Amusing link for the day

Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature

Apparently I discovered this a few years back, linked to it, and promptly forgot about it. Nice collection of some of the sillier, ruder, or weirder things taxonomists WILL come up with to name defenseless organisms. I think this is my favorite for the moment...

Amorphophallus (Araceae) The name means something like "misshapen penis" for the shape of the flowering part, or spadix. Various species include Amorphophallus elegans, A. elatus, A. excentricus, A. gigas, A. hottae, A. impressus, A. interruptus, A. maximus, A. minor, A. odoratus, A. pendulus, A. purpurascens, A. pygmaeus, A. rugosus, A. spectabilis, and A. titanum (at heights up to 8 ft., A. titanum has the world's largest inflorescence, and one of the stinkiest.)

I guess when you've got a genus name like that, a certain sort of species names do seem inevitable. (The Huntington has an A. titanum which bloomed awhile back and I went to see it. Whew... Just looked up A. impressus which may be smaller but still kinda fits its name.)

This is Not a Meteor Crater

In fact strictly speaking it doesn't appear to be a crater at all, but the remains of a large dome which has worn down so far as to reveal all sorts of nifty features. Leastwise, this is the current assumption since there are no signs of the sort of shock features you GET with meteoric craters, two of which can be found in a line with it.



It's located in Mauritania, Africa and called the Eye of the Sahara, or Richat Structure. This particular photo is but one of many from this page which I recommend looking at. My thanks to gifmovie on Tumbler for pointing this and a lot of other cool places out.