Category Archives: Froggy Foibles

The City of Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns. …These emails were sent as part of Melbourne City Council’s Urban Forest Visual, an interactive map that allows the public to find out more about any tree in the council area. …But the response was completely unexpected. Since the project started it’s received more than 4,000 emails from around the world… people often think technology removes us from nature but actually the opposite can be true.

A frog believed to be the last of his kind in the world has been granted a reprieve from solitude. Romeo, known as the world’s loneliest frog, has spent 10 years in isolation at an aquarium in Bolivia. Scientists say they have found him a Juliet after an expedition to a remote Bolivian cloud forest. Five Sehuencas water frogs found in a stream were captured, with the goal of breeding and re-introducing the amphibians back into the wild. The five frogs – three males and two females – are the first Seheuncas water frogs to be seen in the wild for a decade, despite previous searches in the Bolivian wilderness. Romeo was collected 10 years ago when biologists knew the species was in trouble, but was not expected to remain alone for so long. He attracted international attention a year ago over his search for a mate, and was even given a dating profile.

In Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute report that male tungara frogs in Panama City put on sexier mating displays than frogs living in nearby tropical forests. “Tungara frogs sound a bit like pinball machines,” said Wouter Halfwerk, assistant professor at Vrije University in Amsterdam, and visiting scientist at STRI. “To their simple tun sound, they can add extra elements like the sound, gara, to make complex calls: tun gara gara—hence their name. Some people call tiny tungara frogs the acoustic equivalents of peacocks. They are nothing to look at, but just like male peacocks have fancy tails to attract females, tungara frogs add extra sounds to their calls to lure females in.”

This column’s recent feature on the poplar tree in Commonwealth Park that over a period of 35 years ‘ate’ a garden rake has prompted readers to submit similar accounts of trees partially devouring objects. “Your article reminded me of a friend’s house in Petersham in Sydney, where, out the back, embedded into a massive camphor laurel tree was a concrete clay tennis court roller,” writes Brenda Croft. According to Croft, “whoever had last used the roller had left it leaning against the tree, and decades later much of it had disappeared inside the body of the trunk.” Other readers have uncovered photographic evidence of trees in various states of devouring objects. Here are my top 5.

As the leaves fall, who doesn’t enjoy stepping on a satisfyingly crunchy leaf? But can you spot which type of tree an autumn leaf on the ground comes from? Take our quiz and see. How many trees can you identify from their autumn leaves?

You may be desperately clinging on to the last rays of summer but, with fewer than 100 days to go until Christmas, the food world is in full festive fig. Indeed, thoughts have already turned to the aftermath, with chef John Williams encouraging readers of the newly released Ritz London: The Cookbook to butcher the ceremonial tree for its “fragrant and spicy” needles. He says they lend a zesty kick to dishes such as his douglas fir and lemon verbena cream, and salt-baked celeriac with douglas fir sprigs. “Wouldn’t it be beautiful,” he said in 2010, “if families gathered after Christmas, festively removed the decorations and then cut off the tasty needles of the tree to flavour their food?”

BEER giant Carlsberg will next year launch a “greener” alternative to glass bottles made from wood fibres.  The Danish brewer has developed a prototype “green fibre” bottle as a biodegradeable alternative. Glass bottles have to be recycled in the UK or washed for re-use up to 25 times in other markets. But as the process uses energy and water, a viable alternative is set to become hugely significant. Carlsberg is also ditching plastic ring multi-can holders which trap animals and clog up the oceans. …Spokeswoman Myriam Shingleton said: “We are thinking of a completely new packaging for bottles, which is a green fibre bottle that will be made from a controlled wood source, so a bio-base.”

NAIROBI, Kenya — School children in Kenya are helping to fight deforestation by planting seeds using slingshots. It’s part of an initiative by the company SeedBalls Kenya, which makes and sells seedballs globally. It encourages children to have slingshot competitions using the charcoal-covered seeds instead of stones. About 2 million seedballs have been planted in Kenya in the past year and a half in what has been called “guerrilla gardening.” Kenya’s government has recognized the threat from deforestation and earlier this year imposed a temporary logging ban that was extended in May by another six months. SeedBalls Kenya recycles coal dust it collects around the capital, Nairobi. It buys the seeds from the Kenya Forest Research Institute.

Classic Minerals and Australia’s federal scientific research outfit CSIRO have teamed up to study the potential correlation of tree size to gold mineralisation at Classic’s Forrestania Gold Project in Western Australia. The company said that in 2017, it had noticed a correlation between tree size and gold mineralisation at the project in the Goldfields region. Major deposits and prospects such as Lady Magdalene and Lady Ada were covered by large gum trees while barren areas were covered by typical Yilgarn shrubs and bush. …If proven to work, it will allow Classic to rapidly generate new targets without ground disturbing exploration. The project could help guide the company with geochemical sampling and geochemical data interpretation on the surface. …Whilst somewhat unusual, this is not the first time that trees have been thought to be a potential indicator of gold mineralisation.

More than a third of the 7,000-odd living species of frogs and toads are found in rain forests around the world. But the fossil record for amphibians from these kinds of wet, tropical environments has been almost nonexistent, leaving paleontologists with few clues to their early evolution. Now, lumps of amber dating back to the Cretaceous period have revealed a set of four tiny tropical frogs that lived alongside the dinosaurs, making them the oldest frog fossils of their kind. The specimens include the remains of an ancient frog complete enough to be described as a new species, called Electrorana limoae. “It was exhilarating to hold these small fossils up to the light to reveal the frogs within,” says David Blackburn, a paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.