[Fern_Blossom]

>Nature isn't kind to humans.

Nature isn't kind to anything. I completely agree with you, but that needs to be said better since the root concept here is how humans, but nothing else, has fallen out of line with nature. Bullshit. Yea, it's pretty to see a monarch butterfly and how peaceful it must be... except it's probably the lone survivor of its swarm after a flock of swallows decimated all the other butterflies it was with just 20 minutes ago. Animals and plants went extinct pre-humans. All. The. Time. They get slaughtered or diseased without us.

The only difference between humans and everything else, we as a species collectively said, "no" to nature ruling our lives. I mean, for fuck's sake, we're such assholes about it, we setup animal sanctuaries and clinics to rescue wild, injured animals. Any other form of nature would have called it "lunch".

I'm going onto a soapbox now. I blame modern animal/nature shows for this gradual misunderstanding of "nature". If you're old enough, you remember old school nature programs showed how metal, destructive and viscous wildlife actually IS. All the shows I see my nieces and nephews watch... they haven't watched footage of a bear tearing into a still kicking deer or wolves taking down a screaming baby bison or moose. They need to know if they see a bear, wolf, snake or cougar in real life, it's not going to be cuddly or do a song/dance number. It's going to fuck them up and they need to keep their distance. Going to stack one more soapbox for me to stand on... and this will get me flamed... koalas and pandas deserve to go extinct. Mono-food source creatures are asking for trouble and need to evolve to diversify their diet to properly outpace extinction.

[exo-pla-net]

The plant kingdom is almost entirely mono-food-sourced. They almost all rely on the sun, which, pending a nuclear winter, might indeed become a scarce resource. Do plants deserve to go instinct?

[Fern_Blossom]

You do realize plants are far more complex than that, right?

I mean, there's water, nutrients in the soil and the importance of mycelium in the dirt. Most plants you can throw in a dark closest for like a week or two easy, then take them out and they'll come back to life. Don't forget, ground level plants in a forest or jungle barely get shit for sun. I'm a cheap bastard that buys "dying" clearance plants from Lowes and Home Depot, then bring them back to life. My dumb redneck green thumb has a lot more respect for plants.

Shit, watch some wild bonsai collectors on youtube. They massacre small trees to bare wood, purposely put them in too small pots, under nourish them and the fuckers still grow.

Plants are no where near as fragile as a koala and panda. Hell, there was an oak tree on my parents property that was struck by lighting some ten some odd times in a five year period (Florida). We cut it down to a 2 or so foot stump since it seemed too dangerous to keep up with all the damage. Fucker started brand new shoots and refused to accept death. After 10 years from cutting, it grew three solid trunks about 10 feet high or so. A bit taller than a house, never measured it.

[monetus]

I've only been into mycology for a few years now, but I think oak forests may be somewhat rare in that regard. An oak tree is more like a whale, orchids are koalas.

[Fern_Blossom]

Orchids are my guilty pleasure. I'll say this, they die way too easy in Idaho (personal experience). Florida, not so much. In my buddy's neighborhood here, someone put orchids on an outdoor palm tree. Like, they just plopped them into the crevasses of the trunk. They grow and thrive just fine. You don't "water" orchids, you "humidify" them. They're jungle, swamp plants. Along with being slightly parasitic. They do grow best on wood matter than anything else (my experience). Moss and other crap is just too much of a pain in the ass. So yea, in the wrong environment, orchids are a goddamn nightmare to keep alive and honestly, not worth it. But for the most part, most plants in the "wrong" environment are a pain in the ass.

[monetus]

oh, I didn't expect you to have experience with them. kudos and shimmy. I know that there are plenty in greenhouses, but not having grown them I have been under the impression their fungal relationships are so misunderstood that there must not be many varieties in circulation. I know most are endangered in my area in the appalachias. If you'd ever like to grow an odd one and need help finding mycorrhizal fungi or substrate I could probably help. Orchids and and fungi together are akin to sophonophores in my mind, floating around the woods like a man of war waiting to sting the right tree.

[exo-pla-net]

Ah, so it's not mono-food-sourcing that makes a species deserving of death. It's fragility. So coral reefs deserve to die.

[Fern_Blossom]

And... what has happened in the past billion some odd years of life on this planet? If any organism does not adapt, especially due to fragility it... gets a participation trophy? There's no deserve. It's simply a fact of the circle of life. Why are you throwing morality at this? Is there morality in physics or math? No grandstanding will alter that reality. It's neither sad nor good. Just is.

[exo-pla-net]

"Going to stack one more soapbox for me to stand on... and this will get me flamed... koalas and pandas *deserve* to go extinct." -Fern_Blossom, 2 hours ago

"There's no *deserve*.... Why are you throwing morality at this?" -Fern_Blossom, current comment

This was an exercise in friendly ribbing. I think we should save the koalas and the pandas, if we can. We've destroyed enough already. And c'mon, they're cute.

[Juliate]

> The only difference between humans and everything else, we as a species collectively said, "no" to nature ruling our lives.

Indeed, it's not kind to anything.

However, even by saying "no" to nature, we're still transforming it (or it transforms itself through its parts, of which we are one type) and part of it; we're not extracting us or whatever from it, in the long term.