Category: Nature

Categories
Nature

More parasitic plants



Snow plant, originally uploaded by Ken-ichi.

Not that parasitic plants have exactly been a running theme on this blog, but I have mentioned broomrape once. Anyway, a photo came up on the ID Please group in Flickr, and it piqued my curiosity enough to poke around with Google and decide it was a Snow Plant, Sarcodes sanguinea. The picture above is a different shot of the same species. Apparently they don’t actually parasitise plants directly, they get their nutrients from fungi which themselves are growing on the roots of trees. Ain’t nature marvellous.

The other remarkable thing about this particular species is that it’s a member of the Ericaceae; i.e. the same family as the heathers, blueberry and rhododendrons.

And that in turn reminded me of a species of orchid I saw in Provence two or three years ago:


photo from and © this site

That’s Limodorum abortivum, or Violet Limodore; and like the Snow Plant it’s a myco-heterotroph, which is apparently the term for plants that feed on fungi that feed on plants.

Categories
Nature Other

FSotW: Backyard Biodiversity: Bichos

Flickr set of the week is Backyard Biodiversity: Bichos by Crfullmoon, which is “A species survey in progress of “little beasts” on my property in Massachusetts in North America.” Here’s just a couple of the 307 photos.

Those are available under a by:nc:nd Creative Commons license, but most of the set seems to be fully ©.

Categories
Nature

Fox cubs

The foxes have cubs at the moment. The foxes are pretty tame in London, since no-one hunts them, and once or twice I’ve seen the cubs playing on the lawn. Mainly you just hear them; squawking, screeching and making a high-pitched twittering like angry plovers.

The foxes and cats seem to co-exist in a state of cautious truce.

Categories
Culture Nature

God’s cock and hen

I woke up this morning to see something fluttering against the inside of the window-panes. Without my glasses, I couldn’t think what it was – it seemed too big for a moth and too small and whirring for a bird. It turned out to be a wren. They’re such nice things, but they are slightly unbirdy – like little russet mothmice.

Lucky it wasn’t a robin; I recently learnt from Birds Britannica that if a robin flies into your house it’s a omen of death. I assume that only applies to the European Robin and not its American namesake, but maybe the power of superstition is transferable through the power of names.

The robin and the wren are God’s cock and hen;
The spink and the sparrow are the de’il’s bow and arrow.

The ‘spink’ is the chaffinch. I guess it and the sparrow are damned mostly by rhyme and alliteration. You can find more wren rhymes and folklore here (pdf).

Categories
Nature Other

Fruit of my Seed

I was walking in the park behind the house today and, just growing in a little scrubby patch, found a sunflower and a hemp plant. Both of them are probably growing from seed I put out for the birds.

I’m slightly suprised that no bored local youth has taken the hemp plant for personal use. Don’t the young people of today learn any botany in school? I shouldn’t think birdseed cannabis is the connoiseur’s choice, but I shouldn’t think many South London teens are especially fussy.

Categories
Nature Other

More vespal entertainment

Sherry mentioned my wasp nest on her blog and via the comments was revealed this hand-made hornet’s nest by papermaker Gin Petty. You can read her full account of making it here.

And browsing around Flickr I found these pictures by Andrew Dill of a wasp nest built on a window:

Here’s something I learned today. ‘Hymenoptera’ (i.e. bees, wasps and ants) are not called that because of all those virgin workers, as I’d always vaguely assumed. Rather it’s

from Greek humenopteros ‘membrane-winged,’ from humēn ‘membrane’ + pteron ‘wing.’

Which perhaps I should have realised, since Hymen wasn’t god of virginity but marriage.

And here’s a good word: haplo-diploid.