Norm Douglas

We are hiring a tenure-track Plant Ecologist at the University of Florida! Please share with interested colleagues. explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/54...

This is very good news. ncbg.unc.edu/2026/08/31/u...

This is maddening esp. on top of what they're doing in Big Bend. The first wall is bad enough; an extra one behind it seems like a way to keep money flowing to contractors and flip a big middle finger to our national parks. I take a class to this exact spot for the unique biodiversity found here.

Crazy to feel an actual earthquake in Florida a few minutes ago.

Actual botanists don't feel like they need to lie to their neighbors about their jobs.

Camellia season.

This is probably a minor thing to fixate on in the whole mess of nonsense that was Jurassic World: Rebirth, but I can't get over the Dunkleosteus head pulled up by fisherman in the beginning. Where the hell did inGen or whoever get its DNA from? 🧵 1/

We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.

Thunderstorm got me trapped in my little greenhouse with two dogs and a beer.

Atala, Eumaeus atala, at Selby Botanical Garden in Sarasota. Larvae feed on cycads!

"If you don't know anything, you don't have a problem." Measuring biodiversity and ecosystem health is crucial to knowing how rapidly decline is taking place and if anything we are doing is helping to mitigate our impact. If this passes, we will be flying blindly into oblivion.

As a Norm, this is officially the end of an era.

I love this account.

That’s neat.

this is the way

iNat says this is Ammophila pictipennis. How does this waist make any sense?

NEW: DeSantis directed the University of Florida to cancel a nearly-complete search for its next dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — because the governor believed the finalists were not in alignment with the state's opposition to DEI

Merch for UF’s national championship, which was played in San Antonio, Texas. Whoever chose the background was absolutely trolling this botanist. Saguaro-itis strikes again.

Efficiency.

You can’t sell timber if no one is buying. This is like opening up drilling in the arctic. No one is bidding. Sure they’ll sell a little timber, but it will be taxpayer subsidized timber.

This is a bigger issue than people realize. Not just jobs lost. But their families losing benefits. Landlords losing tenants. Cities and towns losing revenue. This is how recessions start Ready Fire Aim is no way to govern.

Quote post with a picture you took in a National Park. Some UF Biology students who journeyed from Florida to study the biodiversity of the desert southwest- here completing an incredible hike of Arch Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. This class doesn’t happen w/o our public lands!

Hammock season.

The point is this: Scientists are accused of being partisan. I say embrace it. We're not lying for political reasons. We are defending science as a way of knowing, and as a humanitarian endeavor to help even those groups that are disenfranchised by people in power. If that's partisan so be it.

So it turns out that compared to centralized distribution of digital information on the web, printed material in libraries provided a kind of distributed defense against the casual whims of an authoritarian government aiming to rewrite history.

Imagine if you're a graduate student who knows they are funded on a federal grant, but doesn't understand the distinction between disbursed and undisbursed funds. You might reasonably think you won't get paid next week even if there is a year or more of your support in a university account already.

Phyllochrysa may have also been mimicking Selaginella, which was later identified from the Myanmar amber by Schmidt et al, 2022. This is a diagram I made for a blog in 2019, so it needs updating. Also, just a note: Myanmar amber is ethically horrible, and studies on it should no longer be supported.

For what it’s worth, North America has a native caffeine producing plant, Yaupon holly, a close relative of Yerba Mate. It grows abundantly as an understory tree in the southeast.

Hmm… I just realized sometimes they use Parafilm for bananas.

It’s early but Gators got the #1 team doubled up!

Final grades will be posted as soon as I’m able.

I’m sure I’m not the first to guess that the answer was 42.

Plant disease, hort folks: any recommendations for my kumquat and mandarin trees? (N. Fl). On the kumquat only older leaves are yellowing but on the mandarin, they seem to yellow shortly after reaching full size. Is this greening or just a nutrient issue?

I love the bark of live oaks, oh hey…

Joshua Tree National Park is looking for a new Vegetation Ecologist, a great chance to take on an important hands-on role in conservation of Mojave Desert plant communities 🌿

The US *already* has tariffs, import quotas, and subsidies that basically mean Americans have been paying ~ double the world price of sugar. Main beneficiaries are 3 sugar outfits in near the Everglades. Lots of ecological fallout, and also why we use so much corn syrup in this country.

My favourite botanical mistake is Lilium pensylvanicum, a species that occurs widely across boreal East Asia but isn't found in Pennsylvania, or indeed anywhere in North America, except as a later introduction.

Did you know that orchids have a big chunk of fungal mtDNA stuck in their own mitochondrial genomes?? In this new preprint, we found that fungal-derived tRNAs are functional in the orchid mitochondria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/4

Today is the first day of the season in Florida where it’s slightly cooler outside than inside, and I just saw someone walking a huge (panting) pit bull in a pink sweater and dog crocs.

Ch-ch-ch-chia, with pet. First time finding Salvia hispanica as a volunteer in the yard.

I can’t decide if this flower is blue or green!

Uh, what? That thing looks like it belongs in the Carboniferous.

An endangered Mexican gray wolf was found dead near Flagstaff last week. F2979, a female named "hope" embodied the dreams of full recovery. With USFWS & other orgs, we're offering $100k+ for information that leads to conviction for this senseless tragedy. READ: www.knau.org/knau-and-ari...

I'm so excited to announce that my department is now hiring TWO ECOLOGISTS at the Assistant Professor Level. We will be really excited to substantially expand research in ecology in our EEOB Department at UCR. Please Repost and share widely! aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF01983