unicorn-and-bluebells:

pipscillaneous:

haviptrsn:

my new favorite hobby is coming up with speculative anatomy for fictional aliens - i think it would be cool if Cardassians were a little more snake-like since their silhouette was meant to emulate a cobra, and also it would funny if cardassians had tongue-flicking and gaping behaviors like snakes and lizards do. only, they’d probably have a ton of weird etiquette rules and hang-ups about it, lol.

oh i love this! i was just speculating this last night!

i decided that cardassians also have tapita lucida which means their eyes glow in the dark when a light is shined on them (like a cat). apparently crocodiles, alligators, and caimans are some of the only reptiles who have this!

also, nictating membranes. i like the thought of garak sitting there with his weird semi-translucent extra eyelids closed and julian being like “aw he’s asleep!” and then garak talks to him and he about jumps out of his skin. though like the tongue flicking, having your eyelids closed like that is probably impolite and you wouldn’t do it in front of people.

did you know that crocodiles can apparently sleep with one eye open? for a species as structured around paranoia as the cardassians, I feel like this is a regular thing for them to do.

pleurodont dentition is a cool concept too! where they have a bunch of teeth that regularly fall out and regrow. molly o'brien loses her first tooth and is like “look, uncle garak!” and garak shows her one of his that he just lost and miles is like “…ew”

tl;dr: cardassians with glowing eyes, creepy eyelids, and 4 rows of teeth that fall out and regrow. i love aliens

Oh dude AWESOME addition!! Also I headcanon Klingons as having pleurodont dentition as well, so I’m really enjoying the idea of like. Garak babysitting Molly at some point (since he and Keiko are totally gardening buddies somehow) and she loses a tooth and Garak shows her one he lost, as above, and then a few weeks later when Worf’s babysitting her she loses another one and he (totally independent of Garak) does the same thing and Miles begins to wonder if it’s everyone else that’s weird or just him for thinking this is gross

Anyways I love the nictitating membrane idea lol, I keep giving nictitating membranes to like all the aliens but I feel like Cardassians in particular definitely have them

Also if anyone wants another fun Cardassian headcanon thing, I’ve been headcanoning their hair as being much more feathery (like you know the teeny wispy bits on ostrich or peacock tail feathers? I imagine one “Strand” of hair, for a Cardassian, as a reeeaaalllyy long wispy bit, complete with that super itty bitty flexible quill in the middle of it)

dangerbooze:

sailorofships:

fuckyeahwomenprotesting:

azzandra:

rookstheravens:

solluxismsnowaifu:

natashi-san:

reallifescomedyrelief:

viforcontrol:

beautifuloutlier:

gwydtheunusual:

zafojones:

Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.

Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. 
Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together. 

You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits.

Frankentrees.

As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.

On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.

But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:

[source]

I am both amazed and horrified of nature as we all should be

I love how trees are like “fuck it, I’ll deal” at literally everything. Forest fire? Cool, my seeds’ll finally grow. Upside down? Branches, suck, roots, leave. What’s this new branch? Eh, welcome to the tree buddy.

I need to be more like tree

I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.

what kind of professor did these students have that they needed to prove him wrong so badly that they literally dug up a tree, flipped it and put it back in the ground?

Sounds like y’all’ve never heard about the Tree of 40 Fruits. Well, it’s exactly as it sounds. Sam Van Aken, an artist based in New York, decided to try his hand at grafting (e.g. the process by which you attach the branches of a different tree to a host tree).

As artists are inclined to do he decided to push some limits and over the course of a few years he grafted over 40 different fruit onto the host “ including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.”

It has a fruiting period lasting from July to October and this is what it looks like when blossoming.

Shit’s tight yo.

Also we have a group called the Guerrilla Grafters. A group who started in San Fransisco with the goal of grafting fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same type.

Most cities have fruit trees that simply don’t produce fruit because having all these would be a mess and inadvertently providing unregulated food to people comes with a lot of legal risks I suppose. These grafters seem to think otherwise and have taken it upon themselves to try and bring fruit trees back to urban areas.

HOLY SHIT