If you garden, I recommend you try tobacco. It’s such a beautiful plant. I grew some seeds provided by my tribe and the plants were wonderful, the smell, the blooms, just massive unique plants. It’s a shame it has caused so much death. It just wants to make nicotine to protect itself from insects.
>"Engaging in the illicit tobacco trade is a serious offence. It significantly deprives the Australian community of vital funding which could have otherwise been used to fund health, education and other essential community services."
Cestrum nocturnum for a humble looking shrub with small yellow whitish flowers and simple leaves that couldn't look more plain most of the year.
This thing will punch you in the nose at night with strong almond fragrance carried by the air at long distances. Is a Solanaceae also, so is wickedly toxic; and the Nicotiana like flowers, aren't so flamboyant as in Nicotiana, but without any of the legal problems that tobacco and easier to care for. Just keep cattle away from it and use it as background.
Funny enough, my glow in the dark petunias (a nightshade, same family as tobacco) from light.bio put me on a gardening kick. I’ve been looking for native species to throw in my yard.
I’m going to harvest seeds from some American bird's-foot trefoil from the seasonal streams in a field I’m checking tomorrow for work.
Certainly. They can’t even really compete with street lights, usually. (The brightness fluctuates)
I think the marketing material was highly inadvisable to put it kindly. Due to my experience with taking pictures outdoors, I’m familar with how cameras are close to nightvision (dusk can look like day) so I knew what I was getting and am pleased with them, but I think others were misled.
They are working on increasing brightness and different species, but it’s not gonna be easy. My understanding is that perceived brightness is logarithmic, so getting just twice the brightness may be a tall ask from plant metabolism and energy reserves. If they could limit glow to just the flowers or other specific parts, that’d be more viable for plant health.
Another issue is that the plant cells themselves trap and absorb much of the light. You’d need some kind of cellular microstructures like actual fireflies have that optimize emission (https://raog.ca/lightening-bugs-how-fireflies-inspired-leds/). My understanding is that they tested many species, and this variety petunia had the best performance thus far. Some people have grown crossbred seed, and it’s possible that the resulting higher amounts of chlorophyll result in a somewhat darker plant.
As an aside, firefly petunias seem particularly susceptible to fasciation, with occasional flowers with double petals, and mutant ribbon stems. I’m curious if this variety was already like that, or if the genetic manipulation was a factor.
Another aside, if you want something that’s impressively bright (though only for a second), consider dinoflagellates. A bit easier to care for than these petunias: https://pyrofarms.com/
another interesting note is that a much larger leaved purple petunia has come up in the same pot they are in and i have absolutely no idea how it got there. it doesnt glow so perhaps it was accidentally included in the original plants dirt
I am always flabbergasted by these articles. They put so much effort in writing a good article and then not make the effort of adding a single relevant picture too it. I don't get it.
Or is it by choice? as in, this is a text only publication etc. I could understand that i guess
Quite aside from the fact that the author thoroughly describes the experience as one which images on a screen can't convey, that kind of photo would be a serious project in its own right to make. Difficult low-light conditions where no light can be added, and an event of a few seconds' duration that occurs once every 24 hours - those are more challenging circumstances than any under which I've ever shot, and I shoot wild and lively wasps in 1:1 macro from six inches away.
A professional photographer would likely be able to approach the task with more aplomb than I, of course. But it seems unlikely the writer is also one of those; most writers aren't. So now we need a second person on the story. That's a lot more expensive, and given the demands of the project maybe also difficult to find one who'll take it and who you can count on. It adds a lot of complexity to the project if you try to do that.
And even for a pro, actually getting the shot is going to be enough of a production that the writer will probably talk about it some in the text. So now people on social media are going to complain about that, because somebody always will, about anything. (Cf. this thread.)
And for what? Either a frozen instant, probably noisy, that doesn't convey the magic of the moment, or an again probably hard-to-make-out video that - again as suggested in the article - would look just like a timelapse, or like a bad timelapse. So now people on social media are complaining you used AI. Because somebody always will. And it still doesn't convey the moment.
When a writer explains that no imagery is included because it could only disappoint, you should respect that. Instead the writer trusts the reader to be a human being, endowed with powers of imagination on at least some scale. There are times it does you good to use those. This is one.
It's by choice. They're flowering up (pun intended) something quite mundane. Marketers by another name these people.
It's the same game as youtubers. The first thing they say in a 30 minute video is "wait until the end to discovered this amazing secret". And so these authors say "what amazing beauty" and wax poetic, but we never even get the satisfaction of a picture. Thusly, as far as the article, TLDR.
There’s a place near where my parents live in Mexico that is experimenting with this stuff. Unfortunately, hasn’t seemed to reach southern Belgium! But then again, I’ve been trying to quit smoking.
https://imgur.com/a/MxPDX8a