sisu

"Pain is the price of love"

"Pain is the price of love," our dear friend C Ward wrote a few days ago, sharing our eternal sadness at the loss of our precious Tiny. Above, the gaping, sap-weeping wound slashing through the very heartwood of a major branch of our grand old Silver Maple in the wake of the last big snowstorm of winter a few weeks back. Talk about the psychological landscape.

"My precious 'outdoor room,' The Maple Court shaped by [the] grand old silver maple shading our terrace, has been destroyed by overpruning. Tears," we twittered last August in the wake of a tree surgeon's visit. Now another major bough has been lopped off, made necessary by a cruel trick of Mother Nature herself, who sent a late-winter storm of water-laden snow to these parts.

Kind of like life itself, I guess. Will have a snort of rum and have to move on.

"Soupçon. Silky Cauliflower Soup with a dollop of Peter Rabbit's Soup. Lots of Chelsea lore, historical and anecdotal, kept the conversation buzzing," we captioned this delicious image from our June 2008 post "A rose is a rose is a napkin."

There was till just this afta a magical "outdoor room" just outside our kitchen window, a Silver Maple Court sheltered by the embrace of cascading weeping boughs that made a shimmering, light-and-shadowing place apart from the brutally sun-baked lawn. Then came well-meaning tree surgeons who reduced our outdoor room to a vast, undefined space with unwanted views of the neighbors' unkempt windows and walls. Just a bare trunk with an umbrella of leafy boughs far above. As we twittered in mental anguish this afternoon:

My precious "outdoor room," The Maple Court shaped by grand old silver maple shading our terrace, has been destroyed by overpruning. Tears.

Twitter gal pal Angela Lash comforted us with sweet sympathy:

I'm so sorry to hear that, Sissy. Those are my favorite kinds of rooms. :(

And we in reply:

I am bereft. Canopy will fill in in time, but lower branches that created the intimacy of my precious garden room won't grow back … Kind of like life itself, I guess. Will have a snort of rum and have to move on.

 

We had a marital spat with the Tuckster over it, he said and she said, but in the end we kissed and made up, sharing the sorrow of our heartfelt loss. Now talking remediation. Multi-stemmed River Birches for starters? They're fast growers and were a favorite of our landscape architectural hero Frederick Law Olmsted's.

Update: Dan sends sweet words of comfort:

Awww, don't worry, tree happy!! ; ) There are no wood chips in heaven!

To those who gave their all so that we might enjoy such natural wonders

A North American native, the lushly exotic-looking Cecropia Silkmoth lays its eggs on "various trees and shrubs including box elder, sugar maple, wild cherries and plums, apples, alder and birch, dogwoods and willows," where the caterpillars gorge through five instar phases before spinning a cocoon and metamorphosizing into the astonishing creature (above) we held in our hand for one brief, shining moment this morning at Goomp's Down East. Given the local plant community, the spreading apple or the amelancher in the front forty looks to be the likely nursery for this miracle of nature.

As we were letting Goomp's Purrky out onto the little porch here at Camelot-by-the-Sea early morning, a small bit of something animalcule caught the pussycat's eye. Uh, oh, another bird or chipmunk gone the way of all flesh, we sighed. But no. Purrk wasn't interested in whatever it was and headed off on his rounds. We took a closer look, and a wonderment: A Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia). Last time we'd seen one we were still wet behind the ears ourselves. This one, fresh from the cocoon, was flexing its wings preparatory to taking the plunge.

 

As a little girl, we'd captured an outrageously gorgeous plump caterpillar in the family garden and set it up in a homemade terrarium to complete its eating orgy, pupate and finally emerge months later into a likeness of the stunning specimen above. This morning we coaxed the totally awesome creature onto our left hand and took a few photographs one-handed with our right before the transcendent moment when it suddenly took flight and soared off into the early-morning light in search of love.

 

Adult Cecropias "do not feed." No dinner dates for them, but not to worry: "The females emit pheromones at night, which the male can detect with its large, plumose antennae. Males can fly for miles in order to reach a female. The moths mate, and the female spends the remainder of her life laying eggs, while the male may mate several more times." Looks like our little guy was hot to trot.

More pictures below from our Memorial Day salute to the brave and good and true fellow Americans who give their all so we might enjoy such natural wonders. The cookout was a triumph, our dearly departed mother's garden was in glorious bloom, and Susie's rhubarb pie was a show stopper. Purrky provided the entertainment by delivering a chipmunk before the assembled guests. Quickly mobilizing, we grabbed him up, shaking the chipster out of the jaws so it had time to scurry away. As we always say, our beloved puddies have their imperatives, and we have ours.

Update: Laura Lee links with a moving tribute:

None of these men will be with us tomorrow as we celebrate the many freedoms we enjoy on Memorial Day.

Every heart beats true for the red, white and blue

Blue skies and gentle west winds with occasional gusts graced our Sunday Family Fourth Festivities at Goomp's Camelot-by-the-Sea down east. Old Glory, above, was in her glory.

Matthew and Susan pose in a proud and loving mother-and-son embrace with the Brahmanesque York Reading Room and Atlantic Ocean falling away behind. Click here for higher-resolution image.

Suzi's Red, White and Blue Strawberry/Blueberry Shortcake hit our sweet spot. All agreed Pillsbury's Shortcake beats those dry, tasteless homemade ones of our new-bride days when you had to prove your culinary worth by making everything from scratch.

Working off our just desserts, Sue, Ellen, Matt, Tuck, Ben and ourselves tripped the light fantastic in a rousing rendition of the Cliff-Walk Two-Step across the York River down by York Harbor Beach, with the Hahbah in the background.

Mother ponders what to do next as son checks camera settings.

Earlier on the opposite side of the river at Goomp's, a groaning board of Fourth-of-July faves was downed with relish: Grilled Chicken Sate with Peanut Sauce, rib eyes, Kayem [Chelsea's own!] dogs — both pork and beef — on grilled buns, corn on the cob, Eddie's Beans [Thanks, Ellen!], Sissy's Superb Potato Salad and Corny Cornbread Mini Muffins. Did we forget anything? Oh, yes: The champagne flowed!

Note gray roof of Goomp's house in background across the river, upper right amidst native forest greenery.

'Wish the day would linger longer … They left us laughing and begging for more. A wonderful time was had by all. Click here for higher-resolution image.

As we made our way back to the car, Matthew discovered a botanical "reversion," growing out of one of the Dwarf Alberta Spruces (Picea Glauca 'Alberta') that dot the landscape. The sport's the strapping youngster sprouting from the refined parent plant, above. Wikipedia explains:

A sport is a part of a plant … that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant.

Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars. Such selections are often prone to "reversion," meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form.

Googling, we came upon this fascinating snippet of plant-explorer lore — worthy of a blogpost of its own, tied in with the contentious "green" debate —  from the University of Arkansas Extension Service:

Dwarf Alberta Spruce was discovered in 1904 in the Northern Rockies near Lake Laggan, Alberta as two Arnold Arboretum botanists awaited the arrival of their train to take them back to Boston. Today, they would meet with serious government red tape and social castigation, but at the time they spotted the stunted seedling and recognized it as something new and different. Without a second thought, they dug it up and took it home with them.

Back in Boston, the dwarf spruce was found to be easy to propagate and was released to the nursery trade a few years later. [You see them everywhere, from carefully cultivated formal estates and suburban lawns to planted in large terra cotta pots outside luxury apartment buildings and perfunctorily "landscaped" curbs of gas stations along the interstate.]

The most famous of the pair was Alfred Rehder, who became known to thousands of students for his Manual of Cultivated Trees and Shrubs. In the1940 edition, Rehder was the first to use a plant hardiness zone map based on minimum winter temperatures. His first hardiness map had only seven zones but served as the precursor to the 12-zone USDA map we use today.

Heading south back to Chelsea on I-95 Monday morning, we found ourselves playing a bit part in the big traffic story of the day, a smash-up involving three cars and a tanker truck in the northbound lane. Police cars, ambulances, fire engines, a dump truck full of sand and a hazmat vehicle rushed to the scene, and a helicopter hovered overhead. The highway was closed for hours as emergency workers tried to stem the flow of oil into the nearby Merrimack River. We escaped with a relatively modest 45-minute delay and a creepy feeling at the horror of it all, compounded by the fact that just as the traffic was starting to slow down, we had been reading the chapter in Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism where Lucianne's elder son makes the argument that Woodrow Wilson was "the twentieth century's first fascist dictator."

Update: More pics and info re crash and clean-up from local Daily News.

Other than that, a perfect weekend.

It was a Chelsea morning

"Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw" were the sun's early rays dazzling the pure white cranes of Ice Type Handymax bulk carrier "Lowlands Opal" out of Panama across the street at Eastern Salt here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea.

" . . . and a rainbow on the wall, Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon." Grape-family member Boston Ivy (Parthenocissus cuspidata) trips the light fantastic on the great retaining wall behind the house.

"There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too, And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses," but who needs Joni Mitchell's "milk and toast and honey" when you've got Eggs Bennie with Hollandaise Light Fantastic, the latest entry in our Cold Turkey Cookbook. What to do with the egg whites when you separate out the yolks for the Perfect Hollandaise? We whipped 'em up to stiff peaks and folded the meringue into the basic Hollandaise for a sensuously pale yellow, fluffy concoction that's fun to eat. Excerpts from an imail conversation:

We: I checked out online to see if anyone else had tried it. Someone had and said it was wonderfully light. And it is.

She: What made you decide to try that?

We: It came to me in a dream? Actually, it was the ease of beating egg whites, which I've become used to in making my broccoli and spinach MOOSES (MEESE?), with my adorable new KitchenAid Immersion Blender.

Enhancing the creative process with new technologies in our own Experimental Kitchen.

She: LOL. I must say, as much as I love Hollandaise, it always sits in my stomach like a pound of butter, for two days. Lightening it up sounds like a stroke of pure genius. God works in mysterious ways, yes?

We: And don't forget your cream of tartar.

She: Sis, trust me on this one. You can forget cream of tartar. Not necessary.

We: Really? But I don't WANT to forget it. It reminds me of "eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog."

She: Well, we ARE the Weird Sisters. Our cooking should reflect that.

"For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

Sometimes an acorn is just an acorn

"I closed my eyes and imagined I was there tramping through the woods with a band of knowledgeable and passionate field observers," we wrote blogfriend Greenman Tim of Walking the Berkshires in the comments of his post announcing the first two of a new series of freelance articles (available online with free registration) for the The Lakeville [Connecticut] Journal, "Of seeds and serpents" and "Great Mountain Forest: 99 years of innovation, education." A few excerpts first from "Seeds" and then from "Forest" for a taste of Tim's richly-layered brand of nature writing:

This appears to be a mast year for oak trees, a time when there is a dramatic increase in acorn production. More small rodents will survive the winter after a mast year when food is plentiful, and that in turn could mean a bonanza for their predators in the coming spring.

I was musing along these lines while hiking in the mountains recently when I came upon two timber rattlesnakes [Crotalus horridus] …

They breed on approximately three-year cycles, and gravid females do not eat at all in the seasons before giving birth. Their young are born alive in late summer and have a very small window of opportunity to catch a meal before hibernation.

One might assume that approximately a third of the female timber rattlesnakes of reproductive age would be gravid in any given year. However, researchers consistently observe that they find very little evidence of reproduction in some years, followed by a “pile up” year when most of the female snakes in a population give birth. This corresponds rather well to the availability of prey following a mast year for oaks.

"Saving Great Mountain Forest [in Norfolk, CT] for the benefit of future generations and the regional ecology is a tremendous conservation success story and a remarkable family achievement," writes Tim in the second Lakeville Journal article:

Next year will make a full century since the core of Great Mountain Forest in Norfolk was acquired by U.S. Sen. Frederick C. Walcott and Starling W. Childs. These visionaries were conservation leaders in their day, and where others saw burned-over scrubland and hardscrabble farms, they saw hope for restoring wildlife that had all but vanished from the Connecticut landscape.

Back in 1909, white-tailed deer had been driven from the state, and water birds were in deep decline. Together, Walcott and Childs laid the foundation for the recovery of these species and a healthier reforested landscape …

In 2003, 5,383 acres of the forest were protected through a Forest Legacy working forest easement. The entire property is now owned and managed by the non-profit Great Mountain Forest Corporation, with a mission to conserve forest areas and serve as a living laboratory for environmental research …

Starling W. Childs II, representing  the third generation of his family associated with these lands, recalled that his father Edward used to say that “there was no point in having all this if it could not be shared with others.”

Good stuff. Especially Edward Childs's “no point in having all this if it could not be shared with others," a perfect opportunity for the Queen of the Segueway to segue to the question of the hour and contrast Childs's all-American sentiment of individual civic responsibility with Barack Obama's socialistic notion that he and other self-appointed elites know best how to spend others' wealth, as told to a disgusted "Joe the Plumber" yesterday:

My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread [other people's] wealth around, it's good for everybody.

This just in: Right out of the gate at tonight's sit-down presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, John McCain puts the case of Joe the Plumber front and center [rough transcript]:

He looked at your tax plan, and he saw that you were going to put him in a much higher tax bracket, which was going to make it impossible for him to hire more people for his plumbing business and not able to realize the American Dream. I will not stand for a tax increase on small-business income. Senator Obama's plan would take Joe's money, give it to Obama and let HIM spread it around. The whole premise behind Obama's plan is class warfare. Why would you want to increase anybody's taxes at such a tough time?

We aren't live blogging the debate but will say two things before signing off for the night:

1. Every time McCain mentions an inconvenient truth about his opponent, seated inches away across the desk, Obama shakes his signature thoughtfully tilted head (more in sorrow than in anger), a creepy, smirky smile transmogrifying his human face into a bizarre theatrical comedy mask. Will Obamaniacs notice or be unnerved by it? Probably not, but maybe our fellow citizens who haven't yet made up their minds will.

2. The format is excellent. Our hats off to Bob Schieffer and CBS for a most professional presentation.

Our Johnny's got Barry in the loop.

Update: Good thoughts from Greenman Tim in the comments:

I continue to believe that while nothing excites our political passions quite so much as people or governments telling us what to do with our land, nothing unites us quite like a shared love of place, even if my particular place and yours are different.

Are you listening, Barack Obama?

Update: Nothing excites our furry, feathery and scaly passions quite so much as a visit to Modulator's Friday Ark #213.

Cool as a cucumber

Peaches-and-cream Tiny strikes a thoughtful pose out back atop the woodpile early morning.

At first we thought this sprawling vine crawling over the Lamium maculatum 'White Nancy' in the border along the base of the retaining wall was Wild Grape. But no. That's a squash-type flower, our Plant ID-ometer told us. A quick check with Newcomb's Wildflower Guide's key system led us gently down the garden path:

Vines Clinging by Tendrils

There are only three local plants that fill the bill, Grapes, Passionflowers and One-seeded Bur Cucumbers, and only the latter's description matched our own specimen's:

One-seeded Bur Cucumber (Sicyos angulatus) Stem covered with sticky hairs; small clusters of greenish-white flowers in the axils. Staminate flowers in long-stalked clusters; pistillate flowers in short-stalked clusters. Leaves broad, 5-lobed, heart-shaped at the base. Fruits prickly, 1/2" long, stalkless, in a small cluster. Riverbanks and moist thickets. Summer and fall. Gourd Family.

Three cheers for the Gourd Family (Cucurbitaceae), Mother of all Squashes! Smitten with its beauty and grit, we begged a determined Tuck not to weed the Bur Cucumber from atop the Lamium. He is right, of course. Give invasive species an inch and they demand a mile. Check out what they can do to a stand of corn:

Bur Cucumber in a field of corn. (Sikkema, Ridgetown College photo)

Who's the prettiest girl kitty ever was?

The Bur Cucumber's sprawling growth habit along the top of the Lamium, with Tiny front and center for scale.

The Bur Cucumber's tendrils called to mind that computer-generated image of leptin, the substance that signals to the brain the body has had enough to eat, or satiety, blogged here. Somebody stop us before we animate gifs again.

The flowers (x 4) of Lamium — Deadnettle by common name — are real show stoppers.

Did somebody say stop the show? Enter Babe, center stage, a scene stealer from way back.

Update: A boatful of show stopper's at Modulator's Friday Ark #206.

"As a grain of mustard seed"

Tiny relaxes mid morning surrounded by the English ivy that covers the neighbor's house.

"Hoo, boy - thems is some kittehs," comments ailurophile par excellence Elisson re the Chelsea Grays. Here's lookin' at you, kid.

A bristling specimen of common burdock (Arctium minus) — Old World invasive biennial forb of waste places and member of the daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae) — has set up shop just under the forsythia by the side steps at Chelsea-by-the-Sea, a perfect place for our camera's eye to study its progress from flower to seed. The first-year rosette of basal leaves went unnoticed by us, but this year's bushy crop of stunning magenta and pink flowerheads surrounded by hooked green burrs (x 4) towering over the stairs is making quite a splash. 

You're probably aware that the "hook and loop fastener" Velcro was inspired by the structure of burdock's fruit, but did you know it all started in the Alps?

Detail of botanical illustration of Arctium minor shows cross section of flowerhead (magenta and pink) enclosed in a prickly burr or involucre, a series of bracts or phyllaries (green turning to brown when ripe) with hooks curving inward. (Flora von Deutschland Österreich und der Schweiz, 1885)

From SwissInfo.org's How a Swiss invention hooked the world:

It was in 1941 that [Velcro inventor Georges] de Mestral had his eureka moment. Walking his dog in the woods, he spotted that his woollen socks and jacket and his dog's fur were covered with burrs — small seeds or dry fruits found in many types of plant including thistles and, in this case, burdock.

Back home, de Mestral slipped a few burrs under a microscope and saw that their barbed, hook-like seeds meshed with the looped fibres in his clothes … in 1955, the hook-and-loop fastener was patented under the name Velcro, which comes from the French words "velours" (velvet) and "crochet" (hook).

Most "flower flies have "yellow-and-black stripes and are excellent mimics of wasps or bees," according to the US Forest Service site. "Flies are considered 'incidental' pollinators," adds the USDA Agricultural Research Service, "moving pollen on their body hairs from one flower to another as they search for nectar." This striking specimen was busy incidentally pollinating flowers of gold of pleasure, AKA false flax (Camelina sativa), another weedy plant of waste places that caught our camera's eye this morning along a seedy stretch of sidewalk during walkies. Camelina has "long been grown in Europe, its oil used as a lamp oil until the 18th century.

Gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa), a weedy member of the  Brassicaceae or Cruciferae (AKA the crucifers, mustard family or cabbage family) of economic plants is another one of those "volunteers" in our own backyard that promises to be a boon to mankind. According to a Journal of Applied Poultry Research study, it is "one of various oilseed crops being studied for its potential value in biofuel production. The resultant by-product of oil extraction, camelina meal (CM), could be marketable as a livestock feed.

Update: Compare profile of burdock blossom, far right, with cross-section of flowerhead in botanical illustration above.

We stumbled onto camelina's virtues the other day when the Professor commented "I certainly agree that non-food-based biofuels are the future. Corn-based ethanol is justifiable, if at all, only as a bootstrapping measure," linking to an AgWeb article by Dr. Don Panter, President of Sustainable Oils, LLC:

Most important to the debate of fuel vs. food is the fact that biodiesel can be produced from non-food crops. Camelina, for example, is a non-invasive, oilseed crop of the mustard family. It can be grown in arid conditions or rotated with cereal crops and requires low amounts of fertilizer and pesticides. Aptly nicknamed “gold of pleasure,” the high-yielding energy-crop boosts farm revenues by creating a food-plus-fuel scenario. The meal produced from crushed camelina can be used to create omega-3 enriched feed for livestock, a significant benefit that has gotten swept away in the controversy. The beauty of non-food crops like camelina is that they are here today and don’t require new technology breakthroughs, just a commitment to see them succeed.

Update II: Burdock receives a gentleman caller, one of those fuzzy flower flies that looks like a bee to the untrained eye, "but there are several features that make it easy to separate [Syrphus sp.] from a bee: the eyes are huge, the antennae are short and stubby with a bristle half-way along, there’s nowhere to carry pollen and there is only one pair of wings." 

And camelina's bounty isn't just for diesel-powered vehicles, livestock and flower flies:

Camelina's other attraction is its possible application in human nutrition. It has a unique fatty acid profile that could make it a good source of omega three and omega six fatty acids. McVicar suggests that the health food industry is currently seeking products that have improved health attributes, which might present new opportunities for camelina.

The biblical parable of the mustard seed comes to mind:

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

                — Matthew 17:20 (King James Version)

Back to biodiesel, Rudolph Diesel himself planted the seed — a peanut seed — over a hundred years ago, as BioShuttles explains:

Biodiesel has been around for over a century. Dr. Rudolf Diesel actually invented the diesel engine to run on vegetable oil and in fact when he presented his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, his engine was running on a fuel derived from peanut oil. Prior to his death in 1913 he stated that; "The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it."

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time." However due to the low cost of mineral oils at the time his engine was modified to run such oils. However, in European countries since the mid 1990's and in UK since 2002 reductions in biofuels duty has made the use of biodiesel economically viable as is now seen to be the "sustainable fuel of the future".

The Lord and the Invisible Hand move in mysterious ways.

Update: Maggie's links, commenting on the old saying that "The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but mosquitoes come close":

'Toon from Theo. It's wrong, though. Without mosquitoes, we would have no Gin and Tonics.

Be sure to check out all the links. It's a treasure trove, as usual.

Update II:  A treasure trove of links to all things bright and beautiful at Modulator's Friday Ark #201

Update III: Lots more things bright and beautiful at Carnival of the Cats #228, now playing at Cat.Synth.com.

"Those who aren't aware of these grand concepts are culturally deprived"

"I like the purple flowers that overtook the wildflower garden," emails Dan Adams. The local chicory community, a frequenter of waste places, has moved en masse to the chic new address in town for plants who garden, Dan's experimental "Flowers at the Industrial Edge," untended behind its chain-link enclosure since being soil-enriched and seeded a year ago. Chicory's flower heads (x 1.8 above) are not the corolla of petals they appear to be. Instead, they are a composite of ray florets that look like single petals, each designed to produce a single seed that will parachute away in the wind when mature. Think dandelion to get a mental image.

"Those who aren't aware of these grand concepts are culturally deprived," writes Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society of London, referring to Darwin's theory of natural selection, promulgated before the Linnean Society 150 years ago today. Only it isn't just Darwin anymore. In fact, it never was just Darwin — nor did Darwin claim it was — as evolutionary biologist/entomologist George Beccaloni, guest blogging at The Beagle Project Blog, explains:

Today we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first public announcement of what Richard Dawkins has called "… the most momentous idea ever to occur to a human mind." He was of course referring to the theory of natural selection, the primary mechanism driving the evolution of life on our planet; an idea actually discovered independently by two minds, not just one. Whilst the owner of one of these brains, Charles Darwin, is rather well known, the possessor of the other, Alfred Russel Wallace, is not exactly the household name he once was. So who was Wallace and how did he come to be the co-discoverer of what is probably the most revered (and reviled) idea in human history?

A European native that long ago escaped cultivation on these shores, Chicory (Cichorium intybus) is grown for its edible leaves [radicchio] or for the roots, which are "baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive," most famously in New Orleans's "French Market" Coffee & Chicory. AKA blue sailors, succory and coffeeweed, it is a member of Compositae or Asteraceae, the largest family of flowering plants, including asters, daisies and sunflowers.

Beccaloni reveals how Darwin's friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker finessed events to assure the lion's share of credit for the theory would go to him:

Unbeknownst to Wallace, Darwin had of course discovered natural selection many years earlier. He was therefore horrified when he received Wallace's letter and immediately appealed to his friends Lyell and Joseph Hooker for advice on what to do. They famously decided to present Wallace's essay (without first asking his permission!), along with two unpublished excerpts from Darwin's writings on the subject, to a meeting of the Linnean Society of London on July 1st 1858. These documents were published together in the Society's journal a month later as the paper "On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; And On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection" …

This unfortunate episode prompted Darwin to abandon writing his big book on evolution and instead, he rushed to produce an "abstract" of what he had written up until that point.

"The flower heads consist of 10-20 spreading ray florets that are light blue, fading to white — they are about 1–1½" across. For each ray floret, there is a light [dark?] blue stamen, terminating in a blue [bilabiate] anther. There are five small teeth at the tip of each ray floret. The flower heads bloom during the morning, and close up later in the day unless the skies are cloudy."

The result was the publication fifteen months later of On the Origin of Species, "a book which Wallace remarked would '… live as long as the Principia of Newton,'" notes Beccaloni. Speaking of Newton, "In terms of sheer IQ, Newton was — frankly — way ahead — offscale — an utterly singular intellect," admits Royal Society President Rees in his tribute referenced above:

But I'm happier to celebrate Darwin, for two reasons.

First, at the old-fashioned school that Darwin and I went to, it was drummed into us that character was more important than brains. Darwin was an engaging and admirable character. He had a fulfilled life: adventurous early on; five years of voyages on the Beagle; and then serene and productive decades among his family in Down House.

In contrast, Newton wasn't a man you'd want to meet: he was solitary and unbalanced when young — vain and vindictive in his later years.

Darwin's second attraction is the accessibility of his ideas. Newton wrote in Latin, and his maths was a challenge to the greatest scholars of his time. Darwin in contrast, is neither arcane nor impenetrable.

His work, like all great science, is based on hard slog and a focus on detail. But it's distilled into a broad vision, conveyed in elegant prose.

Lord Monboddo was unavailable for comment [thanks to Tuck for the thought].

The lotus effect in our own back yard

Gardeners usually think of hostas as foliage plants, but the flowers of Hosta sieboldiana 'Elegans' (above x 1.76) are as showy as the gigantic "puckered, blue-gray leaves" that have grown by the back door of Chelsea-by-the-Sea into a dramatic clump 4½ feet wide.

Unfolding floral parts of our totally awesome blue-gray-leaved Hosta sieboldiana 'Elegans' demonstrate the "lotus effect":

Water, unable to wet the cuticle beads up and runs off, carrying dust and soluble contamination with it. This property of self-cleaning ultrahydrophobicity is known as the lotus effect.

A little Photoshopping — zoom tool plus paint-daubs filter — locates our plant's inner Georgia O'Keefe.

And what is a plant cuticle? According to Wikipedia:

Plant cuticles are a protective waxy covering produced only by the epidermal cells of leaves, young shoots and all other aerial plant organs without periderm. [AKA bark]…

The cuticle is composed of an insoluble cuticular membrane impregnated by and covered with soluble waxes …

[It] is one of a series of innovations, together with stomata, xylem and phloem and intercellular spaces in stem and later leaf mesophyll tissue, that plants evolved more than 450 million years ago during the transition between life in water and life on land. Together, these features enabled plant shoots exploring aerial environments to conserve water by internalizing the gas exchange surfaces, enclosing them in a waterproof membrane and providing a variable-aperture control mechanism, the stomatal guard cells, which regulate the rates of transpiration and CO² exchange.

In addition to its function as a permeability barrier for water and other molecules, the micro- and nano-structures of the cuticle confer specialized surface properties that prevent contamination of plant tissues with external water, dirt and microorganisms. Many plants, such as the leaves of the sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) [and our own Hosta Sieboldiana 'elegans'] exhibit ultra-hydrophobic and self-cleaning properties … The lotus effect has potential uses in biomimetic technical materials.

Biomimetic technical materials? Think Velcro.