Peri Coleman

@pericoleman.bsky.social

4516 Followers 941 Following

Botanist, Quaker, grandmother, friend of dogs, and lover of all things saltmarsh & salt lake.

Restore marine ecosystems to increase resilience
Our coasts are in crisis
Asks voters in South Australia to vote for independents Tammy Franks and Faith Coleman (column P on the ballot for the Upper House). They say they will fight for our coasts and our futures
A really wide Karenia microalgae cell, stained yellow with Lugol’s media. Its nucleus is a round red patch, centrally located in the cell. The cell is 40 microns wide and 27 microns tall, with a waistline marking the top quadrant of the cell, and a distinct node on its apex
A lab bench with three sample bottles and three measuring cylinders. The water samples in the cylinders is honey gold, stained with Lugol’s media to settle the microalgae for counting
Tiny microcrustacean copepod, about 1mm long, carrying two egg sacks tucked between its legs and lower abdomen
A microscope slide with scale bar, with a tintinnid in focus. A yellow-stained protozoan that lives in a clear wineglass shaped ‘lorica’ or ‘test’
A Tripos dinoflagellate with a long apical horn and three hypoconical horns
View down a microscope. The circular lit area is marked with the grid lines of a haemocytometer, and grouped stars and spiral chains of the diatom Asterionellopsis are visible
Karenia mikimotoi a yellowish dinoflagellate shaped like a dumb bell
Silhouetted cactus arms point to the wraithlike blur of comet Atlas as it appears to dive through the purpling last light and into the last orange glow of sunset
Under a burning blue sky the low shrubby samphires, khaki green, hug the sinuous bends of the saltmarsh creek. The tide is going out, small whirlpools forming against the stems of the samphires where they stand in the water.
Milky coloured brine laps against a gypsum encrusted embankment
A soft square of unbleached linen, embroidered in one corner with a black dragon, provides a mat for a tiny earthenware teapot and cup. Light reflects from the softly polished wood of the table and from the still clear brew in the cup.
Purple curtains and green arc of the Aurora australis and the stars of the Southern Cross, the Pointers and the Milky Way reflect in the dark still waters of Lake Indawarra in South Australia. Photographed by Faith Coleman
A brown coloured adult lacewing stretches it’s four wings - beautiful netted wings at least as long as the insect - out as it rests against a white painted ceiling.
Wooden scrub pine table with a huge brandy snifter on it. Part-filled with water and floating red frangipani blossoms. Some limes lay on the table near the flowers. Background ferns create a green cool ambiance.
Printed pages of Lanier’s four “Hymns of the Marshes”. Top of the first page has a black banner proclaiming “Poet’s Corner”
Ads Jackson’s book Seashore, Swamp and Bush” has black and white drawings of the denizens of those habitats around the outer edge of most of the book’s cover with a splash of wave-riven blue water across the centre
A dark book cover - dark flooring with a circular pool of bright light that shows the flooring planks overlaid by the shadow outlines of window panes in a grid. The book is “The Spirit of the Quakers” by Geoffrey Durham
The bare brown binding of this book, with a green square on the spine so that you can read the title, belies the impact of V Chapman’s classic “Salt Marshes and Salt Deserts of the World”.
I love the cover of “Plain Living, A Quaker Path to Simplicity” by Catherine Whitmire. Jumping out the the soft focus blue and brown grassland background, a flowering head of a plantain takes the foreground. It plain, but so exuberant!
Black and white photo of gulls on the edge of a waterbody illustrated the cover of “Thoreaux’s Method - A Handbook for Nature Study ” by David Pepi
Black and white photo of gulls on the edge of a waterbody illustrated the cover of “Thoreaux’s Method - A Handbook for Nature Study ” by David Pepi
Yellow and orange background to a quote from Mark Twain “There’s nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule”
The cover of “What Love Can Do: Following the Way of Peace, Justice and Compassion” slows a marsh pond in the darkling light, mist rising, surrounded with reeds, and an egret backlit as it lifts to the sky
The cover of Kathleen McArthur’s “Living on the Coast” has one of her watercolours of native plants of the Cooloola Coast - yellow Guinea flowers, purple beach ipomeas, the pink flowering pigface, crowned with the nodding heads of some smaller blue flowers.
Cover of “The Hidden Tradition - Women’s Spiritual Writings Rediscovered” by Lavinia Byrne. A paining of a woman in a full length dark dress, standing next to a chair near a lace curtain, reading. Behind her is what looks to be a child’s cot or cradle
Cover of an extremely old copy of “Guide to the Study of Freshwater Biology”. The faux leather cover is clearly paper - it has torn off the spine numerous times and is taped together with copious quantities of yellowing sticky tape. The book’s preciousness is reflected by the fact the owner has sticky taped their business card to the front - they clearly have no intention of losing this essential text.
Cover of the book “Quaker by Convincement”. Light blue with a black and white photo of a statue of Mary Dyer, who was hanged for her beliefs on Boston Common. Mary is shown sitting in Meeting for Worship, head bowed, listening for the Spirit, her hands folded on her lap
A book cover - Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. There is a dead bird lying on the ground on its back, greenery to yellow feathers tattered. Diagonally oriented text above the title contains a quote from the book, about the persistent poisoning of the environment
Cover of the book “A testament of devotion” by Thomas Kelly. Across the middle of the cover, under the title is a photo of s wooden picket fence against the darkness. The wood of the palings glows a warm russet colour.
Cover of Aldo Leopoldo’s book, “A Sand County Almanac”. Cover is white with green line drawings of wild geese, necks outstretched and beaks open, below the title in orange type
The pink coloured dawn is caught in mist rising from the river. This is the illustration of the cover of Parker Palmer’s book, “Let Your Life Speak - Listening for the Voice of Vocation”
The first juvenile mangroves growing in the mud of St Kilda Bay, about 50cm tall, in 2011
View across St Kilda Bay. Mangrove trees in the foreground are mature enough to carry reproductive propagules and hand many pneumatophores (finger like breathing roots). Further away the mangroves are smaller juveniles. The tide is partially in.
A cartoon showing a coal ship called climate chaos accelerant bearing down on climate protestors in kayaks. The police loudspeaker is threatening to arrest anyone threatening public safety. The reader suspects they won’t be arresting the coal ship.
Book cover for ‘A Sense of Place’ by George Sedona. Black and white photo of grass trees in a grassy area against a cloudy sky
A book cover - The Christian Life, Lived Experimentally, by Kathleen Lonsdale. The book is a paper back with a cover coloured in three bands - orange, brown and white
Prof Brian Timms sitting on top of a large granite outcrop next to a gnamma hole, which he is sampling for tiny invertebrates. The outcrop is a pink colour and in the distance can be seen dry farmlands with belts of trees under a blue sky
A quadrat made of pvc pipe and builders twine, made to measure vegetation cover, placed in the shallowly flooded mangrove habitat. Young plants are visible inside the measured area
View of campervan interior, with table set up with microscope, a plant press and plant identification books and a field notebook