Fritillaries …

 

Frittering away … well enjoying some time-space … with a nodding head as the Winter and early Spring disappear before an easier Summer, one (I do) hope/s, at least on the nature side, arrives …

Snake's-head Fritillary

Diddle away dissipate fribble away … words, words, words … aren't we lucky to have so many expressions to illustrate our ideas …

I'm on slow-go time … lots to do, and no doubt will get there … so in the meantime … some wonderful plants from a by-gone era …

Nodding Meleagris
in the meadow

Fritillaries first recognised in Europe in the late 1500s … characterised by nodding flower heads … probably brought over from the Middle East ...

Cultivated (Dutch) Fritillaries

... in Oxford there's a wild meadow, which hasn't been cultivated for centuries, as it's annually flooded …

... once the fritillaries in Iffley Meadows have finished their flowering, the deer herd is moved in for the summer and autumn …

Meadow Fritillary - underside of the female

Shakespeare in his narrative poem Venus and Adonis, Adonis metamorphoses into a purple flower checked with white:

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d

Was melted like a vapour from her sight,

And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,

A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white.

Helmeted Guinea Fowl in Namibia

The Latin specific epithet 'meleagris' means “spotted like a guineafowl” …

Then I came across the 'Fritillary' an academic term's magazine of the Oxford Women's Colleges … published between 1894 and 1931 …

Fritillary
Summer term
1927 magazine

... which I'd noted in the book Joanne Faries had reviewed last December … titled “The Eights” …

... and came about from Joanne Faries at her Word Splash blog in December last year when she reviewed “The Eights” - about four women in 1920 starting at Oxford University … which took me back to my school days in Oxford, and brought some history to life …

... and then oh yes! - in the book Joanne recommended … 'The Hilary Term' … which has just finished. I'm more than delighted today … I'm cheered at the coincidences!!

So here's to hope – I do fall on the side of optimism … and relate to my name derived from the Latin 'hilarius' – cheerful merry...

Section or Semester heading

Joanne Faries - Word Splash blog 'The Eights'

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories

April Fool's Day … let's collect fog to drink ...

 

April Fool's Day (I know 'twas yesterday) … let's collect fog to drink – shall we?!

Fog collection in Atacama Desert, Chile

Yes – it's real … fog has been collected over aeons, while in human times traced back to the 13^th century Inca Empire … fog was collected for their water requirements … from trees dripping their moisture into containers placed underneath the foliage from the coastal mists and fogs …

Strange but true … and those early humans, of course, realised that nature offered this ancient practice … from the small-scale drinking pools of condensation collected in plant stems, to these Namib beetles … all do it!

The Racingstripe Darkling Beetle,
Namibia. (stenocara gracilipes)

Also the Redwood forests survive particularly due to the addition of condensation on needles which drip into the trees' root stems …

Fog collecting has been devised using stone piles in Ukraine, medieval dew ponds in southern England and volcanic stone covers on the fields of Lanzarote …

Fog Collection

One of the first recent projects was in 1969 in South Africa … the collector is made up of three major parts: the frame, the mesh netting, and the trough of basin …

Mist or fog amongst
Red Forest

The design is adjusted according to the area – geography, the mesh has to be appropriate, while the frame size can vary as necessary …

You're lucky … I will not try and work out how much, etc etc … I'd probably be here in a few years still pondering!!

Cloud Forest in Sri Lanka

Building-integrated fog collectors into architectural elements is an ongoing emerging technology … we are still learning …

Fog can be harvested in the Atacama and Namib Deserts … fog fences … and surprisingly in Canada: where fog collecting devices were deployed on Mont Sutton in Quebec to study the constituents of the fog.

Village - Ait Baamrane, bordering
the Sahara Desert, Morocco
Men and Women collect potable water
from fog and mists

This project sparked the interest of other scientists … particularly in Chile, southern Africa … and other places … links below:

Fog Collection - Wikipedia - see Quebec information here

Fog-Harvesting - c/o UN Climate Technology Centre & Network ...

Case study: Morocco

Humans are behind the curve, but 'suddenly' we realise we could learn from our ancestors and their environment … we do not appreciate that which we have … thank goodness for scientists and people who are curious … always looking to improve life for all …

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories