Ideas from the Front Page

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Liis
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Re: Ideas from the Front Page

Post by Liis »

Thank you, Leonia and Macdoum!

A small bunch of meadowsweet was found recently in a Bronze age grave (Perthshire, UK, 2009; BBC news link HERE). It caused some small quarrels between those who saw it as a beautiful gesture and others with a more practical view. :mrgreen:. One headline 4000 year old “aspirin” flowers found in Bronze Age grave.
Meadowsweet pollen has quite often been found in beakers and vessels with remains of drinks similar to mead in ancient graves, for instance in Denmark.

(To be chemically more correct: willow (Salix), meadowsweet (Filipendual/Spirea ulmaria) and several other plants contain salicin, a glycoside and precursor to salicylic acid. It can fairly easily be converted into salicylic acid in the lab or one's stomach. It is rather harsh on the stomach; adding another chemical group, acetyl, to the molecule, makes it kinder. The A in aspirin is from the a-cetyl. Aspirin's invention history is rather complicated, but Bayer AG patented it in 1899)
Liis
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Post by Liis »

Unexpected effect of the heat: white storks with white legs :shock: - Simple lack of rain - and maybe low waters? - for washing the white stuff off has been suggested as alternative explanation to "thermoregulation" ...

Ripe cloudberries : last year this time we had Harald Misund's glorious photos from cloudberry & eagle country in Norway, and of his enviable bucket of ripe cloudberries on the forum.
Cloudberries are curious, they are one of the few berries and fruits that go from a clear shining cinnabar red to pale yellow on ripening.
leonia
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Post by leonia »

Hello Liis,
its common that storks have white legs during the dog days in summer. Even the young ones do this to protect their red legs against the heat.
And soon I learned something new: dog days = Hundstage = dog days :hi:
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

leonia wrote:Hello Liis,
its common that storks have white legs during the dog days in summer. Even the young ones do this to protect their red legs against the heat.
And soon I learned something new: dog days = Hundstage = dog days :hi:
Yes, I learnt that story about white storks,white legs for thermoregulation..with excrements .. a well known fact in Alsace with its large w/stork population.
(newspaper articles too)
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

I was interested in the little piece on yellow loosestrife, which I had never heard of, because purple loosestrife which is beautiful is considered such a menace here. I think it gets into waterways and nothing eats it and so it grows and grows


I think we have finally banned the sale of English Ivy of which I have LOTS because it too is such a menace. It gets into forests and simply chokes off trees -- in my yard it is every where, at least a couple of kinds. (some but not all are my fault)
Liis
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Post by Liis »

White storks, white legs and dogdays (Thank you, Leonia and Macdoum!)

Do the storks do the whitewashing on purpose or is it just lack of water to get it off(hmmm, white-washing: quite the opposite to washing here as I understand it?).
Maybe it hasn't been noticed in Estonia because it is so seldom so hot? Are there "koerapäevad" in Estonian summers?

Dog days, "hunddagar": in Swedish vocabulary mainly only when the Austrian film Hundestage is written about, according to Google. So maybe Swedish (and Estonian) summers seldom used to be uncomfortably hot.
The ancient Nordic hell was actually cold, frozen and icy - that burning hot hell came from the South with Christianity ...


Alice:
Loosestrife, and climate again: the purple one (Lychnis) EDIT: Lythrum, of course :blush: - is beautiful, may colour patches of wet river or lake or sea shores, but never overruns things here. The garden variety of the yellow one (Lysimachia) can be some trouble in old neglected gardens - it is a survivor! - but again, no real problem. Interesting: why has purple loosestrife become such trouble in US?
There are really remarkably few plant invaders - yet? - in Sweden that are real trouble. The somewhat colder climate - compared to continental Europe - seems to be a barrier to mass invasions from abroad. I think Denmark for instance has more problems.
Imported fungi, insects, even fish are more worrying. And in ever more places vigorous species from the native flora take over to near-monoculture.
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

I hadn't really read about Loosestrife before -- I just heard oh no its invading

ECOLOGICAL THREAT
Purple loosestrife adapts readily to natural and disturbed wetlands. As it establishes and expands, it outcompetes and replaces native grasses, sedges, and other flowering plants that provide a higher quality source of nutrition for wildlife. The highly invasive nature of purple loosestrife allows it to form dense, homogeneous stands that restrict native wetland plant species, including some federally endangered orchids, and reduce habitat for waterfowl.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/lysa1.htm

It says it blooms june - september so it make lots of seeds. So i guess a long season makes it worse.
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Post by Liis »

alice44 wrote:I hadn't really read about Loosestrife before -- I just heard oh no its invading
ECOLOGICAL THREAT
Purple loosestrife adapts readily to natural and disturbed wetlands. As it establishes and expands, it outcompetes and replaces native grasses, sedges, and other flowering plants that provide a higher quality source of nutrition for wildlife. The highly invasive nature of purple loosestrife allows it to form dense, homogeneous stands that restrict native wetland plant species, including some federally endangered orchids, and reduce habitat for waterfowl.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/lysa1.htm

It says it blooms june - september so it make lots of seeds. So i guess a long season makes it worse.
:wave: Hello, Alice -
thought of you yesterday when a lady proudly passed me on bicycle with a trailer crammed with purple loosestrife plants (summer sale is on at the local plant shop).
I have actually tried it myself, but couldn't offer conditions that were humid enough. There is a number of garden varieties; "1 g of seeds = 20 000 seeds, germinate well".
About "foreign" threats: I passed a magnificent avenue of ash trees the other day, surely at least a couple of 100 years old (oldest known ash in Sweden is about 600). At least half of the trees were half bare, nearly all had some branches without leaves: ash disease or ash dieback, spreading from central or southeastern Europe, noted first in Sweden about 2001/2002, observed in the whole of the Swedish ash growing region by 2005.
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Post by Liis »

Main page article on bog bilberries, Vaccinium uliginosum, the anonymous cousin of bilberries and blueberries.
Never seen them waist high, though. The berries are a very beautiful, misty blue colour. Nearly everyone who has noticed them at all maintain that they are dangerous and poisonous, but I have met very few who have actually eaten them (except me). - "Odon", their Swedish name, is said to come from old Swedish odher = wild, mad; "Rauschbeere" in German = drunk or delirium berries.

When there were no bilberries because of dry weather there were at least bog bilberries. As a small fringe benefit you usually meet much fewer stinking sloebugs, shield bugs and their relatives than on bilberries.
How do they get rid of these particularly nastily stinking things on commercially sold bilberries?

PS. According to Linné / Linnaeus, Flora Oeconomica (source Virtuella floran) "[the berries] ... please small children and turkey chicks" :innocent: .
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Post by Liis »

Has anyone seen or used the "burrometer" in the weather forecasting article?
It wasn't all that easy to find more information on the Internet.

But obviously the carline thistle (Carlina vulgaris), Sw. spåtistel = forecasting thistle, one of my favourite flowers, behaves like a herbal burrometer: if the flowers are wet and closed, it rains ... :innocent: .
A contemporary of Linnaeus says however that particularly the part under the actual "flower" acts as a hygrometer, and closes or opens 6 hours before the rain arrives or stops. Best used when the seeds are ripe and gone, he says: hang in a window or door.
The flower is beautiful, but sadly, not photogenique. THIS is reasonable, but still misses the often velvety dark brown centre, and just hints at the right shade of deep purple-blue-violet inside the straw-coloured ring of bracts. More illustrations HERE

EDIT: it rained yesterday. And yes, it kept its flowers closed ... but even after the rain had stopped and the sun was out.
leonia
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Post by leonia »

Hello Liis, please try this link to burrometer:
http://www.aai.ee/~andres/weathergifs/ilmajaam.html
:wave:

I had some problems with the translation of "Weather-wisdom":
For example because meteorologists use the English terms shelf cloud and roll cloud here in Germany too. But after some time of online-search I found "Böenkragen" (gust's collar) and "Böenwalze" (gust's role) and I believe that it fits.
And than there were the "mock suns or sun-(moon-)dogs". I couldn't find anything similar, the only term was "Scheinsonnen" (pseudo-suns). Has the term "dog" in that combination anything to do with "hangers-on"?
Greetings from cold-wet-grey Bavaria http://www.storchennest.de/forum/viewto ... start=1425
Liis
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Post by Liis »

Hello, Leonia -
thanks for the link to burrometer building instructions! At the moment my herbal burrometers, the carline thistles, flower too.

That weather article wasn't easy, no. But there were interesting things to learn - as always. All meteorology fans at the forum, please correct whatever might have turned out wrong in English!

No idea of the origins of the term "sun dog" (parahelion). Just found it when reading up halos and suchlike generally. There is a very interesting Wikipedia article with a list of historical mock sun or sun dog episodes. The oldest known picture of Stockholm, the "vädersolstavlan" - Mock sun painting - was painted to show a famous "sun dog" episode, for instance.
Looking at the Wikipedia illustration, it might be that the spots or mock suns look like dogs walking beside their master?

(Wikipedia is considered a murky source, I know, but surely not worse to use than Google Translate :mrgreen: ?)
leonia
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Post by leonia »

Liis wrote: . . . there were interesting things to learn - as always. . . .

(Wikipedia is considered a murky source, I know, but surely not worse to use than Google Translate :mrgreen: ?)
I totaly agree with you. I often use the Google picture search, when there are animals or plants I don't know and than look further on. But why shouldn't one use a little help, as long as good old brain work is used afterwards to make sense out of the chaos? :dunno:

NB: I searched nearly the whole forum for a note on Raivo's early start to migration! Do you know anything? I hope for a thread on this year's migration.
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Post by Liis »

leonia wrote:
NB: I searched nearly the whole forum for a note on Raivo's early start to migration! Do you know anything? I hope for a thread on this year's migration.
Better ask Urmas for facts and Jo for topic! The Migration Map is a good heading, but it doesn't show up directly on the main Board Index view. I often forget it.

It was mentioned - I think - that Raivo's proper nest may have been occupied when he arrived. In that case he would belong to the roaming bachelor gang without chick upbringing responsibilities, and isn't maybe so early. Leida left Estonia first, then Toomas, but they seem to make rather long part-way stops.
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

Liis,Leonia..I have kept this address for a long time.. I think it was Yarko who sent us there in a similar topic on weather.
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/
I haven't looked now as its a bit late here .. :sleeping: and time to :offtobed: but I remember a chat here on weather and cloud formations. :unsure:
See 'ice-haloes'
:wave:
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
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leonia
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Post by leonia »

Many thanks, Carmel, this site seems to be very interesting.

Yesterday I found another example for similar terms in different languages:
map butterfly (Landkarten-Schmetterling = Landkärtchen (i.e. "maplet")
This was more surprising than the pair peacock butterfly (Pfauen-Schmetterling) = Pfauenauge (peacock's eye) . . .

Raivo: Carsten Rhode, our blackstork-specialist, will go to Israel I think next week or so to register ringed BS. So maybe he will find Raivo again as he did last year http://www.schwarzstorchberingung.de/page14.php (Aktuelles/Raivos Afrikareise 209/2010)
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

While we are wondering about the weather signs here on earth..up in space there are just as many mysteries;
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
That is Astronomy Pic of the day fro 9th August so if it has changed see in the archives the photo for 9/8/2010.... :shock:
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
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Post by Jo UK »

Today, the NASA pic is of the sand dunes of Titan - looking perfectly ploughed in ridges!
Liis
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Post by Liis »

leonia wrote:Many thanks, Carmel, this site seems to be very interesting.

Yesterday I found another example for similar terms in different languages:
map butterfly (Landkarten-Schmetterling = Landkärtchen (i.e. "maplet")
This was more surprising than the pair peacock butterfly (Pfauen-Schmetterling) = Pfauenauge (peacock's eye) . . .
Yes, thank you!
About name similarities - there are quite many: flowers, birds, butterflies. Enough to make one suspect that the national name-giving committees have "borrowed" names from each other, so that these are not always genuine local national names.
Here is another example of probable non-spontaneous similarity, the mourning cloak butterfly : Trauermantel (De), sorgmantel (Swe), leinaliblikas (Est).
But its UK name differs: Camberwell Beauty! Jo, other UK members - is it what you call them :innocent: ?

(I had the great luck to see quite many of them the other day - they were gorgeous. And as the LK article says - shy, and very good, acrobatic fliers.)
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Post by Jo UK »

The Camberwell Beauty is not a constant resident here, Liis, merely a visitor in some years

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species. ... ell+Beauty

But yes, that name seems to identify the butterfly.
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