bombylildæ

While in Europe we don’t have humming birds (Kolibris), we are lucky enough to have these uncanny important pollinators called the fly bee or the humblefly (Wollschweber). Our garden is absolutely full of them but I’ve never managed to capture a picture of one until now when I spied one resting on a flower (see also), which by the end of the season can grow quite substantially and present like their avian cousins but less so than the equally camera-shy Hummingbird Hawk-Moth (Taubenschwänzchen) that hovers and has a proboscis for nectaring. We’re visited by them too and maybe if I’m patient, I’ll be able to get a photo.

brood x

For the emergence of the seventeen-year cicadas in North America—what was going on in the early summer of 2004, we are treated, via Messy Nessy Chic to this graphic depicting the stages of conventionalisation, deconstruction of the periodic insects (Magicicada septendecula and two other closely related species, tribes, see previously) as illustrated by Hugo Froelich (the periodical being from Syracuse, New York and the contributor not the classical German actor) in 1905 (that year being an emergent one for Brood XXX on a thirteen-year cycle as assigned by entomologist Charles Lester Marlatt at those geographical climes) for Keramic Studio Magazine

your daily demon: gusion

The eleventh spirit on the Demonological Calendar ruling from today through 14 May presents as either a baboon or as having the chimerical condition defined as xeno- or theriocephaly (from the Greek for beast-headed). Controlling forty-five legions of devils and giving the powers of prophesy and reconciliation of friendships, Gusion is countered by the Shem HaMepohrash angel Lauviah and can be summoned with aloe vera.

the planet on the plate

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are directed towards the announcement of one influential cooking website that going forward (the policy change has been essential in effect for over a year to overwhelmingly positive reception) won’t promote any new recipes with beef as an ingredient—the decision based on sustainability and “not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offender.” Rather than being anti-cow, Epicurious—whom hope others follow—acknowledges that giving up meat alone is not a panacea for our predicament and that in a broken food system, soy, seafood and most everything else is potentially problematic but it’s definitely a start and a signal to the industry at large.

guerrilla greening

Via Colossal, a Honolulu-based design consortium imagines the transformation of some of the iconic urban corridors of world cities transformed through an aggressive and transfixing shift away from the concrete jungle to something living and sympathetically breathing with us. Learn more about their work and the study that’s gone into these visualisations at the link above.

robigalia

One of a number of Roman celebrated during this time of year to ensure a good growing season and bountiful harvest, the feast of the for the god Robigus was held on this day in the agricultural outskirts of the city.
The god, which was designated as the divine representation of fungal blight or rust needed to be propitiated in order to ensure that the crops wouldn’t spoil in the fields. Understood as a separate, corrupt manifestation of the same infestation that could be harnessed for fermentation, the games held at this time with their attendant feasts (see also) were also marked by rather dark sacrifices that expressed their anxieties over crop failure—especially for one this late in the growing seasons that wouldn’t be easy to recover from. Whereas animal sacrifice generally was reserved for livestock that was part of the Roman diet and was shared in a communal meal, Robigalia rather gruesomely demanded a dog with a red coat—that matched the rust disease—as form of homeopathic magic.
Other observations included a celebration of—for whatever reason—of male sex-workers, professional female prostitution having had their own honours in the previous days, specifically on Vinalia urbana, the grape harvest on 23 April. Though without the cruel bits, thankfully—or the fun bits either, I suppose, the holiday is preserved in Western Christianity with the same day of prayer and fasting known as Rogation (from the Latin to beseech—to ask God for protection from calamity) and was done to cleanse the body and mind in anticipation of the Ascension and farmers often had priests bless their crops, often holding mass and processionals in the fields.

the best laid plants

Featuring just like on my window ledge at my work-week apartment a Money Plant next to a Calathea Rattlesnake (Goeppertia), we were intrigued and quite enjoyed exploring this helpful guide, brilliantly illustrated for caring for our household botanical friends. Via ibīdem, How Many Plants features quite a voluminous identification and upkeep section and will even let one assemble a fantasy league of potted-plants should space have become an issue though one can never have too many.

timelapse

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we discover the latest suite of features from Google Earth—which has been giving us a privileged perspective on our planet for fifteen years now—includes a chronological dial that allows one to peer into the past four decades of satellite telemetry with a cache of some twenty-four million archived images (see also here and here) to better visualise the toll that de-forestation, desertification, intensive mining and agriculture, urban-sprawl, pollution and global warming takes on the environment.

7x7

tsugite: software that generates traditional Japanese joinery (previously) that can be 3D printed or precision cut

prince albert in a can: a collection of fish tin labels from a digital museum dedicated to the Portuguese canning industry 

cosmic nature: artist Yayoi Kusama exhibits at New York’s Botanical Garden  

tune-dex: the real-fake book of jazz standards, essential to musicians in the 1970s 

dingbat: thirty select works of Mid-Century Modern print for inspiration 

beer is proof god loves us and wants us to be happy: brew theorems post US National New Beers’ Eve ahead of the anniversary of rescinding parts of the Volstead Act that allowed for consumption of higher proof beer 

ukiyo-e: the unintentional ASMR of a master printmaker at work

your daily demon: marbas

Governing from today through 14 April, this fifth spirit and infernal president, ruling thirty-six legions, presents as a lion until brought under the control of the exorcist—whereupon Marbas dispenses wisdom on mechanical conundrums and has the potency and power to both cause and cure disease, leading some to source the name to barba, Latin for beard as well as the plant hellebore—a toxic herb used in witchcraft to summon (and banish) demons.

they are not long—the days of wine and roses

Though separated by a considerable distance in the north and the southern part of modern Germany, it’s interesting to note, via the always engrossing Futility Closet, the kindred relationship between the oldest known rosebush and the oldest known uncorked bottle of wine. The Millennium Rose (der Tausendjähriger Rosenstock) grows in the apse of the Hildesheimer Dom—dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, and is a non-domesticated variety known as the wild dog, Rosa cainina. Hardier by degrees that cultivated garden varieties that usually only thrive for decades, this especially long-lived specimen is legendary, with Louis the Pious (Ludwig der Fromme), heir to the Holy Roman Empire after the death of his father Charlemagne, happened upon this rosebush after becoming separated from his hunting party. Sacred to the Saxon goddess Hulda, the lost emperor sought shelter there but offering a prayer to the Virgin Mary through a reliquary he carried with him. Ludwig rested and upon waking, he found his icon irretrievably stuck among the branches—taking this as a sign from the pagan goddess that she was to be replaced in veneration. The emperor’s entourage found him and Ludwig pledged that his city should be founded in this spot and constructed the cathedral around the rosebush. In March of 1945, Hildesheim was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid which razed the cathedral as well. The rose’s extensive root system was intact and began to flourish again the next season as the city was rebuilt. The Speyer wine bottle (Römerwein) was recovered from a Roman tomb outside of the city (see also) in the mid 1800s and since dated to the fourth century of the common era. This grave good is contained in a glass vessel and is one-and-a-half litres in volume, two modern standard bottles and is shaped like an amphora with dolphins ornamenting the handles. There is no intention of opening it.

francesco di paola

Venerated on this day—the occasion of his death at the then very advanced age of ninety-one in 1507 (*1416), the friar from Calabria was later appointed patron of his home region at the toe of Italy, Panama, ferrymen, mariners and naval officers for famously refusing to pay a boatman for passage and using his own cloak and staff as a sail and mast and crossing to Sicily under his own power, Francis of Paola also went on to establish the mendicant order known as the Minims. Membership including the botanist monk Charles Plumier who first encountered the fuchsia plant and a cloister in München who continues to brew Paulaner beer though they were expelled from the order for not following the rule that they should subside on charity and alms alone. Known for their humility, their name referring not only to the last among the faithful but also to the idea of having minimal impact, Francis—himself the namesake of St Francis of Assisi—advocated to keep the diet of Lent year round and ate no animals or animal products, vegan in modern parlance. Another legend recounts resurrecting a favourite trout, Antonella, who was caught and cooked by an unthinking brother who tossed out his dish once he saw how upset Francis was getting over a fish. Antonella, with some divine intervention, became whole again, swimming happily in the pond, and convinced the whole friary to abstain.

fuchsia splendens

Though our prized exemplar did not make it through the winter sadly, we did rather find it interesting to learn how this plant of the month, the fuchsia, died of an over-exposure of a different sort though its reputation is now somewhat rehabilitated. First described by a French friar and botanist under commission of Louis XIV stationed on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the 1690s, the genus was named in honour of the German Renaissance researcher and professor Leonhart Fuchs of the previous century and considered one of the fathers of the field. In the following decades, it started to be cultivated in Europe and parallel the rise in cheap printing and lithography which resulting in multiple copies from the same prepared page easily reproduced without sacrificing the colour and detail that the flower highlighted and quickly became popular, and oversold eventually victim of its own success. While a number of enthusiasts and nurseries continued to experiment with breeding new types, public tastes were shifting, ultimately went for other novel plants including ferns, orchids, decorative palms and other ornamental plants.

a baneful herb

In a quite round-about way, I learned the identity of these plants that appear in the woods in early spring: hellebore (Nieswurz) also called Lenten roses due to the timing is a type of buttercup that is mildly toxic and eschewed by most, distasteful and deadly in sufficient quantities and dangerous to touch. Sometimes recommended as a purgative in traditional medicine, the plant can also cause a host of horrible things including the birth-defect of cyclopia, characterised by the failure to properly divide the eyes into two orbits, tinnitus, vertigo and slowing heart rate, and though commended in Greek mythology as a curative for madness and possession including releasing the princesses of Argos from the spell of the Maenads and the inducements of Dionysus modern witchcraft does not endorse its use beyond the wild and ornamental.

7x7

a tree grows in brooklyn: a map of New York’s great perennials  

no wine before its time: an interview with the director of Orson Welles’ infamous commercial for Paul Masson’s California champagne  

foley artists: the talented individuals who help make supplemental sounds for nature documentaries  

what level of wood panelling is this: McMansion Hell yearbook 1979—previously  

riding the rails: the portfolio of Wang Fuchun (RIP), celebrated photographer best known for capturing the narrative train travel  

schwarzschild radius: the Event Horizon Telescope—previously—takes another picture of the black hole  

hempire state: New York poised to legalise cannabis

tragomaschalia

From the June 1953 issue of Esquire—courtesy of Weird Universe—we are directed towards bedding with a strange gimmick that really stretches metaphor with these sheets treated with chlorophyll which apparently would at the same time attract livestock and fulfil the preferences of goatherds and shepherdesses who would rather sleep in the great outdoors. There’s one made up fear (see also) but made not in the obvious word. If one’s present linens are wanting, one is advised to “deter aegiphobia”—not a real word and presumably one should avoid the fear of covering up, aegis—“and rest assured.” The other menacing word, even footnoted from Aristophanes, is τραγομάσχαλος but not meaning agoraphilia or claustrophobia but rather referring our little bedmate above armpits smelling like a he-goat, in use both figuratively and in clinical-settings. There is quite a bit going on here and I’d be hard-pressed to find a contemporary advertisement that has this many levels I think.

dewdrop

Last year it was a little too warm for snowdrops (Galanthus, Schneeglöckchen) but this spring we had quite a profusion including a few fine examples of the related but rarer leucojum (below center, from the Greek for white violet, Knotenblumen for the green or yellow knotted tips to their outer petals).

Both snowflakes as all related genera are known are part of the Amaryllis family of bulbous perennials and are also sometimes called Saint Agnes’ flower, as they usually begin to appear around the feast day of Agnes of Bohemia on 2 March, springing up in shadier, wetter spots and tend to be pretty hardy and resilient garden plants despite their seemingly delicate and ephemeral nature.  Summer snowflakes also grow in late spring.

lph-8

Occupying a liminal space between 2001: A Space Odyssey and the juncture that went with cosmic opera in one direction and dread aliens in the other, the environmental-themed, weakly-endorsing techno-utopia Silent Running by Douglas Trumbull—released on this date in 1972—does resound with our times and the bleak climate catastrophes we are facing, nearly fifty years on. The film follows a resident botanist (Bruce Dern) on board a greenhouse just beyond the orbit of Saturn, maintaining specimens of Earth’s plant life for its eventual reseeding the planet after all native trees and crops went extinct. Disobeying an order from the corporate headquarters that sponsored the space ark project to jettison their living cargo and return to commercial services, the botanist with his three service robots try to save the last biosphere.

casanea dentata

Previously we’ve written about the consequences of blight and efforts to reintroduce the American chestnut tree with generic engineering but failed to appreciate the devastating magnitude that the loss of a keystone species had for industry and ecosystem until acquainting ourselves with this extensive Sierra Club article, excerpted by Super Punch. Crucial as building and construction material, the westward expanse of Old World settlers would not have been possible with log cabins and later railroad ties made out of the durable, rot-resistant wood, to say nothing of its sheltering branches and bark, the food-chain of fauna it supported or its pharmacological merits. Cutting or coppicing the tree didn’t kill it and rather it re-sprouted and was ready again to be harvested in a couple of decades, leading to the strangest, tortured Promethean twist in this study: as the blight only damaged the surface part of the tree, extensive root systems still exist, an estimated half a billion individuals and every once and a while grow new saplings, though these too succumb to the fungal disease within a few years.

dewi sant

Patron of poets, vegetarians and the Welsh, Saint David (*500) is fêted on this day, the occasion of his death in 601 at an advanced age. David’s monastic rules prescribed that the monks had to plough their own plots of land without the aid, abuse of draught animals and adopt ascetic practises that avoided meat and beer—giving rise to his associated symbol, the leek. The saint’s other iconography includes a flag—sable a cross or—representing the nation the same way the crosses of George, Andrew and Patrick stand for England, Scotland and Ireland respectively though this alternate banner (engrailed rather than offset) is not as prevalent as the Red Dragon. Reminiscent of the admonition “Be kind to small things” it is reported that David’s last words were “Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd”—“Do ye the little things in life,” a well-known saying in Wales.