A Garden In May

Time for our monthly date with the Botanic Garden in Cambridge. It was another glorious day, though not as peaceful as usual. The reason was a large group of "young botanists" in the shape of a school group clutching their clip-boards and scurrying around in search of the answers to their questionnaire. It was a reminder that the garden was designed as a teaching facility by Charles Darwin's tutor, no less.

As usual I didn't complete my homework very fully so I'll add some notes where I can, but feel free to add information or correct me via a comment...

These are the unmistakable blooms of Bleeding Hearts (Lamprocapnos spectabilis). There's really nothing else like them.

The pond above can be seen from the Woodland Garden. I think I take a photo here most times when I visit.

Is this some kind of peony? Whatever it is I love the papery petals and the startling splodges of deep red. (It's cistus ladanifer - thanks, Rosemary, see comment below)

Astonishing colour combinations beside the little stream, which seems to have been planted up since last time I was here.

There never seems to be anything quite as white as the flowers of the Arum Lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica). Apparently they are native to Southern Africa.

It's easy to spend a long time sitting in the sunshine beside the fountain.

I'd never noticed the above tree before, which must mean that I've never been here when it's flowering. I wandered over to have a look at the little sign which told me that it's a Manna Ash (Fraxinus ornus). In Medieval times it's sugary sap was said to taste like "manna from heaven", hence the name. 

This is one of my favourite areas of the garden, where the vegetation around the trees is left to "do its own thing".

Variety of colours around the "lake".

We had a lot of this white flower growing in the garden where I spent my childhood and it was known as "the one that Granny dug up" as she had brought it from a previous home. We did the same thing when we moved house later on. Its more usual name is Snow In Summer or  Cerastium silver carpet. It was growing in the Chronological Beds so I can tell you that it was introduced into the UK in around 1650.

There were lots of flowers like the one above growing all over the garden, I presume they are an Allium of some kind.

This striking flower was in the Systematic Beds and was grouped with the Daisy Family.

Fallen blossom, still beautiful despite being grounded!

Take care.

The Aaaah Factor

As well as the big ferocious beasts that dominated the previous post they also have some of the cute and cuddly kind. These lemurs were the pick of the bunch for me; you can follow a raised walkway through their enclosure and some of the lemurs climb up to say hello.

Three kinds to see here, all of which have nice descriptive names, Ring-Tailed Lemur, Red-Bellied Lemur and Black-And-White Ruffed Lemurs.

Take care.

On Safari

As far as I'm concerned zoos are very much like a large pie and chips - I know they're a bad idea, I can make a good argument against them, but I really enjoy them anyway!  In that spirit, when my brother suggested a trip to Woburn Safari Park I jumped at the idea. If we must have animals in captivity then may all of them have the space to live their lives as they have at Woburn, even if they do look a bit incongruous in the lush Bedfordshire countryside. Here are just a few of the characters that we encountered....

Amur Tiger

Barbary Macaque

Humboldt Penguin

African Lion

Oryx

Aldabra Giant Tortoise

 White Rhinocerous

Californian Sea Lion

Ankole Cattle

Black Bear

Meerkat

Grevy's Zebra

Now, lets go and find a pub that serves a good pie and chips!

Take care.

Searching For Sarah

We're still in Stow Bardolph for one more post. From the rare breeds farm you get a pleasant view across towards the church - well, it is called Church Farm so it's what you'd expect. Lets toddle across there and take a look.

First impressions are of a clean and well-maintained church, fairly typical of the area but with no obviously remarkable features.

Then I spotted this superbly carved royal coat of arms. It dates from the reign of Charles II and is very similar to one in the church at Therfield. And once again there's a spelling mistake in the word PENSE, this time it's been rendered as PENCE whereas in Therfield it's PENES. If it's the same carver then I think we can assume that he wasn't particularly literate.

On one of the pews there's a carved hare holding the arms of the Hare family of Stow Hall. It looks medieval but is actually nineteenth century. But then you notice there's a side door in the chancel leading into a side chapel filled with memorials to various Hares from past centuries.

There's great variety and great artistry here. Lets have a look at some of them.

Above is the rather striking memorial to Radulph Hare. It has a very odd inscription in Latin which is handily translated on a card placed nearby.

I lived almost nine times eight years

(if you take four away) thence to death succumb

and for me you, July, were the month of my birth,

and you, June, the month of my death...

it goes on to list his virtues and concludes...

I was small of body, but the neighbourhood said,

In body I was a pygmy, but in good deeds a giant.

The skilfully carved monument above is to Susannæ Hare. It is by the great Peter Scheemakers the Younger, a Flemish sculptor who worked in London, who is regarded as the father of modern sculpture. He is responsible for the monument to Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey amongst other great works. If you're thinking that it looks similar to one of the monuments in Wimpole church, which I showed you recently, then give yourself a pat on the back; that was by Scheemakers too.

But there's a detail in the Latin inscription which I can find no mention of elsewhere. it is the single Latin word "cineres" or ashes. It says that Susannæ's ashes lie here. But this was 1741 and cremation was not made legal for another century or so. The Romans had used cremation but the Christian church had always outlawed the practice. It is known that there was a cremation, of one Honoretta Pratt, in 1769 and that's usually considered to be the first cremation in the UK in recent centuries. That was also in Norfolk.

What was going on here back in the eighteenth century? I'd like to know.

I can however hazard a guess at why no one's noticed the details in the inscription on Susannæ's memorial. They were all in a hurry to see the little wooden cupboard that stands in the corner. For it contains the memorial to Susannæ's sister, Sarah.

Sarah was considered eccentric in her lifetime and in death she was particularly unconventional. She left instructions that a wax effigy should be made and displayed so that future generations might see her, dressed in her real clothes.

As you can see she wasn't particularly beautiful, but apart from the funereal effigies of royalty which were carried in their funeral processions and are stored in Westminster Abbey, she has a unique (and rather unsettling) memorial.

(I read online that the Westminster Abbey effigies are going to be displayed during 2018, if you want to see them).

Take care.

Rarer Than a Giant Panda

I'm afraid it's true, some of the rare breed farm animals that we've met in past posts (and others that we'll meet today) have numbers lower than the Giant Panda (of which there are reckoned to be about 1,500). All of today's gang can be found at Church Farm, Stow Bardolph which I visited recently.

Boreray Sheep

When the remote islands of St Kilda were evacuated in the 1930s, after the human population had voted to leave for the mainland, the sheep on Boreray were left on the island to fend for themselves. In the 1970s a few were brought from the island and from these all the mainland Borerays are descended. Most of them are white with dark marks on their faces though some individuals are darker.

British Saddleback Pig

This is Basil, the Saddleback boar, and if you look closely you can see his tusks protruding from the sides of his mouth. But don't get too close as he can inflict some nasty injuries with them if he doesn't like the look of you! "Nice Basil, good ol' Basil", would be a good way to address him.

Back in the days 'when I were a lad' these were one of the breeds of pig favoured by those who kept just one or two pigs. Although they rarely had large litters of piglets they were very little trouble to look after (as long as you kept on the right side of Basil!). It seems amazing to me that they are now considered "at risk" by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

Golden Guernsey Goat

If beauty alone was the major consideration of goat keepers then surely the Golden Guernsey would be one of the most popular breeds. But the truth is that goat farming of any type is not hugely profitable in the UK, though recent health food fads have made goats' milk more popular. It's all come a long way since people tethered their goats on the roadside verges of my village and old Mrs Fletcher would knock at the door and say "I've brought you a nice jug of goats' milk", then before she turned to go would add "That'll be fourpence, please!"

Gloucester Old Spot Pig

Them pigs are John Potts'

I knows 'em by their spots

These were the traditional pigs of the cider orchards of the West Country, quiet, easy-going and placid - and often very fat and lazy! Males weigh in at around 600 lbs (250 Kg) and a Gloucester Old Spot was supposed to be the biggest pig ever raised in the UK. Today, far from being a cottagers' pig, they are kept by both Prince Charles and Princess Anne on their Gloucestershire estates. Despite royal patronage they are on the "at risk" list.

North Ronaldsay Sheep

These dainty-looking little sheep come from the most northerly island of Orkney and have a remarkable adaptation; they are the only sheep in the world who can live on a diet of seaweed. The islanders used to rely heavily on harvesting the kelp or seaweed on their rocky beaches but when the market for that commodity collapsed it was decided to build a drystone wall all around the island to keep the sheep on the shoreline while using the inland area for growing crops. 

The resultant wall, six feet high (2 m) and 13 miles (21 Km) long is now listed as a site requiring conservation, though the current population of the island lacks the skills and resources to maintain it.

British Lop Pig

Here's an interesting one: most people's reaction on seeing a British Lop is "Why's that here? It's just a normal pig". And that has added to the British Lop's problems. While it's not to hard to get people to keep odd- and exotic-looking breeds as a visitor attraction or just as a talking point, it's very difficult to persuade farms to keep something that looks perfectly normal, however rare and endangered the breed may be. And with less than 100 breeding sows the Lop is certainly endangered.
  

Suffolk Punch

Suffolk Punch horses originated from a small area of that county and were bred for farm work. They are shorter and stockier than other draught horses which apparently makes them more suitable for farm jobs. They are always this wonderful chesnut colour. And whatever this computer thinks, when referring to horses, there is traditionally no letter "t" in chesnut. There are only about 80 mares of this breed in the world, much, much rarer than the Giant Panda then.


Dartmoor Sheep

White face with grey markings around the nose and everything else covered in long, thick, curly wool - that would be a Grey-faced Dartmoor. Not quite as rare as some of the other breeds here but still not numerous enough to be safe, the Dartmoor is a big sheep that is extremely hardy and able to survive on the uplands of Dartmoor. And far too cute for me not to take lots of photos.


Take care.