Monday, 5 May 2025

This is a Preprint dated Monday May 5 ,2025

The internet began for me in the Spring of 1992. After a talk, I wrote my first hypertext document, probably for Xmosaic, followed later by documents for Netscape, etc. The concern was that as a "published" document it might be subject to laws of liable. Oral expressions are subject to laws of slander.

It has been said that plagiarism is stealing an idea from one person or as Goggle AI puts it:

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Yes, plagiarizing is essentially stealing someone else's ideas or work and presenting it as your own without proper credit. It's a form of intellectual theft and a violation of academic integrity

What does it have to say about research?

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.”

― Steven Wright"

So the following is a private communication in response to

my blog about Arrowheads

I personally think that the notion of "research is an act of stealing" is based on ignorance rather than on actual research experience. However, maybe I am out of touch with the current situation in which a politician can declare that Lyme disease is not a disease to be covered by provincial health insurance.

In any event the first part of the private communication stated:

"I enjoyed your description of events but there was one slight modification in terms of what one sees: the two types of flowers are female and bisexual. The anthered flowers have seeds buried in the center of the flower surrounded by yellow anthers. "

Let me try to illustrate what the author, Dr EW Larson, meant:

So a second communication arrived later that afternoon and I quote:

"The history of recognition of bisexual anthered Arrowhead is this: In an accepted manual of plant species descriptions it states that "occasionally " flowers with anthers are bisexual (meaning that they contain seeds). My "discovery" is that every flower with anthers has seeds at its centre! So you are right that your Google results produced the usual idea of unisexual anthered plants. Ontario Arrowheads have been studied with respect to sexuality in dozens of articles and at least one professor at Trent refuses to accept this information, even when I sent him photos with arrows pointing to seeds and anthers in the same flower. I read a recent PhD thesis from his lab which followed her professor's bias. So naturally, you have to decide if you should modify your blog or not. If you do, it will be the first "published" account of the ubiquity of bisexuality. "

So this has yet to be peer reviewed but it is Open Access in the interests of furthering science with openness.

For completeness, I include some impressions and details of the bulbous female flowers on the West side:

Now I hope I have not confused the language with the data, nor right and left with compass directions.

WOB

The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

The study of the Arrowhead plant became serious - not Latin name serious, but rather field studies intensified seriously - on Tuesday September 3, when a field botanist explained what I had noticed: the flowers on the West side were different from those on the East side:

Flowers are whorled in groups of 3 in a spike-like raceme up to 1 foot long.
There are usually both male and female flowers on the same stem, but sometimes
a stem has a single gender. Both genders are about 1 inch across with 3 broad
white petals and 3 small pale green sepals behind the flower.
Female flowers have a bulbous green center, covered in tiny carpels.
https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/broad-leaf-arrowhead
Male flowers have a group of golden yellow stamens in the center.

So why this dichotomy in gender between the 2 sides of the road and the 2 ditches?

Female flowers on the West side and male flowers on the East.

On Monday March 31 I visited the 2 ditches and was amazed to see obvious differences:

The East side ditch - photo directly above - had open water while the West side had snow at least 10cm higher than the road surface.

So Vicki and I have done water monitoring of McGee Creek some years ago and turned to the staff of Couchiching Conservancy, Grants Woods, for help. Were there differences in the 2 bodies of water?

The following is what actually happened, not necessarily the best scientific method since the data were not acquired simultaneously.

I drew 2 samples of water on April 30 at 4PM - 1L from the West ditch in a blue "Nalgene" bottle, and 1L from the East ditch in an orange "Nalgene" bottle. The following photos were taken later in a reenactment.

The team at Grants Woods:

VS, JT, and AA with 2 water testing kits.

Some action shots?

The measurements on May 1 around 11AM:

               East    West sides of Forest Ave.
Cl-free     0        0
Cl-total   0        0

Alkalinity
              180    180

pH            8    8

Total Hardness
               450    450

2 different methods of testing delivered similar results:
Nitrates

   0     0
pH           8    8 - basic alkaline

Phosphate
      0.2    0.0 - I personally could not see any difference between these cards, let alone the test sample.

Alkalinity
282 284

Lake Couchiching water temperature on April 30, 2025
was 5.9°C as given on the web site:
https://seatemperature.info/lake-couchiching-water-temperature.html

Air temperature on Forest Ave was 12°C

Water taken from the East side was clear, colourless, odourless
while
water taken from the West side was yellowish, with a faint fragrence
of "damp forest floor" - not very scientific but like a walk in the woods
after a rain.

WOB

So it is rather late but I actually went to Forest Rd the evening before the flower discovery to see if I could see a moose. This is what I saw in the twilight: (Mon Sept 2 2024)