Wednesday Links

Linda Chalker-Scott at The Garden Professors rips to shreds the recently talked about (including, I'm a little embarrassed to admit, right here on my blog) paper about water droplets on sunny days causing leaf burn. The take home message is that watering on sunny days almost certainly doesn't harm anything. But go read it! Watching a good scientist tear apart lousy research is one of the best spectator sports ever! (Oh, sorry -- is my nerd showing?)


Another episode of: Plant breeders making plants uglier! This week: Proliferated roses as a cut flower. Ugh. I found this link on a comment thread over on the Rose hybridizers Association forum where people made comments like: "Very reminiscent of some hideous parasite or tumorous growth." and (my favorite): "Nothing says, "I just gave you scabies, dear," like a proliferated rose on a date."

I can't resist being all meta and fractal-like, so: Here is a link to another list of gardening links from the sunset fresh dirt blog!

From a trashy advice column in the UK, this complaint: "My cold, control freak husband loves his garden more than me." Uh oh. Wonder if my partner wrote that letter?

If you are interested in genetics, biotechnology and just what plant breeders do these days, check out this post from The Scientist Gardener.  It is a good introduction to some of the cool tools breeders use these days.

I'm becoming kind of addicted to Deborah Silver's blog, Dirt Simple. For example, this post which is nothing but incredibly lovely flower arrangements in colors that make me drool... (And: Check out this!)