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Nature

Willows

“The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,

(Sing all a green willow, willow willow willow,)
With his hand in his bosom and his head upon his knee.
(Oh willow, willow, willow
Shall be my garland.)

He sighed in his singing and made a great moan…
I am dead to all pleasure, my true love she is gone…

The mute bird sat by him was made tame by his moans…
The true tears fell from him, would have melted the stones…

Come all you forsaken and mourn you with me…
Who speaks of a false love, mine’s falser than she…

Let love no more boast her in palace nor bower…
It buds, but it blasteth ere it be a flower…

Though fair and more false, I die with thy wound…
Thou hast lost the truest lover that goes upon the ground, sing…

Let nobody chide her, her scorns I approve…
She was born to be false, and I to die for her love…

Take this for my farewell and latest adieu…
Write this on my tomb, that in love I was true…”

Othello, 4.3

You’d probably figured out there would be no happy ending after you listened to Desdemona and later her maid sing this song, even if you never heard of Othello before. Shakespeare really knew how to punish with willow: In Hamlet, Ophelia falls to her watery death when the willow branch she had been sitting on, gives up its ghost. In 12th Night Viola moans about unrequited love with reference to willows.

Willows have been prominent in mythology – Hecate was the goddess of the willow and the moon, Apollo’s harp was made of willow wood, Orpheus carried willow branches during his travels in the underworld. They also played an important role in literature, both in Western Europe, Russia and China where they were seen as a symbol of immortality and renewal.

They were adored by individuals for whatever reason – Napoleon, for example, sat forever under his beloved willow tree in exile on St. Helena and eventually was buried under it. (It is claimed that a clone of this very tree now lives next to I-5 in Seattle, in fact has done so for 135 years, which is weird in itself given that willows don’t live long, 30 years on average. Here is the full story of how a tree migrated from France via San Francisco to Washington state.)

Most people think of willows as weeping willows, those gracious, voluminous trees that you don’t want to be near when they crack and fall over, which they do with regularity….

I am more fascinated by the regular straight or bushy ones, who grow faster than most plants on earth (some up to 30 meters high!), don’t mind having wet feet, and act as a local pharmacy to deer who make use of the painkiller in their bark, and people who have used their bark as medicines since Etruscan times. (I’m too lazy to get up right now and photograph it, but a self seeded willow in my yard needed a protective wrap recently, because the deer rubbed their itchy antlers to get to the aspirin-like compound in it, completely destroying the trunk’s bark.)

Yes, aspirin. Well, salicin (named after Salix, the genus name of the willow tree), which formed the basis of the discovery of aspirin. To this day there are conflicting opinions who actually deserves the honor of having invented it in 1890, but it made a fortune for Bayer, the German pharmaceutical company and is now the most sold drug in the world. Was it the head of the pharmaceutical division, which was responsible for developing new drugs, the chemist working for that division (who invented heroin use a few months later), or the head of the pharmacology section, which was responsible for clinical trials? Here is a fun read about the history. 

In addition to its medicinal value – Native Americans called willows the toothache tree – it has many practical functions: great for weaving baskets, perfect for making charcoal for drawing, paper pulp, and daub-and wattle structures.

And in the conflict department: in many countries, particularly England, they now use new adaptations of traditional methods. Willow cuttings are rooted and woven into a living fence on the riverbank, provide highly effective erosion control at a low cost, using a renewable and biodegradable material. Scientists also work on finding ways to use willows in biofiltration systems to purify water.

In Australia, on the other hand, most willow species are termed weeds of national significance. Their invasive nature, causing flood and erosion along stream beds, reducing water quality and amounts of available oxygen to aquatic plants, their water uptake being humongous, all threaten stream health. Much legislation is planned or enacted to control spread and eradicate the “infestation.”

It’s never easy, is it? In ecology they are seen as good and bad actors. In literature they signify death and renewal. Their medicinal properties, known for 3500 years, are exploited by patents. And in my garden they attract these bucks soothing their antlers by rubbing the bark only to go on and eat every flower in sight. I am so done with the deer….

It is, however, easy to revel in the willow trees’ beauty. Stark shadow play in the wintry season, bright, earliest green in the spring, lightening up the groves. Dotted with the most delicate signs that renewal is upon us. Makes my head ache less simply by looking at them, rather than chewing their bark!

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Lupins

In 1917 a ‘Lupin’ banquet was given in Hamburg at a botanical gathering, at which a German Professor, Dr. Thoms, described the multifarious uses to which the Lupin might be put. At a table covered with a tablecloth of Lupin fibre, Lupin soup was served; after the soup came Lupin beefsteak, roasted in Lupin oil and seasoned with Lupin extract, then bread containing 20 per cent of Lupin, Lupin margarine and cheese of Lupin albumen, and finally Lupin liqueur and Lupin coffee. Lupin soap served for washing the hands, while Lupin-fibre paper and envelopes with Lupin adhesive were available for writing. (Ref.)

I guess, the guy liked lupins. Turns out, he was not the only one. In 1949, Connie Scott (later know as the Lupin Lady), of Godley Peaks Station in New Zealnd, “scattered lupin seeds along the roadside. She bought about £100 worth from the local stock and station agent, hiding the bill from her husband for many months, hoping simply to make the world more beautiful.” It started an ecological disaster, as well as becoming a source for economic gain both from tourist trade – travelers arrive in flocks to marvel at the beauty – and sheep farming in otherwise barren regions.

What is it with lupins? On the one hand, they (particularly the white and yellow varieties) are a high-protein plant source, a real alternative to soy beans. Given that the global demand for meat, dairy and fish products for human consumption is recognized as unsustainable due the high environmental impact of animal production and given our knowledge about the rise in diseases associated with excessive consumption of animal products, plant-based protein really looks promising. Lupin use as a protein crop is widely spread in Australia and now recommended for European farmers, once some advanced breeding techniques are developed to provide new lupin varieties for socio-economically and environmentally sustainable cultivation.

Ironically, the protein these plants provide is also widely used in sheep farming, so we all can enjoy one more rack of lamb….

This is where the conflict between conservationists and farmers arises, at least in New Zealand. Lupins clog braided river beds, providing shade for many invasive species of weeds to move in and they are disturbing nesting sites for endangered birds – Black stilts and certain terns need to nest on gravel beds in these rivers, which are now grown over. The environmental agencies are bowing to the sheep farmers’ needs, with scant efforts to control the spread of the plant that gets carried far in the sheep’s fleeces, with landowners not taking any responsibility. Ecologists see them as uncontrollable weeds like scotch broom, their spreading soon to be unstoppable across the entire land

War of the lupins

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In Oregon we have, strangely, the opposite problem. Kincaid’s lupine or Oregon lupine is regionally endemic from Douglas County, Oregon north to Lewis County, Washington. They are now threatened due to the loss of prairie lands where they once flourished. The smaller the prairies – a result of urbanization and use for agriculture – the larger the distance between them, which means seeds have a harder time being spread into suitable environments to grow. We finally got a critical habitat designation in 2006, after the plant had been declared threatened in 2000. The was essential because they are the primary larvae food plant for the endangered Fender blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides fenderi), which is found only in Oregon. The plant is also used by the Puget blue butterfly ((Icaricia icarioides blackmorei) in Washington State.

It’s never simple, is it? What’s good for ecology in our region might be bad in other countries. What’s good for economic development, including alternate protein sources for poor, developing-world nations whose populations face hunger and malnourishment, might mean the end of certain species whose habitats get destroyed by the plant. Even within industrialized economies there might be conflict. What serves the sheep farmers well for their livestock might undermine the success of brands like Icebreaker who buy up all the wool but run under a certified sustainable flag, now debatable – surely brought to consumers’ attention by ecologist who try to save habitats.

What is simple is to enjoy the beauty of the plants, once you manage to stop thinking: so it was on my Saturday walk up at the protected area on Powell Butte, on an unseasonably hot, windy day with the waves of grass rolling, the lupines shining in blue, the daisies pointing their faces to the sun and the mountains glowing in the distance. My heart sang.

And here is a piece inspired by endless prairies, from 1948, with the composer Lukas Foss playing the piano.

Here is a short piece about the composer and here is an excerpt from The Prairie a composition that is probably more fun to sing than to listen to.

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The risen cream of all the milkiness of maytime…

That’s what H.E.Bates called hawthorn. Hmmm. Must have known only the white ones, so prevalent in english hedgerows and pastures. They do come in red and pink as well, although admittedly less often.

Lots of lore attached to the bush which, once it grows into a tree, can become 400 years old. Or so they say. It held significant place in Greek mythology, as a symbol of love and marriage, believed to be able to ward off dark spirits, and rumored to have provided the crown of thorns for Christ.

Lore also has it that it is a portent of disaster if you bring the hawthorne blossoms inside. There might be some scientific explanation for that: the early blossoming tree is essential for bees and other pollinating insects – if they are deprived and starving, they will not be available for later necessary crops.

Hawthorn was the badge of the house of Tudor, because Henry VII lost his crown and it was found in a thorn bush. Maybe it is indeed a plant that brings misfortune…

Hawthorns belong to the rose family of plants and are in the genus Crataegus, a large group widely distributed throughout the north temperate zone and in the tablelands of Mexico and the Andes. The small, red berries covering the tree in autumn are called “haws”; they contain bioflavinoids, cardiotonic amines, polyphenols, vitamin C, the B vitamins and other nutrients. Squirrels and birds love them.

The scent of flowers includes trimethylamine, also released during sex and by dead bodies. Just what you needed to know, right? But, taken together with the symbolism of the ancient Greek goddess Hymen, protector of love and marriage, who carried a torch made out of Hawthorne, we might have immediate clues helping to understand the poem below. It is said to be among Willa Cather’s favorites, even though she was unhappy about how the poetry volume, April Twilights, in which it first appeared, was received.

THE HAWTHORN TREE 

by Willa Cather

ACROSS the shimmering meadows– 
Ah, when he came to me! 
In the spring-time, 
In the night-time, 
In the starlight, 
Beneath the hawthorn tree. 

Up from the misty marsh-land– 
Ah, when he climbed to me! 
To my white bower, 
To my sweet rest, 
To my warm breast, 
Beneath the hawthorn tree. 

Ask of me what the birds sang, 
High in the hawthorn tree; 
What the breeze tells, 
What the rose smells, 
What the stars shine– 
Not what he said to me! 

Risen cream, shimmering meadows, rose smells, secretive murmurs of lovers – all points to May arriving soon! With our warm spring, the hawthorns got a head start. Photographed yesterday. Music is an ode to the English Country side by Finzi Eclogue in F major.

And that brought to mind another Eclogue, only to be enjoyed by adventurous readers, who appreciate naked bodies in a sunlit dale, approached by cows…. it’s actually quite an astounding piece by May Swenson.

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Swallows

I have always liked swallows. They were constant companions from late spring through fall in our village, nesting in corners under the barn roofs, often in large numbers. Barn swallows are quite social, attack in groups, if they feel their mud abodes are threatened, and they sing their heart out to attract a mate. They swoop and fly fast, doing all kinds of acrobatic maneuvers to catch the insects that they feed on while in the air, with unending chirpy commentary. Mating up there as well, must be a fleeting pleasure.

The old lore of “when swallows fly high, the weather will be dry,” lost its magical prediction power when my scientist father explained to me, early on, that of course swallows change the level at which they fly depending on weather, if you think where their food source will be: when it’s warm, outside thermal activity carries bubbles of air up and with it the insects that swallows hunt. Convection is even stronger near heated surfaces of sunlit buildings. If it rains or colder weather brings winds, the insects seek shelter under trees and bushes, with the swallows following in lower swoops.

Well, magic could still be had elsewhere. One of my favorite fairy tale books of Hans Christian Andersen tales had color plates depicting an old fashioned Thumbelina flying South to a warm, sunny, fairy tale land on the back of her rescuer, a neon-blue swallow, only to meet a prince her size and live happily ever after. Things had seemed pretty hopeless after having been abducted and given in service or forced marriage to all kinds of threatening creatures, but hey, swallow to the rescue. I longed more for the trip than the prince, all of age what, 6 or 7?

The tales containing swallows changed over time, becoming much darker when reading turned from fairy tales to Greek mythology. Remember the myth of two sisters, Philomela and Procne? Procne was married to King Tereus, a political alliance forced by her father, an Athenian king. Tereus coveted her sister, raped her and cut her tongue out so she could not tell. She managed to put the story into her weavings which were sent to her sister. The two sought revenge, unwilling to let the crime and the silencing of female voices stand – something that impressed me tremendously as a teenager, even though it included infanticide of the king’s son with Procne, and feeding Tereus the child, unbeknownst to him. The glimpse of justice served by two strong women refusing to be victims almost made up for having to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses.…

When Tereus tries to persecute the sisters, they ask the Gods for help and are changed into a nightingale (Philomela) and a swallow (Procne) respectively, voices forever heard in beautiful song. (Never mind that female nightingales in real life are mute, and it is the males who sing.) The sisters avenge the assault and regain their honor and freedom, much in contrast to so many others in Greek mythology who share the female fate and get punished on top of it (just think Medusa!) Then again, it is ravaging Gods in most other cases, who get away with it, while Tereus was a mere mortal – maybe those will be punished after all. Or will they?

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In North America you mostly see tree swallows, migratory birds that come back every spring. They are amazing aerialists and they are some of the migratory birds most affected by climate change. Shifts in temperature and amount of rainfall since the 1970s have led to breeding patterns that have been catastrophic. Due to warmer winters, eggs are laid earlier, but then the critical period for babies’ weight gain falls into time windows where there are not enough insects to go around to feed them because of excessive spring rains. Not only has the insect population itself steadily declined, but insects hide when it is wet and cool, and the swallow parents stop going to the nesting sites for days on end since they can’t find food. Often it is too late for the fledglings who die of starvation and hypothermia before better weather resumes.

One way to combat that is, of course, to increase insect availability. That means creating more wetlands, no spraying with pesticides, and allowing weeds to grow that really attract insect populations. Dandelions are among the ones that really help fight the insect decline and yet they’ve become scarcer and scarcer due to overeager gardeners and farmers waging war on them (yours truly included before I learned this.) Let them bloom!

In any case, when I see and hear swallows it makes me happy, it makes me think back to the fascination they have obviously held for many across centuries, to the fact how they were integrated into the literary arts. It makes me want to document their beauty to get us all more engaged in trying to do what’s right for the environment.

You can have the chattering of swallows by Janacek.

the song of the nightingale by Stravinsky

or some very sad birds by Ravel, if we don’t get our act together.

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Shared Fields

Do you know that feeling when you have completely conflicting reactions to a person or an event? When a lot strikes you as admirable or interesting or unusual, but other things bug you, and you can’t quite find a resolution to that emotional tension? So it is with me and Helen Frankenthaler (1928 – 2011), today’s painter of choice, since large blocks of landscape colors reminded me of her color fields.

Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928–2011). Hint from Bassano, 1973. 

She was born into an upper-class, wealthy and cultured New York family and early on given a sense of superiority by her father, New York state supreme court judge Alfred Frankenthaler. Her life was defined by remaining within that class and its perks, with multiple residences, staff, the works. Her education was privileged from the beginning, from ultra-conservative prep-schools to progressive institutions like Bennington College. Affairs and then marriage to arrived art critics and artists opened the door to the intensely creative world of the 1950s, including exposure to Jackson Pollock who stimulated her thinking about painting method. A short stint of being mentored by Hans Hofman, one of my own favorites (I wrote about him here) set her on her path, never looking back after that.

Helen Frankenthaler, Provincetown Window, 1963-64.

Yet she paved her own way, and despite all her socially somewhat conservative inclinations she was nothing less than revolutionary when it came to her art. And she came to it on her own – after a bitter break-up after 5 years with Clement Greenberg, the art critic du jour, and before her 1958 marriage to Robert Motherwell, another unusually wealthy artist, she managed to achieve recognition as one of the few women in the mid-century art world by pushing away from expressionism into true abstraction. (The marriage ended in 1971, she later wed an investment banker.)

Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled (Cover of a book, not dated.)

She was 23 years old when she started to paint in ways that would be known as the color field movement, influencing other artists later associated with that school. Pouring thinned oil paint on unprepared canvasses which absorbed it while flat on the ground (rather than using a brush), she created luminous, evanescent paintings that hinted at landscape but were as ambiguous as only good abstract art can be. British art critic Nigel Gosling reviewed her in 1964: “If any artist can give us aid and comfort,” he wrote, “Helen Frankenthaler can with her great splashes of soft colour on huge square canvases. They are big but not bold, abstract but not empty or clinical, free but orderly, lively but intensely relaxed and peaceful … They are vaguely feminine in the way water is feminine – dissolving and instinctive, and on an enveloping scale.”

Helen Frankenthaler, For E.M, 1982

I have always thought that she had the courage to create beauty (for women in general a treacherous undertaking, in my view,) but sometimes it was almost too beautiful. I was gratified when I found this review by Deborah Solomon which expresses my reservations in better ways than I could. Written in 1989 for the New York Times, she teases apart the contradictions between the artist’s bourgeois, anti-feminist, controlling nature and her lyrical work that depends to a large extent on accidents and improvisation.

Helen Frankenthaler, Tantric, 1977

It was, above all, beauty she was after, managing to translate ephemeral watercolor-like paintings onto a truly large scale. In later years sponges, squeegees and mops were added to the mix, now spreading diluted acrylics onto raw canvas, but the style pretty much remained the same, yet nowhere seeming boring. She did not seem to mind that the art world had moved on and the younger set deemed her caught in the past – that I admire too: to stick to your ways of expression independent of vogue.

Helen Frankenthaler, Canal, 1963

In her own words:”What concerns me when I work is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it’s pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is – did I make a beautiful picture?”

Below are two videos describing her life and recording her musings during a visit here at Portland State University some 50 years ago.

And here is a local artist, recently discussed, who continues a tradition of luminosity.

And here is music that reminds me of Frankenthaler’s soothing effects on my mind – an unapologetic melodic approach with hints of romanticism.

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Shared Colors

Here are some skies. The painted ones reflect the landscape of Northern Germany, up at the North Sea. The photographed ones were all taken while looking at the Pacific, a century later. I loved the painter, Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956), for much of my early life, being drawn to the color work, his expressionism, an unmatched intensity in his paintings – and the myth that he was the courageously resisting victim of Nazi terror, re-told in a famous novel by Siegfried Lenz, The German Lesson.

Emil Nolde, Meer (hoher Himmel, dunkel-grünes Wasser, qualmender Dampfer)
  1946–1947

I am still fascinated by the evocativeness of his colorization, the way it makes me ask is this really how the maritime sky looks? Indeed, it does! But everything else has collapsed, the beliefs that were so carefully instilled in post-war Germany, and the admiration that had been based on false premises.

Emil Nolde, Dampfer unter rot gelbem Himmel, circa 1935

Nolde was a man who was energetically and successfully building legends around his status as an artist, from day one. He was the misunderstood genius, the martyr at the hands (depending on the era in question) of the Jewish cabal dominating the art market who would not allow a true, pure nordic German to be successful, or at the hands of the Nazis who suppressed his art.

Emil Nolde, Dampfer unter gelbem Himmel, circa 1946

As it turns out, he was an ardent National Socialist himself (as was his wife Ada), a virulent anti-Semite, who even after the war did not change autobiographical writings depicting his loathing for Jews, and who stopped painting religious motifs because he could no longer stand painting “Jews.” Letters from him to Goering and Hitler contained suggestions as to how to rid Germany of “that race.” His subject matter shifted over to painting Vikings and other nordic mythology in the belief he could this way participate in forming the national-socialist art canon.

Emil Nolde, Rote Wolke, circa 1930

In 1933 he admired the writings of fascist Julius Langbehn (Rembrandt as Educator) who claimed that “a pure German art was needed to counteract modernist malaise. He deplored internationalism, mass culture, big city life, argued against specialization, knowledge, a culture of enlightenment, and called for a return to an education of the heart, based on character and individualism, the root of all German art.” Nolde loved this image of a national redeemer, the artist as a German quasi-religious idol. His unmet craving for recognition morphed into a sense of mission that he saw matched by the Führer’s plans. Alas, the admiration was not mutual. Hitler was rejecting the modernism exhibited by Nolde and assigned some of his work to the degenerate art exhibitions (soon to be removed from them by some high-up Nolde admirers in the 3rd Reich administration.) He was, however, sanctioned not with a prohibition to paint (as his later legend has it) but by restrictions on his possibility to freely seek and/or exhibit his art.

Emil Nolde, Herbsthimmel am Meer circa 1940

After the war Nolde carefully crafted the story of himself as a secret resister, having painted 1000s of small works (the unpainted pictures) while being checked on by the Gestapo (a lie.) The paintings date back to almost a decade before he was told to desist sales, and include topics that expressed alliance to the Nazi cause. Here is the interesting thing: much of German society was all too eager to join into this myth building, desperately needing a collective moral saga that matched each person’s need to absolve themselves from accusations of conformity if not collaboration, showing a way out: they had all gone into some kind of inner emigration. The Foundation archiving his work refused all access to incriminating written materials, benefitting from the myth making themselves. Nolde became a figure of cultural identification in post-war Germany, where clean heroes were desperately needed to regain a sense of identity and self-esteem. He was deemed the modern martyr who relentlessly served his art, regardless of defamation and persecution, helping people to redefine their own roles during the 3rd Reich.

Emil Nolde, Landschaft mit hohem Himmel und roten Wolken
circa 1930-1935

Last year saw the first comprehensive revision of the legend around this painter at a retrospective exhibition in Berlin, with a catalogue exploring the true history. The Nolde foundation is now under new leadership and fully participant in the research efforts.

Here is a fabulous review that offers more detail.

Music today from another Northern-born German, Johannes Brahms. No conflict between self presentation and content here, or between his art and his identity. Sigh of relief.

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Shared Forms

Last year the Centre Pompidou did a retrospective of Victor Vasarely’s life works, titled Le Partage Des Formes, Shared Forms. I only read about it, but the title stuck in my head. It probably referred to the repetitive, grouped forms in his paintings. I, on the other hand, often see forms in nature which remind me of abstract art, and I always wonder what unconscious influence is extended by having been exposed to these patterns across a life time. Art offering its share of nature.

As a little exercise, then, I tried to come up with photographs I took on my walks and match them up with art works that they reminded me of. I’ve added a short description of the painter’s life, keeping us as far away from discussion of politics as possible. I think it helps to look at something beautiful, just to keep our spirits up.

Georges Braque, Still Life with Metronome, 1909

Vasarely’s work might, in individual instances, fit the bill for today’s nature photographs, but overall his op-art paintings are just too regular and bent towards creating visual illusions. Someone else, however, hits the jack pot: Georges Braque.

Georges Braque, Bottle and Fishes, 1910-1912

Born in 1882 in France, he was a trained as a house painter, but interested enough in fine art that he pursued an education. Originally influenced by Fauvism, he soon struck up a friendship with Picasso. (In his own words, they were tied together for some time like mountain climbers on a rope.) The two revolutionized painting by developing Cubism in parallel. The first, Analytical phase of Cubism was dominated by slab volumes, somber colouring, and warped perspective.

 “The colours are brown, gray, and green, the pictorial space is almost flat, viewpoints and light sources are multiplied, contours are broken, volumes are often transparent, and facets are turned into apparently illogical simultaneous views.”

Exactly the kind of view of sandstone and basalt cliffs when you inspect them closely.

Georges Braque, Piano and Mandolin, 1909

Braque became famous and well-to-do during his life time. He served in WW I with distinction, incurring a serious head wound that required multiple surgeries and months of recuperation. He had but one wife, and eventually separated from Picasso who chose a very different path. He died in 1963, with the last years of his life devoted to more figurative painting and subjects of Greek mythology.

Georges Braque, Le Sacre Coeur, 1910

Of particular interest to me is his development of collage work; he was one of the first to add paper and other substances to his paintings in his later career. He wrote much about the fact that paintings should no just be the representation of an anecdote, but an independent object. That is the inherent joy for me, of course, when I make montages: creating something that is in itself new and non-existent in reality from something as reality-based as possible: photographs. A representational illusion.

Here, however, is the representation of the real thing!

And here is the website of contemporary Oregon artist Lee Musgrave, who has a penchant for echoing nature in his abstract art or find abstraction in nature, depending on where and when the muse strikes him.

Music today is a 1917 ballet with cubist influence, Parade, composed by Eric Satie for a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau, original costume design by Picasso. For the overlapping fragments, Satie uses jazz elements, a whistle, siren, and typewriter in his score.

For something a little bit more melodious: Here are the piano works.

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Fowl to the Rescue

And in the let’s see how can we rescue the mood for the weekend – department, here is a glimmer of hope for locus-infested Pakistan: 100 000 ducks. Courtesy of China, no less.

Locusts had three uninterrupted exceptional breeding cycles due to the 2018/19 cyclone season that brought deluges to the Arab peninsula. They are now swarming into East Africa and South Asia, threatening already scarce food supplies and leading to states of emergency.

Sending hungry fowl is not new – in 2000, a 700,000-strong army of ducks and chickens was used to gain control over swarms of locusts that devoured over 3.8 million hectares of crops and grassland. As it turns out, ducks were more efficient than chickens at guzzling down the devastating pests, they stayed in group and did not disappear randomly into the landscape like their little headless friends…

So: 100,000 ducks are awaiting deployment along some 3,000 miles from the eastern province of Zhejiang to Pakistan, which shares a border with the Xinjiang province.

Quack. Quack. Let’s hope they have insatiable appetites.

Musical topic today is not for the faint of heart but for those who want to faint from laughing. The larger than life persona behind The Homosexual Necrophilica Duck Opera is duck guy Kees Moeliker, Director of the Museum for Natural History Rotterdam. He won the Ig Nobel Prize in 2003 for his paper of the same name as the opera. The video has him introduce the work and then presents the miniature opera.

Let no-one ever accuse me of not trying to widen our horizons, musical and otherwise….

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One of those days

I am out for the count. Between bouts of fever, fits of coughing, no sleep and anxious glances to the clock if it’s time for the next round of pain meds, I am watching the crows in my back yard from bed. And that is with the flu shot.

Here are some of them during better, or certainly more vertical times…

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Moss Green

And when thou art weary I’ll find thee a bed
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head; – John Keats To Emma (ca. 1815)

I cherish this couplet, find the thought of a pillow of moss appealing (although currently you might want to bring a waterproof plane before you sit down…)

And since I want to start the week with making you less weary, the couplet is the perfect fit. (Which cannot be said for the rest of the poem, which closes with this: So smile acquiescence, and give me thy hand,
With love-looking eyes, and with voice sweetly bland. No sweetly bland voice here, googly eyes and/or acquiescence…. but lots of intentions to get your spirits up.

Moss it shall be: for one, because it shines, glimmers, glows in abundance right now, greenest, most brilliant green in those watery woods (Tryon Creek). Secondly because it gives me the opportunity to cite Wikipedia’s color page where I found this gem: Green is common in nature, especially in plants.

I hope you spill your coffee laughing. I did. Or maybe you need to know German, where the equivalent of nature is green: Wir gehen ins Grüne…

Let’s proceed to name the biological greens:

We are subsequently told that:

Moss green is a tone of green that resembles moss. Who would have thought.

Tidbit: Moss is practical. It used to be the diaper of millennia of babies – Native Americans stuffed spagnum in bags with which they swaddled their children, the Inuit used moss inside sealskin covers, and Mongolians used fur sacks stuffed with moss to carry the young. Biodegradable, too. It was used as antiseptic bandages to treat the wounds of thousands of WWI soldiers, when the Allied forces ran out of cotton bandages. (Link is to a fascinating article in the Smithsonian.)

I have written a bit more seriously some time back on moss and lichen, with a focus on the latter. If memory serves me right, we talked about rootless Bryophyta, which is the botanical name for moss, attaching themselves to their environment via hairy protrusions called rhizoids, take water and air in to create their food through photo synthesis.

Today I am more interested in why moss appears so intensely luminous when you hike through the forests during these dark, rainy days.

It has to do with a process called the Purkinje effect, or Purkinje shift, named after the Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkyne, who proposed it at the beginning of the 19th century. It is the tendency for the peak luminance sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward the blue-green end of the spectrum at low illumination levels. Simply put, we have two main receptor types in the retina, the rods and the cones. The former are more light sensitive, but pretty much worthless for distinguishing color. They take over when it gets dark, because the cones, which are color-sensitive, fire best only when there is lots of light.

When light is scarce, at dawn and dusk, but also on these cloudy, rainy days in the woods, the reds, processed by cones now starved of stimulation, will appear duller and duller. The greens take on a contrasting brightness, because the rods take over. Voilà, iridescent green.

Before we all get too happy basking in that glow, here is the dark side of moss: half a billion years ago, when Bryophyta first appeared on land, they plunged earth into an ice-age and caused mass extinction of ocean life. Before you freak out, it took them 35 million years to do so, and they might just be the antidote to global warming if we could only wait that long.

Nonetheless, then it was a catastrophe – moss secretes a wide range of organic acids that can dissolve rock, and the altered rock can then suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Sharp reduction in carbon dioxide levels ensues – here comes the ice. (For a more detailed account, go here.)

Reminder to self: this was supposed to cheer, not make more weary. Music to the rescue:

So here is a ditty from the 50s – Ja ja im Moos, da ist was los – well, well, things are hopping in the moss…..

Pileated woodpecker

and one a little older: Brahms says it all about the cool forest.



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