The Magpie's Hoard

Happy Birthday Mr Darwin

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

To mark the occasion, a wide variety of events are being held across the UK and beyond.

If you want to know more about Darwin's life and works, there are loads of really useful resources available on the 'net. The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online has text and images from many of his publication and private papers, plus an account of how the 100th anniversary of his birth was celebrated.

I haven't yet had an opportunity to visit the Darwin - Big Idea Big Exhibition at the Natural History Museum, but it looks great.

You can leave a birthday message for Darwin here. Don't forget to order your free Tree of Life poster and buy a set of Darwin Stamps.

Palm, Willow and Yew

Tomorrow is the feast of Palm Sunday, when Christians commemorate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The crowds that greeted Christ are said to have carpeted his path with palm fronds, symbols of joy and victory in Jewish tradition.

According to Roy Vickery's excellent Dictionary of Plant Lore, Christians in many parts of Europe traditionally used willow as a substitute for palm when decorating their churches on Palm Sunday. The species most often used was Salix caprea, commonly known as pussy willow, goat willow or great sallow. Apparently the tradition has all but died out in England, now that "real" palm fronds can be obtained fairly easily. I'm not sure whether the use of willow still continues on the continent.

Here's a quote from 1530, attributed to Palsgr. Bulleyn, which I found in the OED:

"Palme, the yellow that groweth on wyllowes"

Pussy willow is still known as "palm" in some parts of Britain and Europe. One of my Flickr contacts tells me that Germans call it palmkätzchen, which literally translates as "palm cat". Perhaps Simon can tell us what it's called in Hungary...

The link between willow and palm is not without biblical precedent. In the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus states "And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days."

Elsewhere in the British Isles, yew was used in place of palm, giving rise to the feast's alternative name "Yew Sunday". Roy Vickery says that the practice was widespread in Ireland, where many Irish speakers know Palm Sunday as Domhnach an Iuir.

In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey states that yew was also widely used in England, particularly in years when the date of Palm Sunday was too late to permit flowering willow branches to be gathered. A shortage of willow catkins was more likely to have been a problem in southern counties, where the flowering season begins and ends a few weeks earlier than in the north.

According to the OED, yew was traditionally known as "palm" in parts of Kent. In illustration, the dictionary cites a pub in Woodnesborough called 'The Palm Tree' which, in 1887, was said to "bear for its sign a clipped yew tree."

Incidentally, there's a pub near my home in Sheffield called The Palm Tree Tavern, but I've no idea how it got its name!

This is my contribution to Festival of the Trees 10.

Frying Tonight!

My mother recently lent me some old family photographs so I can scan them and make copies for my sisters. Looking through them, I was fascinated to discover that one of my ancestors had a fish and chip shop on Aston Street off Cricket Inn Road in Sheffield. It wasn't any old chip 'oyl either - it was a "High Class Fried Fish & Chip Potato Restaurant"!

Sadly, the building itself was probably demolished many years ago. In fact, I think the Sheffield Parkway now runs straight through there. I'll have a look next time I'm passing.

There's a follow-up post here.

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet

This morning I visited Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Peter, one of my former students, kindly offered to show me round. He works at the Hamlet and is involved in the restoration of the dam that feeds the water-powered machinery.

One of the aims of the restoration is to improve the dam as a wildlife habitat, whilst meeting the needs of the industrial museum and the local anglers. To help achieve this, a lot of marginal vegetation has been introduced: mostly Glyceria maxima and Iris pseudacorus.

From an ecological point of view, the restoration certainly seems to be working. The eastern bank of the dam was teeming with insects. Peter pointed out various species of hoverflies (Syrphidae) that were feeding on flowers of umbellifers. I'm still very much a novice when it comes to entomology, but I'm gradually learning to recognise some of the more distinctive species.

I managed to get a few decent shots of blue-tailed damselflies (Ishnura elegans) resting on the leaves of Glyceria. Common blue damselflies (Enallagma cyathigerum) were also abundant, but far too fidgety and flighty to photograph.

Here comes the flood

"Sheffield’s five valleys carried their rivers along, now feeding the mills and wheels which in turn fed the industries, the grindstones, tilt hammers and other machinery which helped make Sheffield the steel capital of the world."

That's an extract from the prologue of 'Flood Waters', a new novel by Lett Rowe. It's based on the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864, which claimed several hundred lives. Chapter one of the novel can be downloaded free-of-charge from www.syci.org.uk/floodwaters.

Remembrance

A few months ago, a friend of mine lent me two tape cassettes: a recording of an oral history interview about his experiences as a soldier during in the closing months of World War II. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve only just got round to listening to them.

Aged just 18, my friend took part in Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of north-west Europe. Having landed in Normandy about a month after D-Day, he got his first taste of action crossing the River Orme near Grimbosq. It was an experience which began, in his words, as “scary but exciting” but ended in bloody chaos.

My friend was fortunate to survive the decimation of his battalion at Grimbosq, but very nearly didn’t make it to this 19th birthday due to ‘friendly fire’ from American planes near Villers Bocage.

In a welcome break from soldiering, my friend had an opportunity to visit the newly liberated Paris. He enjoyed a beer on the Champs Elysees just a week after the Germans had fled the city.

Later, he found himself at Arnhem in Holland. He recalls wading through a spillage of gooseberries in syrup near the village of Oosterhout, where he also helped a local farmer slaughter injured livestock that had been caught in the cross-fire.

In November 1944 my friend was in the thick of the fighting as the Allies advanced into Germany near Geilenkirchen. He describes two occasions on which he and his fellow infantrymen refused to obey orders which would have meant certain death. They were not punished for their insubordination: it was a display of good sense rather than cowardice.

My friend was briefly hospitalised after being caught in a mortar blast, but was soon sent back into combat. Eventually it all proved too much for him. He recalls “becoming confused” after being peppered by shrapnel on the battlefield. Somehow he found the courage to tell his commanding officer that he had no wish to desert but he couldn’t go on fighting.

Although I am a confirmed pacifist, I was fascinated by my friend’s account of his wartime experiences. It brought home to me what it must have been like for an ‘ordinary’ teenager caught up in the mayhem and bloodshed. Despite numerous near-misses, he came through it all without serious physical injury. Of course, many men and women were not so fortunate, and it is right that we should remember them at this time of year.

Warkworth and Bamburgh

Fans of Blackadder will recall that Tim McInnery played the amusingly dimwitted character Lord Percy Percy, heir to the Duchy of Northumberland. On my first visit to Alnwick, about 15 years ago, I was surprised to learn that this character was not entirely fictional. Such is my ignorance of English history!

The Percy family has ruled the roost in Northumberland for nearly 700 years. The family home is Alnwick Castle but, in the 14th century, they also took possession of Warkworth Castle and transformed it into an impressive stronghold.

Warkworth Castle is the setting for Act 2 Scene 3 of Shakespeare's Henry IV and several members of the Percy family can be found amongst the dramatis personae.

The present Duke of Northumberland is Ralph Percy (named after St Ralph the Liar, perhaps?) but, sadly, I can find no record of an idiot ancestor by the name of Percy Percy. Shame!

Due to its proximity to the Scottish border, the Northumbrian coast has more than its fair share of castles. The most imposing is Bamburgh Castle, thanks mainly to its setting: perched on a rugged volcanic crag which protrudes abruptlly from the surrounding sand-dunes. The building itself is rather disappointing, having been subject to a Victorian makeover.

On this day in 1791

When shall we 3 meet again
Originally uploaded by JJay

Last Saturday I picked up a book called "Gilbert White's Journals" in our local Oxfam shop for £1.99. It's a transcription of the diaries that the Reverend Gilbert White kept from 1768 until his death in 1793. He used some of them as reference material whilst writing his bestseller "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne".

Here is the entry for 14th September 1791:

Hop-picking goes on without the least interruption. Stone-curlews cry late in the evenings. The congregating flocks of hirundines on the church and tower are very beautiful, and amusing! When they fly-off altogether from the roof, on any alarm, they quite swarm in the air. But soon they settle in heaps, and preening their feathers, and lifting up their wings to admit the sun, seem highly to enjoy the warm situation. Thus they spend the heat of the day, preparing for their emigration, and, as it were consulting when and where they are to go. The flight about the church seems to consist chiefly of house-martins, about 400 in number: but there are other places of rendezvous about the village frequented at the same time. The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assemblies on trees.

"When Autumn scatters his departing gleams,
Warn'd of approaching winter gathered play
The Swallow people; and toss'd wide around
O'er the calm sky in convolution swift,
The feather'd eddy floats: rejoicing once
Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire,
In clusters clung beneath the mouldring bank,
And where, unpierced by frost, the cavern sweats.
Or rather into warmer climes convey'd,
With other kindred birds of season, there
They twitter chearful, till the vernal months
Invite them welcome back: - for thronging now
Innumerous wings are in commotion all."

I'm fairly sure that the poem is an excerpt from "Autumn" by James Thomson. It refers to the uncertainty about where summer migrants, such as swallows, spend the winter.