Virtual foraging

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Grief & Praise
#1

do you guys ever watch for plants in the background whenever you’re watching a tv show or a movie? i sometimes find myself missing plot points because i focused too much on whatever springs up at the actors’ feet. but i often find it difficult to actually seen and make out the background plants enough to actually identify them–besides obvious things like common trees, etc.

so while watching “The Last Sin Eater” this past weekend, i freaked when the protagonist ran into a forest and went right by a patch of mayapple with huge leaves. then, of course, she went over to some very cultivated, very obviously planted-by-the-props-department flowers and picked them for her grandmother. but at least i got to see some pretty mayapples.

#2

No, but I’m getting pretty good ID’ing plants while driving.

Prolly not the safest skill. :slight_smile:

#3

My eye’s drawn to all sorts in illustrated books and magazine pictures that have nothing to do with foraging… I’ll read a travel brochure and find myself unable to think anything but “holy crap that’s a handsome mullein, that’d keep me going for a week”)…

#4

Just the other day, I was watching something with old footage of a Nazi tank rolling over some verdant countryside and I was like, “HOLY SHIT, that’s yarrow!” I was so surprised that I recognized a specific plant in the scene, but more than that, I was all the more horrified and enraged at the Nazis’ crimes because it was like the tank was rolling over someone I knew.

I know that probably sounds weird, since the yarrow probably wasn’t harmed, unlike the 6 million Jews that were much like the Jews I was raised by and grew up around. I dunno… it was weird.

#5

[quote=“The Prissiest Primitivist, post:4, topic:273”]Just the other day, I was watching something with old footage of a Nazi tank rolling over some verdant countryside and I was like, “HOLY SHIT, that’s yarrow!” I was so surprised that I recognized a specific plant in the scene, but more than that, I was all the more horrified and enraged at the Nazis’ crimes because it was like the tank was rolling over someone I knew.

I know that probably sounds weird, since the yarrow probably wasn’t harmed, unlike the 6 million Jews that were much like the Jews I was raised by and grew up around. I dunno… it was weird.[/quote]

Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t sound that weird to me. Maybe that’s weird. Dunno…

#6

Yeah, I’m sure I would have had the same feeling, Giuli. And I would have had it regardless of the political motivation behind the tank. It’s not like you wouldn’t feel the same way if the tank had been rolling over human people. But then, you might know yarrow better than you know a lot of people.