Common Nature

I have made a resolution this year to, every week, take a picture of an organism that is either showing its mating display or carrying the next generation, and then identify the organism. (Actually, I've made this resolution every year for several years; this year I'm going to go actually post the results for once!) I'm calling it the Fecundity Project because I can't think of a better word that covers the mating habits of flowering and non-flowering plants, fungi, molds and micro-organisms, and whatever else I might stumble upon. This is modeled on urpban's 365 Urban Species Project from several years ago, only I'm not quite as amazing as he is, so my identifications will be more tentative - in particular, I'm not going to be fussy about getting the exact species identification as long as I have the genus and several common names. (I have a whole rant about the limited usefulness of Linnaean taxonomic species in many cases compared to folk taxonomies, but I will save it for later, I think.) Anyone who wants to join in - adding to or correcting mine, or with posts of your own - is more than welcome to, especially since mine will, by default, be focused on American and Western European common names.

Since it's late-early-spring where I live, I'll be starting with early spring flowering weeds; the hard late winter this year has everything starting up several weeks later than usual, so the first weeds are only just now blooming.


( Fecundity Project 1: Speedwell (Veronica) )