Ginkgo - Tumblr Posts
Naked Sperm Plants
Gymnosperms are weird.
The thing all gymnosperms have in common, and that separates them from their much more successful rival cousin group the angiosperms (flowering plants) is that they have seeds without a seed coat. That’s literally what "gymnosperm" means.
Sperm means "seed" or whatever. And the Greek root gymn- means "naked". Because in ancient Greece the gymnasium was a place where manly men would go to work out, make gains, be naked, wrestle, hang out with the boys and appreciate each other’s gains. While naked. Together. Y’know… Man stuff. For men.
Gymnosperms include pine trees, cycads (which look like giant half-buried pineapples with a single giant pinecone/flower thing coming out the top), gnetums (look like normal leafy plant vines), ephedras (weird stick shrubs with no leaves), the welwitschia(an immortal desert plant that grows exactly two blade leaves endlessly until it’s just a tangled pile of leaf), and the gingko (a single species of tree that paradoxically hasn't gone extinct for 299million years despite being completely unadapted to any existing ecosystem and also makes vomit "berries") So you see, all the Gymnosperms are freaking weird.
I mentioned ginkgo “berries” in scare quotes because these aren’t actually berries. They’re not even fruits. It’s actually just the seed but with a fruit-like fleshy seed coat bit around it. Remember how I said that gymnosperms by definition don’t have seed coats? Yeah, the ginkgo has one of those despite being a gymnosperm; taxonomy is a folly of man’s hubris.
Do they change colors throughout the year to match the leaves?
Also if that's the case what do they do during the winter?
if you’ve been following me long enough you know I love a mimic. From my false faced mermaids that I’ve been painting for years to butterfly dragons, I’m a big fan of illusion in the bestiary world.
I bring you the Ginkgo Draco, another member of the Botanical Drakes.
A few leather barrettes that I shipped out last week. A ginkgo leaf dyed orange, and a couple simple ones in black and brown.
Will I ever catch up on posting my backlog? Evidence points to no.
「 Feel the gentle atmosphere of autumn 」
「 It's autumn color 」
「 blue collections 」
night creature
📷: mine
I’m back! Just in time for Inktober! We had a family medical crisis over the Summer, so between that and a tiring Summer job I haven’t been able to do much drawing at all. Even out of these little ones, only the Ginkgo was drawn over the Summer itself. Still, things have calmed down a bit now, so I thought I’d post a few photos of the decent drawings I do have before Inktober starts tomorrow.