Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Fun With YouTube

Via Technorati, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to hang out, I see that plenty of people are tagging their YouTube submissions with "invasive species." Some of these videos are quite entertaining:

  • From rienchien, a video of a brown anole lizard and a gecko. Both in Florida, both non-native there, and one eating the other! Awesome! (Not safe for the squeamish)
  • LeafMaker put together a five minute educational video about Japanese knotweed in the Great Lakes region of the US. It's a little trippy with the music and roadside driving and all, and I love the title fonts he uses. The video is actually pretty good, though at one point he does stand next to already-past-flowering stalks of knotweed and claim that they are about to burst ito flower (I think that was actually hybrid Fallopia x bohemica too, but never mind...).
  • From kieranpearson, coqui frogs at UMass Boston. Yes, my school has a coqui infestation in the greenhouse. Yes, it annoys me, even though we're in Boston, MA. Yep, I'm worried about climate change too.
  • From gurdonark, an animation of epically painful proportions. Plant invasions start in the backyard, dontcha know? (Let me know if you can make it all the way through this one - there's actually an educational message at the end.)
  • From ReallyLee, a photo montage of 71 pampas grass plants, naturalized in El Granada, CA. I like this - it is an interesting idea, and quite powerful, to show the photos streamed together in a video. Also, be sure not to miss the sequel: 90 more pampas grass plants.

Update 4/15/07: This got a small mention in the Boston Globe, have fun hunting for the linkback :-).

5 comments:

Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener) said...

If I see this is any of my 1000 local Starbucks, I will ask them the same questions in person.

I'll also grab some samples, plant them, and see what comes up.

Jennifer Forman Orth said...

I planted one of my disks too (in a pot...inside) just to see what's in there. When I held the disk up to the light, I could see a lot of seeds.

Anonymous said...

To describe the youtube video from gurdonark as epically painful is an understatement.

Patrick B. said...

I love this compilation of YouTube videos - not some of the individual videos so much, but the fact that you posted links to them and that people are using YouTube for this kind of stuff.

Gurdonark said...

It *is* a catchy put-down--"epically painful". Thanks for the moment's amusement.

Of course, the notion that backyard invasives are an issue is not original to the crude cartoon on youtube.

http://www.nature.org/initiatives/invasivespecies/features/

But I'm glad to find your resource nonetheless.