Trees
Easter Island Exhibition at Manchester Museum
Moai Hava and Sam in the World Museum in Liverpool
Since returning from the Ke EMu conference in Washington on Saturday I’ve been thinking about Manchester Museum’s next temporary exhibition which will be about the stone statues or moai of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. We are in the fortunate position of being able to borrow a statue called moai Hava from the British Museum, and a selection of supporting objects from the BM and other museums. The exhibition will draw upon the results of fieldwork on Easter Island undertaken by Professor Colin Richards of the University of Manchester’s Department of Archaeology. Our ‘Making Monuments on Rapa Nui: the Stone Statues of Easter Island’ exhibition will open in early April 2015 and run for four months in the Museum’s temporary exhibition gallery.
It is incredibly exciting to work with material from Easter Island, which must rank as some of the highest profile…
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Forests in Iceland

Iceland’s native forests are primarily composed of downy birch (Betula pubescens) with some rowan (Sorbus acuparia). The aspen (Populus tremula) is also found in Iceland, but is extremely rare and the shrubby tea-leaved willow (Salix phylicifolia) can sometimes get tall enough to be counted as a tree.

Beyond these species, the Iceland Forestry Service has experimented with a number of species from overseas, as well as planting more birch, and plantations of trees are now maturing. We have wandered through a few forested ares and we were privileged to meet Throstur Eysteinsson (division chief of the forestry service) who wrote this excellent description of forestry in a treeless land.
On the road to Grindavik

While David Gelsthorpe stopped to collect some interesting basalt specimens, mine and Dmitri Logunov’s attention was drawn to this lovely juniper bush.

Growing over the rocks and through a mound of moss, this juniper has grown into a low-lying shape which gives it some protection from high winds and the winter snows.
Whitworth: Past, Present and Future: An outdoor tour
With warmer weather on the way we invite you to join us for Whitworth: Past, Present & Future: An outdoor tour for those interested in finding out more about the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester’s gallery in the park, whilst we undergo a £15 million redevelopment (opening Saturday, 25 October).
Sarah Sanders from the Visitor Services team leads the first tour
The Whitworth’s very own Visitor Team will take you back through the Gallery’s illustrious 125 year history, from its humble beginnings as Grove House, a gallery established ‘for the perpetual gratification of the people of Manchester’, right up to the present day. Hear about what the redeveloped Whitworth will offer: brand new exhibition spaces, a fabulous art garden designed by Sarah Price, the innovative Clore Learning Studio and more… All this whilst taking a stroll through Whitworth Park, with views of the original façade of the building and encounters with…
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Megalithic Mallorca
The University of Manchester has broken up for the Easter holidays and so it must be the right time of year again for the 1st year field course in Comparative and Adaptive Biology. This year the staff and students were even more enthusiastic than usual to escape the unseasonably cold snow flurries of Manchester and head for sunny Mallorca. We’ve been braving the mosquitoes in the shrubberies to study how plants cope with the challenges of Mediterranean living and to see some interesting examples of plant endemism.
Last year I blogged about one of our days on the seashore, so I think this time I shall go more terrestrial and share some images from a site which is one of the staff favourites. Although there are other places to go and see Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) woodland, the Bronze Age talayotic site of Ses Paisses is pretty special. Excavated in the mid 20th century, the settlement is arranged around a central tower (or talaiot) and is now covered by a very nice woodland.
Under the shade of the oak trees we find black bryony (Tamus communis), butcher’s broom (Ruscus aculeatus) and a hemi-parasitic plant Osyris alba which can produce it’s own sugars by photosynthesis but steals water and minerals from a host plant .
However, with all these rocks around there is always the chance that botanical lectures on the effects of light and shade can end up being disrupted by sudden acts of zoology….
National Nest Box week
- What a lot of wood!
- RSBP sign
- Andrew Lawton
- Nearly ready…..
Yesterday, Andrew Lawton (the Museum’s curatorial trainee) and I braved the cold outside the Museum entranace to make bird boxes with Evan Powell from the RSPB.
For National Nest Box Week, we made homes for starlings and sparrows which will be placed in trees around the University of Manchester campus. We’re hoping to increase the amount of wildlife that calls the University campus home.
Members of the public helped us by decorating the boxes with their individual artworks
We couldn’t decide whether this was a colder event than the Wonderful Whitworth Wildlife bioblitz last year!
Tomorrow, artist Lucy Burscough will be making beautiful bird houses made from woven naural fibres in one of our Urban Naturalist events. These nesting pouches would be suitable for wrens and are inspired by the work of the Scottish ‘outsider artist’ Angus McPhee.
Egypt at the Manchester Museum
Working with wood in Ancient Egypt: a practical demonstration
In conjunction with our ‘Collecting Trees’ project and as part of our ‘Discover Archaeology’ Big Saturday on February the 9th, the Museum is delighted to host Dr. Geoffrey Killen, an expert on ancient Egyptian woodworking, who will demonstrate ancient craft techniques – LIVE! Watch Geoff use replica ancient Egyptian tools to make furniture, the Egyptian way. There will also be a chance to see Egyptian wooden items normally kept in storage.
Ancient Egyptian Woodworking
Saturday 9th February
11:30am and 2:30pm
Manchester Museum
ENTRY FREE
Treats of Turrialba
Andrew Gray, the Curator of Herpetology, is currently in Costa Rica looking for suitable places for University of Manchester Life Sciences students to visit on a field course. He’s posted a photo of a beautiful Cattleya orchid flower on his FrogBlog. Check it out: Treats of Turrialba.
These orchids are epiphytes (plants which grow on other plants) and there are lots of epiphytic plants in the tropics growing on the large trees. Xaali O’Reilly, a Zoology student fron the University of Manchester, is doing research on wildlife in the Ecuadorean rainforest and has some great posts about epiphytes on her blog. There are also some lovely epiphytes growing in the Manchester Museum vivarium, such as these bromeliads which collect water in the centre of the rosette and provide places for the frogs to breed.
However, you don’t have to travel far to find yourself an epiphytic plant growing in a tree; there are plenty to be found in Manchester’s concrete jungle. Look out for mosses growing on tree bark and for ferns and small plants growing in places where leaf litter can collect and develop into soil (such as at the junction of the branches and the trunk). Dave Bishop from the Friends of Chorlton Meadows has spotted a species of Polypodium fern which seems to like to grow on the London plane trees planted along Manchester’s roads and park paths.
Epiphytes are easy to spot on deciduous trees at this time of year while they have no leaves. If you see someting interesting, why not let us know?