UPDATED: Manchester Bee swarm

On the 1st of June I was walking along Brantingham Road where it meets Manchester Road in Chorlton, at about 5pm. I saw a young man pointing his phone into a tree. I assumed he was just a fan of elder-flowers until I got nearer. I could then see a few insects orbiting around a clump on a branch of the elder tree. The young man said he had called a bee-herd.

More pictures after the break.

King Caradoc, inspiration for the mythical King Arthur?

There was once a British King who presided over a prosperous time, ruling from the city of Camulodunum. He regularly defeated his neighbours in battle to spread his rule. His father had already been so powerful that he was called King of the Britons. The young king fought against the armies of an invader across most of southern Britain for eight years before being defeated in a final great battle. He left the scene of the last battle alive and was then betrayed by a Queen who was having an affair with her husband's greatest warrior. The king did not die but went into exile in a far-distant and almost mythical land famous for the size and sweetness of its apples.

It was not King Arthur. This king is best known as Caractacus or Caratacus, the version of his name the Romans had used. He was resurrected as a hero of the British Empire in the 19th century because of his bravery in fighting a massive Empire, being British and being a noble, well-spoken loser. Even so, he is nowhere near as famous as King Arthur. The original name is thought to have been something like Caratauc or Caratacos. It is derived from a root meaning "beloved" like the modern Welsh cariad. Old Welsh has Caratauc, which became Caradoc. Modern Welsh has Caradog. Old Breton has Caratoc. The surviving Irish form of the name of Caradoc is Carthach or Carthaigh. The modern surnames Carthy and O'Carthy come from the same name. McCarthy derives from "mac Carthaigh" - son of Caratauc.

Caractacus at the Tribunal of Claudius at Rome
Engraving by Andrew Birrell of a painting by Henry Fuseli, 1792
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

More after the break.

Background

I decided to update the picture in the background to take out the discontinuity between the repeated tiles. So I took a new photo of a pinstripe ginger leaf (Alpinia formosana). I don't seem to have saved the cropped version of the original photo. It would have looked more or less like this:

I then flipped the image horizontally, vertically and both horizontally and vertically. Putting those four images together makes a tile that should tesselate perfectly.

Here is a mosaic approximately the shape of my screen:

King oyster growing kit

I have become tired of the poor quality and intermittent availability of oyster mushrooms in supermarkets in recent years. So I bought a King oyster kit from Suttons Seeds. It arrived less than four weeks ago. It was sitting in the little propagator they provide in a dark but well-ventilated cardboard box for two weeks and near a window since then. Today I had my first harvest. They are simpler to cultivate than the common mushroom. I got 175g of edible mushroom.

More after the break.

Star Carr Duck Pendant

My colourised version of the photo of the original reproduced at
the end of this piece. Colours represent a mallard drake.

A paper was published in the online journal Internet Archaeology* in 2016 detailing a find from the previous year at Star Carr in North Yorkshire. They recovered a remarkable 11,000 year old shale pendant just over 3 centimetres (1¼ inches) wide. Many interpretations of the engraving were offered but most were a bit weird. I think the most obvious is that it is a carving of a duck.

Updated 20/3/2021: I found a larger photo to manipulate, open in a new tab for the full image:

More after the break.

A Swarm of Golden Space Bees can't find Manchester because it is raining.

A Swarm of Golden Space Bees can't find Manchester because it is raining.
or
A terrestrial globe semée of bees volant, all proper.
Totally ©-free. Use as you like. If you care give me credit.

This is my interpretation of the top of the crest of the coat of arms of Manchester Council, made a little more realistic than the usual stylised heraldic cartoons such as that at the bottom of this page. I had a desire to know what it would look like done properly and realised the only way I was going to get to see it was to do it myself.

More after the break.

Marvellous marigolds

Maravilla silvestre (wild marvel, botanically Calendula arvensis) is very common and widespread in Andalusia. This small wild version of the well-known garden Marigold or maravilla (Calendula officinalis) is also used medicinally, for much the same things.

The flowers contain lutein, an interesting carotenoid that seems to protect the human body and particularly the eyes. The plant also contains particular saponins that seem to promote the rate of healing of wounds. Other names in Spanish are hierba del podador (herb of the pruner, as pruning tends to end up causing cuts and scrapes) and hierba lavamanos (handwash herb).

They are also very pretty.

I also saw another bright orange-yellow member of the marigold/daisy/sunflower/lettuce/thistle/artichoke/dandelion/tarragon/echinacea/chamomile/ragwort/dahlia/zinnia/chicory/cornflower/feverfew/goldenrod/tansy/coltsfoot/safflower/chrysanthemum family Compositae (also called Asteraceae). It is a very big family. 

The margarita de mar (sea daisy), estrella de mar (sea star) or padrijo (fatherson) is now known botanically as Pallenis maritima. It was previously called Asteriscus maritimus, Buphthalmum maritimum and Odontospermum maritimum. I don't know any uses for this plant apart from as a garden ornamental.

The margarita de mar can spread quite a bit.

Bufalaga marina

Bufalaga marina (Thymelaea hirsuta) is a member of Thymelaeaceae, the same family as the popular fragrant garden shrub Daphne. I didn't notice a smell from the flowers to this example above the Cuevas de Nerja. Like Daphne, it is also toxic, though it was used as a purgative despite this.

Flower of St James

This little buttercup, the flor de san diego (Ranunculus bullatus), seems to be very resistant to being trodden on. It was growing in the middle of a footpath above the Cuevas de Nerja.

Little little dragons and puffins.

Arisarum vulgare is known by many names including dragontea menor, the little dracontium. The dragontea mayor or big dracontium is Dracunculus vulgaris, whose botanical name means common little dragon. So Arisarum is the little little dragon and they are all very small. Other names for Arisarum vulgare are candilicos (candlesticks) and frailecillos (little friars, also used of the seabirds called puffins).

The arisarums of Andalucia include a range of intermediate forms between Arisarum vulgare  and Arisarum simorrhinum (the specific name means snub-nosed). Arisarum comes from the ancient Greek ἀρίσαρον used by Dioscorides, perhaps of this plant.

More pictures after the break.

Sarsaparilla

The Spanish plant Zarzaparrilla (Smilax aspera) is not the Sarsaparilla of commerce, which is Smilax ornata from the Americas. However the root has been used for the same medicinal effects and is famed as an aphrodisiac in Andalusia.

The berries were not ripe in January in Nerja.

The plant can scramble up to 10 metres hanging on with vicious thorns, though here only about 3 metres into great reed (Arundo donax). I would not recommend trying to weed it as the vines spring unpredictably when cut and wrap around digging their huge thorns into any unprotected flesh.

Also along the Rio Chillar I found this little seedling of a variegated form of the zarzaparrilla:

Zarzaparrilla comes from zarza (the bramble or blackberry for its thorns) and parrilla (the grapevine for its long vines growing up supports). A small unhappy zarza or blackberry (Rubus sp.) was also growing in the shade of some great reed.

Olivilla

Olivilla (Cneorum tricoccon), the "little olive" sounds delightful but is unfortunately quite toxic. It has been used medicinally but that probably is not a good idea. It used to be in its own family, Cneoraceae but is now included in the rue/citrus family Rutaceae.

This one was growing by the watchtower called Torre de Maro at the top of the cliff by the sea.

In English the olivilla is called spurge olive, here is an actual spurge, a Euphorbia of some species or other from by the sea east of Nerja.

Viper's Bugloss

The species of Echium found in Britain are called Viper's Bugloss. Those in Spain are called viborera and viperina. In both countries they have a folk reputation for curing snakebite, There are many species in Spain so I didn't try to identify these to species level, so here is some Echium from Malaga wasteland:

From by the Rio Chillar:

Potatoes

This post contains a few of the introduced ornamental members of the Solanaceae found around Nerja and a possible native. The large family Solanaceae contains;
the familiar vegetables aubergine, chili and sweet peppers, physalis, potato and tomato,
the familiar poisons deadly nightshade, henbane, mandrake and tobacco,
the familiar ornamentals petunia, physalis, shoo-fly, solanums and tobacco and many, many more.

All of the plants described after the break are deadly poisonous except for the Lycium, which has edible fruit and other parts used medicinally.

Houseplants in the garden

A source of cognitive dissonance when visiting Spain is the appearance of many plants I grew up with as houseplants being in the gardens outside and growing to immense proportions. For example, these poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima, Latin for "beautiful spurge") are rather big:

More pictures after the break.

Sweet Violets

Proper, sweet-smelling violets, Viola odorata, in the borders at San Juan Capistrano in Nerja. Though not on the Calle las Violetas.

Candiles, Andalusian pipevine

Aristolochia baetica, called locally candiles or candilillos, is a very distinctive scrambling vine with the typically weird flowers of the genus. Baetica was a province of the Roman empire that roughly corresponds with modern day Andalusia.

The name Aristolochia probably came from the Greek for "best childbirth", Aristolochia clematitis having the name Birthwort in English. Though many members of the genus have been used in medicine in both Europe and Asia they have been found in recent years to have a toxicity to the kidneys and tendency to cause cancer that makes them unusable. This toxicity is due to alkaloids such as aristolochic acid, an unusual nitro-substituted alkaloid.

The first plants were scrambling over a thorny shrub by the roadside on the way eastwards from Maro.

This is a pipevine fruit on the same plant.

Attached to the shrub was what appeared to be a small wasp nest.

By the Torre de Maro I encountered another colour form of this species. The true colour is a little darker than it seems in these pictures, due to the camera not coping with the strong sun. The pale parts were a dark beige. The dark purple forms were growing within a few paces of these.