Bluestocking! The Gerbical

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

Welcome to the Bluestocking, where gerbils dance & quokkas - well, no-one's quite sure what they're up to.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5169893-les-bas-bleus-the-bluestocking?page=1

Would you just prefer the bottle to be brought to the table?

Good idea. Then I can spend all evening boring everyone with details of how barley reproduces.

Ooh, fascinating. Do tell.

I'm serious, spill the beans barley

I'm not going to read about the cat.

Seeing this dear little rodent coming towards us with the tray on his head reminds me: I stumbled across a 1957 documentary film this weekend called 'Every Day Except Christmas', about the old Covent Garden fruit/veg/flower market. Quite gobsmacking to see everyone at work at a ferocious pace (lots of men carrying stuff on their head), & even more surprising to me was the fact that all the porters in the flower market had been women; by 1957 there was only one left - & there she was, carrying multiple long flower boxes on her head! There were also old women picking over the cheap flowers left at the end of the day, to sell them on street corners. Even in 1957 this was a bit passe, apparently.

Wind pollinated, like the rest of the grasses, so it's terribly promiscuous, spreading pollen around with gay abandon. I'm sure Kew could have a field day describing that in suitably anthropomorphic language. I always enjoy grossing out my younger students by asking how many have hay fever and then explaining they're allergic to plant sperm... 😂

I'd like to know about barley, please.

I've given up trying to get CP to make a picture to go with this. Utterly hopeless & Americanised.

Cross-posted because CP was WASTING MY TIME! What a git.

Thanks for the plant pron, @Magpiecomplex

Could you explain lichen, please? DH & I were walking through the woods today & it got mentioned & he said it was a fungus & a moss together, & wondered if it's a mix & match thing or fixed. I have no idea, as I seem to have missed science altogether somehow (apart from a physics O level).

What I find particularly interesting is that unlike us, where the male gametes are delivered close to where they need to be, in plants the pollen lands at the tip of the female organs and then has to tunnel its way through to the ovary to meet up with the ovum, which never moves. Then the tissues around the ovary sometimes get incorporated into the fruit - an apple, for example, is mostly receptacle tissue, not developed from the ovary.

Good question! I'm not completely au fait with lichens but I think it's a fixed thing, I don't think they play fast and loose with partners. Very cool little symbiotic organisms though, involved in rock weathering, which eventually makes soil. After a veeeeeeerrrry long time...

Well, that's put me off eating apples, thanks!

😂😂😂😂

I thought lichen was a fungi and an algae?

It is, I missed that bit

According to the British Lichen Society, a lichen is not a single organism; it is a stable symbiotic association between a fungus and algae and/or cyanobacteria.

Happy Electric Motor Day, by the way! An engineer friend has just informed me of the significance of today.

You're not on your own, my brain keeps reading Lord Reed as Lou Reed!

Between DH & me, our ignorance of lichen is vast.

Are electric motor cars included in the celebration?

I don't see why not!

I swerved this post as i was in a good mood at the time then realised it was Lord Reed.

LOL

He has to decided what the meaning of woman is as per the Equalities Act, legal interpretations are his job.

I am hopeful as the courts here in the UK have thus far been sensible.

'Holly came from Miami, FLA
Hitch-hiked her way across the USA
Plucked her eyebrows along the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she'

It is possible that Lou was singing about the past where they did things differently.

😂
Hope not - we know that for him, all a bloke would have to do was pluck his eyebrows on the way, shave his legs and then he was a she...

Cross-posted!

It should be noted that Lou Reed was actually singing about the soul-destroying life of trans prostitutes in New York.