🍂MtBotany
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mtbotany.bsky.social
🍂MtBotany
@mtbotany.bsky.social
Botanizer. I'm not mad, just irresponsible. Also not a person made of plants or a killer robot pretending to be human, honest.

Wikipedia editor that writes about plants. Posting about plants 92.8% of the time. But I comment about other things.
Pinned
If you have a request for a plant (that is not a moss or algae) article, reply here or on my Wikipedia talk page. I will make an attempt on any plant species, genus, or family.

#Wikipedia #NativePlants #Botany
I continue to do... things. I had to delete BlueSky off my phone because I kept on looking at it in the middle of the night because I have the will power of a marzipan cookie and so now I only look at it when I power up my computer.

🧵
December 6, 2025 at 2:45 AM
Introduce yourself with 5 plants that you were exited to see:

European Mistletoe (Viscum album)
Twinflower (Linnaea borealis)
European Beech (Fagus sylvatica)
Penland Penstemon (Penstemon penlandii)
Colorado Columbine (Aquilegia coerulea)
December 3, 2025 at 9:42 PM
A close up of the same species atop Cottonwood Pass.
December 1, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Even though they bloom in the "heat" of an alpine July, the flowers above the tree line make me think of winter.

A disputed narcissus-flowered anemone that is a species named Anemonastrum zephyrum according to POWO, but a variety of Anemone narcissiflora in Flora of North America.

#Bloomscrolling
December 1, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:

Banded Woolly Bear (Pyrrharctia isabella)
Greater Short-Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma hernandesi)
Golden Northern Bumble Bee (Bombus fervidus)
Brown Bear (Ursus arctos)
Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:

New Zealand giraffe weevil
New Zealand red admiral butterfly
Leopard seal
Hector’s dolphin
Brown kiwi
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild:

Woolly mammoth
Woolly rhino
Cave lion
Steppe bison
Lena horse
December 1, 2025 at 4:02 AM
Escobaria vivipara oder Pelecyphora vivipara, ein Kaktus aus dem Westen Nordamerikas. Fotografiert im Juni in Colorado.
November 30, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by 🍂MtBotany
Hellebore in winter light, captured as a handheld in-camera focus stack.
November 15, 2025 at 5:22 PM
The German Wikipedia page on European holly (Ilex aquifolium) is so much better than the English language page. It even has more information about British and North American Christmas traditions than the English article.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C...
Europäische Stechpalme – Wikipedia
de.wikipedia.org
November 30, 2025 at 5:01 AM
The plant man imagery is perfect in The Green Knight. Plants are exactly the living things that get chopped off at the head and then shrug it off. "One—Year—Hence."

Though admittedly, they usually they don't ride off laughing afterwards.

—Plant Christmas—
a person holding a statue with a headless torso
Alt: The Green Knight's headless body holds up his head in both hands and then the head opens its eyes.
media.tenor.com
November 30, 2025 at 4:24 AM
A mountainside garden containing many species. To the west of Crested Butte in July. There are little pink elephants, paintbrush flowers, and even some of the not-terribly spectacular green orchids. #Bloomscrolling
November 25, 2025 at 2:34 AM
Every year I swear I'll do a better job documenting so I'll be sure which lupine flower I'm looking at, but no. Probably Lupinus caudatus, but I'm not 100% sure. It has the little spur, but lupines are hard. Photograph from June, Steamboat Lake State Park, Colorado #Bloomscrolling
November 23, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Okay, okay, I gotta break character for a story here folks. For the purposes of this story I am not some sort of plant monstrosity driving around an undead corpse. Instead imagine young child person living in rural Colorado in the Black Forest. (That's not relevant, I just like the name.)
🧵
Right? I fell off a horse as a kid, wiped out spectacularly, and thought that being sore after was The Worst Thing Ever. If I did that today, I’d be in traction.
November 22, 2025 at 3:46 AM
Has anyone got a picture of the adobe penstemon (Penstemon retrorsus) they would be willing to release under creative commons by attribution or by attribution share alike on #Wikipedia? It's either that or I'll have to try for a picture myself next year.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penstem...
Penstemon retrorsus - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 22, 2025 at 3:07 AM
Going through my photos from this past year. I'm quite confident this is meadow penstemon based on its growing in somewhat moist areas and seeing some other individuals closer to the road.

#Bloomscrolling
November 21, 2025 at 3:36 AM
An important research maxim is to only use books for their area of expertise.

Example: Don't trust a wildflower guide for biography, ethnobotany, etymology, or edibility.

At least until you see that the authors are not just repeating hearsay or half-remembered factoids.
November 19, 2025 at 4:23 PM
What happened was this. I was working on a plant named for Rydberg and made a link to his article. I saw he married and wondered if he had kids so I did a search on @archive.org

Oh, might as well add this info too. Was about his wife? Then suddenly it was after 2300. Bleh.
Okay MtBotany, stop researching Per Axel Rydberg and go to bed!

I swear I'm so easy to distract from minor things like sleep.
November 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Okay MtBotany, stop researching Per Axel Rydberg and go to bed!

I swear I'm so easy to distract from minor things like sleep.
November 19, 2025 at 6:07 AM
This is fun. I got a book in the mail from @naominovik.bsky.social

I'm over at the library starting it.
November 18, 2025 at 9:24 PM
What are my top 5 movie genres? In no particular order:

•Weird Dream (Green Knight, etc.)
•Gay Vampires (subtext or text)
•Sweet Animated (No downer ending)
•Grumpy but Nice Person (Up, etc.)
•Funny Misadventure (The Duke)
I don’t know if I have a top 5 movie genres but I definitely have a favorite and it’s:

- group of strangers are put into/wake up in an enclosed space they can’t leave and have to Figure It Out while also learning if the others are friends or enemies
What are your top 5 movie genres? Mine are:

-Two girls bond over evil
-Art drives people insane
-Australia is weird
-Everybody who died shows up at the end as ghosts and makes you cry
-Repo Man
November 16, 2025 at 11:01 PM
This is why I go to the original source when possible! There was cultural information from an ethnobotany website cited in Wikipedia on the blue spruce article. Going to the original sources I got much more detail and an item missed on the website.

Yay research!
November 16, 2025 at 10:24 PM
I so love black and white line drawings of plants. When I come across one in a scan of an out of copyright book I delight in adding them to Wikipedia.

Little pink elephant (Pedicularis groenlandica) from a 1909 book on the wildflowers of Colorado.
November 16, 2025 at 4:48 PM
This is what I want from a calendar. Celebration of seasonal plants and a few animals...

Mostly plants.
Today is Sextidi the 26th of Brumaire in the year 234.
Brumaire is the month of mist.
Today we celebrate pistachios.#JacobinDay

More information on pistachios
November 16, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Another week, another penstemon.

Grand Mesa penstemon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penstem...
Penstemon mensarum - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 15, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Christmas Day is coming. Will you be ready to celebrate with MtBotany?
November 15, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Okay MtBotany, you are already working on two big important article rewrites. Don't add a third. Finish up what you are working on first. The common sunflower can wait.
November 14, 2025 at 3:00 PM