Environment trivia

Environment

» The "French" marigold arrived in Europe with the Spanish conquistadors during the sixteenth century, who brought the delicate flower with them from its land of origin. It was from Mexico, not France.

» In Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile, it has never rained.

» The African boabab tree can have a circumference as large as 100 feet. One such tree in Zimbabwe is so wide that the hollowed-out trunk serves as a shelter at a bus stop, with a capacity to hold as many as 40 people.

» In England, vraic is a seaweed used for fuel and fertilizer. It is found in the Channel Islands.

» In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979 that snow fell on the Sahara. A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic. But within a few hours, all the snow had melted.

» In Los Angeles, discarded garments are being recycled as industrial rags and carpet underlay. Such recycling keeps clothing out of landfills, where it makes up 4 percent of the trash dumped each year.

» There are more than 700 species of plants that grow in the United States that have been identified as dangerous if eaten. Among them are some that are commonly favored by gardeners: buttercups, daffodils, lily of the valley, sweet peas, oleander, azalea, bleeding heart, delphinium, and rhododendron.

» There are only about fifty geyser fields known to exist on Earth and approximately two-thirds of those fifty are home to five or fewer active geysers. Yellowstone National Park in the state of Wyoming has more geysers than any other field known in the world. The park has been the site of extensive study of the properties and characteristics of geysers.