View allAll Photos Tagged 12...the
Wise sages have noted that in railroading, often a line's last act is the most dramatic. My first experience with that phenomenon was when the Oregon, California & Eastern moved all its equipment off the property during September 1991, in preparation for abandonment.
Our vacation plans for 1991 were a trip to Northern Arizona. The goal was to shoot brand new Santa Fe warbonnets in profusion on the Transcon. Unfortunately, after we visited the Grand Canyon, Arizona and Southern California were hit by an unseasonable weather system. The rains turned most of the lineside access roads into impassable mud bogs.
While we were watching the rain fall from our motel in Holbrook, Arizona, my wife checked our home answering machine in Portland. She found a message from a friend in Klamath Falls, Oregon that the OC&E was going to begin running clean-up trains on Monday, September 11th. Since the weather had just about destroyed my goals for the trip, we cut and ran for Klamath, our old hometown.
So, on a flawless September morning, I stood trackside for an encore performance by my favorite shortline. I had shot OC&E's last log train in April 1990. Naturally, I was thrilled to be in the town of Sprague River when OC&E 7602 west wound up for the grade to East Switchback on September 12.
The final train ever run by the actual OC&E operated a couple of weeks later. In 1992-93, Southern Pacific ran some salvage trains over the line for scrapper A&K Railroad Materials. The final train on OC&E ran in July 1993, and the rails were gone by year end. Today, the right of way is an Oregon State Park.
The second photograph in the series is entitled “The Fourth of May” and is based upon Francisco Goya’s The Third of May. Goya’s painting commemorates the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies during the Peninsular War of 1808. It was during this time; 1804-1814, that Napoleon’s official title was “Emperor of the French”. In many ways, Napoleon and the French could be compared to the Emperor and the Empire from the Star War universe; similarly, the people of Spain could just as easily be seen as the Rebels; both resisting an imposed authority.
In my recreation, I have chosen to replace the Spanish civilians; the resistance, with Owen Lars and Beru Whitesun; more commonly known as Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Although it was not depicted in "A New Hope", it is my belief that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru fought bravely to protect their adopted son; Luke, as well as his newly purchased droids from the Empire. Similarly, the people of Spain resisted against the Napoleonic armies by ambushing and sabotaging them in every way imaginable. The Rebels approach against the Empire was very similar. By using guerrilla warfare strategies, they became the itch that the Empire could not scratch. In Goya’s original, the French army has been set up as a firing squad on the right side of the painting; perhaps this was symbolic of the French invading Spain from the East? In my recreation, Napoleon’s firing squad has been replaced with an Imperial firing squad of Sandtroopers.
The content of Goya’s painting has been considered groundbreaking by many art historians as it diverges from traditional Christian art as well as the traditional depiction of war. Goya’s positioning of characters, scenery choice as well as the story behind the painting has allowed it to be the influence behind the second tableau in my retelling of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It should also be noted that Goya’s “The Third of May” has also bee said to be the first painting of its kind and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era.
Enjoy!
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Visit our Cast of Star Wars Characters at www.365DaysofClones.com.
The first train encountered during the drive from the airport in Great Falls to West Glacier was this eastbound oil empty.Seen here on the well photographed Two Medicine trestle at East Glacier MT, 09/16/12.The new highway bridge here should offer even better views.
Hit the 12 hour mark with some more fine weather tonight. I'm happy with how it looks after half a day of exposure time!
Imaged between 29/02/12 - 20/03/12 the image comprises of 3 hours of Lum, Green, Red and Blue. Processed in Pixinsight and CS5.
Imaging camera - Atik 314l+
Imaging scope - Altair Astro 6"RC Astrograph
For the Challenge group on flickr
www.flickr.com/groups/challengegroup/
Take a whole "roll of film" in one walk. Mine is 12 shots.
I felt a little like Rain Man, walking around the neighbourhood taking snaps of random things.....
There are always people who regret the Packard automobile has gone for good. Or people who hardly can except Packard is history.
But there are also people who refuse to except this fact and take action. Like Roy Gullickson, an engineer and entrepreneur from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, US.
Read the auction description below and be surprised...
This Packard Twelve prototype was designed by former GM stylist Don Johnson with important input from Roy Gullickson and Lawrence Johnson. Development started in Autumn 1993. This prototype was presented in 1999. A yearly production of at least 2000 items was intended but the necessary investments were not found. It remained with this single prototype.
It was finally offered at an auction in 2014.
See also: rmsothebys.com/auctions/sj14/lots/r112-1999-packard-twelv...
Auction description:
573 hp, 525 cu. in. OHV fuel-injected V-12 engine, four-speed GM 4L80E automatic transmission, full-time all-wheel drive, four-wheel independent suspension, and four-wheel power-assisted anti-lock disc brakes. Wheelbase: 119 in.
Some cars have presence, some cars have panache, some cars have prestige, and some cars have all that and more…like Packards. This is what inspired Roy Gullickson, entrepreneur and engineer, to pursue his dream and build the new Packard Twelve.
It began as an idea among friends during a conversation at lunch in 1991. After successfully securing the trademark rights to build a new automobile with the Packard name, concept development began during September and October of 1993. Engineering and styling work was started in January 1994 and continued through to 1996 with Gullickson and Lawrence Johnson, who were both mechanical engineers with automotive experience. The new Packard Motor Car Company and Twelve prototype were first introduced publicly at the 25th anniversary celebration of Arizona Packards in Tuscon in October 1998.
A full-size styling mock-up was developed after consultation with four professional stylists, who included Don Johnson, the former GM stylist who was responsible for the final version of the Zimmer automobile. The sub-structure is an all-aluminum space-frame chassis and body, making extensive use of proprietary high-strength, heat-treated aluminum extrusions. The special aluminum suspension A-frames and knuckles are heat-treated, then X-rayed and dye-penetrant tested to detect any porosity. Anti-squat and anti-dive geometry are included, along with 13.2-inch four-wheel disc brakes. The completed car weighs in at a comparatively light 3,750 pounds.
Power is supplied by a 573 horsepower, 525-cubic inch, all-aluminum OHV V-12. The engine was tested over a five-year period and is equipped with Delco electronic-port fuel injection, dual catalytic converters and oxygen sensors, and Delco powertrain control modules. Full-time all-wheel drive is managed by a Borg Warner transfer case with a viscous clutch and a 35/65 torque split front/rear. A GM 4L80E four-speed electronic-shift automatic transmission was chosen for effortless touring. Performance is quoted at 0–60 mph in 4.8 seconds and the quarter mile in 12.5 seconds.
Inside, you’ll find fine leather upholstery, hand-finished dark walnut veneers with aluminum backing, power front seats, and power windows and locks. Comfort items also include automatic temperature control, full instrumentation, and an AM-FM radio with a CD player and changer.
Included in the purchase of the vehicle are spare parts, such as door glass, suspension knuckles and A-frames, and taillight lenses, along with a list of components with part numbers and suppliers’ names. Historical notes and materials will be provided with the car, as well as many additional photographs and original artwork.
The car is titled under authorization of federal and state laws for “constructed” vehicles, and therefore, it is not EPA or NHTSA certified. It is truly a unique vehicle and the only one built. According to the consignor, there will be no other. He adds that over $1.5 million has been invested in the cost of engineering and building this one-off, modern-day Packard prototype.
This is one time, perhaps, you’ll have to “Ask the Man Who Owns the Only One.”
8603 cc V12 engine.
Performance: 573 bhp.
Production Packard Twelve: 1999.
Without reg. number.
This Packard is part of the Dutch Packard Collection.
Seen on the Dutch Studebaker Packard Club meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of this club.
See also: www.spcn.nl/
Plus: studebakerdriversclub.com/
Bleiswijk, Hoekeindseweg, May 20, 2014.
© 2024 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved
Day 39
I was very lucky to have a teacher at the age of 8 or 9 who encouraged us all to buy fountain pens and told us always to write in "real" ink and to shun ball pens. I still find pleasure in writing with a fountain pen, and there is definitely something special about receiving a handwritten letter in real ink.
EOS 50D - EF 50mm compact macro - f/4.5 - 1/8 - ISO 400 - Portrait picture style.
Here we go: (By the way, these are not my original jokes)
YOU KNOW YOU'RE AN AUBURN TIGERS FAN WHEN.....
1. You let your 14-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.
2. The Blue Book value of your truck goes up and down depending on how much gas is in it.
3. You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
4. You think a woman who is "out of your league" bowls on a different night.
5. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean.
6. Someone in your family died right after saying, "Hey, y'all, watch this."
7. You think Dom Perignon is a Mafia leader.
8. Your wife's hairdo was once ruined by a ceiling fan.
9. Your junior prom offered day care.
10. You think the last words of the "Star-Spangled Banner" are "Gentlemen, start your engines."
11. You lit a match in the bathroom and your house exploded right off its wheels.
12. The Halloween pumpkin on your porch has more teeth than your spouse.
13. You have to go outside to get something from the fridge.
14. One of your kids was born on a pool table.
15. You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.
16. You can't get married to your sweetheart because there's a law against it.
17. You think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk.
Croome Court is a mid 18th century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by an extensive landscaped parkland at Croome D'Abitot, near Pershore in south Worcestershire. The mansion and park were designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry, and was Brown's first landscape design and first major architectural project. Some of the internal rooms of the mansion were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion house is owned by Croome Heritage Trust, and is leased to the National Trust who operate it, along with the surrounding parkland, as a tourist attraction. The National Trust own the surrounding parkland, which is also open to the public.
Location[edit]
Croome Court is located near to Croome D'Abitot, in Worcestershire,[1] near Pirton, Worcestershire.[2] The wider estate was established on lands that were once part of the royal forest of Horewell.[3] Traces of these older landscapes, such as unimproved commons and ancient woodlands, can be found across the former Croome Estate.[4]
House[edit]
Croome Court South Portico
History[edit]
The foundations and core of Croome Court, including the central chimney stack structure, date back to the early 1640s.[5] Substantial changes to this early house were made by Gilbert Coventry, 4th Earl of Coventry.[6]
In 1751, George Coventry, the 6th Earl, inherited the estate, along with the existing Jacobean house. He commissioned Lancelot "Capability" Brown, with the assistance of Sanderson Miller, to redesign the house and estate.[7][1] It was Brown's "first flight into the realms of architecture" and a "rare example of his architectural work",[8] and it is an important and seminal work.[9] It was built between 1751 and 1752, and it and Hagley Hall are considered to be the finest examples of Neo-Palladian architecture in Worcestershire. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Croome Court include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire).[1] Robert Adam worked on the interior of the building from 1760 onwards.[10]
The house has been visited by George III,[2][11] as well as Queen Victoria[7] during summers when she was a child, and George V (then Duke of York).[11]
A jam factory was built by the 9th Earl of Coventry, near to Pershore railway station, in about 1880, to provide a market for Vale of Evesham fruit growers in times of surplus. Although the Croome connection with jam making had ceased, during the First World War, the building was leased by the Croome Estate Trust to the Huddersfield Fruit Preserving Company as a pulping station.[12]
The First World War deeply affected Croome, with many local casualties, although the house was not requisitioned for the war effort. This is possibly because it was the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who needed a residence for his many official engagements.[13]
During the Second World War Croome Court was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works and leased for a year to the Dutch Government as a possible refuge for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands; to escape the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. However, evidence shows that they stayed two weeks at the most, perhaps because of the noise and fear created by the proximity of Defford Aerodrome. They later emigrated to Canada.[14]
In 1948 the Croome Estate Trust sold the Court, along with 38 acres (15 ha) of land, to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and the mansion became St Joseph's Special School, which was run by nuns[15] from 1950[11] until 1979.[15]
The house was listed on 11 August 1952; it is currently Grade I listed.[10]
In 1979 the hall was taken over by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna movement), who used it as their UK headquarters and a training college[16] called Chaitanya College,[15] run by 25 members of the movement.[16] During their tenure they repainted the Dining Room.[17] In 1984 they had to leave the estate for financial reasons. They held a festival at the hall in 2011.[16]
From 1984 onwards various owners tried to use the property as a training centre; apartments; a restaurant and conference centre; and a hotel and golf course,[15] before once more becoming a private family home,[2][15] with outbuildings converted to private houses.[15]
The house was purchased by the Croome Heritage Trust, a registered charity,[18] in October 2007,[19] and it is now managed by the National Trust as a tourist attraction. It opened to the public in September 2009, at which point six of the rooms had restored, costing £400,000, including the Saloon. It was estimated that another £4 million[2][20] to £4.8 million would be needed to restore the entire building. Fundraising activities for the restoration included a 2011 raffle for a Morgan sports car organised by Lord and Lady Flight. After the restoration is complete, a 999-year lease on the building will be granted to the National Trust.[21] An oral history project to record recollections about Croome was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.[15] As of 2009, the service wing was empty and in need of substantial repair.[22]
Exterior[edit]
The mansion is faced with Bath stone,[7] limestone ashlar, and has both north and south facing fronts. It has a basement and two stories, with three stories in the end pavilions. A slate roof, with pyramid roofs over the corner towers, tops the building, along with three pair-linked chimneys along the axis of the house.[10]
Both fronts have 11 bays, split into three central sets of three each, and one additional bay each side. The north face has a pedimented centre, with two balustraded staircases leading to a Roman Doric doorcase. The south face has a projecting Ionic tetrastyle portico and Venetian windows. It has a broad staircase, with cast stone sphinxes on each side, leading to a south door topped with a cornice on consoles. The wings have modillion cornice and balustrade.[10]
A two-story L-shaped service wing is attached to the east side of the mansion. It is made of red brick and stone, with slate roofs.[10] It was designed by Capability Brown in 1751-2.[22] On the far side of the service wing, a wall connects it to a stable court.[10]
Interior[edit]
The interior of the house was designed partially by Capability Brown, with plasterwork by G. Vassalli, and partially by Robert Adam, with plasterwork by J. Rose Jr. It has a central spine corridor. A stone staircase, with iron balusters, is at the east end.[10]
The entrance hall is on the north side of the building, and has four fluted Doric columns, along with moulded doorcases. To the east of the entrance hall is the dining room, which has a plaster ceiling and cornice, while to the west is a billiard room, featuring fielded panelling, a plaster cornice, and a rococo fireplace. The three rooms were probably decorated around 1758-59 by Capability Brown.[10] The dining room was vibrantly repainted by the Hare Krishnas in the 1970s-80s.[17]
The central room on the south side is a saloon, probably by Brown and Vassalli. It has an elaborate ceiling, with three panels, deep coving, and a cornice, along with two Ionic fireplaces, and Palladian doorcases.[10] George III was entertained by George Coventry, the 6th Earl, in the house's Saloon.[2] A drawing room is to the west of the saloon, and features rococo plasterwork and a marble fireplace.[10]
To the east of the saloon is the Tapestry Room.[10] This was designed in 1763-71, based on a design by Robert Adam, and contained tapestries and furniture covers possibly designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot, and made by Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins.[23] Around 1902 the ninth Earl sold the tapestries and seating to a Parisian dealer. In 1949 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation purchased the ceiling, floor, mantlepiece, chair rails, doors and the door surrounds, which were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1958. In 1959 the Kress Foundation also helped the Metropolitan Museum acquire the chair and sofa frames, which they recovered using the original tapestry seats.[7][23] A copy of the ceiling was installed in place of the original.[10] As of 2016, the room is displayed as it would have looked after the tapestries had been sold, with a jug and ewer on display as the only original decoration of the room that remains in it. The adjacent library room is used to explain what happened to the tapestry room;[17] the former library was designed by Adam, and was dismantled except for the marble fireplace.[10]
At the west side of the building is a long gallery,[10] which was designed by Robert Adam and installed between 1761 and 1766. It is the best preserved of the original interior (little of the rest has survived in situ).[1] It has an octagonal panelled ceiling, and plaster reliefs of griffins. A half-hexagonal bay faces the garden. The room also contains a marble caryatid fireplace designed by J Wilton.[10] As of 2016, modern sculptures are displayed in empty niches along the Long Gallery
wikipedia
The raccoon (/rəˈkuːn/ or US: /ræˈkuːn/ ⓘ, Procyon lotor), also spelled racoon[3] and sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from the other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm (16 to 28 in), and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg (11 to 57 lb). Its grayish coat mostly consists of dense underfur, which insulates it against cold weather. Three of the raccoon's most distinctive features are its extremely dexterous front paws, its facial mask, and its ringed tail, which are themes in the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas relating to the animal. The raccoon is noted for its intelligence, as studies show that it is able to remember the solution to tasks for at least three years. It is usually nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, and 27% vertebrates.
The original habitats of the raccoon are deciduous and mixed forests, but due to their adaptability, they have extended their range to mountainous areas, coastal marshes, and urban areas, where some homeowners consider them to be pests. As a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, raccoons are now also distributed across central Europe, the Caucasus, and Japan.
In Europe, the raccoon is included since 2016 in the list of Invasive Alien Species of Union concern (the Union list).[4] This implies that this species cannot be imported, bred, transported, commercialized, or intentionally released into the environment in the whole of the European Union.[5]
Though previously thought to be generally solitary, there is now evidence that raccoons engage in sex-specific social behavior. Related females often share a common area, while unrelated males live together in groups of up to four raccoons in order to maintain their positions against foreign males during the mating season and against other potential invaders. Home range sizes vary anywhere from 3 ha (7.4 acres) for females in cities, to 5,000 ha (12,000 acres) for males in prairies. After a gestation period of about 65 days, two to five young known as "kits" are born in spring. The kits are subsequently raised by their mother until dispersal in late fall. Although captive raccoons have been known to live over 20 years, their life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years. In many areas, hunting and vehicular injury are the two most common causes of death.
Etymology
The mask of a raccoon is often interrupted by a brown-black streak that extends from forehead to nose.[6]
Names for the species include the common raccoon,[7] North American raccoon,[8] and northern raccoon.[9] In various North American native languages, the reference to the animal's manual dexterity, or use of its hands is the source for the names.[10] The word raccoon was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term meaning 'animal that scratches with its hands', as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone.[11] It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning '[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands'.[12] The word is sometimes spelled as racoon.[13]
In Spanish, the raccoon is called mapache, derived from the Nahuatl mapachtli of the Aztecs, meaning '[the] one who takes everything in its hands'.[14]
Its Latin name literally means 'before-dog washer'.[15] The genus Procyon was named by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr.[10] The animal's observed habit of "washing" or "dowsing" (see below) is the source of its name in other languages.[16][17] For example, the French "raton laveur" means "washing rat".
The colloquial abbreviation coon is used in words like coonskin for fur clothing and in phrases like old coon as a self-designation of trappers.[18][19] In the 1830s, the United States Whig Party used the raccoon as an emblem, causing them to be pejoratively known as "coons" by their political opponents, who saw them as too sympathetic to African-Americans. Soon after that the term became an ethnic slur,[20] especially in use between 1880 and 1920 (see coon song), and the term is still considered offensive.[21] Dogs bred to hunt raccoons are called coonhound and coon dog.[22]
Taxonomy
Skins of P. lotor and P. cancrivorus
Skulls of P. lotor and P. cancrivorus
In the first decades after its discovery by the members of the expedition of Christopher Columbus, who were the first Europeans to leave a written record about the species, taxonomists thought the raccoon was related to many different species, including dogs, cats, badgers and particularly bears.[23] Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus, first as Ursus cauda elongata ('long-tailed bear') in the second edition of his Systema Naturae (1740), then as Ursus Lotor ('washer bear') in the tenth edition (1758–59).[24][25] In 1780, Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr placed the raccoon in its own genus Procyon, which can be translated as either 'before the dog' or 'doglike'.[26][27] It is also possible that Storr had its nocturnal lifestyle in mind and chose the star Procyon as eponym for the species.[28][29]
Evolution
Based on fossil evidence from Russia and Bulgaria, the first known members of the family Procyonidae lived in Europe in the late Oligocene about 25 million years ago.[30] Similar tooth and skull structures suggest procyonids and weasels share a common ancestor, but molecular analysis indicates a closer relationship between raccoons and bears.[31] After the then-existing species crossed the Bering Strait at least six million years later in the early Miocene, the center of its distribution was probably in Central America.[32] Coatis (Nasua and Nasuella) and raccoons (Procyon) have been considered to share common descent from a species in the genus Paranasua present between 5.2 and 6.0 million years ago.[33] This assumption, based on morphological comparisons of fossils, conflicts with a 2006 genetic analysis which indicates raccoons are more closely related to ringtails.[34] Unlike other procyonids, such as the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus), the ancestors of the common raccoon left tropical and subtropical areas and migrated farther north about 2.5 million years ago, in a migration that has been confirmed by the discovery of fossils in the Great Plains dating back to the middle of the Pliocene.[35][33] Its most recent ancestor was likely Procyon rexroadensis, a large Blancan raccoon from the Rexroad Formation characterized by its narrow back teeth and large lower jaw.[36]
Subspecies
A Torch Key raccoon (P. l. incautus) in Cudjoe Key, Florida. Subspecies inhabiting the Florida Keys are characterized by their small size and very pale fur.
Female raccoon of the Vancouver Island subspecies at Sidney, British Columbia, with characteristic dark fur
As of 2005, Mammal Species of the World recognizes 22 subspecies of raccoons.[37] Four of these subspecies living only on small Central American and Caribbean islands were often regarded as distinct species after their discovery. These are the Bahamian raccoon and Guadeloupe raccoon, which are very similar to each other; the Tres Marias raccoon, which is larger than average and has an angular skull; and the extinct Barbados raccoon. Studies of their morphological and genetic traits in 1999, 2003 and 2005 led all these island raccoons to be listed as subspecies of the common raccoon in Mammal Species of the World's third edition. A fifth island raccoon population, the Cozumel raccoon, which weighs only 3 to 4 kg (6.6 to 8.8 lb) and has notably small teeth, is still regarded as a separate species.[38][39][40][41]
The four smallest raccoon subspecies, with a typical weight of 1.8 to 2.7 kg (4.0 to 6.0 lb), live along the southern coast of Florida and on the adjacent islands; an example is the Ten Thousand Islands raccoon (Procyon lotor marinus).[42] Most of the other 15 subspecies differ only slightly from each other in coat color, size and other physical characteristics.[43][44] The two most widespread subspecies are the eastern raccoon (Procyon lotor lotor) and the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon (Procyon lotor hirtus). Both share a comparatively dark coat with long hairs, but the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon is larger than the eastern raccoon. The eastern raccoon occurs in all U.S. states and Canadian provinces to the north of South Carolina and Tennessee. The adjacent range of the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon covers all U.S. states and Canadian provinces to the north of Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.[45]
The taxonomic identity of feral raccoons inhabiting Central Europe, Causasia and Japan is unknown, as the founding populations consisted of uncategorized specimens from zoos and fur farms.
Description
Physical characteristics
Lower side of front paw with visible vibrissae on the tips of the digits
Skeleton
Skull with dentition: 2/2 molars, 4/4 premolars, 1/1 canines, 3/3 incisors
Baculum or penis bone
Female genitourinary system
Male genitourinary system
Head to hindquarters, raccoons measure between 40 and 70 cm (16 and 28 in), not including the bushy tail which can measure between 20 and 40 cm (7.9 and 15.7 in), but is usually not much longer than 25 cm (9.8 in).[71][72][73] The shoulder height is between 23 and 30 cm (9.1 and 11.8 in).[74] The body weight of an adult raccoon varies considerably with habitat, making the raccoon one of the most variably sized mammals. It can range from 2 to 26 kg (4.4 to 57.3 lb), but is usually between 5 and 12 kg (11 and 26 lb). The smallest specimens live in southern Florida, while those near the northern limits of the raccoon's range tend to be the largest (see Bergmann's rule).[75] Males are usually 15 to 20% heavier than females.[76] At the beginning of winter, a raccoon can weigh twice as much as in spring because of fat storage.[77][78][79] The largest recorded wild raccoon weighed 28.4 kg (63 lb) and measured 140 cm (55 in) in total length, by far the largest size recorded for a procyonid.[80][81]
The most characteristic physical feature of the raccoon is the area of black fur around the eyes, which contrasts sharply with the surrounding white face coloring. This is reminiscent of a "bandit's mask" and has thus enhanced the animal's reputation for mischief.[82][83] The slightly rounded ears are also bordered by white fur. Raccoons are assumed to recognize the facial expression and posture of other members of their species more quickly because of the conspicuous facial coloration and the alternating light and dark rings on the tail.[84][85][86] The dark mask may also reduce glare and thus enhance night vision.[85][86] On other parts of the body, the long and stiff guard hairs, which shed moisture, are usually colored in shades of gray and, to a lesser extent, brown.[87] Raccoons with a very dark coat are more common in the German population because individuals with such coloring were among those initially released to the wild.[88] The dense underfur, which accounts for almost 90% of the coat, insulates against cold weather and is composed of 2 to 3 cm (0.79 to 1.18 in) long hairs.[87]
The raccoon, whose method of locomotion is usually considered to be plantigrade, can stand on its hind legs to examine objects with its front paws.[89][90] As raccoons have short legs compared to their compact torso, they are usually not able either to run quickly or jump great distances.[91][92] Their top speed over short distances is 16 to 24 km/h (9.9 to 14.9 mph).[93][94] Raccoons can swim with an average speed of about 5 km/h (3.1 mph) and can stay in the water for several hours.[95][92] For climbing down a tree headfirst—an unusual ability for a mammal of its size—a raccoon rotates its hind feet so they are pointing backwards.[96][92] Raccoons have a dual cooling system to regulate their temperature; that is, they are able to both sweat and pant for heat dissipation.[97][98]
Raccoon skulls have a short and wide facial region and a voluminous braincase. The facial length of the skull is less than the cranial, and their nasal bones are short and quite broad. The auditory bullae are inflated in form, and the sagittal crest is weakly developed.[99] The dentition—40 teeth with the dental formula:
3.1.4.2
3.1.4.2
—is adapted to their omnivorous diet: the carnassials are not as sharp and pointed as those of a full-time carnivore, but the molars are not as wide as those of a herbivore.[100] The penis bone of males is about 10 cm (3.9 in) long and strongly bent at the front end,[101][102] and its shape can be used to distinguish juvenile males from mature males.[103][104][105] Seven of the thirteen identified vocal calls are used in communication between the mother and her kits, one of these being the birdlike twittering of newborns.[106][107][98]
Senses
The most important sense for the raccoon is its sense of touch.[108][109][110] The "hyper sensitive"[109] front paws are protected by a thin horny layer that becomes pliable when wet.[111][112] The five digits of the paws have no webbing between them, which is unusual for a carnivoran.[113] Almost two-thirds of the area responsible for sensory perception in the raccoon's cerebral cortex is specialized for the interpretation of tactile impulses, more than in any other studied animal.[114] They are able to identify objects before touching them with vibrissae located above their sharp, nonretractable claws.[89][110] The raccoon's paws lack an opposable thumb; thus, it does not have the agility of the hands of primates.[110][112] There is no observed negative effect on tactile perception when a raccoon stands in water below 10 °C (50 °F) for hours.[115]
Raccoons are thought to be color blind or at least poorly able to distinguish color, though their eyes are well-adapted for sensing green light.[116][117][118] Although their accommodation of 11 dioptre is comparable to that of humans and they see well in twilight because of the tapetum lucidum behind the retina, visual perception is of subordinate importance to raccoons because of their poor long-distance vision.[119][120][121] In addition to being useful for orientation in the dark, their sense of smell is important for intraspecific communication. Glandular secretions (usually from their anal glands), urine and feces are used for marking.[122][123][124] With their broad auditory range, they can perceive tones up to 50–85 kHz as well as quiet noises, like those produced by earthworms underground.[125][126]
Intelligence
Zoologist Clinton Hart Merriam described raccoons as "clever beasts", and that "in certain directions their cunning surpasses that of the fox". The animal's intelligence gave rise to the epithet "sly coon".[127] Only a few studies have been undertaken to determine the mental abilities of raccoons, most of them based on the animal's sense of touch. In a study by the ethologist H. B. Davis in 1908, raccoons were able to open 11 of 13 complex locks in fewer than 10 tries and had no problems repeating the action when the locks were rearranged or turned upside down. Davis concluded that they understood the abstract principles of the locking mechanisms and their learning speed was equivalent to that of rhesus macaques.[128]
Studies in 1963, 1973, 1975 and 1992 concentrated on raccoon memory showed that they can remember the solutions to tasks for at least three years.[129] In a study by B. Pohl in 1992, raccoons were able to instantly differentiate between identical and different symbols three years after the short initial learning phase.[129] Stanislas Dehaene reports in his book The Number Sense that raccoons can distinguish boxes containing two or four grapes from those containing three.[130] In research by Suzana Herculano-Houzel and other neuroscientists, raccoons have been found to be comparable to primates in density of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which they have proposed to be a neuroanatomical indicator of intelligence.[131][132]
Behavior
Social behavior
Eastern raccoons (P. l. lotor) in a tree: The raccoon's social structure is grouped into what Ulf Hohmann calls a "three-class society".
California raccoon (P. l. psora) climbing a tree in Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge
Baby raccoon chatter
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Studies in the 1990s by the ethologists Stanley D. Gehrt and Ulf Hohmann suggest that raccoons engage in sex-specific social behaviors and are not typically solitary, as was previously thought.[133][134] Related females often live in a so-called "fission-fusion society"; that is, they share a common area and occasionally meet at feeding or resting grounds.[135][136] Unrelated males often form loose male social groups to maintain their position against foreign males during the mating season—or against other potential invaders.[137] Such a group does not usually consist of more than four individuals.[138][139] Since some males show aggressive behavior towards unrelated kits, mothers will isolate themselves from other raccoons until their kits are big enough to defend themselves.[140]
With respect to these three different modes of life prevalent among raccoons, Hohmann called their social structure a "three-class society".[141] Samuel I. Zeveloff, professor of zoology at Weber State University and author of the book Raccoons: A Natural History, is more cautious in his interpretation and concludes at least the females are solitary most of the time and, according to Erik K. Fritzell's study in North Dakota in 1978, males in areas with low population densities are solitary as well.[142]
The shape and size of a raccoon's home range varies depending on age, sex, and habitat, with adults claiming areas more than twice as large as juveniles.[143] While the size of home ranges in the habitat of North Dakota's prairies lie between 7 and 50 km2 (3 and 20 sq mi) for males and between 2 and 16 km2 (1 and 6 sq mi) for females, the average size in a marsh at Lake Erie was 0.5 km2 (0.19 sq mi).[144] Irrespective of whether the home ranges of adjacent groups overlap, they are most likely not actively defended outside the mating season if food supplies are sufficient.[145] Odor marks on prominent spots are assumed to establish home ranges and identify individuals.[124] Urine and feces left at shared raccoon latrines may provide additional information about feeding grounds, since raccoons were observed to meet there later for collective eating, sleeping and playing.[146]
Concerning the general behavior patterns of raccoons, Gehrt points out that "typically you'll find 10 to 15 percent that will do the opposite" of what is expected.[147]
Diet
Though usually nocturnal, the raccoon is sometimes active in daylight to take advantage of available food sources.[148][149] Its diet consists of about 40% invertebrates, 33% plant material and 27% vertebrates.[150] Since its diet consists of such a variety of different foods, Zeveloff argues the raccoon "may well be one of the world's most omnivorous animals".[151] While its diet in spring and early summer consists mostly of insects, worms, and other animals already available early in the year, it prefers fruits and nuts, such as acorns and walnuts, which emerge in late summer and autumn, and represent a rich calorie source for building up fat needed for winter.[152][153]
Contrary to popular belief, raccoons only occasionally eat active or large prey, such as birds and mammals. They prefer prey that is easier to catch, specifically crayfish, insects,[154] fish, amphibians and bird eggs.[155] Raccoons are virulent predators of eggs and hatchlings in both birds and reptile nests, to such a degree that, for threatened prey species, raccoons may need to be removed from the area or nests may need to be relocated to mitigate the effect of their predations (i.e. in the case of some globally threatened turtles).[156][157][158][159][160] When food is plentiful, raccoons can develop strong individual preferences for specific foods.[78] In the northern parts of their range, raccoons go into a winter rest, reducing their activity drastically as long as a permanent snow cover makes searching for food difficult.[161]
Dousing
Captive raccoons often douse their food before eating.
One aspect of raccoon behavior is so well known that it gives the animal part of its scientific name, Procyon lotor; lotor is Latin for 'washer'. In the wild, raccoons often dabble for underwater food near the shore-line. They then often pick up the food item with their front paws to examine it and rub the item, sometimes to remove unwanted parts. This gives the appearance of the raccoon "washing" the food. The tactile sensitivity of raccoons' paws is increased if this rubbing action is performed underwater, since the water softens the hard layer covering the paws.[109][162] However, the behavior observed in captive raccoons in which they carry their food to water to "wash" or douse it before eating has not been observed in the wild.[163][164] Naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, believed that raccoons do not have adequate saliva production to moisten food thereby necessitating dousing, but this hypothesis is now considered to be incorrect.[162][163][165][166] Captive raccoons douse their food more frequently when a watering hole with a layout similar to a stream is not farther away than 3 m (10 ft).[166] The widely accepted theory is that dousing in captive raccoons is a fixed action pattern from the dabbling behavior performed when foraging at shores for aquatic foods.[162][166][167][168] This is supported by the observation that aquatic foods are doused more frequently. Cleaning dirty food does not seem to be a reason for "washing".[166]
Reproduction
Raccoons usually mate in a period triggered by increasing daylight between late January and mid-March.[169][170][171] However, there are large regional differences which are not completely explicable by solar conditions. For example, while raccoons in southern states typically mate later than average, the mating season in Manitoba also peaks later than usual in March and extends until June.[171] During the mating season, males restlessly roam their home ranges in search of females in an attempt to court them during the three- to four-day period when conception is possible. These encounters will often occur at central meeting places.[172][173][174] Copulation, including foreplay, can last over an hour and is repeated over several nights.[175] The weaker members of a male social group also are assumed to get the opportunity to mate, since the stronger ones cannot mate with all available females.[176] In a study in southern Texas during the mating seasons from 1990 to 1992, about one third of all females mated with more than one male.[177] If a female does not become pregnant or if she loses her kits early, she will sometimes become fertile again 80 to 140 days later.[178][179][180]
An eastern raccoon (P. l. lotor) kit
After usually 63 to 65 days of gestation (although anywhere from 54 to 70 days is possible), a litter of typically two to five young is born.[181][182] The average litter size varies widely with habitat, ranging from 2.5 in Alabama to 4.8 in North Dakota.[183][184] Larger litters are more common in areas with a high mortality rate, due, for example, to hunting or severe winters.[185][184] While male yearlings usually reach their sexual maturity only after the main mating season, female yearlings can compensate for high mortality rates and may be responsible for about 50% of all young born in a year.[186][187][188] Males have no part in raising young.[138][189][190] The kits (also called "cubs") are blind and deaf at birth, but their mask is already visible against their light fur.[191][192] The birth weight of the about 10 cm (4 in)-long kits is between 60 and 75 g (2.1 and 2.6 oz).[192] Their ear canals open after around 18 to 23 days, a few days before their eyes open for the first time.[193] Once the kits weigh about 1 kg (2 lb), they begin to explore outside the den, consuming solid food for the first time after six to nine weeks.[194][195] After this point, their mother suckles them with decreasing frequency; they are usually weaned by 16 weeks.[196] In the fall, after their mother has shown them dens and feeding grounds, the juvenile group splits up.[197] [198] While many females will stay close to the home range of their mother, males can sometimes move more than 20 km (12 mi) away. This is considered an instinctive behavior, preventing inbreeding. However, mother and offspring may share a den during the first winter in cold areas.
Life expectancy
Captive raccoons have been known to live for more than 20 years. However, the species' life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years, depending on the local conditions such as traffic volume, hunting, and weather severity. It is not unusual for only half of the young born in one year to survive a full year. After this point, the annual mortality rate drops to between 10% and 30%. Young raccoons are vulnerable to losing their mother and to starvation, particularly in long and cold winters. The most frequent natural cause of death in the North American raccoon population is distemper, which can reach epidemic proportions and kill most of a local raccoon population. In areas with heavy vehicular traffic and extensive hunting, these factors can account for up to 90% of all deaths of adult raccoons. The most important natural predators of the raccoon are bobcats, coyotes, and great horned owls, the latter mainly preying on young raccoons but capable of killing adults in some cases. In Florida, they have been reported to fall victim to larger carnivores like American black bear and cougars and these species may also be a threat on occasion in other areas. Where still present, gray wolves may still occasionally take raccoons as a supplemental prey item. Also in the southeast, they are among the favored prey for adult American alligators. On occasion, both bald and golden eagles will prey on raccoons. In the tropics, raccoons are known to fall prey to smaller eagles such as ornate hawk-eagles and black hawk-eagles, although it is not clear whether adults or merely juvenile raccoons are taken by these. In rare cases of overlap, they may fall victim from carnivores ranging from species averaging smaller than themselves such as fishers to those as large and formidable as jaguars in Mexico. In their introduced range in the former Soviet Union, their main predators are wolves, lynxes and Eurasian eagle-owls. However, predation is not a significant cause of death, especially because larger predators have been exterminated in many areas inhabited by raccoons.
Range
Although they have thrived in sparsely wooded areas in the last decades, raccoons depend on vertical structures to climb when they feel threatened. Therefore, they avoid open terrain and areas with high concentrations of beech trees, as beech bark is too smooth to climb. Tree hollows in old oaks or other trees and rock crevices are preferred by raccoons as sleeping, winter and litter dens. If such dens are unavailable or accessing them is inconvenient, raccoons use burrows dug by other mammals, dense undergrowth or tree crotches. In a study in the Solling range of hills in Germany, more than 60% of all sleeping places were used only once, but those used at least ten times accounted for about 70% of all uses. Since amphibians, crustaceans, and other animals around the shore of lakes and rivers are an important part of the raccoon's diet, lowland deciduous or mixed forests abundant with water and marshes sustain the highest population densities. While population densities range from 0.5 to 3.2 animals per square kilometer (1.3 to 8.3 animals per square mile) in prairies and do not usually exceed 6 animals per square kilometer (15.5 animals per square mile) in upland hardwood forests, more than 20 raccoons per square kilometer (51.8 animals per square mile) can live in lowland forests and marshes.
Distribution in North America
Raccoons are common throughout North America from Canada to Panama, where the subspecies Procyon lotor pumilus coexists with the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus). The population on Hispaniola was exterminated as early as 1513 by Spanish colonists who hunted them for their meat. Raccoons were also exterminated in Cuba and Jamaica, where the last sightings were reported in 1687. The Barbados raccoon became extinct relatively recently, in 1964. When they were still considered separate species, the Bahamas raccoon, Guadeloupe raccoon and Tres Marias raccoon were classified as endangered by the IUCN in 1996.
A Raccoon sleeping on a tree in High Park, Toronto
There is archeological evidence that in pre-Columbian times raccoons were numerous only along rivers and in the woodlands of the Southeastern United States. As raccoons were not mentioned in earlier reports of pioneers exploring the central and north-central parts of the United States, their initial spread may have begun a few decades before the 20th century. Since the 1950s, raccoons have expanded their range from Vancouver Island—formerly the northernmost limit of their range—far into the northern portions of the four south-central Canadian provinces. New habitats which have recently been occupied by raccoons (aside from urban areas) include mountain ranges, such as the Western Rocky Mountains, prairies and coastal marshes. After a population explosion starting in the 1940s, the estimated number of raccoons in North America in the late 1980s was 15 to 20 times higher than in the 1930s, when raccoons were comparatively rare. Urbanization, the expansion of agriculture, deliberate introductions, and the extermination of natural predators of the raccoon have probably caused this increase in abundance and distribution.
Distribution outside North America
s a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, the raccoon is now distributed in several European and Asian countries. Sightings have occurred in all the countries bordering Germany, which hosts the largest population outside of North America. Another stable population exists in northern France, where several pet raccoons were released by members of the U.S. Air Force near the Laon-Couvron Air Base in 1966. Furthermore, raccoons have been known to be in the area around Madrid since the early 1970s. In 2013, the city authorized "the capture and death of any specimen". It is also present in Italy, with one self-sustaining population in Lombardy.
About 1,240 animals were released in nine regions of the former Soviet Union between 1936 and 1958 for the purpose of establishing a population to be hunted for their fur. Two of these introductions were successful – one in the south of Belarus between 1954 and 1958, and another in Azerbaijan between 1941 and 1957. With a seasonal harvest of between 1,000~1,500 animals, in 1974 the estimated size of the population distributed in the Caucasus region was around 20,000 animals and the density was four animals per square kilometer (10 animals per square mile).
Distribution in Japan
In Japan, up to 1,500 raccoons were imported as pets each year after the success of the anime series Rascal the Raccoon (1977). In 2004, the descendants of discarded or escaped animals lived in 42 of 47 prefectures. The range of raccoons in the wild in Japan grew from 17 prefectures in 2000 to all 47 prefectures in 2008. It is estimated that raccoons cause thirty million yen (~$275,000) of agricultural damage on Hokkaido alone.
Distribution in Germany
In Germany – where the raccoon is called the Waschbär (literally, 'wash-bear' or 'washing bear') due to its habit of "dousing" food in water – two pairs of pet raccoons were released into the German countryside at the Edersee reservoir in the north of Hesse in April 1934 by a forester upon request of their owner, a poultry farmer. He released them two weeks before receiving permission from the Prussian hunting office to "enrich the fauna". Several prior attempts to introduce raccoons in Germany had been unsuccessful. A second population was established in eastern Germany in 1945 when 25 raccoons escaped from a fur farm at Wolfshagen (today district of Altlandsberg), east of Berlin, after an air strike. The two populations are parasitologically distinguishable: 70% of the raccoons of the Hessian population are infected with the roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis, but none of the Brandenburgian population is known to have the parasite. In the Hessian region, there were an estimated 285 raccoons in 1956, which increased to over 20,000 in 1970; in 2008 there were between 200,000 and 400,000 raccoons in the whole of Germany. By 2012 it was estimated that Germany now had more than a million raccoons.
The raccoon was once a protected species in Germany, but has been declared a game animal in 14 of the 16 German states since 1954. Hunters and environmentalists argue the raccoon spreads uncontrollably, threatens protected bird species, and supersedes indigenous competitors. This view is opposed by the zoologist Frank-Uwe Michler, who finds no evidence that a high population density of raccoons leads to negative effects on the biodiversity of an area. Hohmann holds that extensive hunting cannot be justified by the absence of natural predators, because predation is not a significant cause of death in the North American raccoon population.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
The raccoon is extensively hunted in Germany as it is seen as an invasive species and pest. In the 1990s, only about 400 raccoons were hunted yearly. This increased dramatically over the next quarter-century: during the 2015–2016 hunting season, 128,100 raccoons were hunted, 60 percent of them in the state of Hesse.
Distribution in the former Soviet Union
Experiments in acclimatising raccoons into the Soviet Union began in 1936, and were repeated a further 25 times until 1962. Overall, 1,222 individuals were released, 64 of which came from zoos and fur farms (38 of them having been imports from western Europe). The remainder originated from a population previously established in Transcaucasia. The range of Soviet raccoons was never single or continuous, as they were often introduced to different locations far from each other. All introductions into the Russian Far East failed; melanistic raccoons were released on Petrov Island near Vladivostok and some areas of southern Primorsky Krai, but died. In Middle Asia, raccoons were released in Kyrgyzstan's Jalal-Abad Province, though they were later recorded as "practically absent" there in January 1963. A large and stable raccoon population (yielding 1,000~1,500 catches a year) was established in Azerbaijan after an introduction to the area in 1937. Raccoons apparently survived an introduction near Terek, along the Sulak River into the Dagestani lowlands. Attempts to settle raccoons on the Kuban River's left tributary and Kabardino-Balkaria were unsuccessful. A successful acclimatization occurred in Belarus, where three introductions (consisting of 52, 37, and 38 individuals in 1954 and 1958) took place. By January 1963, 700 individuals were recorded in the country.
Urban raccoons
Due to its adaptability, the raccoon has been able to use urban areas as a habitat. The first sightings were recorded in a suburb of Cincinnati in the 1920s. Since the 1950s, raccoons have been present in metropolitan areas like Washington, DC, Chicago, Toronto, and New York City. Since the 1960s, Kassel has hosted Europe's first and densest population in a large urban area, with about 50 to 150 animals per square kilometer (130 to 390 animals per square mile), a figure comparable to those of urban habitats in North America. Home range sizes of urban raccoons are only 3 to 40 hectares (7.5 to 100 acres) for females and 8 to 80 hectares (20 to 200 acres) for males. In small towns and suburbs, many raccoons sleep in a nearby forest after foraging in the settlement area. Fruit and insects in gardens and leftovers in municipal waste are easily available food sources. Furthermore, a large number of additional sleeping areas exist in these areas, such as hollows in old garden trees, cottages, garages, abandoned houses, and attics. The percentage of urban raccoons sleeping in abandoned or occupied houses varies from 15% in Washington, DC (1991) to 43% in Kassel (2003).
Health
Raccoons can carry rabies, a lethal disease caused by the neurotropic rabies virus carried in the saliva and transmitted by bites. Its spread began in Florida and Georgia in the 1950s and was facilitated by the introduction of infected individuals to Virginia and North Dakota in the late 1970s. Of the 6,940 documented rabies cases reported in the United States in 2006, 2,615 (37.7%) were in raccoons. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as local authorities in several U.S. states and Canadian provinces, has developed oral vaccination programs to fight the spread of the disease in endangered populations. Only one human fatality has been reported after transmission of the rabies virus strain commonly known as "raccoon rabies". Among the main symptoms for rabies in raccoons are a generally sickly appearance, impaired mobility, abnormal vocalization, and aggressiveness. There may be no visible signs at all, however, and most individuals do not show the aggressive behavior seen in infected canids; rabid raccoons will often retire to their dens instead. Organizations like the U.S. Forest Service encourage people to stay away from animals with unusual behavior or appearance, and to notify the proper authorities, such as an animal control officer from the local health department. Since healthy animals, especially nursing mothers, will occasionally forage during the day, daylight activity is not a reliable indicator of illness in raccoons.
Unlike rabies and at least a dozen other pathogens carried by raccoons, distemper, an epizootic virus, does not affect humans. This disease is the most frequent natural cause of death in the North American raccoon population and affects individuals of all age groups. For example, 94 of 145 raccoons died during an outbreak in Clifton, Ohio, in 1968. It may occur along with a following inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), causing the animal to display rabies-like symptoms. In Germany, the first eight cases of distemper were reported in 2007.
Some of the most important bacterial diseases which affect raccoons are leptospirosis, listeriosis, tetanus, and tularemia. Although internal parasites weaken their immune systems, well-fed individuals can carry a great many roundworms in their digestive tracts without showing symptoms. The larvae of the roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis, which can be contained in the feces and seldom causes a severe illness in humans, can be ingested when cleaning raccoon latrines without wearing breathing protection.
While not endemic, the worm Trichinella does infect raccoons, and undercooked raccoon meat has caused trichinosis in humans.
Trematode Metorchis conjunctus can also infect raccoons.
Relationship with humans
Raccoons have become notorious in urban areas for consuming food waste. They possess impressive problem-solving abilities and can break into all but the most secure food waste bins, which has earned them the derisive nickname trash panda. The presence of raccoons in close proximity to humans may be undesirable, as raccoon droppings (like most wild animals) contain parasites and other disease vectors. Raccoon roundworm is of particular concern to public health. It can be contracted in humans by accidental ingestion or inhalation of the eggs, which are present in the feces of infected raccoons. While usually harmless to the host, it causes progressive neurological damage in humans, and is eventually fatal if untreated. It is found in about 60% of adult raccoons. The general presence of raccoons in an area is not typically of concern, but nests or droppings found within or near structures should be destroyed. Roundworm eggs are very robust and bleach alone is insufficient; burning or treatment with hot solutions of sodium hydroxide is required. The keeping of raccoons as pets is illegal in some jurisdictions due to these risks.
The increasing number of raccoons in urban areas has resulted in diverse reactions in humans, ranging from outrage at their presence to deliberate feeding. Some wildlife experts and most public authorities caution against feeding wild animals because they might become increasingly obtrusive and dependent on humans as a food source. Other experts challenge such arguments and give advice on feeding raccoons and other wildlife in their books. Raccoons without a fear of humans are a concern to those who attribute this trait to rabies, but scientists point out this behavior is much more likely to be a behavioral adjustment to living in habitats with regular contact to humans for many generations. Raccoons usually do not prey on domestic cats and dogs, but isolated cases of killings have been reported. Attacks on pets may also target their owners.
A Florida raccoon (P. l. elucus) in the Everglades approaches a group of humans, hoping to be fed
While overturned waste containers and raided fruit trees are just a nuisance to homeowners, it can cost several thousand dollars to repair damage caused by the use of attic space as dens. Relocating or killing raccoons without a permit is forbidden in many urban areas on grounds of animal welfare. These methods usually only solve problems with particularly wild or aggressive individuals, since adequate dens are either known to several raccoons or will quickly be rediscovered. Loud noises, flashing lights, and unpleasant odors have proven particularly effective in driving away a mother and her kits before they would normally leave the nesting place (when the kits are about eight weeks old). Typically, though, only precautionary measures to restrict access to food waste and den sites are effective in the long term.
Among all fruits and crops cultivated in agricultural areas, sweet corn in its milk stage is particularly popular among raccoons.[309][310] In a two-year study by Purdue University researchers, published in 2004, raccoons were responsible for 87% of the damage to corn plants. Like other predators, raccoons searching for food can break into poultry houses to feed on chickens, ducks, their eggs, or food.
Mythology, arts, and entertainment
In the mythology of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the raccoon is the subject of folk tales. Stories such as "How raccoons catch so many crayfish" from the Tuscarora centered on its skills at foraging. In other tales, the raccoon played the role of the trickster which outsmarts other animals, like coyotes and wolves. Among others, the Dakota believe the raccoon has natural spirit powers, since its mask resembles the facial paintings, two-fingered swashes of black and white, used during rituals to connect to spirit beings. The Aztecs linked supernatural abilities especially to females, whose commitment to their young was associated with the role of wise women in their society.
The raccoon also appears in Native American art across a wide geographic range. Petroglyphs with engraved raccoon tracks were found in Lewis Canyon, Texas; at the Crow Hollow petroglyph site in Grayson County, Kentucky; and in river drainages near Tularosa, the San Francisco River of New Mexico and Arizona. The meaning and significance of the Raccoon Priests Gorget, which features a stylized carving of a raccoon and was found at the Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma, remains unknown.
Hunting and fur trade
The fur of raccoons is used for clothing, especially for coats and coonskin caps. At present, it is the material used for the inaccurately named "sealskin" cap worn by the Royal Fusiliers of Great Britain. Sporrans made of raccoon pelt and hide have sometimes been used as part of traditional Scottish highland men's apparel since the 18th century, especially in North America. Such sporrans may or may not be of the "full-mask" type. Historically, Native American tribes not only used the fur for winter clothing, but also used the tails for ornament. The famous Sioux leader Spotted Tail took his name from a raccoon skin hat with the tail attached he acquired from a fur trader. Since the late 18th century, various types of scent hounds, called coonhounds, which are able to tree animals have been bred in the United States. In the 19th century, when coonskins occasionally even served as means of payment, several thousand raccoons were killed each year in the United States. This number rose quickly when automobile coats became popular after the turn of the 20th century. In the 1920s, wearing a raccoon coat was regarded as status symbol among college students. Attempts to breed raccoons in fur farms in the 1920s and 1930s in North America and Europe turned out not to be profitable, and farming was abandoned after prices for long-haired pelts dropped in the 1940s. Although raccoons had become rare in the 1930s, at least 388,000 were killed during the hunting season of 1934–1935.
After persistent population increases began in the 1940s, the seasonal coon hunting harvest reached about one million animals in 1946–1947 and two million in 1962–1963. The broadcast of three television episodes about the frontiersman Davy Crockett and the film Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier in 1954 and 1955 led to a high demand for coonskin caps in the United States, although it is unlikely either Crockett or the actor who played him, Fess Parker, actually wore a cap made from raccoon fur. The seasonal hunt reached an all-time high with 5.2 million animals in 1976–1977 and ranged between 3.2 and 4.7 million for most of the 1980s. In 1982, the average pelt price was $20. As of 1987, the raccoon was identified as the most important wild furbearer in North America in terms of revenue. In the first half of the 1990s, the seasonal hunt dropped to 0.9 from 1.9 million due to decreasing pelt prices.
Food
While primarily hunted for their fur, raccoons were also a source of food for Native Americans and early American settlers. According to Ernest Thompson Seton, young specimens killed without a fight are palatable, whereas old raccoons caught after a lengthy battle are inedible. Raccoon meat was extensively eaten during the early years of California, where it was sold in the San Francisco market for $1–3 apiece. American slaves occasionally ate raccoon at Christmas, but it was not necessarily a dish of the poor or rural. The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, released in 1931, contained a recipe for preparing raccoon, and US President Calvin Coolidge's pet raccoon Rebecca was originally sent to be served at the White House Thanksgiving Dinner.
Although the idea of eating raccoons may seem repulsive to most mainstream consumers, who see them as endearing, cute, or vermin, several thousand raccoons are still eaten each year in the United States, primarily in the Southern United States. Some people tout the taste of the meat.
Other uses
In addition to the fur and meat, the raccoon baculum (penis bone) have had numerous traditional uses in the Southern United States and beyond. Indigenous people used the bones as a pipe cleaning tool. The bones were used by moonshine distillers to guide the flow of whiskey from the drip tube to the bottle. With their tips filed down, the bones were used as toothpicks under the moniker "coon rods". In hoodoo, the folk magic of the American South, the baculum is sometimes worn as an amulet for love or luck. The bones also have decorative uses (e.g. on the trademark hat of stock car racer Richard Petty or as earrings by actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Vanessa Williams).
Pet raccoons
Raccoons are sometimes kept as pets, which is discouraged by many experts because the raccoon is not a domesticated species. Raccoons may act unpredictably and aggressively and it is extremely difficult to teach them to obey commands. In places where keeping raccoons as pets is not forbidden, such as in Wisconsin and other U.S. states, an exotic pet permit may be required. One notable pet raccoon was Rebecca, kept by US president Calvin Coolidge.
Their propensity for unruly behavior exceeds that of captive skunks, and they are even less trustworthy when allowed to roam freely. Because of their intelligence and nimble forelimbs, even inexperienced raccoons are easily capable of unscrewing jars, uncorking bottles and opening door latches, with more experienced specimens having been recorded to open door knobs. Sexually mature raccoons often show aggressive natural behaviors such as biting during the mating season. Neutering them at around five or six months of age decreases the chances of aggressive behavior developing. Raccoons can become obese and suffer from other disorders due to poor diet and lack of exercise. When fed with cat food over a long time period, raccoons can develop gout. With respect to the research results regarding their social behavior, it is now required by law in Austria and Germany to keep at least two individuals to prevent loneliness. Raccoons are usually kept in a pen (indoor or outdoor), also a legal requirement in Austria and Germany, rather than in the apartment where their natural curiosity may result in damage to property.
When orphaned, it is possible for kits to be rehabilitated and reintroduced to the wild. However, it is uncertain whether they readapt well to life in the wild. Feeding unweaned kits with cow's milk rather than a kitten replacement milk or a similar product can be dangerous to their health.
Somewhere, Earth
HDR 5 Scatti
Fotocamera: Canon EOS 650D
Esposizione: 0,1 sec (1/10)
Aperture: f/11.0
Lente: 10 mm
ISO: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Lens: Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC HSM
NOTE: MY photos are NOT to be used or reproduced, COPIED, BLOGGED, USED in any way shape or form. Understand clearly these are my photographs and use of them by anyone is an infringement of my copyrights and personal artistic property!
© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal
I made the boots, all gloves, the zebra purse, the blue coat, the beret, blue headband, dad's tie, mom's belt, Judy's skirt, and scarves. The rest of the clothing is original Littlechap.
I followed Wandy's Blythe Boot pattern for the boots, modifying for the larger ladies and following it for the little girl's boots.
Explored 11.6.12, the highest #179.
Landscape and villages around my town.
Thank you for you visit, comments and favs.
Explored 8/26/12.
The Hawaiian Chieftain is a replica of merchant traders used on the west coast of the US. Her hull shape and rigging are also similar to the Spanish explorer ships used in expeditions to this area in the late 18th century. The ship is used for educational purposes and offers sailing experiences to the public.
Texture by Lenabem-Anna www.flickr.com/photos/lenabem-anna/6196782617/
Location: Lyndhurst, New Jersey
Date: 2020.09.12
The Story: Again, a shot that many have taken, but, new to me. NJT locomotive 4019 accelerates out of Hoboken, as the spectacular skyline of NYC sets the backdrop.
Lufthansa Airbus A321-231 D-AIDV is taxiing towards Terminal 1 in Frankfurt.
MSN 5413 has had its first flight on 12.12.12 with the test registration D-AVZM and was delivered to LH on 19.12.12.
The jet is powered by 2x IAE V2533-A5 turbofans and has a variable cabin layout with 205 Business and Economy Class seats.
This is flight LH1335 from Budapest (BUD).
Please join my Facebook fan page:
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...and there is a Plane Spotting group on Facebook you should visit:
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My aviation-related photo collections:
Special Aviation Photos
www.flickr.com/photos/thomasbecker/collections/7215762339...
Airlines of the World
www.flickr.com/photos/thomasbecker/collections/7215760571...
Aviation by Date
www.flickr.com/photos/thomasbecker/collections/7215760307...
Airline Alliances of the World
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Thurs., May 14, 2020 - Astro Bob, aka Bob King, last week wrote a blog post on The Crescent Venus Is Within Your Reach, so I decided to try it a few days later at late dusk.
Due to the fact that my tripod is in storage and not with me in lockdown/quarantine, I handheld my Nikon D850 with the 300mm lens on it - even with Vibration Reduction on it took a few tries to get a working image. Cropped in post, here is my Venus in her Crescent form photo.
It is ok, but I did it. I am sure with a tripod, in a clear desert sky with no atmospheric humidity, this photo would have turned out nicer.
I am glad to know that myself, my camera, and my 300mm lens can capture Venus in her crescent shape.
Also, I am sorry that I have been nearly completely AWOL the last few months, but the whole COVID-19 lockdown thing has drained me of every desire to process and post any photo whatsoever.
So, this is my first time being in a group like *12 months for dogs*.
Here is my subject: Luna.
She's a (almost) 4 years old mix (Border collie x Podenco x ...) and my buddy. :)
++++++++ FROM WIKIPEDIA ++++++++++
Kalimpong is a hill station in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located at an average elevation of 1,250 metres (4,101 ft).[2] The town is the headquarters of the Kalimpong district.[3] The Indian Army's 27 Mountain Division is located on the outskirts of the town.[4]
Kalimpong is known for its educational institutions, many of which were established during the British colonial period.[5] It used to be a gateway in the trade between Tibet and India before China's annexation of Tibet and the Sino-Indian War. Kalimpong and neighbouring Darjeeling were major centres calling for a separate Gorkhaland state in the 1980s, and more recently in 2010.
The municipality sits on a ridge overlooking the Teesta River and is a tourist destination owing to its temperate climate, magnificent Himalayan beauty and proximity to popular tourist locations in the region. Horticulture is important to Kalimpong: It has a flower market notable for its wide array of orchids; nurseries, which export Himalayan grown flower bulbs, tubers and rhizomes, contribute to the economy of Kalimpong.[2] Home to Nepalisindigenous Lepchas, other ethnic groups and non-native immigrants from other parts of India, the town is a religious centre of Buddhism. The Tibetan Buddhist monastery Zang Dhok Palri Phodang holds a number of rare Tibetan Buddhist scriptures.[6]
The Kalimpong Science Centre, established under the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 2008 is a recent addition to its many tourist attractions. The Science Centre, which provides for scientific awareness among the students of the town and the locals sits atop the Deolo Hill.
Contents
1 Name origin
2 History
3 Geography
4 Economy
5 Transport
6 Demographics
7 Civic administration
8 People, culture, and cuisine
9 Media
10 Education
11 Flora and fauna
12 Notes
13 References
14 External links
Name origin
The precise etymology of the name Kalimpong remains unclear. There are many theories on the origin of the name. One widely accepted theory claims that the name "Kalimpong" means "Assembly (or Stockade) of the King's Ministers" in Tibetan, derived from kalon ("King's ministers") and pong ("stockade"). It may be derived from the translation "ridge where we play" from Lepcha, as it was known to be the place for traditional tribal gatherings for summer sporting events. People from the hills call the area Kalempung ("the black spurs").[7]
According to K.P. Tamsang, author of The Untold and Unknown Reality about the Lepchas, the term Kalimpong is deduced from the name Kalenpung, which in Lepcha means "Hillock of Assemblage";[8] in time, the name was distorted to Kalebung, and later further contorted to Kalimpong. Another possible derivation points to Kaulim, a fibrous plant found in abundance in the region.[9]
History
Katherine Graham Memorial Chapel, Dr. Graham's Homes
The Clock Tower of Kalimpong.
Until the mid-19th century, the area around Kalimpong was ruled in succession by the Sikkimese and Bhutanese kingdoms.[8][10] Under Sikkimese rule, the area was known as Dalingkot.[11] In 1706, the king of Bhutan won this territory from the Sikkimese monarch and renamed it Kalimpong.[11] Overlooking the Teesta Valley, Kalimpong is believed to have once been the forward position of the Bhutanese in the 18th century. The area was sparsely populated by the indigenous Lepcha community and migrant Bhutia and Limbu tribes.
After the Anglo-Bhutan War in 1864, the Treaty of Sinchula (1865) was signed, in which Bhutanese held territory east of the Teesta River was ceded to the British East India Company.[8] At that time, Kalimpong was a hamlet, with only two or three families known to reside there.[12] The first recorded mention of the town was a fleeting reference made that year by Ashley Eden, a government official with the Bengal Civil Service. Kalimpong was added to district of Darjeeling in 1866. In 1866–1867 an Anglo-Bhutanese commission demarcated the common boundaries between the two, thereby giving shape to the Kalimpong subdivision and the Darjeeling district.[13]
After the war, the region became a subdivision of the Western Duars district, and the following year it was merged with the district of Darjeeling.[8] The temperate climate prompted the British to develop the town as an alternative hill station to Darjeeling, to escape the scorching summer heat in the plains. Kalimpong's proximity to the Nathu La and Jelep La passes (La means "pass"), offshoots of the ancient Silk Road, was an added advantage. It soon became an important trading outpost in the trade of furs, wools and food grains between India and Tibet.[14] The increase in commerce attracted large numbers of Nepali's from the neighbouring Nepal and the lower regions of Sikkim, the areas where, Nepali's were residing since the Gorkha invasion of Sikkim in 1790. The movement of people into the area, transformed Kalimpong from a small hamlet with a few houses, to a thriving town with increased economic prosperity. Britain assigned a plot within Kalimpong to the influential Bhutanese Dorji family, through which trade and relations with Bhutan flowed. This later became Bhutan House, a Bhutanese administrative and cultural centre.[15][16][17]
The arrival of Scottish missionaries saw the construction of schools and welfare centres for the British.[12] Rev. W. Macfarlane in the early 1870s established the first schools in the area.[12] The Scottish University Mission Institution was opened in 1886, followed by the Kalimpong Girls High School. In 1900, Reverend J.A. Graham founded the Dr. Graham's Homes for destitute Anglo-Indian students.[12] The young missionary (and aspiring writer and poet) Aeneas Francon Williams, aged 24, arrived in Kalimpong in 1910 to take up the post of assistant schoolmaster at Dr. Graham's Homes,[18] where he later became Bursar and remained working at the school for the next fourteen years.[19] From 1907 onwards, most schools in Kalimpong had started offering education to Indian students. By 1911, the population comprised many ethnic groups, including Nepalis, Lepchas, Tibetans, Muslims, the Anglo-Indian communities. Hence by 1911, the population had swollen to 7,880.[12]
Following Indian independence in 1947, Kalimpong became part of the state of West Bengal, after Bengal was partitioned between India and East Pakistan. With China's annexation of Tibet in 1959, many Buddhist monks fled Tibet and established monasteries in Kalimpong. These monks brought many rare Buddhist scriptures with them. In 1962, the permanent closure of the Jelep Pass after the Sino-Indian War disrupted trade between Tibet and India, and led to a slowdown in Kalimpong's economy. In 1976, the visiting Dalai Lama consecrated the Zang Dhok Palri Phodang monastery, which houses many of the scriptures.[12]
Most large houses in Kalimpong were built during the British era. In the background is Mount Kangchenjunga.
Morgan House is a classic example of colonial architecture in Kalimpong.
Between 1986 and 1988, the demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland and Kamtapur based on ethnic lines grew strong. Riots between the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) and the West Bengal government reached a stand-off after a forty-day strike. The town was virtually under siege, and the state government called in the Indian army to maintain law and order. This led to the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, a body that was given semi-autonomous powers to govern the Darjeeling district, except the area under the Siliguri subdivision. Since 2007, the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state has been revived by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and its supporters in the Darjeeling hills.[20] The Kamtapur People's Party and its supporters' movement for a separate Kamtapur state covering North Bengal have gained momentum.[21]
Geography
A view from the Deolo Resort, atop Deolo Hill, Kalimpong's highest point
The town centre is on a ridge connecting two hills, Deolo Hill and Durpin Hill,[12] at an elevation of 1,247 m (4,091 ft). Deolo, the highest point in Kalimpong, has an altitude of 1,704 m (5,591 ft) and Durpin Hill is at an elevation of 1,372 m (4,501 ft). The River Teesta flows in the valley below and separates Kalimpong from the state of Sikkim. The soil in the Kalimpong area is typically reddish in color. Occasional dark soils are found due to extensive existence of phyllite and schists.[22] The Shiwalik Hills, like most of the Himalayan foothills, have steep slopes and soft, loose topsoil, leading to frequent landslides in the monsoon season.[22] The hills are nestled within higher peaks and the snow-clad Himalayan ranges tower over the town in the distance. Mount Kanchenjunga at 8,586 m (28,169 ft) the world's third tallest peak,[23] is clearly visible from Kalimpong.[2]
View of the Himalaya range
Kalimpong has five distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter and the monsoons. The annual temperature ranges from a high of 30 °C (86 °F) to a low of 9 °C (48 °F). Summers are mild, with an average maximum temperature of 30 °C (86 °F) in August.[24] Summers are followed by the monsoon rains which lash the town between June and September. The monsoons are severe, often causing landslides which sequester the town from the rest of India. Winter lasts from December to February, with the maximum temperature being around 15 °C (59 °F). During the monsoon and winter seasons, Kalimpong is often enveloped by fog.[25]
Economy
Oranges grown in the hillsides are exported to many parts of India.
Tourism is the most significant contributor to Kalimpong's economy.[26] The summer and spring seasons are the most popular with tourists, keeping many of town's residents employed directly and indirectly. The town—earlier an important trade post between India and Tibet—hopes to boost its economy after the reopening of the Nathu La (pass) in April 2006.[27] Though this has resumed Indo–China border trades,[28] it is expected that Kalimpong will have a better chance of revival as a hub for Indo–China trades if the demand of local leaders for reopening of Jelep La pass also is met.[28]
Kalimpong is a major ginger growing area of India. Kalimpong and the state of Sikkim together contribute 15 percent of ginger produced in India.[29] The Darjeeling Himalayan hill region is internationally famous for its tea industry.[30] However, most of the tea gardens are on the western side of Teesta river (towards the town of Darjeeling) and so tea gardens near Kalimpong contribute only 4 percent of total tea production of the region. In Kalimpong division, 90 percent of land is cultivable but only 10 percent is used for tea production.[31] Kalimpong is well known for its flower export industry—especially for its wide array of indigenous orchids and gladioli.[32]
A significant contributor to the town's economy is education sector.[26] The schools of Kalimpong, besides imparting education to the locals, attract a significant number of students from the plains, the neighbouring state of Sikkim and countries such as Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Thailand.[26]
Many establishments cater to the Indian army bases near the town, providing it with essential supplies. Small contributions to the economy come by the way of the sale of traditional arts and crafts of Sikkim and Tibet. Government efforts related to sericulture, seismology, and fisheries provide a steady source of employment to many of its residents.
Kalimpong is well renowned for its cheese, noodles and lollipops. Kalimpong exports a wide range of traditional handicrafts, wood-carvings, embroidered items, bags and purses with tapestry work, copper ware, scrolls, Tibetan jewellery and artifacts.[32][33]
Transport
NH31A winds along the banks of the river Teesta near Kalimpong.
Kalimpong is located off the National Highway 31A (NH31A), which links Sevok to Gangtok. The NH31A is an offshoot of the NH 31, which connects Sevok to Siliguri.[34] These two National Highways together, via Sevok, links Kalimpong to the plains.[35] Regular bus services and hired vehicles connect Kalimpong with Siliguri and the neighbouring towns of Kurseong, Darjeeling and Gangtok. Four wheel drives are popular means of transport, as they can easily navigate the steep slopes in the region. However, road communication often get disrupted in the monsoons due to landslides. In the town, people usually travel by foot. Residents also use bicycle, two-wheelers and hired taxis for short distances.
The nearest airport is in Bagdogra near Siliguri, about 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Kalimpong. Air India, Jet Airways and Druk Air (Bhutan) are the four major carriers that connect the airport to Delhi, Kolkata, Paro (Bhutan), Guwahati and Bangkok (Thailand). The closest major railway station is New Jalpaiguri, on the outskirts of Siliguri,[2] which is connected with almost all major cities of the country.
Demographics
Population growth
At the 2011 India census,[37] Kalimpong town area had a population of 42,988, of which 52% were male and 48% female.[37]
At the 2001 census,[38] Kalimpong had an average literacy rate of 79%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy was 84%, and female literacy was 73%. In Kalimpong, 8% of the population was under 6 years of age. The Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes population for Kalimpong was 5,100 and 5,121 respectively.[39]
Civic administration
Kalimpong is the headquarters of the Kalimpong district. The semi-autonomous Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), set up by the West Bengal government in 1988, administers this district as well as the Darjeeling Sadar and Kurseong subdivisions.[40] Kalimpong elects eight councillors to the DGHC, who manages the departments of Public Health, Education, Public Works, Transport, Tourism, Market, Small scale industries, Agriculture, Agricultural waterways, Forest (except reserved forests), Water, Livestock, Vocational Training and Sports and Youth services.[41] The district administration of Darjeeling, which is the authoritative body for the departments of election, panchayat, law and order, revenue, etc., also acts as an interface of communication between the Council and the State Government.[41] The rural area in the district covers three community development blocks Kalimpong I, Kalimpong II and Gorubathan consisting of forty-two gram panchayats.[42] A Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) presides over the Kalimpong subdivision. Kalimpong has a police station that serves the municipality and 18 gram panchayats of Kalimpong–I CD block.[43]
The Kalimpong municipality, which was established in 1945,[39] is in charge of the infrastructure of the town such as potable water and roads. The municipal area is divided into twenty-three wards.[44] Kalimpong municipality is constructing additional water storage tanks to meet the requirement of potable water, and it needs an increase of water supply from the 'Neora Khola Water Supply Scheme' for this purpose.[45] Often, landslides occurring in monsoon season cause havoc to the roads in and around Kalimpong.[46] The West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Corporation Limited (WBSEDCL) provides electricity here.[47] Renewable Energy Development Agency of the state has plans to promote usage of solar street lights in Kalimpong and proposed an energy park here to sell renewable energy gadgets.[48] The Public Works Department is responsible for the road connecting the town to the National Highway–NH-31A.[49] The Kalimpong municipality has a total of 10 health care units, with a total of 433 bed capacity.[50]
The Kalimpong assembly constituency, which is an assembly segment of the Darjeeling parliamentary constituency, elects one member of the Vidhan Sabha of West Bengal.[51]
People, culture, and cuisine
The Zang Dhok Palri Phodang monastery atop Durpin Hill
The original settlers of Kalimpong are the Lepchas, although the majority of the populace are ethnic Nepali, having migrated from Nepal to Kalimpong in search of jobs while it was under British rule.[52]
Indigenous ethnic groups include the Newars, Bhutia, Sherpas, Limbus, Rais, Magars,[53] Chettris, Bahuns, Thakuris, Gurungs, Tamangs, Yolmos, Bhujels, Sunuwars, Sarkis, Damais and the Kamis.[54] The other non-native communities as old as the Nepalese are the Bengalis, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, Chinese, Biharis and Tibetans who escaped to Kalimpong after fleeing the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet. Kalimpong is home to Trinley Thaye Dorje—one of the 17th Karmapa incarnations.[55] Kalimpong is the closest Indian town to Bhutan's western border, and has a small number of Bhutanese nationals residing here. Hinduism is the largest religion followed by Nijananda Sampradaya, Buddhism and Christianity.[53] Islam has a minuscule presence in this region, The Oldest settlers include people residing since the mid of 19th Century and also mostly Tibetan Muslims who fled in 1959 after Chinese invasion of Tibet.[56] The Buddhist monastery Zang Dhok Palri Phodang holds a number of rare Tibetan Buddhist scriptures.[6] There is a Mosque, Kalimpong Anjuman Islamia Established in 1887 in the bazaar area of Kalimpong.[57]
Popular Hindu festivals include Dashain, Tihar, Cultural Programme and the Tibetan festival of Losar. Languages spoken in Kalimpong include Nepali, which is the predominant language; Lepcha, Limbu, Tamang, Kirat, Hindi, English and Bengali.[2] Though there is a growing interest in cricket as a winter sport in Darjeeling Hills, football still remains the most popular sport in Kalimpong.[58] Every year since 1947, the Independence Shield Football Tournament is organized here as part of the two-day-long Independence Day celebrations.[59] Former captain of India national football team, Pem Dorjee hails from Kalimpong.[60]
A popular snack in Kalimpong is the momo, steamed dumplings made of pork, beef or vegetable cooked in a wrapping of flour and served with watery soup. Wai-Wai is a packaged Nepalese snack made of noodles which are eaten either dry or in soup form. Churpee, a kind of hard cheese made from yak's or chauri's (a hybrid of yak and cattle) milk, is sometimes chewed.[61] A form of noodle called Thukpa, served in soup form is popular in Kalimpong.[62] There are a large number of restaurants which offer a wide variety of cuisines, ranging from Indian to continental, to cater to the tourists. Tea is the most popular beverage in Kalimpong, procured from the famed Darjeeling tea gardens. Kalimpong has a golf course besides Kalimpong Circuit House.[2][63]
The cultural centres in Kalimpong include, the Lepcha Museum and the Zang Dhok Palri Phodang monastery. The Lepcha Museum, a kilometre away from the town centre, showcases the culture of the Lepcha community, the indigenous peoples of Sikkim. The Zang Dhok Palri Phodong monastery has 108 volumes of the Kangyur, and belongs to the Gelug of Buddhism.
Media
Kalimpong has access to most of the television channels aired in the rest of India. Cable Television still provides service to many homes in the town and it's outskirts, while DTH connections are now practically mandatory throughout the country. Besides mainstream Indian channels, many Nepali-language channels such as Dainandini DD, Kalimpong Television KTv, Haal Khabar (an association of the Hill Channel Network), Jan Sarokar, Himalayan People's Channel (HPC), and Kalimpong Times are broadcast in Kalimpong. These channels, which mainly broadcast locally relevant news, are produced by regional media houses and news networks, and are broadcast through the local cable network, which is now slowly becoming defunct due to the Indian government's ruling on mandatory digitization of TV channels. The movie production houses like JBU films produces the movies on the nepali and other languages.[64]
Newspapers in Kalimpong include English language dailies The Statesman and The Telegraph, which are printed in Siliguri,[65][66] and The Economic Times and the Hindustan Times, which are printed in Kolkata.
Among other languages, Nepali, Hindi and Bengali are prominent vernacular languages used in this region.[25] Newspapers in all these four languages are available in the Darjeeling Hills region. Of the largely circulated Nepali newspapers Himalay Darpan, Swarnabhumi and some Sikkim-based Nepali newspapers like Hamro Prajashakti and Samay Dainik are read most.[67] The Tibet Mirror was the first Tibetan-language newspaper published in Kalimpong in 1925.[68] while Himalayan Times was the first English to have come out from Kalimpong in the year 1947, it was closed down in the year 1962 after the Chinese aggression but was started once again and is now in regular print. Internet service and Internet cafés are well established; these are mostly served through broadband, data card of different mobile services, WLL, dialup lines,[69][70] Kalimpong News, Kalimpong Online News, Kalimpong Times and KTV are the main online news sites that collect and present local and North Bengal & Sikkim news from its own agencies like KalimNews and other newspapers. Besides this there are others like kalimpong.info, kalimpongexpress.blogspot.com and several others. All India Radio and several other National and Private Channels including FM Radio are received in Kalimpong.
The area is serviced by major telecommunication companies of India with most types of cellular services in most areas.[71]
Education
There are fifteen major schools in Kalimpong, the most notable ones being Scottish Universities Mission Institution, Dr. Graham's Homes, St Joseph's Convent, St. Augustine's School, Rockvale Academy, Saptashri Gyanpeeth, Springdale Academy, St. Philomenas School, Kalimpong Girls' High School, Kumdini Homes, Chandramaya High School, Lolay Sampu High School and Gandhi Ashram School. The Scottish Universities Mission Institution was the first school that was opened in 1886. The schools offer education up to high secondary standard, following which students may choose to join a Junior College or carry on with additional two years of schooling.
Kalimpong College, Cluny Women's College and Rockvale Management College are the main colleges in the town. Former two are affiliated to the North Bengal University and the latter affiliated to West Bengal University of Technology and apart from these, Good Shepherd IHM (Hotel management Institution) offers courses on hospitality sectors. Most students however, choose to further their studies in Siliguri, Kolkata, and other colleges in the Indian metropolis. The Tharpa Choling Monastery, at Tirpai Hill near Kalimpong, is managed by Yellow Hat sect and has a library of Tibetan manuscripts and thankas.
Flora and fauna
Heliconia
The area around Kalimpong lies in the Eastern Himalayas, which is classified as an ecological hotspot, one of only three among the ecoregions of India. Neora Valley National Park lies within the Kalimpong subdivision and is home to tigers.[72] Acacia is the most commonly found species at lower altitudes, while cinnamon, ficus, bamboo and cardamom, are found in the hillsides around Kalimpong. The forests found at higher altitudes are made up of pine trees and other evergreen alpine vegetation. Seven species of rhododendrons are found in the region east of Kalimpong. The temperate deciduous forests include oak, birch, maple and alder.[73] Three hundred species of orchid are found around Kalimpong.[74]
The Red panda, Clouded leopard, Siberian weasel, Asiatic black bear,[75] barking deer,[76] Himalayan tahr, goral, gaur[76] and pangolin are some of the fauna found near Kalimpong. Avifauna of the region include the pheasants, cuckoos, minivets, flycatchers, bulbuls, orioles, owls, partridges, sunbirds, warblers, swallows, swifts and woodpeckers.[77]
Kalimpong is a major production centre of gladioli in India,[78] and orchids, which are exported to many parts of the world. The Rishi Bankim Chandra Park is an ecological museums within Kalimpong.[79] Citrus Dieback Research Station at Kalimpong works towards control of diseases, plant protection and production of disease free orange seedlings.[80]
Kalimpong is also famous for their rich practice of cactus cultivation. Its nurseries attract people from far and wide for the absolutely stunning collection of cacti they cultivate. The strains of cacti, though not indigenous to the locale, have been carefully cultivated over the years, and now the town boasts one of the most fascinating and exhaustive collections of the Cactaceae family. The plants have adapted well to the altitude and environment, and now prove to be one of the chief draws of tourism to the township.[81][82]
The blue Pacific Gas and Electric truck joined the branch-munching van.
Blogged here: sketchaway.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/the-morning-the-tree-...
"Orcs were evil beings that served Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman in The Lord Of The Rings and lived in Middle-earth. Orcs were cannibalistic creatures that seem to feel no pain in battle."
And here's batch 12.
The new usual amount of 5 orcs has been reduced to 4 for this one,
as it will be a while until a next batch will be seen. Hope you like 'em!
Go ahead and rate the orcs,
and if you can think of any improvements I should make, list them for every orc that you think needs one.
Also, I'm thinking of trying to make all
of my current orcs better and perfect enough, so if you can give me any suggestions on what kind of things you think that would be best on every orc.
(Such as some kind of style, or perhaps
a few different good styles)
Hope you liked this batch as well,
C&C is welcome as always.
In other news...
Started building a Fell Beast.
I previously started making a head design, but that didn't work out so well then, so I have re-made it and I'm starting to be satisfied with it so far!
Fell Beasts are hard to make, but it looks like I'm on the right track.
If I can finish it in time, it will show up in my Osgiliath MOC.
ARMY (up to batch 10 is shown)
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Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, literally "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), officially named Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺, literally "Deer Garden Temple"), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan.[2] It is one of the most popular buildings in Japan, attracting many visitors annually.[3] It is designated as a National Special Historic Site, a National Special Landscape and is one of 17 locations making up the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which are World Heritage Sites.
The Golden Pavilion (金閣 Kinkaku) is a three-storey building on the grounds of the Rokuon-ji temple complex.[11] The top two stories of the pavilion are covered with pure gold leaf.[11] The pavilion functions as a shariden (舎利殿), housing relics of the Buddha (Buddha's Ashes). The building was an important model for Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion Temple) and Shōkoku-ji, which are also located in Kyoto.[2] When these buildings were constructed, Ashikaga Yoshimasa employed the styles used at Kinkaku-ji and even borrowed the names of its second and third floors.[2]
Architectural design
The pavilion successfully incorporates three distinct styles of architecture, which are shinden, samurai and zen, specifically on each floor.[8] Each floor of the Kinkaku uses a different architectural style.[2]
The first floor, called The Chamber of Dharma Waters (法水院, Hō-sui-in), is rendered in shinden-zukuri style, reminiscent of the residential style of the 11th century Heian imperial aristocracy.[2] It is evocative of the Shinden palace style. It is designed as an open space with adjacent verandas and uses natural, unpainted wood and white plaster.[8] This helps to emphasize the surrounding landscape. The walls and fenestration also affect the views from inside the pavilion. Most of the walls are made of shutters that can vary the amount of light and air into the pavilion[8] and change the view by controlling the shutters' heights. The second floor, called The Tower of Sound Waves (潮音洞, Chō-on-dō ),[2] is built in the style of warrior aristocrats, or buke-zukuri. On this floor, sliding wood doors and latticed windows create a feeling of impermanence. The second floor also contains a Buddha Hall and a shrine dedicated to the goddess of mercy, Kannon.[8] The third floor is built in traditional Chinese chán (Jpn. zen) style, also known as zenshū-butsuden-zukuri. It is called the Cupola of the Ultimate (究竟頂, Kukkyō-chō). The zen typology depicts a more religious ambiance in the pavilion, as was popular during the Muromachi period.[8]
The roof is in a thatched pyramid with shingles.[12] The building is topped with a bronze hōō (phoenix) ornament.[11] From the outside, viewers can see gold plating added to the upper stories of the pavilion. The gold leaf covering the upper stories hints at what is housed inside: the shrines.[9] The outside is a reflection of the inside. The elements of nature, death, religion, are formed together to create this connection between the pavilion and outside intrusions.
Garden
The Golden Pavilion is set in a Japanese strolling garden (回遊式庭園 kaiyū-shiki-teien, lit. a landscape garden in the go-round style).[6] The location implements the idea of borrowing of scenery ("shakkei") that integrates the outside and the inside, creating an extension of the views surrounding the pavilion and connecting it with the outside world. The pavilion extends over a pond, called Kyōko-chi (鏡湖池 Mirror Pond), that reflects the building.[5] The pond contains 10 smaller islands.[8] The zen typology is seen through the rock composition; the bridges and plants are arranged in a specific way to represent famous places in Chinese and Japanese literature.[8] Vantage points and focal points were established because of the strategic placement of the pavilion to view the gardens surrounding the pavilion.[10] A small fishing deck (釣殿 tsuri-dono) is attached to the rear of the pavilion building, allowing a small boat to be moored under it.[5] The pavilion grounds were built according to descriptions of the Western Paradise of the Buddha Amida, intending to illustrate a harmony between heaven and earth.[6] The largest islet in the pond represents the Japanese islands.[5] The four stones forming a straight line in the pond near the pavilion are intended to represent sailboats anchored at night, bound for the Isle of Eternal Life in Chinese mythology.[5]
The garden complex is an excellent example of Muromachi period garden design.[11] The Muromachi period is considered to be a classical age of Japanese garden design.[10] The correlation between buildings and its settings were greatly emphasized during this period.[10] It was a way to integrate the structure within the landscape in an artistic way. The garden designs were characterized by a reduction in scale, a more central purpose and a distinct setting.[13] A minimalistic approach was brought to the garden design, by recreating larger landscapes in a smaller scale around a structure.
New Volvo 7900 Hybrid number 48 (BT64 LJF) approaches the Gyle retail centre on Service 12. The new fleet group 41-50 work mostly on Services 12 and 45.
Lothian has fifty of these hybrid single deckers now spread across our three depots, as follows:
1-10 (Central)
11-30 (Longstone)
31-40 (Central)
41-50 (Marine)
Some of the new vehicles have the Volvo pin-tag on the front grille but, as can be seen here, some don't have one yet.
See all of Lothian's Volvo 7900 Hybrid single deckers by visiting my album - each of the new vehicles, 31-50 in numerical order with an exclusive story for each bus. Please click on the link in the Comments section below.
These rediant beauties were taken in our garden earlier this summer.
The tulip is a perennial, bulbous plant with showy flowers in the genus Tulipa, of which around 75 wild species are currently accepted and which belongs to the family Liliaceae.
The genus's native range extends west to the Iberian Peninsula, through North Africa to Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, throughout the Levant (Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan) and Iran, North to Ukraine, southern Siberia and Mongolia, and east to the Northwest of China. The tulip's centre of diversity is in the Pamir, Hindu Kush, and Tien Shan mountains. It is a typical element of steppe and winter-rain Mediterranean vegetation. A number of species and many hybrid cultivars are grown in gardens, as potted plants, or as cut flowers.
Tulips are spring-blooming perennials that grow from bulbs. Depending on the species, tulip plants can be between 4 inches (10 cm) and 28 inches (71 cm) high. The tulip's large flowers usually bloom on scapes with leaves in a rosette at ground level and a single flowering stalk arising from amongst the leaves.Tulip stems have few leaves. Larger species tend to have multiple leaves. Plants typically have two to six leaves, some species up to 12. The tulip's leaf is strap-shaped, with a waxy coating, and the leaves are alternately arranged on the stem; these fleshy blades are often bluish green in color. Most tulips produce only one flower per stem, but a few species bear multiple flowers on their scapes (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica). The generally cup or star-shaped tulip flower has three petals and three sepals, which are often termed tepals because they are nearly identical. These six tepals are often marked on the interior surface near the bases with darker colorings. Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colors, except pure blue (several tulips with "blue" in the name have a faint violet hue).
The flowers have six distinct, basifixed stamens with filaments shorter than the tepals. Each stigma has three distinct lobes, and the ovaries are superior, with three chambers. The tulip's seed is a capsule with a leathery covering and an ellipsoid to globe shape. Each capsule contains numerous flat, disc-shaped seeds in two rows per chamber. These light to dark brown seeds have very thin seed coats and endosperm that does not normally fill the entire seed.
Etymology
The word tulip, first mentioned in western Europe in or around 1554 and seemingly derived from the "Turkish Letters" of diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, first appeared in English as tulipa or tulipant, entering the language by way of French: tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulīpa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend ("muslin" or "gauze"), and may be ultimately derived from the Persian: دلبند delband ("Turban"), this name being applied because of a perceived resemblance of the shape of a tulip flower to that of a turban. This may have been due to a translation error in early times, when it was fashionable in the Ottoman Empire to wear tulips on turbans. The translator possibly confused the flower for the turban.
Tulips are called laleh (from Persian لاله, lâleh) in Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and Bulgarian. In Arabic letters, "laleh" is written with the same letters as Allah, which is why the flower became a holy symbol. It was also associated with the House of Osman, resulting in tulips being widely used in decorative motifs on tiles, mosques, fabrics, crockery, etc. in the Ottoman Empire
Cultivation
Tulip cultivars have usually several species in their direct background, but most have been derived from Tulipa suaveolens, often erroneously listed as Tulipa schrenkii. Tulipa gesneriana is in itself an early hybrid of complex origin and is probably not the same taxon as was described by Conrad Gesner in the 16th century.
Tulips are indigenous to mountainous areas with temperate climates and need a period of cool dormancy, known as vernalization. They thrive in climates with long, cool springs and dry summers. Tulip bulbs imported to warm-winter areas of are often planted in autumn to be treated as annuals.
Tulip bulbs are typically planted around late summer and fall, in well-drained soils, normally from 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) deep, depending on the type. Species tulips are normally planted deeper.
Propagation
Tulips can be propagated through bulb offsets, seeds or micropropagation. Offsets and tissue culture methods are means of asexual propagation for producing genetic clones of the parent plant, which maintains cultivar genetic integrity. Seeds are most often used to propagate species and subspecies or to create new hybrids. Many tulip species can cross-pollinate with each other, and when wild tulip populations overlap geographically with other tulip species or subspecies, they often hybridize and create mixed populations. Most commercial tulip cultivars are complex hybrids, and often sterile.
Offsets require a year or more of growth before plants are large enough to flower. Tulips grown from seeds often need five to eight years before plants are of flowering size. Commercial growers usually harvest the tulip bulbs in late summer and grade them into sizes; bulbs large enough to flower are sorted and sold, while smaller bulbs are sorted into sizes and replanted for sale in the future. The Netherlands are the world's main producer of commercial tulip plants, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually, the majority for export.
For further information please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip
Tulips are spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having bulbs as storage organs) in the Tulipa genus. Their flowers are usually large, showy, and brightly coloured, generally red, orange, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm colours). They often have a different coloured blotch at the base of the tepals (petals and sepals, collectively), internally. Because of a degree of variability within the populations and a long history of cultivation, classification has been complex and controversial. The tulip is a member of the lily family, Liliaceae, along with 14 other genera, where it is most closely related to Amana, Erythronium, and Gagea in the tribe Lilieae.
There are about seventy-five species, and these are divided among four subgenera. The name "tulip" is thought to be derived from a Persian word for turban, which it may have been thought to resemble by those who discovered it. Tulips were originally found in a band stretching from Southern Europe to Central Asia, but since the seventeenth century have become widely naturalised and cultivated (see map). In their natural state, they are adapted to steppes and mountainous areas with temperate climates. Flowering in the spring, they become dormant in the summer once the flowers and leaves die back, emerging above ground as a shoot from the underground bulb in early spring.
Growing wild over much of the Near East and Central Asia, tulips had probably been cultivated in Persia from the 10th century. By the 15th century, tulips were among the most prized flowers; becoming the symbol of the later Ottomans. Tulips were cultivated in Byzantine Constantinople as early as 1055 but they did not come to the attention of Northern Europeans until the sixteenth century, when Northern European diplomats to the Ottoman court observed and reported on them. They were rapidly introduced into Northern Europe and became a much-sought-after commodity during tulip mania. Tulips were frequently depicted in Dutch Golden Age paintings, and have become associated with the Netherlands, the major producer for world markets, ever since. In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, during the time of the tulip mania, an infection of tulip bulbs by the tulip breaking virus created variegated patterns in the tulip flowers that were much admired and valued. While truly broken tulips are not cultivated anymore, the closest available specimens today are part of the group known as the Rembrandts – so named because Rembrandt painted some of the most admired breaks of his time.
Breeding programmes have produced thousands of hybrid and cultivars in addition to the original species (known in horticulture as botanical tulips). They are popular throughout the world, both as ornamental garden plants and as cut flowers.
Description
Tulip morphology
Collection of tulip bulbs, some sliced to show interior scales
Bulbs, showing tunic and scales
Flower of Tulipa orphanidea, showing cup shape
Cup-shaped flower of Tulipa orphanidea
Photograph of Tulipa clusiana, showing six identical tepals (petals and sepals)
Star-shaped flower of Tulipa clusiana with three sepals and three petals, forming six identical tepals
Tulips are perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes that bloom in spring and die back after flowering to an underground storage bulb. Depending on the species, tulip plants can be between 10 and 70 cm (4 and 28 inches) high.
Tulip stems have few leaves. Larger species tend to have multiple leaves. Plants typically have two to six leaves, some species up to 12. The tulip's leaf is cauline (born on a stem), strap-shaped, with a waxy coating, and the leaves are alternate (alternately arranged on the stem), diminishing in size the further up the stem. These fleshy blades are often bluish-green in colour. The bulbs are truncated basally and elongated towards the apex. They are covered by a protective tunic (tunicate) which can be glabrous or hairy inside.
Flowers
The tulip's flowers are usually large and are actinomorphic (radially symmetric) and hermaphrodite (contain both male (androecium) and female (gynoecium) characteristics), generally erect, or more rarely pendulous, and are arranged more usually as a single terminal flower, or when pluriflor as two to three (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica), but up to four, flowers on the end of a floriferous stem (scape), which is single arising from amongst the basal leaf rosette. In structure, the flower is generally cup or star-shaped. As with other members of Liliaceae the perianth is undifferentiated (perigonium) and biseriate (two whorled), formed from six free (i.e. apotepalous) caducous tepals arranged into two separate whorls of three parts (trimerous) each. The two whorls represent three petals and three sepals, but are termed tepals because they are nearly identical. The tepals are usually petaloid (petal-like), being brightly coloured, but each whorl may be different, or have different coloured blotches at their bases, forming darker colouration on the interior surface. The inner petals have a small, delicate cleft at the top, while the sturdier outer ones form uninterrupted ovals.
The flowers have six distinct, basifixed introrse stamens arranged in two whorls of three, which vary in length and may be glabrous or hairy. The filaments are shorter than the tepals and dilated towards their base. The style is short or absent and each stigma has three distinct lobes, and the ovaries are superior, with three chambers.
Colours
The "Semper Augustus" was the most expensive tulip during the 17th-century tulip mania. “The colour is white, with Carmine on a blue base, and with an unbroken flame right to the top” – wrote Nicolas van Wassenaer in 1624 after seeing the tulip in the garden of one Dr Adriaen Pauw, a director of the new East India Company. With limited specimens in existence at the time and most owned by Pauw, his refusal to sell any flowers, despite wildly escalating offers, is believed by some to have sparked the mania.
Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colours, except pure blue (several tulips with "blue" in the name have a faint violet hue), and have absent nectaries. Tulip flowers are generally bereft of scent and are the coolest of floral characters. The Dutch regarded this lack of scent as a virtue, as it demonstrates the flower's chasteness.
While tulips can be bred to display a wide variety of colours, black tulips have historically been difficult to achieve. The Queen of the Night tulip is as close to black as a flower gets, though it is, in fact, a dark and glossy maroonish purple - nonetheless, an effect prized by the Dutch. The first truly black tulip was bred in 1986 by a Dutch flower grower in Bovenkarspel, Netherlands. The specimen was created by cross-breeding two deep purple tulips, the Queen of the Night and Wienerwald tulips.
Fruit
The tulip's fruit is a globose or ellipsoid capsule with a leathery covering and an ellipsoid to globe shape. Each capsule contains numerous flat, disc-shaped seeds in two rows per chamber These light to dark brown seeds have very thin seed coats and endosperm that do not normally fill the entire seed.
Phytochemistry
Tulipanin is an anthocyanin found in tulips. It is the 3-rutinoside of delphinidin. The chemical compounds named tuliposides and tulipalins can also be found in tulips and are responsible for allergies. Tulipalin A, or α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone, is a common allergen, generated by hydrolysis of the glucoside tuliposide A. It induces a dermatitis that is mostly occupational and affects tulip bulb sorters and florists who cut the stems and leaves. Tulipanin A and B are toxic to horses, cats and dogs. The colour of a tulip is formed from two pigments working in concert; a base colour that is always yellow or white, and a second laid-on anthocyanin colour. The mix of these two hues determines the visible unitary colour. The breaking of flowers occurs when a virus suppresses anthocyanin and the base colour is exposed as a streak.
Fragrance
The great majority of tulips, both species and cultivars, have no discernable scent, but a few of both are scented to a degree, and Anna Pavord describes T. Hungarica as "strongly scented", and among cultivars, some such as "Monte Carlo" and "Brown Sugar" are "scented", and "Creme Upstar" "fragrant".
Taxonomy
Main article: Taxonomy of Tulipa
Tulipa is a genus of the lily family, Liliaceae, once one of the largest families of monocots, but which molecular phylogenetics has reduced to a monophyletic grouping with only 15 genera. Within Liliaceae, Tulipa is placed within Lilioideae, one of three subfamilies, with two tribes. Tribe Lilieae includes seven other genera in addition to Tulipa.
Subdivision
The genus, which includes about 75 species, is divided into four subgenera.
Clusianae (4 species)
Orithyia (4 species)
Tulipa (52 species)
Eriostemones (16 species)
Etymology
The word tulip, first mentioned in western Europe in or around 1554 and seemingly derived from the "Turkish Letters" of diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, first appeared in English as tulipa or tulipant, entering the language by way of French: tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulipa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend ("muslin" or "gauze"), and may be ultimately derived from the Persian: دلبند delband ("Turban"), this name being applied because of a perceived resemblance of the shape of a tulip flower to that of a turban. This may have been due to a translation error in early times when it was fashionable in the Ottoman Empire to wear tulips on turbans. The translator possibly confused the flower for the turban.
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq stated that the "Turks" used the word tulipan to describe the flower. Extensive speculation has tried to understand why he would state this, given that the Turkish word for tulip is lale. It is from this speculation that tulipan being a translation error referring to turbans is derived. This etymology has been challenged and makes no assumptions about possible errors. At no point does Busbecq state this was the word used in Turkey, he simply states it was used by the "Turks". On his way to Constantinople Busbecq states he travelled through Hungary and used Hungarian guides. Until recent times "Turk" was a common term when referring to Hungarians. The word tulipan is in fact the Hungarian word for tulip. As long as one recognizes "Turk" as a reference to Hungarians, no amount of speculation is required to reconcile the word's origin or form. Busbecq may have been simply repeating the word used by his "Turk/Hungarian" guides.
The Hungarian word tulipan may be adopted from an Indo-Aryan reference to the tulip as a symbol of resurrection, tala meaning "bottom or underworld" and pAna meaning "defence". Prior to arriving in Europe the Hungarians, and other Finno-Ugrians, embraced the Indo-Iranian cult of the dead, Yima/Yama, and would have been familiar with all of its symbols including the tulip.
Distribution and habitat
Map from Turkmenistan to Tien-Shan
Eastern end of the tulip range from Turkmenistan on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea to the Pamir-Alai and Tien-Shan mountains
Tulips are mainly distributed along a band corresponding to latitude 40° north, from southeast of Europe (Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Southern Serbia, Bulgaria, most part of Romania, Ukraine, Russia) and Turkey in the west, through the Levant (Syria, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Jordan) and the Sinai Peninsula. From there it extends eastwards through Jerevan (Armenia), and Baku (Azerbaijan) and on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan, Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent (Uzbekistan), to the eastern end of the range in the Pamir-Alai and Tien-Shan mountains in Central Asia, which form the centre of diversity. Further to the east, Tulipa is found in the western Himalayas, southern Siberia, Inner Mongolia, and as far as the northwest of China. While authorities have stated that no tulips west of the Balkans are native, subsequent identification of Tulipa sylvestris subsp. australis as a native of the Iberian peninsula and adjacent North Africa shows that this may be a simplification. In addition to these regions in the west tulips have been identified in Greece, Cyprus and the Balkans. In the south, Iran marks its furthest extent, while the northern limit is Ukraine. Although tulips are also throughout most of the Mediterranean and Europe, these regions do not form part of the natural distribution. Tulips were brought to Europe by travellers and merchants from Anatolia and Central Asia for cultivation, from where they escaped and naturalised (see map). For instance, less than half of those species found in Turkey are actually native. These have been referred to as neo-tulipae.
Tulips are indigenous to mountainous areas with temperate climates, where they are a common element of steppe and winter-rain Mediterranean vegetation. They thrive in climates with long, cool springs and dry summers. Tulips are most commonly found in meadows, steppes and chaparral, but also introduced in fields, orchards, roadsides and abandoned gardens.
Ecology
Variegation produced by the tulip breaking virus
Botrytis tulipae is a major fungal disease affecting tulips, causing cell death and eventually the rotting of the plant. Other pathogens include anthracnose, bacterial soft rot, blight caused by Sclerotium rolfsii, bulb nematodes, other rots including blue molds, black molds and mushy rot.
The fungus Trichoderma viride can infect tulips, producing dried leaf tips and reduced growth, although symptoms are usually mild and only present on bulbs growing in glasshouses.[citation needed]
Variegated tulips admired during the Dutch tulipomania gained their delicately feathered patterns from an infection with the tulip breaking virus, a mosaic virus that was carried by the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae. While the virus produces fantastically streaked flowers, it also weakens plants and reduces the number of offsets produced. Dutch growers would go to extraordinary lengths during tulipomania to make tulips break, borrowing alchemists’ techniques and resorting to sprinkling paint powders of the desired hue or pigeon droppings onto flower roots.
Tulips affected by the mosaic virus are called "broken"; while such plants can occasionally revert to a plain or solid colouring, they will remain infected and have to be destroyed. Today the virus is almost eradicated from tulip growers' fields. The multicoloured patterns of modern varieties result from breeding; they normally have solid, un-feathered borders between the colours.
Tulip growth is also dependent on temperature conditions. Slightly germinated plants show greater growth if subjected to a period of cool dormancy, known as vernalisation. Furthermore, although flower development is induced at warmer temperatures (20–25 °C or 68–77 °F), elongation of the flower stalk and proper flowering is dependent on an extended period of low temperature (< 10 °C or 50 °F). Tulip bulbs imported to warm-winter areas are often planted in autumn to be treated as annuals.
The colour of tulip flowers also varies with growing conditions.
Cultivation
History
Islamic World
Tulipa sylvestris subsp. australis[a] with seedpod by Sydenham Edwards (1804)
Cultivation of the tulip began in Iran (Persia), probably in the 10th century. Early cultivars must have emerged from hybridisation in gardens from wild collected plants, which were then favoured, possibly due to flower size or growth vigour. The tulip is not mentioned by any writer from antiquity, therefore it seems probable that tulips were introduced into Anatolia only with the advance of the Seljuks. In the Ottoman Empire, numerous types of tulips were cultivated and bred, and today, 14 species can still be found in Turkey. Tulips are mentioned by Omar Kayam and Jalāl ad-Dīn Rûmi. Species of tulips in Turkey typically come in red, less commonly in white or yellow. The Ottoman Turks had discovered that these wild tulips were great changelings, freely hybridizing (though it takes 7 years to show colour) but also subject to mutations that produced spontaneous changes in form and colour.
A paper by Arthur Baker[31] reports that in 1574, Sultan Selim II ordered the Kadi of A‘azāz in Syria to send him 50,000 tulip bulbs. However, John Harvey points out several problems with this source, and there is also the possibility that tulips and hyacinth (sümbüll), originally Indian spikenard (Nardostachys jatamansi) have been confused. Sultan Selim also imported 300,000 bulbs of Kefe Lale (also known as Cafe-Lale, from the medieval name Kaffa, probably Tulipa schrenkii) from Kefe in Crimea, for his gardens in the Topkapı Sarayı in Istanbul.
It is also reported that shortly after arriving in Constantinople in 1554, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, ambassador of the Austrian Habsburgs to the court of Suleyman the Magnificent, claimed to have introduced the tulip to Europe by sending a consignment of bulbs west. The fact that the tulip's first official trip west took it from one court to the other could have contributed to its ascendency.
Sultan Ahmet III maintained famous tulip gardens in the summer highland pastures (Yayla) at Spil Dağı above the town of Manisa. They seem to have consisted of wild tulips. However, of the 14 tulip species known from Turkey, only four are considered to be of local origin, so wild tulips from Iran and Central Asia may have been brought into Turkey during the Seljuk and especially Ottoman periods. Also, Sultan Ahmet imported domestic tulip bulbs from the Netherlands.
The gardening book Revnak'ı Bostan (Beauty of the Garden) by Sahibül Reis ülhaç Ibrahim Ibn ülhaç Mehmet, written in 1660 does not mention the tulip at all, but contains advice on growing hyacinths and lilies. However, there is considerable confusion of terminology, and tulips may have been subsumed under hyacinth, a mistake several European botanists were to perpetuate. In 1515, the scholar Qasim from Herat in contrast had identified both wild and garden tulips (lale) as anemones (shaqayq al-nu'man), but described the crown imperial as laleh kakli.
In a Turkic text written before 1495, the Chagatay Husayn Bayqarah mentions tulips (lale). Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, also names tulips in the Baburnama. He may actually have introduced them from Afghanistan to the plains of India, as he did with other plants like melons and grapes. The tulip represents the official symbol of Turkey.
In Moorish Andalus, a "Makedonian bulb" (basal al-maqdunis) or "bucket-Narcissus" (naryis qadusi) was cultivated as an ornamental plant in gardens. It was supposed to have come from Alexandria and may have been Tulipa sylvestris, but the identification is not wholly secure.
Introduction to Western Europe
Tulip cultivation in the Netherlands
The Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands
Although it is unknown who first brought the tulip to Northwestern Europe, the most widely accepted story is that it was Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq, an ambassador for Emperor Ferdinand I to Suleyman the Magnificent. According to a letter, he saw "an abundance of flowers everywhere; Narcissus, hyacinths and those in Turkish called Lale, much to our astonishment because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers." However, in 1559, an account by Conrad Gessner describes tulips flowering in Augsburg, Swabia in the garden of Councillor Heinrich Herwart. In Central and Northern Europe, tulip bulbs are generally removed from the ground in June and must be replanted by September for the winter.[citation needed] It is doubtful that Busbecq could have had the tulip bulbs harvested, shipped to Germany and replanted between March 1558 and Gessner's description the following year. Pietro Andrea Mattioli illustrated a tulip in 1565 but identified it as a narcissus.
Carolus Clusius is largely responsible for the spread of tulip bulbs in the final years of the 16th century; he planted tulips at the Vienna Imperial Botanical Gardens in 1573. He finished the first major work on tulips in 1592 and made note of the colour variations. After he was appointed the director of the Leiden University's newly established Hortus Botanicus, he planted both a teaching garden and his private garden with tulips in late 1593. Thus, 1594 is considered the date of the tulip's first flowering in the Netherlands, despite reports of the cultivation of tulips in private gardens in Antwerp and Amsterdam two or three decades earlier. These tulips at Leiden would eventually lead to both the tulip mania and the tulip industry in the Netherlands. Over two raids, in 1596 and in 1598, more than one hundred bulbs were stolen from his garden.
Tulips spread rapidly across Europe, and more opulent varieties such as double tulips were already known in Europe by the early 17th century. These curiosities fitted well in an age when natural oddities were cherished especially in the Netherlands, France, Germany and England, where the spice trade with the East Indies had made many people wealthy. Nouveaux riches seeking wealthy displays embraced the exotic plant market, especially in the Low Countries where gardens had become fashionable. A craze for bulbs soon grew in France, where in the early 17th century, entire properties were exchanged as payment for a single tulip bulb. The value of the flower gave it an aura of mystique, and numerous publications describing varieties in lavish garden manuals were published, cashing in on the value of the flower. An export business was built up in France, supplying Dutch, Flemish, German and English buyers. The trade drifted slowly from the French to the Dutch.
Between 1634 and 1637, the enthusiasm for the new flowers in Holland triggered a speculative frenzy now known as the tulip mania that eventually led to the collapse of the market three years later. Tulip bulbs had become so expensive that they were treated as a form of currency, or rather, as futures, forcing the Dutch government to introduce trading restrictions on the bulbs. Around this time, the ceramic tulipiere was devised for the display of cut flowers stem by stem. Vases and bouquets, usually including tulips, often appeared in Dutch still-life painting. To this day, tulips are associated with the Netherlands, and the cultivated forms of the tulip are often called "Dutch tulips". The Netherlands has the world's largest permanent display of tulips at the Keukenhof.
The majority of tulip cultivars are classified in the taxon Tulipa ×gesneriana. They have usually several species in their direct background, but most have been derived from Tulipa suaveolens (today often regarded as a synonym with Tulipa schrenkii). Tulipa ×gesneriana is in itself an early hybrid of complex origin and is probably not the same taxon as was described by Conrad Gessner in the 16th century.
The UK's National Collection of English florists' tulips and Dutch historic tulips, dating from the early 17th century to c. 1960, is held by Polly Nicholson at Blackland House, near Calne in Wiltshire.
Introduction to the United States
The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden
It is believed the first tulips in the United States were grown near Spring Pond at the Fay Estate in Lynn and Salem, Massachusetts. From 1847 to 1865, Richard Sullivan Fay, Esq., one of Lynn's wealthiest men, settled on 500 acres (2 km2; 202 ha) located partly in present-day Lynn and partly in present-day Salem. Mr. Fay imported many different trees and plants from all parts of the world and planted them among the meadows of the Fay Estate.
Propagation
Tulip pistil surrounded by stamens
Tulip stamen with pollen grains
The reproductive organs of a tulip
The Netherlands is the world's main producer of commercial tulip plants, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually, the majority for export.
"Unlike many flower species, tulips do not produce nectar to entice insect pollination. Instead, tulips rely on wind and land animals to move their pollen between reproductive organs. Because they are self-pollinating, they do not need the pollen to move several feet to another plant but only within their blossoms."
Tulips can be propagated through bulb offsets, seeds or micropropagation. Offsets and tissue culture methods are means of asexual propagation for producing genetic clones of the parent plant, which maintains cultivar genetic integrity. Seeds are most often used to propagate species and subspecies or to create new hybrids. Many tulip species can cross-pollinate with each other, and when wild tulip populations overlap geographically with other tulip species or subspecies, they often hybridise and create mixed populations. Most commercial tulip cultivars are complex hybrids, and often sterile.
Offsets require a year or more of growth before plants are large enough to flower. Tulips grown from seeds often need five to eight years before plants are of flowering size. To prevent cross-pollination, increase the growth rate of bulbs and increase the vigour and size of offsets, the flower and stems of a field of commercial tulips are usually topped using large tractor-mounted mowing heads. The same goals can be achieved by a private gardener by clipping the stem and flower of an individual specimen. Commercial growers usually harvest the tulip bulbs in late summer and grade them into sizes; bulbs large enough to flower are sorted and sold, while smaller bulbs are sorted into sizes and replanted for sale in the future.
Because tulip bulbs don't reliably come back every year, tulip varieties that fall out of favour with present aesthetic values have traditionally gone extinct. Unlike other flowers that do not suffer this same limitation, the Tulip's historical forms do not survive alongside their modern incarnations.
Horticultural classification
'Gavota', a division 3 cultivar
'Yonina', a division 6 cultivar
'Texas Flame', a division 10 cultivar
In horticulture, tulips are divided into fifteen groups (Divisions) mostly based on flower morphology and plant size.
Div. 1: Single early – with cup-shaped single flowers, no larger than 8 cm (3 inches) across. They bloom early to mid-season. Growing 15 to 45 cm (6 to 18 inches) tall.
Div. 2: Double early – with fully double flowers, bowl shaped to 8 cm (3 inches) across. Plants typically grow from 30–40 cm (12–16 inches) tall.
Div. 3: Triumph – single, cup shaped flowers up to 6 cm (2.5 inches) wide. Plants grow 35–60 cm (14–24 inches) tall and bloom mid to late season.
Div. 4: Darwin hybrid – single flowers are ovoid in shape and up to 6 cm (2.5 inches) wide. Plants grow 50–70 cm (20–28 inches) tall and bloom mid to late season. This group should not be confused with older Darwin tulips, which belong in the Single Late Group below.
Div. 5: Single late – cup or goblet-shaped flowers up to 8 cm (3 inches) wide, some plants produce multi-flowering stems. Plants grow 45–75 cm (18–30 inches) tall and bloom late season.
Div. 6: Lily-flowered – the flowers possess a distinct narrow 'waist' with pointed and reflexed petals. Previously included with the old Darwins, only became a group in their own right in 1958.
Div. 7: Fringed (Crispa) – cup or goblet-shaped blossoms edged with spiked or crystal-like fringes, sometimes called “tulips for touch” because of the temptation to “test” the fringes to see if they are real or made of glass. Perennials with a tendency to naturalize in woodland areas, growing 45–65 cm (18–26 inches) tall and blooming in late season.
Div. 8: Viridiflora
Div. 9: Rembrandt
Div. 10: Parrot
Div. 11: Double late – Large, heavy blooms. They range from 46 to 56 cm (18 to 22 inches) tall.
Div. 12: Kaufmanniana – Waterlily tulip. Medium-large creamy yellow flowers marked red on the outside and yellow at the centre. Stems 15 cm (6 inches) tall.
Div. 13: Fosteriana (Emperor)
Div. 14: Greigii – Scarlet flowers 15 cm (6 inches) across, on 15-centimetre (6 in) stems. Foliage mottled with brown.
Div. 15: Species or Botanical – The terms "species tulips" and "botanical tulips" refer to wild species in contrast to hybridised varieties. As a group they have been described as being less ostentatious but more reliably vigorous as they age.
Div. 16: Multiflowering – not an official division, these tulips belong in the first 15 divisions but are often listed separately because they have multiple blooms per bulb.
They may also be classified by their flowering season:
Early flowering: Single Early Tulips, Double Early Tulips, Greigii Tulips, Kaufmanniana Tulips, Fosteriana Tulips, § Species tulips
Mid-season flowering: Darwin Hybrid Tulips, Triumph Tulips, Parrot Tulips
Late season flowering: Single Late Tulips, Double Late Tulips, Viridiflora Tulips, Lily-flowering Tulips, Fringed (Crispa) Tulips, Rembrandt Tulips
Neo-tulipae
Tulip Bulb Depth
Tulip bulb planting depth 15 cm (6 inches)
A number of names are based on naturalised garden tulips and are usually referred to as neo-tulipae. These are often difficult to trace back to their original cultivar, and in some cases have been occurring in the wild for many centuries. The history of naturalisation is unknown, but populations are usually associated with agricultural practices and are possibly linked to saffron cultivation[clarification needed]. Some neo-tulipae have been brought into cultivation, and are often offered as botanical tulips. These cultivated plants can be classified into two Cultivar Groups: 'Grengiolensis Group', with picotee tepals, and the 'Didieri Group' with unicolourous tepals.
Horticulture
Tulip bulbs are typically planted around late summer and fall, in well-drained soils. Tulips should be planted 10 to 15 cm (4 to 6 inches) apart from each other. The recommended hole depth is 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches) deep and is measured from the top of the bulb to the surface. Therefore, larger tulip bulbs would require deeper holes. Species tulips are normally planted deeper.
Culture and politics
Iran
The celebration of Persian New Year, or Nowruz, dating back over 3,000 years, marks the advent of spring, and tulips are used as a decorative feature during the festivities.
A sixth-century legend, similar to the tale of Romeo and Juliet, tells of tulips sprouting where the blood of the young prince Farhad spilt after he killed himself upon hearing the (deliberately false) story that his true love had died.
The tulip was a topic for Persian poets from the thirteenth century. The poem Gulistan by Musharrifu'd-din Saadi, described a visionary garden paradise with "The murmur of a cool stream / bird song, ripe fruit in plenty / bright multicoloured tulips and fragrant roses...". In recent times, tulips have featured in the poems of Simin Behbahani.
The tulip is the national symbol for martyrdom in Iran[62] (and Shi'ite Islam generally), and has been used on postage stamps and coins. It was common as a symbol used in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and a red tulip adorns the flag redesigned in 1980. The sword in the centre, with four crescent-shaped petals around it, create the word "Allah" as well as symbolising the five pillars of Islam. The tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is decorated with 72 stained glass tulips, representing 72 martyrs who died at the Battle of Karbala in 680CE. It was also used as a symbol on billboards celebrating casualties of the 1980–1988 war with Iraq.[60]
The tulip also became a symbol of protest against the Iranian government after the presidential election in June 2009, when millions turned out on the streets to protest the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After the protests were harshly suppressed, the Iranian Green Movement adopted the tulip as a symbol of their struggle.
The word for tulip in Persian is "laleh" (لاله), and this has become popular as a girl's name. The name has been used for commercial enterprises, such as the Laleh International Hotel, as well as public facilities, such as Laleh Park and Laleh Hospital, and the tulip motif remains common in Iranian culture.
Iranian 20 rial coin
Obverse with 22 tulips
Obverse with 22 tulips
Reverse with three tulips
Reverse with three tulips
In other countries and cultures
Turkish Airlines uses a grey tulip emblem on its aircraft
Tulips are called lale in Turkish (from the Persian: لاله, romanized: laleh from لال lal 'red'). When written in Arabic letters, lale has the same letters as Allah, which is why the flower became a holy symbol. It was also associated with the House of Osman, resulting in tulips being widely used in decorative motifs on tiles, mosques, fabrics, crockery, etc. in the Ottoman Empire.[6] The tulip was seen as a symbol of abundance and indulgence. The era during which the Ottoman Empire was wealthiest is often called the Tulip era or Lale Devri in Turkish.
Tulips became popular garden plants in the east and west, but, whereas the tulip in Turkish culture was a symbol of paradise on earth and had almost a divine status, in the Netherlands it represented the briefness of life.
In Christianity, tulips symbolise passion, belief and love. White tulips represent forgiveness while purple tulips represent royalty, both important aspects of Easter.[citation needed] In Calvinism, the five points of the doctrines of grace have been summarized under the acrostic TULIP.
By contrast to other flowers such as the coneflower or lotus flower, tulips have historically been capable of genetically reinventing themselves to suit changes in aesthetic values. In his 1597 herbal, John Gerard says of the tulip that "nature seems to play more with this flower than with any other that I do know". When in the Netherlands, beauty was defined by marbled swirls of vivid contrasting colours, the petals of tulips were able to become "feathered" and "flamed". However, in the 19th century, when the English desired tulips for carpet bedding and massing, the tulips were able to once again accommodate this by evolving into "paint-filled boxes with the brightest, fattest dabs of pure pigment". This inherent mutability of the tulip even led the Ottoman Turks to believe that nature cherished this flower above all others.
The Black Tulip (1850) is a historical romance by Alexandre Dumas, père. The story takes place in the Dutch city of Haarlem, where a reward is offered to the first grower who can produce a truly black tulip.[citation needed]
The tulip occurs on a number of the Major Arcana cards of occultist Oswald Wirth's deck of Tarot cards, specifically the Magician, Emperor, Temperance and the Fool, described in his 1927 work Le Tarot, des Imagiers du Moyen Âge.
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Tulip festivals are held around the world, for example in the Netherlands and Spalding, England. There is also a popular festival in Morges, Switzerland. Every spring, there are tulip festivals in North America, including the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley, Washington, the Tulip Time Festival in Orange City and Pella, Iowa, and the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Tulips are also popular in Australia and several festivals are held in September and October, during the Southern Hemisphere's spring. The Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden hosts an annual tulip festival which draws huge attention and has an attendance of over 200,000.
Consumption
Tulip petals are edible. The taste varies by variety and season, and is roughly similar to lettuce or other salad greens. Some people are allergic to tulips.
Tulip bulbs look similar to onions, but should not generally be considered food. The toxicity of bulbs is not well understood, nor is there an agreed-upon method of safely preparing them for human consumption. There have been reports of illness when eaten, depending on quantity. During the Dutch famine of 1944–45, tulip bulbs were eaten out of desperation, and Dutch doctors provided recipes.
Animals
As with other plants of the lily family, tulips are poisonous to domestic animals including horses, cats and dogs. In cats, ingestion of small amounts of tulips can include vomiting, depression, diarrhoea, hypersalivation, and irritation of the mouth and throat, and larger amounts can cause abdominal pain, tremors, tachycardia, convulsions, tachypnea, difficulty breathing, cardiac arrhythmia, and coma. All parts of the tulip plant are poisonous to cats, while the bulb is especially dangerous. A veterinarian should be contacted immediately if a cat has ingested tulip. In the American East, White-tailed Deer eat tulip flowers ravenously, with no apparent ill effects.
Border collies understand the rules of The Game. And they try, with all their might, to convey it to their humans. (That stare? It's Border collie mind meld: "you WILL understand what I am beaming your way!!!")
Except I *don't* understand it. It was tough when we only had Duncan: he'd run outside, lie down on the deck, and stare at us. Our turn in The Game! It got trickier when we added Ross to our household - more so when we added Spain. Now we have three Border collies who run outdoors, stop, and stare at us. Our turn.
To be honest - Duncan stares at us. Sometimes Ross will stare at Duncan. And Spain will stare at both of them. Or Spain will stare at Duncan, and Ross at both Duncan and Spain. It matters little. There clearly exists a set of complex rules of which we understand but little.
About the Frescoes
The ceiling is decorated with five frescos that cover 14.94 m2 (160.8 sq ft) which are the second largest ceiling frescoes (after the Pažaislis Monastery) in Lithuania.
The three smaller frescoes above the organ form a triptych from Saint Peter's life: healing a cripple, escape from prison, and vision of a sheet with animals.
The other two frescoes depict Quo vadis? and Peter's confrontation with Simon Magus.
These frescoes are of a rather simple composition, poorly executed, and lack background detail, but the figures are expressive, making complex, dynamic, almost theatrical movements.
The authorship of the frescoes is unknown. Vladas Drėma attributed them to Martino Altomonte, while Mieczysław Skrudlik suggested Michelangelo Palloni.
Mindaugas Paknys, using surviving written records, disproved both hypotheses and attributed the frescoes to Johann Gotthard Berchhoff.
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From Wikipedia
St. Peter and St. Paul's Church is a Roman Catholic church located in the Antakalnis neighbourhood of Vilnius, Lithuania.
Construction was begun in 1688 and the decorative works were completed in 1704.
It is the centerpiece of a former monastery complex of the Canons Regular of the Lateran.
Its interior has masterful compositions of some 2,000 stucco figures by Giovanni Pietro Perti and ornamentation by Giovanni Maria Galli and is unique in Europe.
The church is considered a masterpiece of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Baroque.
The interior of the church changed relatively little since that time.
The major change was the loss of the main altar. The wooden altar was moved to the Catholic church in Daugai in 1766.[4]
The altar is now dominated by the Farewell of St. Peter and St. Paul, a large painting by Franciszek Smuglewicz, installed there in 1805.
The interior was restored by Giovanni Beretti and Nicolae Piano from Milan in 1801–04.[11]
At the same time, a new pulpit imitating the ship of Saint Peter was installed.
In 1864, as reprisal for the failed January Uprising, Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky closed the monastery and converted its buildings into military barracks.[11]
There were plans to turn the church into an Eastern Orthodox church, but they never materialized.[11] In 1901–05, the interior was restored again. The church acquired the boat-shaped chandelier and the new pipe organ with two manuals and 23 organ stops.[12]
The dome was damaged during World War II bombings, but was rebuilt true to its original design.[12]
When in 1956 Vilnius Cathedral was converted into an art museum by Soviet authorities, the silver sarcophagus with sacred relics of Saint Casimir was moved to the St. Peter and St. Paul's Church.[13] The sarcophagus was returned to its place in 1989.
Despite religious persecutions in the Soviet Union, extensive interior restoration was carried out in 1976–87.[11]
About the Decorative Scheme
St. Peter and St. Paul's is one of the most studied churches in Lithuania.[19]
Its interior has over 2,000 different decor elements that creates a stunning atmosphere.[20]
The main author of the decor plan is not known. It could be the founder Pac, monks of the Lateran, or Italian artists.
No documents survive to explain the ideas behind the decorations, therefore various art historians attempted to find one central theme: Pac's life and Polish–Lithuanian relations, teachings of Saint Augustine, Baroque theater, etc.[19]
Art historian Birutė Rūta Vitkauskienė identified several main themes of the decor: structure of the Church as proclaimed at the Council of Trent with Saint Peter as the founding rock, early Christian martyrs representing Pac's interest in knighthood and ladyship, themes relevant to the Canons Regular of the Lateran, and themes inherited from previous churches (painting of Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy and altar of Five Wounds of Christ).[21]
The decor combines a great variety of symbols, from local (patron of Vilnius Saint Christopher) to Italian saints (Fidelis of Como),[22] from specific saints to allegories of virtues.
There are many decorative elements – floral (acanthus, sunflowers, rues, fruits), various objects (military weapons, household tools, liturgical implements, shells, ribbons), figures (puttos, angels, soldiers), fantastical creatures (demons, dragons, centaurs), Pac's coat of arms, masks making various expressions – but they are individualized, rarely repeating.[23]
The architects and sculptors borrowed ideas from other churches in Poland (Saints Peter and Paul Church, Kraków, Sigismund's Chapel of Wawel Cathedral) and Italy (St. Peter's Basilica, Church of the Gesù).[22]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St._Peter_and_St._Paul,_V...
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From the Church's Brochure
The church was erected after the Russian invasion that devastated Vilnius in the mid-17th century.
Barely a dozen years passed, and the capital of Lithuania began to recover.
In 1668 Mykolas Kazimieras Pacas, Hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and wojewode of Vilnius, embarked upon the Antakalnis.
The church is decorated by the stucco mouldings of two excellent Italian sculptors, Giovanni Pietro Petri and Giovanni Maria Galli.
The interior of the church consists of the main nave, six chapels on both sides, and the transept.
Tulips are spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having bulbs as storage organs) in the Tulipa genus. Their flowers are usually large, showy, and brightly coloured, generally red, orange, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm colours). They often have a different coloured blotch at the base of the tepals (petals and sepals, collectively), internally. Because of a degree of variability within the populations and a long history of cultivation, classification has been complex and controversial. The tulip is a member of the lily family, Liliaceae, along with 14 other genera, where it is most closely related to Amana, Erythronium, and Gagea in the tribe Lilieae.
There are about seventy-five species, and these are divided among four subgenera. The name "tulip" is thought to be derived from a Persian word for turban, which it may have been thought to resemble by those who discovered it. Tulips were originally found in a band stretching from Southern Europe to Central Asia, but since the seventeenth century have become widely naturalised and cultivated (see map). In their natural state, they are adapted to steppes and mountainous areas with temperate climates. Flowering in the spring, they become dormant in the summer once the flowers and leaves die back, emerging above ground as a shoot from the underground bulb in early spring.
Growing wild over much of the Near East and Central Asia, tulips had probably been cultivated in Persia from the 10th century. By the 15th century, tulips were among the most prized flowers; becoming the symbol of the later Ottomans. Tulips were cultivated in Byzantine Constantinople as early as 1055 but they did not come to the attention of Northern Europeans until the sixteenth century, when Northern European diplomats to the Ottoman court observed and reported on them. They were rapidly introduced into Northern Europe and became a much-sought-after commodity during tulip mania. Tulips were frequently depicted in Dutch Golden Age paintings, and have become associated with the Netherlands, the major producer for world markets, ever since. In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, during the time of the tulip mania, an infection of tulip bulbs by the tulip breaking virus created variegated patterns in the tulip flowers that were much admired and valued. While truly broken tulips are not cultivated anymore, the closest available specimens today are part of the group known as the Rembrandts – so named because Rembrandt painted some of the most admired breaks of his time.
Breeding programmes have produced thousands of hybrid and cultivars in addition to the original species (known in horticulture as botanical tulips). They are popular throughout the world, both as ornamental garden plants and as cut flowers.
Description
Tulip morphology
Collection of tulip bulbs, some sliced to show interior scales
Bulbs, showing tunic and scales
Flower of Tulipa orphanidea, showing cup shape
Cup-shaped flower of Tulipa orphanidea
Photograph of Tulipa clusiana, showing six identical tepals (petals and sepals)
Star-shaped flower of Tulipa clusiana with three sepals and three petals, forming six identical tepals
Tulips are perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes that bloom in spring and die back after flowering to an underground storage bulb. Depending on the species, tulip plants can be between 10 and 70 cm (4 and 28 inches) high.
Tulip stems have few leaves. Larger species tend to have multiple leaves. Plants typically have two to six leaves, some species up to 12. The tulip's leaf is cauline (born on a stem), strap-shaped, with a waxy coating, and the leaves are alternate (alternately arranged on the stem), diminishing in size the further up the stem. These fleshy blades are often bluish-green in colour. The bulbs are truncated basally and elongated towards the apex. They are covered by a protective tunic (tunicate) which can be glabrous or hairy inside.
Flowers
The tulip's flowers are usually large and are actinomorphic (radially symmetric) and hermaphrodite (contain both male (androecium) and female (gynoecium) characteristics), generally erect, or more rarely pendulous, and are arranged more usually as a single terminal flower, or when pluriflor as two to three (e.g. Tulipa turkestanica), but up to four, flowers on the end of a floriferous stem (scape), which is single arising from amongst the basal leaf rosette. In structure, the flower is generally cup or star-shaped. As with other members of Liliaceae the perianth is undifferentiated (perigonium) and biseriate (two whorled), formed from six free (i.e. apotepalous) caducous tepals arranged into two separate whorls of three parts (trimerous) each. The two whorls represent three petals and three sepals, but are termed tepals because they are nearly identical. The tepals are usually petaloid (petal-like), being brightly coloured, but each whorl may be different, or have different coloured blotches at their bases, forming darker colouration on the interior surface. The inner petals have a small, delicate cleft at the top, while the sturdier outer ones form uninterrupted ovals.
The flowers have six distinct, basifixed introrse stamens arranged in two whorls of three, which vary in length and may be glabrous or hairy. The filaments are shorter than the tepals and dilated towards their base. The style is short or absent and each stigma has three distinct lobes, and the ovaries are superior, with three chambers.
Colours
The "Semper Augustus" was the most expensive tulip during the 17th-century tulip mania. “The colour is white, with Carmine on a blue base, and with an unbroken flame right to the top” – wrote Nicolas van Wassenaer in 1624 after seeing the tulip in the garden of one Dr Adriaen Pauw, a director of the new East India Company. With limited specimens in existence at the time and most owned by Pauw, his refusal to sell any flowers, despite wildly escalating offers, is believed by some to have sparked the mania.
Tulip flowers come in a wide variety of colours, except pure blue (several tulips with "blue" in the name have a faint violet hue), and have absent nectaries. Tulip flowers are generally bereft of scent and are the coolest of floral characters. The Dutch regarded this lack of scent as a virtue, as it demonstrates the flower's chasteness.
While tulips can be bred to display a wide variety of colours, black tulips have historically been difficult to achieve. The Queen of the Night tulip is as close to black as a flower gets, though it is, in fact, a dark and glossy maroonish purple - nonetheless, an effect prized by the Dutch. The first truly black tulip was bred in 1986 by a Dutch flower grower in Bovenkarspel, Netherlands. The specimen was created by cross-breeding two deep purple tulips, the Queen of the Night and Wienerwald tulips.
Fruit
The tulip's fruit is a globose or ellipsoid capsule with a leathery covering and an ellipsoid to globe shape. Each capsule contains numerous flat, disc-shaped seeds in two rows per chamber These light to dark brown seeds have very thin seed coats and endosperm that do not normally fill the entire seed.
Phytochemistry
Tulipanin is an anthocyanin found in tulips. It is the 3-rutinoside of delphinidin. The chemical compounds named tuliposides and tulipalins can also be found in tulips and are responsible for allergies. Tulipalin A, or α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone, is a common allergen, generated by hydrolysis of the glucoside tuliposide A. It induces a dermatitis that is mostly occupational and affects tulip bulb sorters and florists who cut the stems and leaves. Tulipanin A and B are toxic to horses, cats and dogs. The colour of a tulip is formed from two pigments working in concert; a base colour that is always yellow or white, and a second laid-on anthocyanin colour. The mix of these two hues determines the visible unitary colour. The breaking of flowers occurs when a virus suppresses anthocyanin and the base colour is exposed as a streak.
Fragrance
The great majority of tulips, both species and cultivars, have no discernable scent, but a few of both are scented to a degree, and Anna Pavord describes T. Hungarica as "strongly scented", and among cultivars, some such as "Monte Carlo" and "Brown Sugar" are "scented", and "Creme Upstar" "fragrant".
Taxonomy
Main article: Taxonomy of Tulipa
Tulipa is a genus of the lily family, Liliaceae, once one of the largest families of monocots, but which molecular phylogenetics has reduced to a monophyletic grouping with only 15 genera. Within Liliaceae, Tulipa is placed within Lilioideae, one of three subfamilies, with two tribes. Tribe Lilieae includes seven other genera in addition to Tulipa.
Subdivision
The genus, which includes about 75 species, is divided into four subgenera.
Clusianae (4 species)
Orithyia (4 species)
Tulipa (52 species)
Eriostemones (16 species)
Etymology
The word tulip, first mentioned in western Europe in or around 1554 and seemingly derived from the "Turkish Letters" of diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, first appeared in English as tulipa or tulipant, entering the language by way of French: tulipe and its obsolete form tulipan or by way of Modern Latin tulipa, from Ottoman Turkish tülbend ("muslin" or "gauze"), and may be ultimately derived from the Persian: دلبند delband ("Turban"), this name being applied because of a perceived resemblance of the shape of a tulip flower to that of a turban. This may have been due to a translation error in early times when it was fashionable in the Ottoman Empire to wear tulips on turbans. The translator possibly confused the flower for the turban.
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq stated that the "Turks" used the word tulipan to describe the flower. Extensive speculation has tried to understand why he would state this, given that the Turkish word for tulip is lale. It is from this speculation that tulipan being a translation error referring to turbans is derived. This etymology has been challenged and makes no assumptions about possible errors. At no point does Busbecq state this was the word used in Turkey, he simply states it was used by the "Turks". On his way to Constantinople Busbecq states he travelled through Hungary and used Hungarian guides. Until recent times "Turk" was a common term when referring to Hungarians. The word tulipan is in fact the Hungarian word for tulip. As long as one recognizes "Turk" as a reference to Hungarians, no amount of speculation is required to reconcile the word's origin or form. Busbecq may have been simply repeating the word used by his "Turk/Hungarian" guides.
The Hungarian word tulipan may be adopted from an Indo-Aryan reference to the tulip as a symbol of resurrection, tala meaning "bottom or underworld" and pAna meaning "defence". Prior to arriving in Europe the Hungarians, and other Finno-Ugrians, embraced the Indo-Iranian cult of the dead, Yima/Yama, and would have been familiar with all of its symbols including the tulip.
Distribution and habitat
Map from Turkmenistan to Tien-Shan
Eastern end of the tulip range from Turkmenistan on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea to the Pamir-Alai and Tien-Shan mountains
Tulips are mainly distributed along a band corresponding to latitude 40° north, from southeast of Europe (Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Southern Serbia, Bulgaria, most part of Romania, Ukraine, Russia) and Turkey in the west, through the Levant (Syria, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Jordan) and the Sinai Peninsula. From there it extends eastwards through Jerevan (Armenia), and Baku (Azerbaijan) and on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan, Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent (Uzbekistan), to the eastern end of the range in the Pamir-Alai and Tien-Shan mountains in Central Asia, which form the centre of diversity. Further to the east, Tulipa is found in the western Himalayas, southern Siberia, Inner Mongolia, and as far as the northwest of China. While authorities have stated that no tulips west of the Balkans are native, subsequent identification of Tulipa sylvestris subsp. australis as a native of the Iberian peninsula and adjacent North Africa shows that this may be a simplification. In addition to these regions in the west tulips have been identified in Greece, Cyprus and the Balkans. In the south, Iran marks its furthest extent, while the northern limit is Ukraine. Although tulips are also throughout most of the Mediterranean and Europe, these regions do not form part of the natural distribution. Tulips were brought to Europe by travellers and merchants from Anatolia and Central Asia for cultivation, from where they escaped and naturalised (see map). For instance, less than half of those species found in Turkey are actually native. These have been referred to as neo-tulipae.
Tulips are indigenous to mountainous areas with temperate climates, where they are a common element of steppe and winter-rain Mediterranean vegetation. They thrive in climates with long, cool springs and dry summers. Tulips are most commonly found in meadows, steppes and chaparral, but also introduced in fields, orchards, roadsides and abandoned gardens.
Ecology
Variegation produced by the tulip breaking virus
Botrytis tulipae is a major fungal disease affecting tulips, causing cell death and eventually the rotting of the plant. Other pathogens include anthracnose, bacterial soft rot, blight caused by Sclerotium rolfsii, bulb nematodes, other rots including blue molds, black molds and mushy rot.
The fungus Trichoderma viride can infect tulips, producing dried leaf tips and reduced growth, although symptoms are usually mild and only present on bulbs growing in glasshouses.[citation needed]
Variegated tulips admired during the Dutch tulipomania gained their delicately feathered patterns from an infection with the tulip breaking virus, a mosaic virus that was carried by the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae. While the virus produces fantastically streaked flowers, it also weakens plants and reduces the number of offsets produced. Dutch growers would go to extraordinary lengths during tulipomania to make tulips break, borrowing alchemists’ techniques and resorting to sprinkling paint powders of the desired hue or pigeon droppings onto flower roots.
Tulips affected by the mosaic virus are called "broken"; while such plants can occasionally revert to a plain or solid colouring, they will remain infected and have to be destroyed. Today the virus is almost eradicated from tulip growers' fields. The multicoloured patterns of modern varieties result from breeding; they normally have solid, un-feathered borders between the colours.
Tulip growth is also dependent on temperature conditions. Slightly germinated plants show greater growth if subjected to a period of cool dormancy, known as vernalisation. Furthermore, although flower development is induced at warmer temperatures (20–25 °C or 68–77 °F), elongation of the flower stalk and proper flowering is dependent on an extended period of low temperature (< 10 °C or 50 °F). Tulip bulbs imported to warm-winter areas are often planted in autumn to be treated as annuals.
The colour of tulip flowers also varies with growing conditions.
Cultivation
History
Islamic World
Tulipa sylvestris subsp. australis[a] with seedpod by Sydenham Edwards (1804)
Cultivation of the tulip began in Iran (Persia), probably in the 10th century. Early cultivars must have emerged from hybridisation in gardens from wild collected plants, which were then favoured, possibly due to flower size or growth vigour. The tulip is not mentioned by any writer from antiquity, therefore it seems probable that tulips were introduced into Anatolia only with the advance of the Seljuks. In the Ottoman Empire, numerous types of tulips were cultivated and bred, and today, 14 species can still be found in Turkey. Tulips are mentioned by Omar Kayam and Jalāl ad-Dīn Rûmi. Species of tulips in Turkey typically come in red, less commonly in white or yellow. The Ottoman Turks had discovered that these wild tulips were great changelings, freely hybridizing (though it takes 7 years to show colour) but also subject to mutations that produced spontaneous changes in form and colour.
A paper by Arthur Baker[31] reports that in 1574, Sultan Selim II ordered the Kadi of A‘azāz in Syria to send him 50,000 tulip bulbs. However, John Harvey points out several problems with this source, and there is also the possibility that tulips and hyacinth (sümbüll), originally Indian spikenard (Nardostachys jatamansi) have been confused. Sultan Selim also imported 300,000 bulbs of Kefe Lale (also known as Cafe-Lale, from the medieval name Kaffa, probably Tulipa schrenkii) from Kefe in Crimea, for his gardens in the Topkapı Sarayı in Istanbul.
It is also reported that shortly after arriving in Constantinople in 1554, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, ambassador of the Austrian Habsburgs to the court of Suleyman the Magnificent, claimed to have introduced the tulip to Europe by sending a consignment of bulbs west. The fact that the tulip's first official trip west took it from one court to the other could have contributed to its ascendency.
Sultan Ahmet III maintained famous tulip gardens in the summer highland pastures (Yayla) at Spil Dağı above the town of Manisa. They seem to have consisted of wild tulips. However, of the 14 tulip species known from Turkey, only four are considered to be of local origin, so wild tulips from Iran and Central Asia may have been brought into Turkey during the Seljuk and especially Ottoman periods. Also, Sultan Ahmet imported domestic tulip bulbs from the Netherlands.
The gardening book Revnak'ı Bostan (Beauty of the Garden) by Sahibül Reis ülhaç Ibrahim Ibn ülhaç Mehmet, written in 1660 does not mention the tulip at all, but contains advice on growing hyacinths and lilies. However, there is considerable confusion of terminology, and tulips may have been subsumed under hyacinth, a mistake several European botanists were to perpetuate. In 1515, the scholar Qasim from Herat in contrast had identified both wild and garden tulips (lale) as anemones (shaqayq al-nu'man), but described the crown imperial as laleh kakli.
In a Turkic text written before 1495, the Chagatay Husayn Bayqarah mentions tulips (lale). Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, also names tulips in the Baburnama. He may actually have introduced them from Afghanistan to the plains of India, as he did with other plants like melons and grapes. The tulip represents the official symbol of Turkey.
In Moorish Andalus, a "Makedonian bulb" (basal al-maqdunis) or "bucket-Narcissus" (naryis qadusi) was cultivated as an ornamental plant in gardens. It was supposed to have come from Alexandria and may have been Tulipa sylvestris, but the identification is not wholly secure.
Introduction to Western Europe
Tulip cultivation in the Netherlands
The Keukenhof in Lisse, Netherlands
Although it is unknown who first brought the tulip to Northwestern Europe, the most widely accepted story is that it was Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq, an ambassador for Emperor Ferdinand I to Suleyman the Magnificent. According to a letter, he saw "an abundance of flowers everywhere; Narcissus, hyacinths and those in Turkish called Lale, much to our astonishment because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers." However, in 1559, an account by Conrad Gessner describes tulips flowering in Augsburg, Swabia in the garden of Councillor Heinrich Herwart. In Central and Northern Europe, tulip bulbs are generally removed from the ground in June and must be replanted by September for the winter.[citation needed] It is doubtful that Busbecq could have had the tulip bulbs harvested, shipped to Germany and replanted between March 1558 and Gessner's description the following year. Pietro Andrea Mattioli illustrated a tulip in 1565 but identified it as a narcissus.
Carolus Clusius is largely responsible for the spread of tulip bulbs in the final years of the 16th century; he planted tulips at the Vienna Imperial Botanical Gardens in 1573. He finished the first major work on tulips in 1592 and made note of the colour variations. After he was appointed the director of the Leiden University's newly established Hortus Botanicus, he planted both a teaching garden and his private garden with tulips in late 1593. Thus, 1594 is considered the date of the tulip's first flowering in the Netherlands, despite reports of the cultivation of tulips in private gardens in Antwerp and Amsterdam two or three decades earlier. These tulips at Leiden would eventually lead to both the tulip mania and the tulip industry in the Netherlands. Over two raids, in 1596 and in 1598, more than one hundred bulbs were stolen from his garden.
Tulips spread rapidly across Europe, and more opulent varieties such as double tulips were already known in Europe by the early 17th century. These curiosities fitted well in an age when natural oddities were cherished especially in the Netherlands, France, Germany and England, where the spice trade with the East Indies had made many people wealthy. Nouveaux riches seeking wealthy displays embraced the exotic plant market, especially in the Low Countries where gardens had become fashionable. A craze for bulbs soon grew in France, where in the early 17th century, entire properties were exchanged as payment for a single tulip bulb. The value of the flower gave it an aura of mystique, and numerous publications describing varieties in lavish garden manuals were published, cashing in on the value of the flower. An export business was built up in France, supplying Dutch, Flemish, German and English buyers. The trade drifted slowly from the French to the Dutch.
Between 1634 and 1637, the enthusiasm for the new flowers in Holland triggered a speculative frenzy now known as the tulip mania that eventually led to the collapse of the market three years later. Tulip bulbs had become so expensive that they were treated as a form of currency, or rather, as futures, forcing the Dutch government to introduce trading restrictions on the bulbs. Around this time, the ceramic tulipiere was devised for the display of cut flowers stem by stem. Vases and bouquets, usually including tulips, often appeared in Dutch still-life painting. To this day, tulips are associated with the Netherlands, and the cultivated forms of the tulip are often called "Dutch tulips". The Netherlands has the world's largest permanent display of tulips at the Keukenhof.
The majority of tulip cultivars are classified in the taxon Tulipa ×gesneriana. They have usually several species in their direct background, but most have been derived from Tulipa suaveolens (today often regarded as a synonym with Tulipa schrenkii). Tulipa ×gesneriana is in itself an early hybrid of complex origin and is probably not the same taxon as was described by Conrad Gessner in the 16th century.
The UK's National Collection of English florists' tulips and Dutch historic tulips, dating from the early 17th century to c. 1960, is held by Polly Nicholson at Blackland House, near Calne in Wiltshire.
Introduction to the United States
The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden
It is believed the first tulips in the United States were grown near Spring Pond at the Fay Estate in Lynn and Salem, Massachusetts. From 1847 to 1865, Richard Sullivan Fay, Esq., one of Lynn's wealthiest men, settled on 500 acres (2 km2; 202 ha) located partly in present-day Lynn and partly in present-day Salem. Mr. Fay imported many different trees and plants from all parts of the world and planted them among the meadows of the Fay Estate.
Propagation
Tulip pistil surrounded by stamens
Tulip stamen with pollen grains
The reproductive organs of a tulip
The Netherlands is the world's main producer of commercial tulip plants, producing as many as 3 billion bulbs annually, the majority for export.
"Unlike many flower species, tulips do not produce nectar to entice insect pollination. Instead, tulips rely on wind and land animals to move their pollen between reproductive organs. Because they are self-pollinating, they do not need the pollen to move several feet to another plant but only within their blossoms."
Tulips can be propagated through bulb offsets, seeds or micropropagation. Offsets and tissue culture methods are means of asexual propagation for producing genetic clones of the parent plant, which maintains cultivar genetic integrity. Seeds are most often used to propagate species and subspecies or to create new hybrids. Many tulip species can cross-pollinate with each other, and when wild tulip populations overlap geographically with other tulip species or subspecies, they often hybridise and create mixed populations. Most commercial tulip cultivars are complex hybrids, and often sterile.
Offsets require a year or more of growth before plants are large enough to flower. Tulips grown from seeds often need five to eight years before plants are of flowering size. To prevent cross-pollination, increase the growth rate of bulbs and increase the vigour and size of offsets, the flower and stems of a field of commercial tulips are usually topped using large tractor-mounted mowing heads. The same goals can be achieved by a private gardener by clipping the stem and flower of an individual specimen. Commercial growers usually harvest the tulip bulbs in late summer and grade them into sizes; bulbs large enough to flower are sorted and sold, while smaller bulbs are sorted into sizes and replanted for sale in the future.
Because tulip bulbs don't reliably come back every year, tulip varieties that fall out of favour with present aesthetic values have traditionally gone extinct. Unlike other flowers that do not suffer this same limitation, the Tulip's historical forms do not survive alongside their modern incarnations.
Horticultural classification
'Gavota', a division 3 cultivar
'Yonina', a division 6 cultivar
'Texas Flame', a division 10 cultivar
In horticulture, tulips are divided into fifteen groups (Divisions) mostly based on flower morphology and plant size.
Div. 1: Single early – with cup-shaped single flowers, no larger than 8 cm (3 inches) across. They bloom early to mid-season. Growing 15 to 45 cm (6 to 18 inches) tall.
Div. 2: Double early – with fully double flowers, bowl shaped to 8 cm (3 inches) across. Plants typically grow from 30–40 cm (12–16 inches) tall.
Div. 3: Triumph – single, cup shaped flowers up to 6 cm (2.5 inches) wide. Plants grow 35–60 cm (14–24 inches) tall and bloom mid to late season.
Div. 4: Darwin hybrid – single flowers are ovoid in shape and up to 6 cm (2.5 inches) wide. Plants grow 50–70 cm (20–28 inches) tall and bloom mid to late season. This group should not be confused with older Darwin tulips, which belong in the Single Late Group below.
Div. 5: Single late – cup or goblet-shaped flowers up to 8 cm (3 inches) wide, some plants produce multi-flowering stems. Plants grow 45–75 cm (18–30 inches) tall and bloom late season.
Div. 6: Lily-flowered – the flowers possess a distinct narrow 'waist' with pointed and reflexed petals. Previously included with the old Darwins, only became a group in their own right in 1958.
Div. 7: Fringed (Crispa) – cup or goblet-shaped blossoms edged with spiked or crystal-like fringes, sometimes called “tulips for touch” because of the temptation to “test” the fringes to see if they are real or made of glass. Perennials with a tendency to naturalize in woodland areas, growing 45–65 cm (18–26 inches) tall and blooming in late season.
Div. 8: Viridiflora
Div. 9: Rembrandt
Div. 10: Parrot
Div. 11: Double late – Large, heavy blooms. They range from 46 to 56 cm (18 to 22 inches) tall.
Div. 12: Kaufmanniana – Waterlily tulip. Medium-large creamy yellow flowers marked red on the outside and yellow at the centre. Stems 15 cm (6 inches) tall.
Div. 13: Fosteriana (Emperor)
Div. 14: Greigii – Scarlet flowers 15 cm (6 inches) across, on 15-centimetre (6 in) stems. Foliage mottled with brown.
Div. 15: Species or Botanical – The terms "species tulips" and "botanical tulips" refer to wild species in contrast to hybridised varieties. As a group they have been described as being less ostentatious but more reliably vigorous as they age.
Div. 16: Multiflowering – not an official division, these tulips belong in the first 15 divisions but are often listed separately because they have multiple blooms per bulb.
They may also be classified by their flowering season:
Early flowering: Single Early Tulips, Double Early Tulips, Greigii Tulips, Kaufmanniana Tulips, Fosteriana Tulips, § Species tulips
Mid-season flowering: Darwin Hybrid Tulips, Triumph Tulips, Parrot Tulips
Late season flowering: Single Late Tulips, Double Late Tulips, Viridiflora Tulips, Lily-flowering Tulips, Fringed (Crispa) Tulips, Rembrandt Tulips
Neo-tulipae
Tulip Bulb Depth
Tulip bulb planting depth 15 cm (6 inches)
A number of names are based on naturalised garden tulips and are usually referred to as neo-tulipae. These are often difficult to trace back to their original cultivar, and in some cases have been occurring in the wild for many centuries. The history of naturalisation is unknown, but populations are usually associated with agricultural practices and are possibly linked to saffron cultivation[clarification needed]. Some neo-tulipae have been brought into cultivation, and are often offered as botanical tulips. These cultivated plants can be classified into two Cultivar Groups: 'Grengiolensis Group', with picotee tepals, and the 'Didieri Group' with unicolourous tepals.
Horticulture
Tulip bulbs are typically planted around late summer and fall, in well-drained soils. Tulips should be planted 10 to 15 cm (4 to 6 inches) apart from each other. The recommended hole depth is 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches) deep and is measured from the top of the bulb to the surface. Therefore, larger tulip bulbs would require deeper holes. Species tulips are normally planted deeper.
Culture and politics
Iran
The celebration of Persian New Year, or Nowruz, dating back over 3,000 years, marks the advent of spring, and tulips are used as a decorative feature during the festivities.
A sixth-century legend, similar to the tale of Romeo and Juliet, tells of tulips sprouting where the blood of the young prince Farhad spilt after he killed himself upon hearing the (deliberately false) story that his true love had died.
The tulip was a topic for Persian poets from the thirteenth century. The poem Gulistan by Musharrifu'd-din Saadi, described a visionary garden paradise with "The murmur of a cool stream / bird song, ripe fruit in plenty / bright multicoloured tulips and fragrant roses...". In recent times, tulips have featured in the poems of Simin Behbahani.
The tulip is the national symbol for martyrdom in Iran[62] (and Shi'ite Islam generally), and has been used on postage stamps and coins. It was common as a symbol used in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and a red tulip adorns the flag redesigned in 1980. The sword in the centre, with four crescent-shaped petals around it, create the word "Allah" as well as symbolising the five pillars of Islam. The tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is decorated with 72 stained glass tulips, representing 72 martyrs who died at the Battle of Karbala in 680CE. It was also used as a symbol on billboards celebrating casualties of the 1980–1988 war with Iraq.[60]
The tulip also became a symbol of protest against the Iranian government after the presidential election in June 2009, when millions turned out on the streets to protest the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After the protests were harshly suppressed, the Iranian Green Movement adopted the tulip as a symbol of their struggle.
The word for tulip in Persian is "laleh" (لاله), and this has become popular as a girl's name. The name has been used for commercial enterprises, such as the Laleh International Hotel, as well as public facilities, such as Laleh Park and Laleh Hospital, and the tulip motif remains common in Iranian culture.
Iranian 20 rial coin
Obverse with 22 tulips
Obverse with 22 tulips
Reverse with three tulips
Reverse with three tulips
In other countries and cultures
Turkish Airlines uses a grey tulip emblem on its aircraft
Tulips are called lale in Turkish (from the Persian: لاله, romanized: laleh from لال lal 'red'). When written in Arabic letters, lale has the same letters as Allah, which is why the flower became a holy symbol. It was also associated with the House of Osman, resulting in tulips being widely used in decorative motifs on tiles, mosques, fabrics, crockery, etc. in the Ottoman Empire.[6] The tulip was seen as a symbol of abundance and indulgence. The era during which the Ottoman Empire was wealthiest is often called the Tulip era or Lale Devri in Turkish.
Tulips became popular garden plants in the east and west, but, whereas the tulip in Turkish culture was a symbol of paradise on earth and had almost a divine status, in the Netherlands it represented the briefness of life.
In Christianity, tulips symbolise passion, belief and love. White tulips represent forgiveness while purple tulips represent royalty, both important aspects of Easter.[citation needed] In Calvinism, the five points of the doctrines of grace have been summarized under the acrostic TULIP.
By contrast to other flowers such as the coneflower or lotus flower, tulips have historically been capable of genetically reinventing themselves to suit changes in aesthetic values. In his 1597 herbal, John Gerard says of the tulip that "nature seems to play more with this flower than with any other that I do know". When in the Netherlands, beauty was defined by marbled swirls of vivid contrasting colours, the petals of tulips were able to become "feathered" and "flamed". However, in the 19th century, when the English desired tulips for carpet bedding and massing, the tulips were able to once again accommodate this by evolving into "paint-filled boxes with the brightest, fattest dabs of pure pigment". This inherent mutability of the tulip even led the Ottoman Turks to believe that nature cherished this flower above all others.
The Black Tulip (1850) is a historical romance by Alexandre Dumas, père. The story takes place in the Dutch city of Haarlem, where a reward is offered to the first grower who can produce a truly black tulip.[citation needed]
The tulip occurs on a number of the Major Arcana cards of occultist Oswald Wirth's deck of Tarot cards, specifically the Magician, Emperor, Temperance and the Fool, described in his 1927 work Le Tarot, des Imagiers du Moyen Âge.
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Tulip festivals are held around the world, for example in the Netherlands and Spalding, England. There is also a popular festival in Morges, Switzerland. Every spring, there are tulip festivals in North America, including the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley, Washington, the Tulip Time Festival in Orange City and Pella, Iowa, and the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Tulips are also popular in Australia and several festivals are held in September and October, during the Southern Hemisphere's spring. The Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip Garden hosts an annual tulip festival which draws huge attention and has an attendance of over 200,000.
Consumption
Tulip petals are edible. The taste varies by variety and season, and is roughly similar to lettuce or other salad greens. Some people are allergic to tulips.
Tulip bulbs look similar to onions, but should not generally be considered food. The toxicity of bulbs is not well understood, nor is there an agreed-upon method of safely preparing them for human consumption. There have been reports of illness when eaten, depending on quantity. During the Dutch famine of 1944–45, tulip bulbs were eaten out of desperation, and Dutch doctors provided recipes.
Animals
As with other plants of the lily family, tulips are poisonous to domestic animals including horses, cats and dogs. In cats, ingestion of small amounts of tulips can include vomiting, depression, diarrhoea, hypersalivation, and irritation of the mouth and throat, and larger amounts can cause abdominal pain, tremors, tachycardia, convulsions, tachypnea, difficulty breathing, cardiac arrhythmia, and coma. All parts of the tulip plant are poisonous to cats, while the bulb is especially dangerous. A veterinarian should be contacted immediately if a cat has ingested tulip. In the American East, White-tailed Deer eat tulip flowers ravenously, with no apparent ill effects.
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Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, literally "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), officially named Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺, literally "Deer Garden Temple"), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan.[2] It is one of the most popular buildings in Japan, attracting many visitors annually.[3] It is designated as a National Special Historic Site, a National Special Landscape and is one of 17 locations making up the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which are World Heritage Sites.
The Golden Pavilion (金閣 Kinkaku) is a three-storey building on the grounds of the Rokuon-ji temple complex.[11] The top two stories of the pavilion are covered with pure gold leaf.[11] The pavilion functions as a shariden (舎利殿), housing relics of the Buddha (Buddha's Ashes). The building was an important model for Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion Temple) and Shōkoku-ji, which are also located in Kyoto.[2] When these buildings were constructed, Ashikaga Yoshimasa employed the styles used at Kinkaku-ji and even borrowed the names of its second and third floors.[2]
Architectural design
The pavilion successfully incorporates three distinct styles of architecture, which are shinden, samurai and zen, specifically on each floor.[8] Each floor of the Kinkaku uses a different architectural style.[2]
The first floor, called The Chamber of Dharma Waters (法水院, Hō-sui-in), is rendered in shinden-zukuri style, reminiscent of the residential style of the 11th century Heian imperial aristocracy.[2] It is evocative of the Shinden palace style. It is designed as an open space with adjacent verandas and uses natural, unpainted wood and white plaster.[8] This helps to emphasize the surrounding landscape. The walls and fenestration also affect the views from inside the pavilion. Most of the walls are made of shutters that can vary the amount of light and air into the pavilion[8] and change the view by controlling the shutters' heights. The second floor, called The Tower of Sound Waves (潮音洞, Chō-on-dō ),[2] is built in the style of warrior aristocrats, or buke-zukuri. On this floor, sliding wood doors and latticed windows create a feeling of impermanence. The second floor also contains a Buddha Hall and a shrine dedicated to the goddess of mercy, Kannon.[8] The third floor is built in traditional Chinese chán (Jpn. zen) style, also known as zenshū-butsuden-zukuri. It is called the Cupola of the Ultimate (究竟頂, Kukkyō-chō). The zen typology depicts a more religious ambiance in the pavilion, as was popular during the Muromachi period.[8]
The roof is in a thatched pyramid with shingles.[12] The building is topped with a bronze hōō (phoenix) ornament.[11] From the outside, viewers can see gold plating added to the upper stories of the pavilion. The gold leaf covering the upper stories hints at what is housed inside: the shrines.[9] The outside is a reflection of the inside. The elements of nature, death, religion, are formed together to create this connection between the pavilion and outside intrusions.
Garden
The Golden Pavilion is set in a Japanese strolling garden (回遊式庭園 kaiyū-shiki-teien, lit. a landscape garden in the go-round style).[6] The location implements the idea of borrowing of scenery ("shakkei") that integrates the outside and the inside, creating an extension of the views surrounding the pavilion and connecting it with the outside world. The pavilion extends over a pond, called Kyōko-chi (鏡湖池 Mirror Pond), that reflects the building.[5] The pond contains 10 smaller islands.[8] The zen typology is seen through the rock composition; the bridges and plants are arranged in a specific way to represent famous places in Chinese and Japanese literature.[8] Vantage points and focal points were established because of the strategic placement of the pavilion to view the gardens surrounding the pavilion.[10] A small fishing deck (釣殿 tsuri-dono) is attached to the rear of the pavilion building, allowing a small boat to be moored under it.[5] The pavilion grounds were built according to descriptions of the Western Paradise of the Buddha Amida, intending to illustrate a harmony between heaven and earth.[6] The largest islet in the pond represents the Japanese islands.[5] The four stones forming a straight line in the pond near the pavilion are intended to represent sailboats anchored at night, bound for the Isle of Eternal Life in Chinese mythology.[5]
The garden complex is an excellent example of Muromachi period garden design.[11] The Muromachi period is considered to be a classical age of Japanese garden design.[10] The correlation between buildings and its settings were greatly emphasized during this period.[10] It was a way to integrate the structure within the landscape in an artistic way. The garden designs were characterized by a reduction in scale, a more central purpose and a distinct setting.[13] A minimalistic approach was brought to the garden design, by recreating larger landscapes in a smaller scale around a structure.
Two Lockheed Martin F-35A Lighting II "Joint Strike Fighter's" assigned to the 62nd Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base Ariz, fly near an Arizona National Guard Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker Aug. 4, 2017. Four F-35’s participated in a missing man formation fly-over during WWII pilot 2nd Lt. Charles E. Carlson’s funeral in Pennsylvania more than 70 years after being shot down over Germany in World War II when he was assigned to the 62 FS.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather, stealth, fifth-generation, multirole combat aircraft, designed for ground-attack and air-superiority missions. It is built by Lockheed Martin and many subcontractors, including Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, and BAE Systems.
The F-35 has three main models: the conventional takeoff and landing F-35A (CTOL), the short take-off and vertical-landing F-35B (STOVL), and the catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery, carrier-based F-35C (CATOBAR). The F-35 descends from the Lockheed Martin X-35, the design that was awarded the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program over the competing Boeing X-32. The official Lightning II name has proven deeply unpopular and USAF pilots have nicknamed it Panther, instead.
The United States principally funds F-35 development, with additional funding from other NATO members and close U.S. allies, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Canada, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and formerly Turkey. These funders generally receive subcontracts to manufacture components for the aircraft; for example, Turkey was the sole supplier of several F-35 parts until its removal from the program in July 2019. Several other countries have ordered, or are considering ordering, the aircraft.
As the largest and most expensive military program ever, the F-35 became the subject of much scrutiny and criticism in the U.S. and in other countries. In 2013 and 2014, critics argued that the plane was "plagued with design flaws", with many blaming the procurement process in which Lockheed was allowed "to design, test, and produce the F-35 all at the same time," instead of identifying and fixing "defects before firing up its production line". By 2014, the program was "$163 billion over budget [and] seven years behind schedule". Critics also contend that the program's high sunk costs and political momentum make it "too big to kill".
The F-35 first flew on 15 December 2006. In July 2015, the United States Marines declared its first squadron of F-35B fighters ready for deployment. However, the DOD-based durability testing indicated the service life of early-production F-35B aircraft is well under the expected 8,000 flight hours, and may be as low as 2,100 flight hours. Lot 9 and later aircraft include design changes but service life testing has yet to occur. The U.S. Air Force declared its first squadron of F-35As ready for deployment in August 2016. The U.S. Navy declared its first F-35Cs ready in February 2019. In 2018, the F-35 made its combat debut with the Israeli Air Force.
The U.S. stated plan is to buy 2,663 F-35s, which will provide the bulk of the crewed tactical airpower of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps in coming decades. Deliveries of the F-35 for the U.S. military are scheduled until 2037 with a projected service life up to 2070.
Development
F-35 development started in 1992 with the origins of the "Joint Strike Fighter" (JSF) program and was to culminate in full production by 2018. The X-35 first flew on 24 October 2000 and the F-35A on 15 December 2006.
The F-35 was developed to replace most US fighter jets with the variants of a single design that would be common to all branches of the military. It was developed in co-operation with a number of foreign partners, and, unlike the F-22 Raptor, intended to be available for export. Three variants were designed: the F-35A (CTOL), the F-35B (STOVL), and the F-35C (CATOBAR). Despite being intended to share most of their parts to reduce costs and improve maintenance logistics, by 2017, the effective commonality was only 20%. The program received considerable criticism for cost overruns during development and for the total projected cost of the program over the lifetime of the jets.
By 2017, the program was expected to cost $406.5 billion over its lifetime (i.e. until 2070) for acquisition of the jets, and an additional $1.1 trillion for operations and maintenance. A number of design deficiencies were alleged, such as: carrying a small internal payload; performance inferior to the aircraft being replaced, particularly the F-16; lack of safety in relying on a single engine; and flaws such as the vulnerability of the fuel tank to fire and the propensity for transonic roll-off (wing drop). The possible obsolescence of stealth technology was also criticized.
Design
Overview
Although several experimental designs have been developed since the 1960s, such as the unsuccessful Rockwell XFV-12, the F-35B is to be the first operational supersonic STOVL stealth fighter. The single-engine F-35 resembles the larger twin-engined Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, drawing design elements from it. The exhaust duct design was inspired by the General Dynamics Model 200, proposed for a 1972 supersonic VTOL fighter requirement for the Sea Control Ship.
Lockheed Martin has suggested that the F-35 could replace the USAF's F-15C/D fighters in the air-superiority role and the F-15E Strike Eagle in the ground-attack role. It has also stated the F-35 is intended to have close- and long-range air-to-air capability second only to that of the F-22 Raptor, and that the F-35 has an advantage over the F-22 in basing flexibility and possesses "advanced sensors and information fusion".
Testifying before the House Appropriations Committee on 25 March 2009, acquisition deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Mark D. "Shack" Shackelford, stated that the F-35 is designed to be America's "premier surface-to-air missile killer, and is uniquely equipped for this mission with cutting-edge processing power, synthetic aperture radar integration techniques, and advanced target recognition".
Improvements
Ostensible improvements over past-generation fighter aircraft include:
Durable, low-maintenance stealth technology, using structural fiber mat instead of the high-maintenance coatings of legacy stealth platforms.
Integrated avionics and sensor fusion that combine information from off- and on-board sensors to increase the pilot's situational awareness and improve target identification and weapon delivery, and to relay information quickly to other command and control (C2) nodes.
High-speed data networking including IEEE 1394b and Fibre Channel (Fibre Channel is also used on Boeing's Super Hornet.
The Autonomic Logistics Global Sustainment, Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), and Computerized maintenance management system to help ensure the aircraft can remain operational with minimal maintenance manpower The Pentagon has moved to open up the competitive bidding by other companies. This was after Lockheed Martin stated that instead of costing 20% less than the F-16 per flight hour, the F-35 would actually cost 12% more. Though the ALGS is intended to reduce maintenance costs, the company disagrees with including the cost of this system in the aircraft ownership calculations. The USMC has implemented a workaround for a cyber vulnerability in the system. The ALIS system currently requires a shipping-container load of servers to run, but Lockheed is working on a more portable version to support the Marines' expeditionary operations.
Electro-hydrostatic actuators run by a power-by-wire flight-control system.
A modern and updated flight simulator, which may be used for a greater fraction of pilot training to reduce the costly flight hours of the actual aircraft.
Lightweight, powerful lithium-ion batteries to provide power to run the control surfaces in an emergency.
Structural composites in the F-35 are 35% of the airframe weight (up from 25% in the F-22). The majority of these are bismaleimide and composite epoxy materials. The F-35 will be the first mass-produced aircraft to include structural nanocomposites, namely carbon nanotube-reinforced epoxy. Experience of the F-22's problems with corrosion led to the F-35 using a gap filler that causes less galvanic corrosion to the airframe's skin, designed with fewer gaps requiring filler and implementing better drainage. The relatively short 35-foot wingspan of the A and B variants is set by the F-35B's requirement to fit inside the Navy's current amphibious assault ship parking area and elevators; the F-35C's longer wing is considered to be more fuel efficient.
Costs
A U.S. Navy study found that the F-35 will cost 30 to 40% more to maintain than current jet fighters, not accounting for inflation over the F-35's operational lifetime. A Pentagon study concluded a $1 trillion maintenance cost for the entire fleet over its lifespan, not accounting for inflation. The F-35 program office found that as of January 2014, costs for the F-35 fleet over a 53-year lifecycle was $857 billion. Costs for the fighter have been dropping and accounted for the 22 percent life cycle drop since 2010. Lockheed stated that by 2019, pricing for the fifth-generation aircraft will be less than fourth-generation fighters. An F-35A in 2019 is expected to cost $85 million per unit complete with engines and full mission systems, inflation adjusted from $75 million in December 2013.
Avatar series
My avatar (or icon)
The cow (a Lakenvelder) is allways the same but the weatherconditions or the season can change.
1. snow cow
2. cloudy cow
3. bad weather cow
4. sunny cow
5. moon cow
6. rainy cow
7. autumn cow
8. heavy cloudy cow
9. spring cow
10. misty cow
11. night cow
12. the original cow
I am thinking about:
1. happy cow
2. funny cow
3. depressed cow
4. tired cow
5. ill cow
6. sad cow
7 angry cow
8 alive-and-kicking cow
9 arti cow
10. romantic cow
11. holy cow
12. melancholy cow
ik weet niet of het tweede deel ook echt gerealiseerd gaat worden. Wat ik nu heb gaat alleen maar over meteorogische toestanden en laten de koe verder emotioneel met rust.
Het tweede deel gaat over gemoedstoestanden en de vraag is hoe je dat moet doen zonder aan de vorm van de Lakenvelder te komen. Hier moet ik nog (misschien wel heel lang) over nadenken.
Happy new year to all of you, hope you get well in to 2018.
We got a new addition to our pack. Brown cocker youngster on 8 months, Nemly. A joyfull and happy fellow, that ended up in a divorce. He is fun and a great addition to your pack.
Kilchurn Castle (/kəlˈxʊərn/)[1] is a ruined structure on a rocky peninsula at the northeastern end of Loch Awe, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It was first constructed in the mid-15th century as the base of the Campbells of Glenorchy, who extended both the castle and their territory in the area over the next 150 years. After the Campbells became Earls of Breadalbane and moved to Taymouth Castle, Kilchurn fell out of use and was in ruins by 1770. It is now in the care of Historic Environment Scotland and is open to the public in summerIn traditional genealogies of Clan Campbell, the clan's origins are in the ancient Britons of Strathclyde.[5] The earliest Campbell in written record is Gillespie, whose name is recorded in 1263.[5] Early grants to Gillespie and his relations were almost all in east-central Scotland. The family's connection with Argyll came some generations earlier when a Campbell married the heiress of the O'Duines and she brought with her the Lordship of Loch Awe.[5] Because of this, the early clan name was Clan O'Duine. The name was later styled Clann Diarmaid based on a fancied connection to Diarmuid the Boar, a great hero from early Celtic mythology.[5]
The original seat of Clan Campbell was either Innes Chonnel Castle on Loch Awe or Caisteal na Nigheann Ruaidh on Loch Avich. The clan's power soon spread throughout Argyll, though at first the Campbells were under the domination of the Lords of Lorne, chiefs of Clan MacDougall. The MacDougalls killed the Campbell chief Cailean Mór (Colin Campbell) in 1296. (See: Battle of Red Ford.) All subsequent chiefs of Clan Campbell have taken MacCailean Mór as their Gaelic patronymic.[5]
Between 1200 and 1500, the Campbells emerged as one of the most powerful families in Scotland, dominant in Argyll and capable of wielding a wider influence and authority from Edinburgh to the Hebrides and western Highlands.[6]
Wars of Scottish Independence
Early in the 14th century, the family of Colin Campbell became firm supporters of King Robert the Bruce and benefited from his successes through grants of lands, titles, and good marriages.[6] In 1314, the Campbells fought for Scotland against England in the Wars of Scottish Independence at the Battle of Bannockburn.[6] Throughout the 14th century, Clan Campbell rapidly expanded its lands and power. The expansion is explained in part by the loyalty of Sir Neil Campbell (Niall mac Caile) (died 1316) to the cause of Robert the Bruce, a loyalty that was rewarded with marriage to Bruce's sister Mary.[6] The family was closely associated with the Stewarts and the Bruces in the time of Cailean Mór.[5] Sir Neil, as a staunch ally of Robert the Bruce, was rewarded with extensive lands that had been taken from Clan MacDougall, the Lords of Lorne, and other enemies of the Bruces in Argyll.[5]
15th century and royal relations
Innes Chonnel Castle on Loch Awe, possibly the earliest seat of Clan Campbell.
The Campbells gave support to the Crown throughout the 15th century.[5] By the end of the 15th century, the power of the Lords of the Isles (chiefs of Clan Donald), the Crown's most powerful rivals, had been broken, and the Campbells were the main power in the area.[5] From this time onward, the Campbells acted as the central authority in the area; this transition of power might be the real cause of the ancient enmity between the Campbells and the MacDonalds.[5]
Descendants of Sir Duncan Campbell, 1st Lord Campbell (Donnchadh), and his wife Lady Marjorie Stewart are descendants of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and Robert II Stewart, King of Scotland. Lady Marjorie Stewart (born circa 1390) was the daughter of King Robert II's son, Robert Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany.[6] This makes all descendants of Sir Duncan Campbell and Lady Marjorie Stewart descendants of Robert I Bruce and of most of the early kings of Scotland.[6]
The title of 1st Lord Campbell was created in 1445. In the second half of the 15th century, the Campbells played an increasingly prominent role in Scotland. During his reign, James I of Scotland launched a great political assault on the Albany Stewarts and their allies in the west. However, Duncan Campbell, 1st Lord Campbell (Donnchadh), escaped the fate of his Albany kinsmen, who all were either executed or exiled.[6]
Colin Campbell, 1st Earl of Argyll (Cailean), was ennobled as Earl of Argyll in 1457 and later became Baron of Lorn. He also was granted lands in Knapdale. The title and land grants were signs that the Argylls were one of the major forces in Scotland.[6] In 1493, after the forfeiture of the MacDonalds as Lords of the Isles, the Campbell lords might well have viewed themselves as natural successors to Clan Donald in terms of leadership of the Gaels of the Hebrides and western Highlands.[6] The Campbell lordship thus remained one of the most significant bastions of Gaelic learning and culture in late medieval and early modern Scotland.[6]
In the Battle of Knockmary in 1490, men of Clan Campbell and Clan Drummond joined forces to defeat Clan Murray.[7] The battle also became known as the Massacre of Monzievaird. In 1499, Campbell of Inverliver defeated Clan Calder at the Battle of Daltullich. Sir John Campbell, the younger son of the Earl of Argyll, subsequently received the estate of Calder and Cawdor Castle through his marriage to the estate's heiress, Muriel Calder.[8][9][10]
16th century and clan conflicts
In 1513, the 2nd Earl of Argyll was killed along with many of his clan at the Battle of Flodden.[11][12]
The Battle of Langside took place in 1568 where the chief of Clan Campbell, Archibald Campbell, 5th Earl of Argyll, commanded the forces who fought for Mary, Queen of Scots.[11]
In 1567, a conflict took place between the Clan Campbell and Clan Arthur. Duncan MacArthur and his son of the Loch Awe MacArthur family, became the victims of their own success when jealousy of their power drove neighbours to drown them in Loch Awe during a skirmish with the Clan Campbell. In the archives of Inveraray Castle a charter dated 1567 confirms that a pardon was granted to the Campbells of Inverawe for what became known as the "drowning of Clan Arthur".[13] It is believed that the MacArthurs trying to defend themselves were driven into the loch. Centuries later in the 1970s an ancient sword was unearthed on the shore of the loch.[14][15]
For two centuries from the mid-15th century the Clan Gordon and Clan Campbell controlled the north-east and west of Scotland respectively, as the magnates who straddled the divide between the Scottish Highlands and Scottish Lowlands.[16] In 1594, Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll was granted a Royal Commission against George Gordon, 6th Earl of Huntly but was defeated at the Battle of Glenlivet.[17]
17th century and Civil War
The support that the Campbells gave to the central Government brought them rewards: In 1607, Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll was granted the former MacDonald lands of Kintyre and in 1615 Campbell of Cawdor was allowed to purchase the Isle of Islay which had previously belonged to the Macleans of Duart.[5]
Kilchurn Castle, seat of the Campbells of Glenorchy.
At the Battle of Inverlochy (1645), the Scottish Covenanter forces led by Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll were defeated by the Royalist forces of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose whose army was mainly made up of Scots of the Clan MacDonald, Clan Maclean, and others from Ireland. After the Battle of Inverlochy, Montrose and the Macleans burnt Castle Campbell, but the castle remained in Campbell hands.[18] In the wake of the Battle of Inverlochy the Clan Lamont took the opportunity to raid the Campbell lands.[19][20] The vengeful Campbells also ravaged the lands of the Clan Maclean who had fought against them at Inverlochy and in due course the Maclean's Duart Castle surrendered.[21]
In 1648, at the Battle of Stirling (1648) the Kirk Party Covenanter forces of Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll were defeated by the Engager Covenanter forces of Sir George Munro, 1st of Newmore who supported the Earl of Lanark. Among Argyll's dead was William Campbell of Glenfalloch killed in action.[22]
In 1672, a feud took place between the Clan Campbell and Clan Sinclair. Debt had forced George Sinclair, 6th Earl of Caithness to resign his titles and estates in favour of Sir John Campbell.[23] Campbell took possession of the estates on Sinclair's death in May 1676, and was created earl of Caithness in June the following year.[23] Sinclair's heir, George Sinclair of Keiss disputed the claim and seized the land in 1678.[23] This was followed by the Battle of Altimarlech, 13 July 1680, between the Clan Campbell and the Clan Sinclair in which the Campbells were victorious.[23] Legend has it that so many Sinclairs were killed that the Campbells were able to cross the river without getting their feet wet.[23] Having failed to regain his inheritance by force, Sinclair of Keiss then turned to the law. He took his place as Earl of Caithness on 15 July 1681, and his lands were restored on 23 September.[23] Campbell was made Earl of Breadalbane by way of compensation.[23]
In 1678, Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll led the Campbell of Argyll militia on an expedition to the Isle of Mull and took Duart Castle from the Clan Maclean.[24] However, Argyll was beheaded on 30 June 1685 for his participation in Argyll's Rising in support of the Monmouth Rebellion to depose Catholic James VII and II and place the Protestant James, Duke of Monmouth on the throne.[25] Later in 1692, Archibald Campbell, 1st Duke of Argyll again gained possession of the Maclean's Duart Castle.[26]
In 1692, 38 unarmed people of the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe were killed in the Massacre of Glencoe when a Government initiative to suppress Jacobitism was entangled in the long running feud between Clan MacDonald and Clan Campbell. The slaughter of the MacDonalds at the hands of the soldiers, led by Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, after enjoying their hospitality for over a week was a major affront of Scots Law and Highland tradition. The majority of soldiers were not Campbells, but a roll call from a few months before included six Campbells in addition to Cpt. Robt. Campbell: Corporal Achibald Campbell, Private Archibald Campbell (elder), Private Donald Campbell (younger), Private Archibald Campbell (younger), Private James Campbell, Private Donald Campbell (elder), and Private Duncan Campbell.[27] See also: Earl of Argyll's Regiment of Foot.
18th century and Jacobite Uprisings
Jacobite rising of 1715
During the Jacobite risings of the 18th century the Clan Campbell supported the British-Hanoverian Government. On 23 October 1715, chief John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll learned that a detachment of rebels was passing by Castle Campbell, towards Dunfermline. He sent out a body of cavalry which attacked the rebel party and defeated it in what is now known as the Skirmish of Dunfermline and took a number of prisoners, taking only light casualties.[28] A month later the British Government forces, including men from Clan Campbell, fought and defeated the Jacobites at the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715. However, there were in fact a small number of Campbells who took the side of the Jacobites led by the son of Campbell of Glenlyon whose father had commanded the Government troops at the Massacre of Glencoe against the MacDonalds 22 years earlier. These two families then settled their differences and swore to be brothers in arms, fighting si
Studio 26 - I chose this as my final image because, although I love the one of "the nose", I think this one is more of a chiaroscuro effect. This was a fun assignment, and challenging to get the lighting right!
12 months for dogs - those who have followed Buzz might remember that he took up meditation in 2013. As you can see, he has developed a strong relationship with his Doga and practices relaxation techniques regularly.