A 21st Century Wheel of the Year: Regeneration at Beltane — The Druids Garden

A druid walks upon a landscape, barren, cold, with trees cut and plants uprooted. Tears in her eyes, she surveys the damage that others have caused: the homes of so many animals disrupted after logging, the wild ramps and ginseng roots damaged, and the remains of the logged trees laying like skeletons on the earth.…
A 21st Century Wheel of the Year: Regeneration at Beltane — The Druids Garden

Vulcan Salute

Transitioning into Deeper Darkness: Seasonal Activities and the the Golden Hour

The Druid's Garden

Sun at sunset

As the light grows dim this time of year, as the days grow short, many people find this particular season a difficult one. Without the light, our thoughts can spiral into the darkness, our spirits long for the warmer days. The cold and dark are barely here, and there is so much winter ahead. Just this week, I had three separate conversations with friends about this exact issue: it is a hard time of year, particularly the time between Samhain and Yule, when we know there is much more darkness to come. It is a hard time this year, in particular, when so many of us are beyond stressed and burned out due to the unfolding events of the last two years. It also was a strange year, in that we had temperatures that stayed well above freezing, which kept the leaves green–and suddenly temperatures that plunged…

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History

Native American History

Our Minds Limit Science

Potemkin Nation — Potemkin Nation | Ecosophia

There are advantages to learning about history. One of the big ones is that patterns repeat themselves across historical time, and if you know what happened just before other societies went through the important inflection points in their life cycle, you can tolerably often figure out when one of those is abojut to happen in…
Potemkin Nation — Potemkin Nation | Ecosophia

Science is Dead

Secret Societies

These Male Trees Turn Female Even If It Kills Them

What goes on in a forest might be none of our business. Curious minds, however, always want to know.

In the lower canopy layers of Appalachian forests, a particular tree known as striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) does something that very few trees do.

It changes sex.

Males become females. Females become males.

In academic circles, this phenomenon is known as sequential hermaphroditism. Some plants do it when stakes are high. In the case of striped maple, males become females even if it kills them.

Why does this happen, and what else is known about sex changes in plants? In a brand new video, I introduce some important questions and wonder about them aloud.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out the brand new video!

This animal does not change sex but it does change the way people maneuver through the woods. I recently spotted a few timber rattlesnakes in a Pennsylvania forest. To see photographs and to read more about my encounters, check out the latest Instagram post!Click to view post

Thanks for reading and watching, and thanks for your continued support!

-Adam Haritan