And now back to the depressing cold winter weather outside -- which is best spent in a museum (or listening to an interesting talk).

To Oxford ....

And now, everyone's favourite plant...

The cocoa plant (and pod) -- used to make chocolate.

You can see the ripe cocoa bean in yellow, in the middle of the picture. Unripe cocoa beans are green.

 

Sap from the chicle tree

I don't think they sell Chiclets (a kind of chewing gum) in Canada, but if any of you have been to Asia, you'll recognize the name.

The sap of the tree was the original base for chewing gum. (Nowadays, though, we use a synthetic.)

Here's a picture of some sap. It is really under high pressure. My mom simply scratched the plant lightly, and the sap exuded out quite quickly.

Before you ask, I didn't try it -- I wasn't sure how (or if) you were supposed to process it, and so I didn't feel courageous enough to try it.

And now, everyone's second favourite tree.

This is the cola tree. A substance extracted from its seed (which is a stimulant) was the original flavour enhancer used in cola drinks (nowadays they use synthetics).

So, Coca Cola comes from this plant.

Rattan

Most of you probably have sat on rattan chairs -- they're the kind which look like the have been made of strips of wood (which you probably thought was some kind of bamboo).

Actually, the rattan plant is the one shown in the picture. I'm sure you wouldn't even dream that something this fearsome could be turned into a comfortable chair.

 

Titan Arum

By its name, Titan Arum, you know that the tree has something gigantic (or titanic) in size.

But what?

Actually, thankfully for us walking by, the titanic bloom of this plant was not present.

This massive influorescence is over 50 cm across, and stinks of rotten flesh. This is actually a method to attract its pollinators -- which happen to be flies.

The flies think that they have found rotting meat, and attempt to lay their eggs on it. In the process, the are smeared with the pollen of the flower. Unfortunately, this is no symbiotic relationship -- unable to find food (rotting flesh) when they hatch, the flies' young, maggots, all die.

However, the duped fly, flying from one Titan Arum to another, pollinates the plant, ensuring that it's species certainly does not die out.

 

Here, more tempting fruit.

Unfortunately, this time, the fruit wasn't ripe.

A fig tree (from tropical rainforests in Papua New Guinea).

 

Ripe Dates on a date palm

Here we enter the rainforest biome, and our first sight was a full bunch of dates. I hadn't had lunch yet, but the dates were too far up :(.

 

And here's another animal seen flittering around the Eden Project.

The European Bumblebee

 

Look at the beatiful pigmentation of this plant.

The latin name of the family is certainly no surprise -- Iridiceae.

These plants are bulbs, and they grow and flower from the bulb, each year.

As such, these were the present year's flowers, almost dead -- with only their beautiful pigmentation left.

 

Another English Bird

An English Robin.

Very different from the American robin, the English robin is a smaller bird (about the size of a large sparrow). The red pigmentation is also more pronounced, and can clearly be seen to extend to the face.

The American robin is a much bigger bird, and the red plumage can be harder to see.

I spotted this one in the Eden dome -- you can continuously hear the families of robins that have taken up residence inside the dome.

 

A young cork oak tree

This one is really young. Cork oaks can grow for about 200 years, producing cork for about 150 of those years.


Cork is actually the park of the tree. It is split off between the inner heartwood, and the outer bark. It does not contain any phloem or xylem, but cutting it off does harm the phloem tubes slightly.

However, this species is extremely resilient, and so it survives the rough treatment, and actually grows back another layer of secondary cork. This can then be removed again, and the cycle repeats itself.

As such, cork is harvested every 9 years from each tree.

Did you know that cork was so valuable, that since the early 1500s, chopping down a cork tree was a serious crime. Even today, there is a huge fine in cork producing countries (such as portugal) for cutting down cork trees. You have to get a permit to do so. 

This is cork -- the actual tree bark from which corks are made.

Cork is from the coak oak tree.

I've always known that cork was an actual tree product, but it was really interesting to actually handle a piece of cork oak (I bought some as a souvenier, too). The back is extremely light, the piece seen below was about 2 feet long, and about 3 inches thick, but it only weighted, maybe half a kg.


When we think of cork, we only think about bottles of champagne or wine. However, cork is actually used in lots of other places -- including the space shuttle.

It turns out cork is extremely fire resistent, and is one of the best fire resistent insulators (better than most synthetics). Also, its resilency to being pressed (elasticity) is also very high (again, better than most, if not all, synthetics). As such, cork has many uses in technology.

For example, cork is used to back the glass tiles in the space shuttle, as an extra layer of heat protection. Cork is also used in bridges, and roads, in expansion joints (as it helps to maintain the integrity of the bridge).

Astounding! 

Another interesting plant -- the so called "Century Plant".

The plant has only one bloom in its lifespan -- the bloom grows so fast, and saps so much energy out of the plant, that the plant dies, leaving just a stalk of seeds.

They don't actually bloom once a century, but about once every 25 years -- still a pretty impressive time for a plant.

 

Some unusual cacti. (also in the dry desert ecosystem).


Interestingly, the temperature in the two ecosystems does not have to be strongly controlled. Only the humidity has to be controlled, for the plants to thrive. As such, the humidity in the tropical rainforest is kept at around 70 - 90% (by using both humidifiers, and by having a waterfall in the middle of the recreated biome). In the dry desert ecosystem, they have a humidity of around 5% only. 

Unlike the Biosphere, the Eden project contains only two different biogeographies, indoors.

The first is the dry / desert ecosystem, filled with plants such as the desert palm below.

The second is a tropical rainforest ecosystem (whose dome is almost 400 feet up, at its highest point).

More pictures on the next few posts.

 

The Eden Project

We visited the four huge domes seen above on one of our trips out to the country, from London.

These domes, and three others that are on the right of the ones above (which you can't see) are part of the Eden Project, something similar to the Biosphere project in the States.

P.S. One warning: if you ever visit England in the Winter, beware snow (not because of the danger, but because of the way people react to it.

In Canada, an inch of snow will be considered nothing more than a distraction. In England, numerous people were stranded in their cars, and had to be brought into emergency housing -- to "prevent people from travelling in the harzardous conditions (BBC)". Indeed, after driving 400 km to get to the Eden Project, we found that they had to close -- for a half inch of snow. We had to come back the next day. Huh, the English!

Here is a rookery.

You see them everywhere in England, and they are particularly clear because the trees have lost their leaves.

A rookery is a nesting area for rooks, and many rooks come together to form such a colony.

 

Unknown English Songbird

This was the best picture I could get of this quick bird -- in the early morning light, it was almost impossible to get a good image.


I'll continue to drop in a few picture of the English birdlife as I can, among the rest of the posts.

We did see two foxes -- but both were too quick for us to catch on camera, so no pictures there (that is really a shame, since the red fox is a truly beautiful animal, very different from our own Canadian fox, which you can see in Algonquin).

We also, I must add, saw many Kestrels -- which are the only bird bigger than a hummingbird, to be able to hover. Unfortunately, they proved also too difficult to photograph, and the best I ever got was an image of one in a tree, far away.

Perhaps, when we head back to Scotland on the last leg of the trip, I'll have a better chance. 

A jackdaw

I had always heard that its cry sounded exactly like its name -- and it actually did!

Here the famous jackdaw -- the animal which haunts ruined castles.

 

A rook

Here's a rook -- with some bits of England's famous water cracker in is beak.

(For those of you who haven't heard of them, the English Water cracker is a truly bland snack --- it has no taste whatsoever -- we were trying to get rid of our stack of water crackers :) ).

 

And now for something completely different

There were lots of birds at Stonehenge -- especially when my mum and I started feeding them (indeed, they were so unafraid of us, one of them would even eat from our hand).

So, here are some pictures of the more common birds of England.


Some species of thrush. (I can't find any more information -- please help, if you know more). 

The long Chalk avenue

Another part of Stonehenge, which is not commonly known about is the chalk avenue leading towards the circle.

You can just barely see it as the slightly lighter line in the picture below (just past the sheep).

Archaelogists have found another henge site a short distance away from Stonehenge -- perhaps this avenue was joining the two.

 

The building of Stonehenge

Stonehenge, as you might know, was built in series.

First a trench (as you saw in the last picture). Then a woodhenge, with posts of wood.

Then some of the stones (the smaller bluestones, from Wales, which were moved about 120 miles).

Then, the big Sarsens, which were the last to be put in, and came from only about 40 miles away (from a field of erratics, called Sarsen fields, like the one I showed you).


These different layers were not even close to contemporary.

Put it this way -- if the Sarsens had been put down today. Then...

Bluestones -- Leonardo da Vinci was alive (1500s)
Wooden posts -- We were in the dark ages (1000s)
Trench was built -- Julius Caeser was getting assasinated (~ O AD)

So, to the people who built the Stone circle, the henge would already have looked to them, like Roman artefacts look to us today.

Astounding! 

The trench around Stonehenge

Stonehenge was not an isolated structure.

Here you can see the trench that surrounds Stonehenge.

In truth, the word henge, described only the trench, and not the Stone circle.

Also, the henge, or trench is much older than the circle itself -- almost by a thousand years.

 

The Age of Stonehenge

I don't think you really appreciate the age of stonehenge until you see the lichen on it.

In England's climate, lichen grow only about a mm per hundred years -- so you can certainly tell how old stonehenge is, when you see lichen, like the following, almost 7 cm in diameter. (about 3500 years old).


Astounding!