fun fact, this is actually the one species i’ve gotten to see a bisected specimen of! our herbarium’s small isoetes collection had a few sent up from Peru in the 50s, and they’d been cut in the middle and pressed open to show the anatomy. i actually ended up using the digitization setup to take some Really High Def pictures of them (we are FAAARRR from having all of the stuff in my uni’s herbarium digitized. they just got done with the microfungi, i dont even think they’ve even started on the angiosperms, forget the Strange Lads in the lycophyte lockers….but then again funding is hard to come by for herbariums and all that). anyway, behold:
look at those leaf traces!!!
i love this specimen in particular because you can really see how their roots are actually fucked up leaves. like its one of those things where you don’t really think about it until you actually take a close look, and then you’re like ‘oh, yeah, that’s definitely Not How Normal Plants Look’. compare:
she…..she just made some tubes huh…..really just Did That and gave one some chlorophyll….
through the roots. as in this genus gets all their CO2 from the soil and it gives me an existential crisis every time i think about it
the statue in the bottom right is Le génie du mal, carved by guillame geefs to replace a different lucifer (known as either Le génie du mal or L’ange du mal) carved by his younger brother. why did joseph geefs’ lucifer get removed from the cathedral? it was too sexy. the statue was too sexy by far.
st. paul’s cathedral in liége went from one lucifer, whom they called ‘too sublime’ and removed because he was distracting ‘pretty penitent girls,’ to another lucifer, who they’ve left there for 170 years even though he’s so hot that satanists visit the cathedral to meditate in the presence of this Most Sexy Of Lucifers
here’s how i imagine that went down.
liege cathedral: hmm. you know what we need? a nice satan for our church. let’s ask joey geefs
joseph geefs: sculpts this
liege cathedral: no!! too hot!! now we all want to fuck lucifer! we need a different satan. let’s ask… the sexy lucifer sculptor’s BROTHER. yes. willy geefs is older so he definitely doesn’t want to fuck lucifer
guillaume geefs, who DOES want to fuck lucifer, and the only sign of his being older than his brother is that the lucifer he wants to fuck is somewhat older: sculpts this
liege cathedral: shit. well we don’t have any more money for lucifers so i guess we’ll keep this sexy lucifer
mlm, straight girls, and satanists in the vicinity of liege: NICE
a moment of silence please because today is the day lily, james and harry potter crashed their car into a crocodile which ate harrys parents and then took out a knife and gave him a lightning bolt scar. This is such a tragic day for eveyone around the world
rip tumblr 