Articles written by Jason Hernandez

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About me - Jason Hernandez

I am slated to start graduate studies at East Carolina University this fall, studying biodiversity. I have studied tropical rainforests under academic guidance in Costa Rica and Venezuela; have published brief peer-reviewed articles on Araceae in Lanyu (Taiwan)

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Home & Garden > Vegetables, Herbs & Fruits Adventures with wild vegetables: 1 of 6

As a vegetable lover, I am always looking for new and exciting vegetables to try. One of the ways I have "branched out" from commonplace vegetables, is by trying wild ones. Many of these are tasty; and if you can learn to tell spinach from Swiss chard, you can learn to tell a wild vegetable from an inedible plant. There are ...
Sciences > Biology (Other) Should men be allowed to be pregnant and conceive babies?: 1 of 6

Let me borrow a slogan from the feminist pro-choice movement: "Keep your laws off my body!" The idea behind it is that a woman should not be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term; that a pregnancy deeply affects her body, and no one else has the right to dictate what happens to her body. This school of thought sees c...
Travel > Hawaii Destinations Why go to Hawaii if you don't like beaches: 1 of 5

Every travel brochure, nearly every travel poster, featuring Hawaii depicts a palm-lined beach. But given the cost of flying all the way out there, most of us have nearer places to go to the beach - Americans can much more easily reach Florida or California, Europeans have the Mediterranean. Why go all the way out to Hawaii?...
Sciences > Zoology Can animals be homosexual?: 2 of 6

Conservative author James Dobson, noted for his strong stance against what he calls "the gay rights agenda," once asked, rhetorically, why it is that, with thousands of years of animal domestication, and the great increase in modern times of scientists in the field, and wildlife photography, male-on-male sexual penetration h...
Sciences > Zoology A guide to understanding animals' scientific names: 2 of 6

Why aren't common names enough? A blue jay is a blue jay, right? This might indeed be enough, if a scientist was only studying that one species, or staying in the region where this was the only jay. But now suppose you went traveling, and saw different jays? There is the Steller's jay, the scrub jay, the gray jay. But still,...
Sciences > Botany Pine trees: Identification and uses: 2 of 4

Pine is surely the best known evergreen tree... or is it? Most of the "Christmas-tree" type of evergreens are not really pines at all, but spruce, fir, or Douglas-fir. What sets pine apart from these others is the way the needles grow: spruce, fir, and Douglas-fir all have individual needles evenly spaced on the twigs. Pines...
Sciences > Ecology & Environment How construction and the built environment can both benefit and harm the natural environment: 1 of 2

In these days of ever-expanding suburban sprawl, it might seem that construction would only harm the natural environment. However, as usual, there is another side to the story. While it is true that a large warehouse-type structure or paved parking lot, by its sheer extent of coverage of what was once the habitat of plants a...
Sciences > Zoology Horseshoe crabs: 1 of 2

The earliest horseshoe crab fossils, from Devonian times, show very little difference from the living horseshoe crabs of today, thus making it a "living fossil." Horseshoe crabs were among the first animal life to experiment with leaving the sea. The only time we are likely to see one is at spawning time, when they crawl up ...
Home & Garden > Trees & Shrubs The beauty of the palm tree: 1 of 2

Ah, the palm tree. Nothing else is quite so synonymous with the tropics. Who has not seen a travel poster showing some white powder-sand beach with waving palm trees, the popular image of paradise? And there are so many kinds of palm trees, some of which can even thrive outside the tropics. By far the most familiar palm tree...
Sciences > Botany Cedar trees: Identification and uses: 1 of 2

The term "cedar" is an example of why science uses Linnaean nomenclature instead of common names. There are trees in at least three families commonly called "cedar." Cedar, in the original sense of the word, referred to needle-leaved trees of what science now called the genus Cedrus. There are three species of Cedrus, found ...