Failed searches and streamer weed

click photo to enlarge
Most web searches that I make are successful. A wide range of information is available on the internet, much of it in great depth, and often in at least four forms - text, images, video and audio. Moreover, I've gone out of my way to become familiar with a reasonably wide range of search techniques. Consequently it is relatively unusual for me to fail in a quest for facts about a topic. But failures do happen. Often this is because the subject is arcane. Or it may be obscure or of interest to only a very small minority of people and therefore little documented. Some failures appear to be successes until you discover that what you took to be fact turns out to be someone's unintentionally erroneous posting or just plain wrong through the poster's ignorance.

However, the other day I spent a long time searching for some information and drew a blank. I was trying to find out the name of the plant shown in today's photograph. It is a common river plant that I see regularly in many lowland rivers, and its very prominence suggest that it will be well documented. It probably is, but not in a form that allows me to assign it a Latin name. Fishermen call it (and several other plants that grow in a similar location and fashion) "streamer weed". That is descriptive of the ribbon-like leaves that undulate sinuously in the current. But, to fix its identity with the species' Latin name proved impossible for me. It may be a form of Ranunculus, Glyceria or some other equally common river-growing plant. The problem is that I can't match a photograph that looks like mine with any other reliably labelled image. Then there's the fact that most botanical illustrations use the flower as an identifier and this has clearly passed its flowering season. In fact, I've found very few shots of the plant that emphasise its attractive, twisting form, except a couple by other photographers similarly fascinated

From previous experience I imagine that I'll search again and a route to the right answer that was formerly closed, or which I missed, will open up. Until then streamer weed it is!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lady's Mantle

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Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla mollis) is one of those plants that, once you have it, you need never be without it. It readily spreads from the original clump and is soon spotted, spreading itself around the garden. But it's also one of those plants that people either strongly like or equally strongly dislike. Those who have an aversion to it see only a low growing, leafy, green plant with relatively unspectacular, weed-like, yellow flowers, a perennial that multiplies where it isn't wanted and which becomes somewhat straggly at the end of the season. However, people who favour it admire the palmate shape of the leaves that were once thought to resemble the scalloped mantle once worn around the neck and over the shoulders of women (the Lady is the Virgin Mary). They also appreciate the effective ground cover that it provides and its hardiness. But lovers of the plant most especially like the way that multiple water droplets, looking like liquid mercury, bead on the leaves after rain or a heavy dew.

This latter characteristic happens because of the small, soft hairs that cover the leaves. These beautiful drops of water caught the eye of the medieval alchemists (hence the Latin name) who, it is reputed, judged it the purest form of water and employed it in their attempts to turn base metal into gold. The plant in today's photograph has frequently been dotted with these jewel-like spots of water due to the frequency of rain in Britain this spring and summer. I took my hand-held shot after a particularly heavy downpour, just as the sky brightened for a short period before the onset of the next deluge.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

What's in a name?

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Names are rather like hairstyles: many people want to change the one they have. Parents who give their children more than one forename offer their offspring a choice, the opportunity to choose one of the alternatives if the given one isn't liked. But if you've been saddled with just one forename you tend to be stuck with it and can only shorten it or go to the trouble of making a legal change. The Linnean system of naming plants and animals seems to avoid these problems (not that plants and animals have strong opinions on their names). A country-specific name - in my case English - is accompanied by a Latin name that prevails everywhere regardless of the language(s) spoken in the country. I've written elsewhere about my preference for English names over Latin because of the history and beauty that they often display. However, it isn't always so.

In my garden there are a couple of plants with unfortunate names. The small, attractive blue, pink and purple flower with green spotted leaves that is called lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) seems lamentably named. Lungs, though vital, have never had the appealing associations of, say, the heart. So, we like the name heart's ease (Viola tricolor), for the small pansy-like flower, but lungs, well they conjure up images of dissection, disease and offal. The name arose for the way the spotted leaves recall diseased lungs. One might wish that a different association had been spotted!

Then there's the spurge (Euphorbia sp.). The very name sounds like an uncontrolled exhalation of something unpleasant. And in a way it is, the plant long being used as a purgative. The Latin name comes from the Greek physician, Euphorbus, who noted the plant as a laxative. It also has the unfortunate similarity - just one letter too many - to the word euphoria, a word that means well-being or feeling good. Not a quality that immediately comes to mind when you look at the plant or when the irritant sap gets on your skin. All that being said, I find myself photographing this plant quite a bit. I like the way some of the varieties grow, particularly how the rosettes of leaves present themselves with a slight twist. Today's plant was growing, not in my garden, but in a churchyard. I photographed it with my pocket camera and thought I'd try a black and white version to accentuate the shapes.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lungwort

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I have written elsewhere in this blog that, whilst I recognise the usefulness of Latin names for plants, I much prefer using the English names for their beauty, descriptiveness and heritage. Leopard's Bane is so much more interesting than Doronicum orientale, and Snapdragon trumps Antirrhinum any day. However, there are one or two English names that conjure up a picture which, to my mind, sit ill with the plants they describe. I was photographing one such today - Lungwort (Pulmonaria).

In my garden there are four varieties of this plant. One has pink flowers, another has blue flowers, there is a white flowered variety, and finally one manages to produce flowers that are both pink and blue. All of them, however, have green leaves with light-green or white spots. They are a useful plant, very hardy, thriving in shade and the open, and producing their flowers in early spring. There is something of the wild flower about them, and there is a species native to Europe, Narrow-leaved Lungwort (Pulmonaria longifolia) known in Britain as Joseph and Mary. It is the plant from which several garden varieties have been bred. But, much as I like the Lungwort, I've never liked its name: it strikes me as a particularly ugly name for such an attractive plant. However, many of its names across Europe derive from the likeness of the spotted leaves to diseased lungs, as of course does its Latin name (pulmo is Latin for lung), and the association has well and truly has stuck. Consequently its many other English colloquial names - Soldiers and Sailors, Spotted Dog, Jerusalem Cowslip and Bethlehem Sage among others - are fast disappearing.

I composed my photograph with the attention on a group of pink Lungwort, and moved so that a blue variety was out of focus in the background.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Plant names and house leeks

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English plant names seem so much more evocative than their Latin counterparts, and I much prefer to use them. Consequently our garden has Snapdragons (not Antirrhinums), Forget-me-nots (not Myosotis) and Black-eyed Susans (not Rudbeckia hirta). However, if my classical languages were better then I might appreciate that Antirrhinum means "like a nose" in Greek (referring to the flower shape), that Myosotis is Greek for "mouse's ear" (after the leaf shape) and that "hirta" is Latin for hairy. Rudbeckia, incidentally, derives from the name of the Swedish botanist, Olaus Rudbeck. All of which goes to show that an understanding of languages can enrich one's life in more than the obvious ways.

I was thinking about this when I was processing this photograph of House Leeks. That is the rather uninspiring English name for what is a very attractive and hardy succulent. This one was growing by the edge of the footpath having escaped from a neighbour's house, and I snapped it with my compact camera as I passed. I liked the tightly packed rosettes and the green/blue colour with dark red highlights. My Latin is less than rudimentary but I've picked up enough during my life to know that the Latin name of this plant - Sempervivum - must mean something to do with forever (semper) and life (vivum). In fact, it means "always living", a good name for this hardy plant. I also discovered that one of the English names for it (though not one I've heard used) is "Live Forever." Moreover, in some parts of the world it is called "Hen and Chicks", presumably after its habit of producing small offspring around the larger plant - as in my photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.9mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On