Trees
Good wildlife spotting everyone!
With everyone staying close to home, this year the wildlife spotting for the City Nature Challenge has been really urban. If you have more images taken over the weekend, you can still upload them now into iNaturalist and your sighting will be added into the count. Otherwise, it’s time to try and identify all those finds! Let’s see how many we can push to be research grade records.
I suspect we’ve had far more pavement weeds this year than we did last year. Certainly, last year the top three organisms recorded where blackbirds, harlequin ladybirds and wood pigeons. So far this year, our top three are cuckooflowers, Herb Robert and dandelions. Of course, although the weekend of wildlife spotting is over, we’ve now got time to make sure as many records as possible are properly identified, so that list could change.
Happily, although everyone was limited to gardens and short walks, the weather was much kinder than last year allowing us to really enjoy our local wildlife. There have been plenty of bee and butterfly garden visitors and the occasional bird to watch as well as all the plants. If you have enjoyed a weekend of wildlife recording, check out Greater Manchester’s Local Record’s Centre so that you can continue putting nature on the map. There’s also advice from the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside on how to improve your garden for wildlife. Click here to apply for a free downloadable booklet from the My Wild City Manchetser project.
The City Nature Challenge weekend has been popular across the country with over 4,000 people taking part and just under 60,000 observations made. If know of a city or region that would want to take part next year, then get in touch with the organisers. The City Nature Challenge was invented and is managed by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and California Academy of Sciences: https://citynaturechallenge.org/
Advent Botany 2016 – Day 20: Virgin birth and hidden treasures: unwrapping some Christmas figs — Culham Research Group
By Katherine Preston & Jeanne Osnas Figs reach their peak in summertime, growing fat enough to split their skins under the hot sun. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with a bountiful tree, and many a neglected fig is extravagantly abandoned to the beetles. Beetles gorge on a fig@BitKblog But here we are, halfway around…
Advent Botany 2016 – Day 15: Carob Santa Is On the Way! — Culham Research Group
by Megan Lynch Caracoa, a popular carob candy bar from the ’50s – ’80s At this time of year chocolate is imbibed as hot cocoa, eaten as a confection pressed into the shape of Santa or snowmen, and baked into a variety of holiday treats from recipes often passed down within the family. Where does…
via Advent Botany 2016 – Day 15: Carob Santa Is On the Way! — Culham Research Group
Advent Botany 2016 – Day 6: Yew know it’s Christmas — Culham Research Group
By Niki Simpson Niki Simpson’s outstanding photo montage of Taxus baccata The traditional Christmas tree here in the UK is the Norway spruce, Picea abies, while Abies nordmanniana is increasingly sold as the expensive “non-drop” Nordmann fir. However, mention must be made of our native yew, Taxus baccata, which can provide an alternative Christmas tree.…
via Advent Botany 2016 – Day 6: Yew know it’s Christmas — Culham Research Group
Advent Botany 2016 – Day 5: Pōhutukawa — Culham Research Group
New Zealand Christmas Tree In Europe and North America, our Christmas trees are usually conifers. However, the New Zealand Christmas tree is a member of the Myrtaceae (Myrtle and Eucalyptus family). It is an evergreen tree of coastal North Island, New Zealand where it grows on cliffs and lava fields. The bright red flowers comprise…
via Advent Botany 2016 – Day 5: Pōhutukawa — Culham Research Group
A Travelling Botanist: The Miracle Tree
Guest blog series by: Sophie Mogg
In this installment of A Travelling Botanist I will be focusing on Moringa oleifera, commonly referred to as the miracle tree.
Moringa oleifera is native to South Asia however due to the multitude of useful products it can provide its distribution has increased in more recent years and now covers the majority of Asia, Africa and Europe. M. oleifera is a hardy tree, requiring little in the way of compost or manure and being drought resistant it is well suited to the environment of developing countries. M. oleifera reaches heights of up to 3M within the first 10 months and initial harvests of leaves are able to occur between 6-8months, with subsequent yields improving as the tree reaches maturity at around 12M tall.
Many parts of the Moringa tree are utilised in South Asian cooking. The young seed pods, more often referred to as drumsticks, are used in a variety of dishes such as curries, sambars, kormas and dals. The drumsticks can also be incorporated into soups such as the Burmese Dunt-dalun chin-yei. This is true also for the fruit of the drumsticks, the white seeds can either be cooked as you would green peas or incorporated into a variety of soups. Flowers can also be used, generally being boiled or fried and incorporated into a variety of friend snacks such as pakoras and fritters or alternatively used in tea.
The leaves of the Moringa tree are considered to be very nutritional, with the suggestion that a teaspoon of leaf powder being incorporated into a meal three times a day could aid in reducing malnutrition. The leaves can be prepared in a variety of ways, from being ground into a find powder or deep-friend for use in sambals. They can also be made into a soup with the addition of rice, a popular breakfast during Ramadan. The leaves of the Moringa also contain antiseptic properties with a recent study suggesting that 4g of leaf powder can be as good as modern day non-medicated soap. This provides some means of sanitation to people who would otherwise not be able to properly clean their hands.
The seeds of a single Moringa tree can be used to provide clean water for up to 6 people for an entire year. With their outer casing removed, the seeds can be ground to form what is known as a seed cake that can be used to filter water thereby removing between 90-99% of the bacteria present. This works on the basis of attraction whereby positively charged seeds attract negatively charged bacteria and viruses causing them to coagulate and form particles known as floc. This floc then falls to the bottom of the container leaving clean water above it. It is estimated that only 1-2 seeds are required for every litre of water.
Oil is a by-product of making the seed cakes, comprising of around 40% of the seed. This oil, often known as “ben oil” by watchmakers, can serve a variety of purposes due to its properties. Due to being light, it is ideal for use in machinery and produces no smoke when lit making it ideal for oil-based lamps. The oil also contains natural skin and hair purifiers and is becoming more popular with well known cosmetic companies such as The Body Shop and LUSH thereby providing revenue to the farmers who grow the miracle tree. It also bears similarities to olive oil making it ideal for cooking and therefore another avenue for marketing this multipurpose oil.
Moringa oleifera and its close relatives are also known for their medicinal properties, containing 46 antioxidants which aid in preventing damage to cells. Due to containing benzyl isothiocyanate it has been suggested that Moringa may also contain chemo-protective properties.
I know that you may think I have completely forgotten the bark of the tree. But no, that too has its use. The tree bark is beaten into long fibres ideal for making strong rope.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about the Miracle tree as much as I have, if you wish to seek more information just follow the links below.
As always comment below with your favourite plant and if it’s in our collection and found within South Asia or Europe, I’ll be happy to feature it!
Rhododendrons of the J. D. Hooker Collection
By Berglind Kristjansdottir
The Herbarium has a lot of specimens collected by Joseph Dalton Hooker (f. 1817, d. 1911). Most of them are from his expedition to India were he collected plants in and around the Himalayas.
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and his Exploration of Nepal and Sikkim
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was born in Halesworth, Suffolk in 1817. He spent his childhood in Glasgow were he helped his father with his herbarium which nurtured his keen interest in plants. Later in his life he would become one of the key scientists of his age and the most important botanist of the nineteenth century.
Hooker was only 15 years old when he entered the Glasgow University to study medicine. There he met Charles Darwin, who became one of his closest friends, and Captain James Clark Ross. Ross was about to lead a British Association expedition to the Antarctic and Hooker was determined to join. His father helped his 22 year old son to get the position of assistant ship’s doctor and botanist. On 28 September 1839 Hooker sailed out of the Medway and didn’t return until four years later. During the trip he was able to botanize on three continents as the ship visited Madeira, the Cape of Good Hope, Tasmania, New Zealand, Australia, the Falkland Island and the Southern tip of South America. His discoveries led to the foundation for his authority on the geographical distribution of plants, which later would prove vital to Darwin and his theory of evolution.
When Hooker came back to England in 1841 he was determined to make a study of tropical botany to compare to the Antarctic and on 11 November 1847 he left for a two year plant hunting trip to Sikkim on behalf of Kew. He arrived at Darjeeling on 16 April 1848. Hooker wanted to travel to Sikkim’s high mountain passes but to do that he needed permission from the Rajah. It took Hooker almost a year to get Sikkimese authorities to approve his application and on 27 October 1848 he was finally able to set out for Sikkim with his party of fifty-five men. The trip to the passes wasn’t easy. There were no proper roads to follow and they had to travel by foot. As winter approached the conditions deteriorated. The expedition got more and more dangerous and Hooker and his party had various complications on the way like imprisonment by the Dewan of Sikkim and lack of supplies and food.
The Himalayan expedition took Hooker three years and made him the first European to collect plants in the Himalaya. He collected a lot of important and special plants while he was there but the discovery and introduction into English gardens of the numerous and gorgeous Sikkim Rhododendron was certainly one of his greatest achievements. Out of forty-three species he collected thirty who were considered new to botanists, and most of the others were yet unknown to them.
Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya
Rhododendron grande
In May 1848 Hooker first experienced the excitement of discovering a new rhododendron. He found the ivory-white-flowered Rhododendron grande (R. argenteum) at the top of Mt Sinchul south east of Darjeeling. In his book Himalayan Journals Hooker described this plant as a:
“…tree forty feet high, with magnificent leaves twelve to fifteen inches long, deep green, wrinkled above and silvery below, while the flowers are as large as those of R. Dalhousie and grow more in a cluster. I know nothing of the kind that exceeds in beauty the flowering branch of R. argenteum, with its wide spreading foliage and glorious mass of flowers” (Hooker, 2016).
Rhododendron falconeri
Later in May when he was in Mt Tonglo he found Rhododendron falconeri which has reddish bark and beautiful bell-shaped yellow flowers. Hooker described it as:
“…in point of foliage the most superb of all the Himalayan species, with trunks thirty feet high, and branches bearing at their ends only leaves eighteen inches long: these are deep green above, and covered beneath with a rich brown down” (Hooker, 2016).
Rhododendron campylocarpum
In the Yangma valley at the Yangma Pass (16,168ft) he found the graceful Rhododendron campylocarpum. In the book Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya (1849-1851) Hooker described the plant as:
“A small bush, averaging six feet in height, rounded in form, of a bright cheerful green hue, and which, when loaded with its inflorescence of surpassing delicacy and grace, claims precedence over its more gaudy congeners, and has always been regarded by me as the most charming of the Sikkim Rhododendrons” (Hooker, 1849).
Rhododendron maddeni
Rhododendron maddeni is one of the “original” rhododendrons first introduced from the Himalaya by Hooker in the mid-1800s. It was named for Lt.-Col. E. Madden, a member of the Bengal Civil Service. In Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya Hooker wrote:
“I do myself the pleasure to name this truly superb plant in compliment to Major Madden of the Bengal Civil Service, a good and accomplished botanist, to whose learned memoirs on the plants of the temperate and tropical zones of North-west Himalaya, the reader may be referred for an excellent account of the vegetation of those regions. The same gentleman’s paper on the Coniferae of the north of India may be quoted as a model of its kind” (Hooker, 1849).
Rhododendron arboreum
Rhododendron arboreum is an evergreen shrub or small tree with a showy display of bright red flowers. It is found in Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Rhododendron arboreum is the national flower of Nepal and in India it is the state tree of Uttarakhand and state flower of Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland. R. arboreum was first of the Indian Rhododendrons to be discovered. In Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya it says:
“Towards the very close of the 18th century, namely in 1700, R. arboreum, the first of a new form and aspect of the genus, and peculiar to the lofty mountains of India Proper, was discovered by Captain Hardwicke, in the Sewalic chain of the Himalaya, while he was on a tour to Sireenagur. The species has since been found to have a very extended range” (Hooker, 1849).
References
Desmond, R. (1990). Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker Traveller and Plant Collector. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors’ Club.
Hooker, J. D. (1849). Rhododendrons of the Sikkim-Himalaya. London: Reeve, Benham, and Reeve.
Hooker, J. D. (2016). Himalayan Journals (first published 1854). Oxon: Routledge.
Musgrave, T. Gardner, C & Musgrave, W. (1998). The Plant Hunters. London: Ward Lock.
Advent Botany 2015 – Day 17: Sgan t’sek
By Chelsey Geralda Armstrong On Day 4 of the advent botany series this year we heard about the world’s 4th largest nut crop, the European Hazelnut (Corylus avellena). But, it’s poorly known cousin …
Advent Botany 2015 – Day 14: the Olive
By Louise Denning An olive branch shown with a dove is often depicted on Christmas cards to symbolise peace and goodwill amongst men. Where this concept of the olive branch representing peace origi…
Advent Botany 2015 – Day 8 – Wassailing
By Yvette Harvey and Maria Christodoulou After last year’s relatively well behaved advent plants, it is time for the more obscure and yet omnipresent ingredients of a good Christmas. Time for the h…
Herbology Manchester 