Desktop Calendar - December 2013

Windows
1) To ensure that you get the best quality, click the photo so that lightbox opens the image.
2) Right-click the image so that the context menu appears:
Firefox: Select "Set as Desktop Background..." and choose from the position options as below (Center or Fit will generally provide the best look).

Options from Firefox

Internet Explorer: Select "Set as Background". To change position settings you will need to set the personalise settings for the desktop in Control Panel:

Control Panel settings

Mac OS10.6.8
Chrome: Command click on photo (above); it opens in a new Tab. Drag to desktop. Use "Desktop & Screensaver" in System Preferences to center and choose background color.


Thanks
To Hollis, over at In the Company of Plants and Rocks, for the Mac instructions.
To Jessica Burke from Moss Plants and More for such the idea.

Note: If anyone uses other Operating Systems and could let me know the instructions for applying the photo as a desktop image, please get in touch!

Witches Butter Fungus - Tremella mesenterica

Date Photographed: 13/11/2013
Location: Giles Wood, Wiltshire
Resources: http://www.first-nature.com/fungi/tremella-mesenterica.php
Notes: This fungus has many common names including yellow brain and golden jelly fungus.

Five Fact Friday: Plant Hunters - Robert Fortune

1. Robert Fortune was born in 1912 at Kelloe, Berwickshire. Little is known about his early life as his journals have been lost. That which is known of his life is detailed in the four books that describe his 19 years travelling through China. He died in1880.
2. After an apprenticeship at nearby garden, in 1842 he applied for the post of Superintendent of the Hothouse Department at the Horticultural Society's Chiswick garden. After just a few months working there, he was chosen to spend a year gathering information about Chinese gardening and collecting new seeds and plants. He was told that 'the value of plants diminishes as the heat required to cultivate them is increased', but orchids, aquatics and plants with 'very handsome flowers' were exceptions to this rule.
3. Fortune left Britain aboard the Emu, bound for Hong Kong, on the 26 February 1843. He took plants with him for delivery to the colony in Wardian cases. He had some adventure in China, including what seems to be an epic fight with a crowd that liberated him of his letters and other valuables.
4. During his time in China, he found that strangers were distrusted and disliked. They would deny that nurseries existed or claim that they were very far away. Nevertheless he purchased and found many lovely plants. He had many trips to China before retiring back in Britain in 1862.
5. Fortune is credited with discovering 120 new species, including: Weigela florida, Mahonia japonica, and Rhododendron fortunei.


Resources:
Musgrave, T. (1998) The Plant Hunters, London, The Orion Publishing Group

Five Fact Friday: Plant Hunters - Marianne North

Some plant hunters went in search of plants in the name of science, some in the name of gardening, and some like the great Marianne North in the name of art; as we shall see below.

1. Born in Hastings, on the 24 October 1830, Marianne North was educated at home. She originally trained as a vocalist, but her voice failed. This allowed Marianne to concentrate on her painting. She died on 30 August 1890 in Gloucestershire having lived a life most of us can only dream of.
2. She made many trips to Kew Gardens to paint and draw some of their rare plant specimens. She was encouraged by the director of Kew Gardens at the time, William Hooker, the father of plant hunter Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 
3. She travelled extensively with her parents. She continued to travel with her father after her mother passed away. After her father died Marianne made the decision to travel on her own, with the intention of travelling to tropical countries to paint the 'peculiar vegetation in its natural abundant luxuriance'.
4. North was a very active artist and travelled deep into the areas that she visited ranging from Canada to Australia and Japan to India. She sent her oil paintings to Sir Joseph Hooker at Kew. Marianne later wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker suggesting that she would be happy to build a gallery within the grounds at Kew, if he would agree to display her life's work. He did agree and since 1882 her wonderful work has been on show. In 2008 a lottery grant allowed Kew to restore the Marianne North Galley and all 833 of her canvasses.
5. Marianne painted 900 species of plant and in great scientific detail. Many of her paintings were highly regarded, such as her depiction of Banksia attenuata. There are also plants named in her honour, including Nepenthes northiana, which can been seen in the painting below. The genus Northia was named in her honour by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker in his Icones Plantarum (1884).

One of the many gorgeous illustrations by Marianne North.

Resources:
Harrison, L. (2012) RHS Latin for Gardeners, London, Octopus Publishing Group
http://www.kew.org/visit-kew-gardens/garden-attractions-A-Z/marianne-north-gallery.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_North
Click images for copyright information.

Candle Snuff Fungus - Xylaria hypoxylon

Date Photographed: 10/11/2013
Location: Warminster, Wiltshire
Resources: http://www.uksafari.com/candlesnuff.htm
Notes: Due to the antler shape of the tips, this fungus is also known as Stags Horn Fungus. It seems the the fungus starts as white and matures through grey to black.

Quite a nice surprise to see this fungus. We saw it while out looking for some 'cache and dash' geocaches. We didn't find the cache! But we noticed on the online log for the cache that two others had looked for the cache this year and hadn't found it either - so we weren't too disappointed. The great thing about geocaches is that they take you to places you may never normally go and even if you're only looking for caches next to the road, there are nice surprises to be had!

Watch the video I found on YouTube below to see spore dispersal from this very interesting fungus:

Five Fact Friday: Plant Hunters - Ernest Wilson

1. Ernest Wilson was born in 1876 and grew up in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. Died 1930.
2. His first plant hunting expedition was in 1899, employed by Jame Veitch & Son. He was given the special mission of finding the handkerchief tree. Leaving Liverpool to travel to America on his was to China, he took a detour to the Arnold Arboretum, meeting Charles Sargent - a key player in Ernest's later life. After a false start, Wilson found the Handkerchief tree on 19 May 1900. He gathered a large quantity of the seed and found hundreds of other interesting plants in the area.
3. After marrying Helen Ganderton in the June of 1902, Wilson was off to China again on January 23 1903 for a two year trip. This time his object was the poppy Meconopsis integrifolia, which he found on the 15 July 1903 as a dazzling sheet fluttering in the mountain breeze. He returned home with the seed of 510 species and 2400 herbarium specimens.
4. His last adventures were with the Arnold Arboretum, first in China and finally in Japan - where Helen became the first wife of a British plant hunter to go on a plant hunting expedition. These expeditions were as successful as all the rest and in total Wilson is credited with the introduction of over 1000 species. Sadly Ernest and Helen were killed in a road accident in October 1930.
5. Some of the over 1000 species he discovered include: Viburnum davidii, Lilium regale, and Magnolia sinensis.


Resources:
Musgrave, T. (1998) The Plant Hunters, London, The Orion Publishing Group

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling

Desktop Calendar - November 2013

Windows
1) To ensure that you get the best quality, click the photo so that lightbox opens the image.
2) Right-click the image so that the context menu appears:
Firefox: Select "Set as Desktop Background..." and choose from the position options as below (Center or Fit will generally provide the best look).

Options from Firefox

Internet Explorer: Select "Set as Background". To change position settings you will need to set the personalise settings for the desktop in Control Panel:

Control Panel settings

Mac OS10.6.8
Chrome: Command click on photo (above); it opens in a new Tab. Drag to desktop. Use "Desktop & Screensaver" in System Preferences to center and choose background color.


Thanks
To Hollis, over at In the Company of Plants and Rocks, for the Mac instructions.
To Jessica Burke from Moss Plants and More for such the idea.

Note: If anyone uses other Operating Systems and could let me know the instructions for applying the photo as a desktop image, please get in touch!