A Strange Mushroom

A strange mushroom found in Wangling Park on June 25 last year, and is still a mystery to me. My field notes were not very complete, but indicate that mushroom in the centre of picture was 14 cm in height with a 5.5 cm pileus and a firm stipe 1.5 cm in the middle and 2.5 cm at its base. There was no significant aroma and the spore print was white. The genus cantharocybe was suggested on inaturalist but there are no similar observations recorded in this part of China. Cantharocybe virosa is found in southeast Asia growing near cocos nucifera, but there are no such trees in Wangling Park.

Learn to Read or Take a Beating

[item 33]

    of an a.b.c.
This a.b.c. you do read
    but little do prevail
vnless y^t you take heede
    well whipt shalbe your tail.

Steven W. May, Henry Stanford's Anthology: an Edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd.5.75 (New York; London: Garland, 1988), p. 44.

Written by Henry Stanford for Robin Carey (later Sir Robert) the eldest son of Sir Edmond Carey, third surviving son of Henry Carey Lord Hunsdon. From a group of poems written to assist Tudor children in learning to write poetry in poulter’s metre. Poem dated 1 Jan 1586/87.

Bradybaena

Bradybaena (巴蜗牛属).

Hopefully our recent wet weather will bring out some interesting snails. This medium-sized snail was exploring the gardens near Yuelu Academy: it is some species of Bradybaena, but I am not sure what kind; there is always mysteries in nature.

Oxford Bookshops

That they are pleasing, all who ever buy
In Oxford shops can surely testify:
Of all the shops I name or do not name
I and their other buyers can make claim
That, of our purchased parcels laid in pile
Each one was rendered friendly, with a smile,
A charming word or jest that gave a grace
Of silver to the penny’s commonplace,
So that a spirit companied the thing
Borne in the paper package tied with string,
So that it seemed a thing not bought and sold
But given, out of friendship and worth gold.

It is a pleasant pastime to go eyeing
Where things attract and tempt you into buying;
The dustless shining things which subtly wait
Yourself, the willing fish for this the bait.
Among these verses I have written down
The fruits of shopping about Oxford town,
Each with the happy memory of faces
Who greet me friendly at the customed places,
And of the streets in which the windows shine,
That are the magnets to these friends of mine;
For here, new pleasures purchasers attend,
They find the looked-for treasure and a friend.

I seek few treasures, except books, the tools
Of those celestial souls the world calls fools.
Happy the morning giving time to stop
An hour at once in Basil Blackwell’s shop,
There, in the Broad, within whose booky house
Half England’s scholars nibble books or browse.
Where’er they wander blessed fortune theirs,
Books to the ceiling, other books upstairs.
Books, doubtless in the cellar, and behind
Romantic bays where iron ladders wind,
And in odd nooks sometimes in little shelves,
Lintot’s and Tonson’s calf-bound dainty twelves.

From John Masefield, ‘Shopping in Oxford’ in Poems by John Masefield (London: William Heinemann, 1946; 1923), pp. 870-871.

Pink-winged Grasshopper

Pink-winged Grasshopper (Atractomorpha sinensis, 短额负蝗).

The most common local atractomorpha, in the summer and autumn they are vivacious during the day. They are dimorphic: most commonly bright green, but on Yuelu Mountain and other hills I sometimes find grey-brown ones, though these are far less common.

Sympathy

He was incurably sympathetic.

Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore (Boston: Mariner, 1998l 1979), p. 12.

Changsha Floods

A White Wagtail (Motacilla alba, 白鹡鸰). We have had steady rain for a couple weeks and expect rain for a few weeks more, but yesterday morning we were inundated with heavy downpour, drastically flooding parts of the city.

This is the season for heavy rain in this part of the world. 100 years ago in 1924, Changsha also experienced severe flooding; I cannot find much about what parts of the city were then affected but there are some (sadly low resolution) photos available from the University of Bristol's online Historical Photographs of China collections.

Image courtesy of George Trobridge Collection, University of Bristol Library (www.hpcbristol.net). C. July 1924.

Urban Rain

 In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the gutters.

Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (Oxford University Press, 1997; 1855-1857), pp. 30-31.

   The rain poured down on London so hard that it seemed that it was dancing spray, every raindrop contending with its fellows for supremacy in the air and waiting to splash down. It was a deluge. The drains and sewers were overflowing, throwing up—regurgitating, as it were—the debris of muck, slime, and filth, the dead dogs, the dead rats, cats, and worse; bringing back up to the world of men all those things that they thought  they had left behind them;  jostling and gurgling and hurrying toward the overflowing and always hospitable River Thames; bursting its banks, bubbling and churning like some nameless soup boiling in a dreadful cauldron; the river itself gasping like a dying fish. But those in the know always said about the London rain that, try as it might, it would never, ever clean that noisome city, because all it did was show you another layer of dirt. And on this dirty night there were appropriately dirty deeds that not even the rain could wash away.

Terry Pratchett, Dodger (London: Doubleday, 2012), pp. 1-2.

Slender Green-winged Grasshopper

Slender Green-winged Grasshopper (Aiolopus thalassinus, 绿纹蝗).

This grasshopper can be found in wetlands and near rivers across Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and some of the Pacific islands too. From mid-June until around October, these adult grasshoppers can be easily spotted along the Xiang river.

Wreaths for the Feast of St. John the Baptist

The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist is assigned to the eighth day before the Kalends of July (24 June) so that it falls six months before the celebration of Christmas. The proximity to the Summer Solstice is suggestive of the words of St. John the Baptist in the Gospel: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3:30). The summer festivals celebrated on this feast day have diminished in the English world. William Turner (c. 1510-1568) mentions one lost English tradition, of children making wreaths from the flowers of the fields:

CYANUS [Centaurea cyanus, Cornflower]
Cyanus a Gallis teste Ruellio blauium dicitur. Hanc ego herbam arbitror esse quam Northumbria uocat a Blewblaw aut a Blew bottell. Hanc corollis intexunt pueri eo tempore quo Baptistae sacra peraguntur.

Cyanus, according to Ruellius, is called Blavium by the French. I think that this is the herb which [people in] Northumberland call a Blewblaw or a Blew bottell. Children entwine this [herb] to wreaths when the Baptist’s holy day is celebrated.

GITHAGO siue NIGELLASTRVM [Agrostemma githago, Corncockle]
Githago, siue Grece mauis, pseudomelanthion, est herba illa procera, que in tritico flavescente existit. Inde corollas apud Morpetenses meos pueri in die divi Baptistae texunt. Vulgus appellat Coccle aut pople.

Githago, or Pseudomelanthion if you prefer it in Greek, is the well-known tall herb which appears in ripening wheat. On the day of Saint John the Baptist children among my Morpethians make wreaths of it. The common people call it Coccle or Pople.

William Turner, Libellus de re herbaria novus (1538), ed. & trans. by Mats Rydén, Hans Helander & Kerstin Olsson (Uppsala : Almqvist & Wiksell, 1999), pp. 60-61 & pp. 64-65.

Eristalis Cerealis

Eristalis cerealis (灰带管蚜蝇).

Rainy weather provides a good opportunity for sorting out some old photos. I photographed this drone fly in early May but they are always around in warm weather and as generalist pollinators appear anywhere in Changsha there are flowering plants. Their water-born larva, called 'rat-railed maggots' have a long breathing appendage, mistakenly labelled a tail.

Daily Life

sic igitur vivitur; quotidie aliquid legitur aut scribitur...

This is how I live my life: every day I read or write something...

Cicero, Letters, 9.26.4. My translation.

Scopula Propinquaria

Scopula propinquaria (花边灰姬尺蛾).

The past week has been mostly rain and it looks like there will be nothing but more rain for the near future. And in this humidity it is difficult to keep the fog away from my camera lens. Today I walked around Wangling Park: I did not see much for my effort and could photograph less, but I did at least manage to capture this member of the geometridae family.

John Fisher

Henry E.G. Rope (1880-1978), ‘Blessed John Fisher’
June, 1914

In that grey head and forehead sorrow-scor’d,
Those strong dark eyes with tender love alight,
The face of one that liveth at the height
Of the o’erwhelming trust of his liege Lord,
Radiant with sovran grace on him outpour’d,
With steadfast calm unearthly benedight:
Chosen to bear the fiercest of the fight
With hell’s leagu’d powers o’er all the land abroad.
Whose swords are blunted by his only crook
Who stood alone nor left his flock their prize—
Is this intrigue’s demeanour? This his look
Over whose soul ambitions tyrannize?
O fools, who cannot read an open book!
O jaded wits, false judgements, purblind eyes!

Henry E.G. Rope, Soul’s Belfry and Other Verses (Church Stretton: The Stretton Press, 1919), p. 59.

Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Bishop John Fisher (c.1532-45), The Royal Library, Windsor