Phil Garnock-Jones
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theobrominated.bsky.social
Phil Garnock-Jones
@theobrominated.bsky.social
2.1K followers 920 following 1.7K posts
Retired botanist, focusing on flower biology. 🐸🎸
My book "He Puāwai, a natural history of New Zealand flowers" (Auckland University Press, 2025) illustrated with >500 stereo pair photographs.
Whakatū, Aotearoa. orcid.org/0000-0002-2539-4152
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theobrominated.bsky.social
That seems ... absurd. Perhaps an image will work?
Text of the article. It's too long to paste into ALT, sorry. Text of the article. It's too long to paste into ALT, sorry.
November 11, 2025 at 2:10 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
iNaturalist's AI identification system is often surprisingly accurate, but yesterday its best IDs for this animal were (1) yellow-eyed penguin, (2) cattle, (3) dog, (4) horse. Biology, medicine, and agriculture would unravel without accurate taxonomy.
A little terrier dog. It is white with a brown head and a couple of large black patches on its body. It's wearing a red collar and standing on a lichen-encrusted rock.
November 10, 2025 at 11:09 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
#RemembranceDay
A bright red poppy flowerit has four glossy red petals, each with an elongated black but white-tipped spot at the base, black stamens with yellow pollen, and a central green ovary tipped with 11 radiating pink stigmas.
November 10, 2025 at 10:33 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Newly fledged welcome swallow not sure how to cope with the rain today at Ōkiwi Bay, Marlborough, New Zealand.
A little dark grey bird on a branch it’s paler underneath and has an orange patch under its sharp little beak.
November 10, 2025 at 9:28 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Change one letter, ruin a candy
Slack balls
Spherical candies with black and white stripes: black balls.
October 30, 2025 at 10:00 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
I hope the teachers know better.
Screen grab from the new New Zealand science curriculum that says (erroneously) that pollen is a kind of gamete.
October 29, 2025 at 12:24 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
I had measles as a five year old, on the ship coming to New Zealand. It was pretty mild, but it dicked around with my immune system for about 15–20 years. I had three months off school with rheumatic fever, and lots of skin infections and allergies. It could have been a lot worse. Please get vaxxed.
Two old B&W photos from the Evening Post of measles children being carried from the ship Ruahine in Wellington, 26 April 1955. There were about 30 of us and a fleet of ambulances took us to the old Fever Hospital on Mt Victoria, because the hotels wouldn't take us. The children are wrapped in blankets and carried by the ship's officers and nurses.
October 23, 2025 at 7:36 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Please don't do this. Critical public safety information must be accessible to everyone.
Website where Police and two district councils are putting critical emergency information about the Kaikoura fires on Facebook instead of a site that everyone can access.
October 22, 2025 at 1:06 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
PSA (Public Service Association/ public service announcement) from Te Kauae Kaimahi NZ Council of Trade Unions.
Thursday 23rd October is set be the largest day of strike action in New Zealand for decades. Let’s stand in solidarity with these workers. Over 100,000 union members from ASMS, PSA, NZNO, NZEI and PPTA are all taking strike action. These workers are doctors, primary and secondary teachers, nurses and allied health workers. They keep us healthy, they educate us, they support our society to function every day. Now, it’s our turn to support them. Here are some ways to show your solidarity with these workers: Join a rally. You can find a list of all events here. Note that some areas have had rallies cancelled due to weather. Post online. Share a video of why you’re standing with workers and use the #Oct23Strike hashtag. Talk to your friends, family, and colleagues: Say you support striking workers. You can talk about why you appreciate the work they do and believe they should get fair pay rises (not real term pay cuts). Be patient with disruption and explain to others that that’s an inevitability of a strike and how you know it’s working. Remind them, these workers aren’t just pushing for fair pay for themselves, they’re pushing for safe staffing and adequate investment in services that we all rely on. Join your union! You can see which union you can join here.
October 22, 2025 at 12:58 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Oh, you mean this? Good luck.
Current rain radar picture showing rain and possibly thunderstorms approaching Dunedin from the west.
October 19, 2025 at 11:02 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Thanks for the notice Paul. A hint of purple behind the cloud in Nelson.
Clouds and distant house lights with a slight purple glow in the night sky that might be an Aurora
October 18, 2025 at 8:15 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Peak dogwood in Nelson New Zealand right now. #spring #bloomscrolling #flower 🇳🇿🌱stereo pair magic eye, or use the viewer from my book
A small dogwood tree in full bloom. The blossoms are white, tinged with pink and they look like falling snow.
October 12, 2025 at 4:44 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Brown inflatable poo emoji costume with a smiiley face. The person inside it is pressing her finger under her nose.
October 12, 2025 at 1:24 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
I just saw this map in a travel news story about airline disruptions. I hope it’s not the one the pilots use.
A coloured map showing Australia and Asia. But all the Asian countries have wildly incorrect outlines, are in the wrong locations, and aren’t to scale. The labels look like writing but they’re not any alphabet I recognise.
October 4, 2025 at 9:29 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
All welcome at my book's launch: Unity Books Wellington 6 pm this Friday 10 October. Come and say hello.
Book launch invitation from Unity Books Willis St Wellington, for my book He Puāwai a natural history of New Zealand flowers. It shows the cover on a purple background with some stylised flowers.
October 4, 2025 at 1:10 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Aute or paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) has separate male and female plants. It's wind pollinated and its pollen causes allergies in some countries. These are male flowers, clustered on a stumpy catkin about 50 mm long.
A stalk with clustered small brownish male flowers a few mm across. Each flower has hairy sepals and four white stamens.
October 3, 2025 at 5:02 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
I much prefer this for actual phone calls, even though the dial is backwards.
A dial telephone.
October 2, 2025 at 1:12 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Us flag code saying it’s prohibited and disrespectful to turn the flag into clothing.
October 1, 2025 at 4:02 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Prostrate kōwhai, Sophora prostrata (Fabaceae). It's native to the drier parts of the South Island of New Zealand. Its flowers are smaller than the other native kōwhai.
A small hanging tubular flower in the pea family. Its calyx is globular, brown, and furry, with 5 tiny teeth. The standard and wings are orange and the keel lemon yellow. The style protrudes from the tip of the keel about 4 mm and the anthers are about to emerge. It has twiggy stems and small pinnate leaves.
September 29, 2025 at 10:06 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Agave attenuata. Bloody show-off. 🇳🇿🌱 #bloomscrolling
A tufted succulent with an enormous inflorescence that goes straight up about 3m, arches over, and bends down again almost the ground. The individual flowers are pale yellowish green with cream stamens. This is in a garden in Nelson, New Zealand.
September 27, 2025 at 10:18 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
5 minutes later.
Leafless tree with a bird. The background is grey cloud that has descended below 70 m elevation.
September 21, 2025 at 7:48 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Completely clagged in here in Whakatū but it does seem a bit darker than it should be. #eclipse.
A grassy hillside with houses, the hill tops covered in low cloud.
September 21, 2025 at 7:42 PM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Sweet violet (Viola odorata, Violaceae) flowering now in New Zealand. This is introduced; our native violets, like most of our Veronica and Myosotis, are white flowered.
A stereo pair of photos of a violet flower. It has five petals that are dark violet in colour, two facing up and three facing down. Behind the flower at the top, the tip of the nectar spur is visible. In the centre of the flower are two tufts of stiff hairs on either side of the orange cone of anther appendages, which direct pollen onto a visiting insect. The lower middle petal has a white patch at the base with radiating violet lines, nectar guides that probably help the pollinator find the tubular centre of the flower. To see in 3D, try making a hole to look through with your hands, so that your right eye can see only the left picture and your left eye can see only the right picture. Bring the hole quite close to your face and relax your eyes.
September 15, 2025 at 3:49 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Hutu (Ascarina lucida) is the first New Zealand native plant shown to have heterodichogamy (explained in ALT) and also the first report of it for Chloranthaceae. Most heterodichogamoous plants are wind pollinated and monoecious. Details in latest @ijpsjournal.bsky.social (see above post)
Two leafy shoots with (slightly) different-looking inflorescences. The leaves are bright green and toothed. On the left hand shoot the female flowers have presented their stigmas but the male flowers are still green. On the right hand shoot the male flowers' yellow anthers are about to dehisce. They stay like this for a few weeks, then pause flowering. When they flower again later in spring, the sex roles are reversed. This kind of dimorphic serial hermaphroditism is called heterodichogamy.
September 11, 2025 at 12:19 AM
theobrominated.bsky.social
Whauwhaupaku (Pseudopanax arboreus, Araliaceae) is flowering now. Most flowers are out of reach; my impression is the plants are hermaphrodites with bisexual flowers that develop their male parts well before their female parts. These are ♂ stage flowers (cross-eye stereo pairs). #bloomscrolling 🌱🇳🇿
A small green flower with five long stamens, five recurved petals, and two dark stumpy stigmas. To see in 3D, try making a hole to look through with your hands, so that your right eye can see only the left picture and your left eye can see only the right picture. Bring the hole quite close to your face and relax your eyes. A small green flower with five long stamens, five recurved petals, and two dark stumpy stigmas. To see in 3D, try making a hole to look through with your hands, so that your right eye can see only the left picture and your left eye can see only the right picture. Bring the hole quite close to your face and relax your eyes.
September 8, 2025 at 7:55 AM