Posted on by susurrus

Spotted Foxglove (And Infinite Variety)

Cream foxglove with burgundy spotting

In contrast to my recent post celebrating wild foxgloves, here’s one of several garden forms of Digitalis purpurea with cream flowers and maroon spots.

The foxglove pulls off the trick of being sturdy and fairly compact without sacrificing its elegance. Each throaty tube has a wavy edge, together giving a lacy or lightly frilled effect. The insect landing patterns are alluring: lighter spots at the lip of the flower lead to broader splotches then to a speckled effect that tapers out at the business end of the flower.

Comparing the florets made me wonder if each has a unique fingerprint – or perhaps that should be throatprint. One of the weird, wonderful, counterintuitive characteristics of our world is that infinitely varied things exist.

We know that every human is unique, even from her twin, but society tends to think of types of plants and animals as being broadly identical. We treat waterways and patches of wild land as if they were broadly identical. Would more value would be set on each one lost if we believed every one was unique and irreplaceable?

Crafts-based industries that still co-exist with and compete against mass-produced products do so on the basis that hand-made, subtly varied products are worth more. A logical use of machine intelligence will be to shift some industries away from mass producing identical products to mass producing non-identical ones within looser parameters. Teddy bears, each one with a different set of facial features and expressions, as if hand-made. Dolls designed to appear to be a child’s sister or brother. I’m not actually proposing that this is a good idea, but noting what will surely happen, if it is not already.

I think I should have stuck to celebrating the foxglove, don’t you?

Shared for Cee’s FOTD

34 Replies to “Spotted Foxglove (And Infinite Variety)”

  4. Interesting thoughts. The potential of AI really frightens me. Given what social media has fostered in politics with the widespread broadcast of lies, the thought of AI generated fake photos and videos should scare everyone. I don’t have confidence that our dysfunctional government will be able to effectively to manage the potential evil of AI. Hopefully they will rise to

        1. I agree, Although I was not in IT, I worked a lot with mainframe and PC computers and with implementing (from the business side) new systems. Some of the things I read about AI would have made the analytical parts of my work so much easier.

    1. I don’t suppose there are many support grants for studying the randomness of spotting in ornamental plants, but if there are, perhaps we could make a joint application?

  10. The foxglove is gorgeous; your meditation is sobering. It seems to me logical that something so amazing as a flower should lead to wondering about endless variety. Where will AI fit in? We’d best figure that out sooner rather than later. Right now I am tempted to think that most human intelligence is artificial.

    1. That’s, as so often, a very interesting take. The old UK line ‘Keep calm and carry on’ really needs the addition of ‘(differently)’.

  12. Well, that foxglove did lead you down a sobering track. AI is the discussion of the moment. Whatever laws are put in place to try to protect human creativity are bound to be circumvented. Worrying times, what with that, climate change, and so many countries lurching to the far right.

    1. We need some form of politics with a longer timeframe than 5 years, and more focus than just the national, although that would be a huge leap of faith, and representatives fit to handle specialist issues.

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