Kerry - Thanks once again for a wonderful photo journey - As your mate says, there's more to life than just broms. What a botanical trip and what beautiful plant varieties there are when you look past the broms. Your pics brought back great memories of a trip my wife and I did up there some years back. I really think you and Stephania should consider joining forces and doing a photo book or a DVD on "The Wonders of Nature". Bromcrazy - We crossed the river and went on a day trip up "the dirt track" which all the protests were about when it was originally pushed through the rainforest. The driver of the 4X4 told us they now need a permanent maintenance crew to stop the rainforest from taking over the road again, so it didn't harm the environment all that much as the rainforest was right to the edge of the road when we went. However he did show us an area which was cleared and had a couple of rusty old VW vans covered in weeds and heaps of rusty cans and plastic bottles scattered around. Yes you've guessed it, that was the camp of the "professional protesters" and probably the only real damage to the environment. Don't get me wrong, I agree with reasonable protests against any threats to the environment, what I don't agree with is the "ratbag element" who get on the band waggon, cause environmental damage themselves and pretend to be protesters only to get genuinne protesters a bad name. Gee I feel better now that I've got all that off my chest. I will get down off my soap box now - All the best, Nev

Sure, they are alive, but are they able to hatch like this? Seems like the cocoon would offer protection. I really want to know! No one has addressed my concern of ripping these out of their cocoons, does that do them any harm?

Thanks for the ID, and great question that is actually easy to answer. The list of moths that are garden pests is rather long. But I don't mind moths if they're not pests. The ones I don't want around are: banana moth Australian leaf curl moth apple coddling moth Indian meal moth There are a few more to list but these are the ones that exist around these parts. The rest of the moths can go and have a heyday in my garden, I don't mind at all.

"What really is the point of having a thorny z8 palm in Michigan? No palms are native to places where the ground freezes." This posting may be challenged on the following points: 1.) Mediterranean fan palms are beautiful--really!--I agree they are thorny but so are many other genera of palms. And it's one of the few palms that I have that flowers heavily every season. 2.) Why shouldn't one choose to grow one even if containerized in Michigan. I'm sure a lot of tender plants are successfully cultivated in containers in Michigan.--If anything, it is makes more ecological sense to cultivate an exotic (i.e., non-native) plant that has no chance of being invasive in the environment. How many plants have been introduced into Florida or Hawaii from zone 10 all over the world with the unintended result of them becoming highly invasive weeds. 3.) There are several varieties of palms that regularly have to contend with some degree of freezing winter weather. (Granted that a prolonged,deep, seasonal freeze below ground does preclude the cultivation of any palm that I am aware of--unless protected.) 4.) Because Med. fans are zone 8 (even marginally 7), they are great for Michigan because you'll be able to grow it as a containerized palm (outdoors) for a longer part of the year at chilly temperatures.--It's also quite drought tolerant should you forget about watering occasionally. 5.) Finally, how many of the palms and other tender plants that are grown by any of the zone 10's in the USA are actually native.--If U.S. palm collectors of zone 10 were to restrict their collections to "native" species, their collections would be quite sparse.