Lena Struwe

This is very funny, even more so when you realize that it shows 15 yards between 40 and 50 yards, etc. :) So, next question, was it intentionally math-challenging or was it AI who can't count in images?

This is exciting! - #botany #undergrads #internship #summer2026

A flowering head of Rudbeckia hirta, showing yellow ray flowers with a dark basal dot, and a center disk with brown disk flowers. Surrounded by green foliage and additional yellow flowers.

I think the world needs some flowers today, for so many reasons. Soothing, exciting, interesting…any reason. Rudbeckia hirta, in New Jersey, USA, last summer. #botany #gardening #flowers #nature #photography

Please don’t make jokes about Trump and Epstein.

The survivors are still waiting for justice.

They were children who experienced unspeakable horrors and abuse.

They’ve been ignored, gaslit, threatened and re-traumatized.

It’s not a joke and every predator must be punished.

PS. All our classes were a set mandatory list for the first 2.5 years… bio-geo track at Stockholm University, so not your usual liberal arts electives :(

tell me 5 classes you took in university:

1. Marine biology
2. Geomorphology
3. Cultivated plants
4. Mycology
5. Arctic botany

Pretti Good reason for a national strike.
#NationalStrike

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence.

"I felt an enormous compassion for her in that experience."

I love them. I think we need fun, cute, and a little silly, despite it all, especially despite it all...

Photo through a dissection scope showing a few branches of a small moss with tiny, ovate and slightly cup-shaped leaves.

Tiny living green beings, all around us. This miniature world is so gorgeous. The leaves of this #moss from the base of a tree trunk are not even 0.5 mm long. I am still trying to ID it to species. #bryology #nature #moss-streak2026 #iNaturalist #microscopy

YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert "Labour" - Paris Paloma with the Resistance Revival Chorus (LIVE on The Late Show)

Paris Paloma performs the song that has become a cultural anthem for women's rights as well as a social media phenomenon.
youtu.be/4hyaYHqUSiY?...

Sunday thought: Even worse Friends,

I know it’s exhausting. I know you’re sick to death of Trump. I am, too. But as he revealed yesterday, there is no limit to what Trump will do to assert his power. Your activism, courage, and attention are needed now more than ever. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-thought-the-looting

Interesting thumbs-like toes on this marsupial.

I had to share these just because they are so cool-looking. #liverworts

And not only historians. Also biologists, like me.

Why Do Historians Still Have To Go To Archives? Why do historians go to archives? Hasn’t everything already been digitized?

Seems like it's worth posting this one again.

This is also so true for #biodiversity natural history collections. We are digitizing but there are so much left to do! 23 million invertebrate specimens at #AMNH in NYC, for example. And the paper archives, old taxonomic work, indexing to it all. Maps, drawings. Treasure troves not online.

I would have guessed Malvaceae. It doesn’t look like Portulaca to me. (I am not sure what ’bog’ purslane is.

Sunshine breaking through low clouds over islands and sea along the coast of Sweden, on Dec 21, the solstice.

Solstice on Sweden’s West Coast today, finally the light is turning. A calm Atlantic sea, water mirroring clouds and light in Skärhamn in Bohuslän, Sweden. Own photo.

Exacum affine (Persian violet), is native to Socotra and Oman - far away from where it is not cultivated and sold. As a house plant it often gets root rot, unfortunately. It is a gorgeous little flower.

That is amazing! Like a tiny art sculpture.

Photo of an upright stalk bearing whorls of bracts and flowers. The flowers hang down and have 4 lobes. Each lobe has a green spot (a nectary) near its base. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Frasera is a genus of 15 spp in N. America. In 2024, a 19-year-old plant of F. caroliniensis growing in the NC Bot. Garden bloomed for the first & last time. This species is monocarpic (it flowers & dies). The peculiar greenish flowers have nectaries on the petals. #Gentianaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Cluster of showy, 5-lobed, pink flowers with green eyes. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

Cluster of showy, 5-lobed, pink flowers with yellow eyes. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.

The species of Sabatia (21 spp; 📷: S. angularis) are some of the prettiest wildflowers in the eastern US, Mexico & the Antilles. The similar-looking Zeltnera (27 spp; 📷: Z. venusta) occurs in western N. America but has a much wider distribution (to S. Amer.) #Gentianaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱

Majority of local insect biomass decline linked to species loss A new study shows that over 90% of insect biomass declines are driven by shrinking species numbers, posing a risk to ecosystem function.

www.idiv.de/majority-of-...

The top bracts kind of look like two coins, very rounded. Just an idea.

Great! If you want ideas - Anthocleista and Potalia with super-numerous corollas. Fagraea auriculata for the largest flowers. Voyrias as achlorophyllous understory mycotrophs. Symbolanthus for gorgeousness :) (Working on a revision for the final half of Symbolanthus, ring-gentians, right now)

Thanks for highlighting this gorgeous and interesting family. The blue species are nearly all in temperate environments. Tropical ones have many other flower colors, and some are very tall trees (Fagraea for example). Largest flower 30 cm across!

Maybe it is mm-grid paper below?

Size?

A diner table seen from above with metal containers for salt, pepper, sugar, teawater and milk, plus sugar packets and orange juice in glasses. Photo by CC Lena Struwe

A reminder that breakfast can be good and beautiful and fun. :) Philadelphia, years ago, a table from above. #diner #food #photography #orange