snakeroot, a plant with a poor reputation that provides food for numerous insects in S is for Snakeroot. A few days after I wrote that post, Common Yellowthroats started showing up to pick insects off the snakeroot stems.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the September edition of Berry Go Round! Next month's edition will be hosted at Slugyard. Submit links for next month's edition through the Berry Go Round website.