View allAll Photos Tagged Difficulty
Isolation in ultra remote Black River Valley in Mongolia's Altai Mountains.
I was in an expedition in which we were the first ever foreigners to enter this valley close to the Chinese border with Mongolia. Nomadic elders told us we were the first outsiders they had ever seen in the area due to its remoteness and difficulty in accessing.
View from Mt Difficulty Vineyard in Bannockburn where we are having lunch. April 27, 2016 Central Otago in the South Island of New Zealand.
The Cellar Door at Mt Difficulty Wines is known as much for its dramatic views of rugged rock and thyme landscapes as it is for its stylish wine and food.
The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.
For More Info: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.html
Puotila Metro station a few weeks ago. There was some sort of techincal difficulty and the train got stuck in between stations and had to be evacuated. I was not in the train but by sheer luck I happened to stumble on to the site with the camera.
I already had photographed Puotila Metro station previously but the children on the foreground just forced me to pick this one instead. I may process the original shots some day but I am afraid the day scene just can not compete with this.
I messed up with the camera settings once again and I got this shot as jpg. To me it is painfully visible but I wonder if it is so for anyone else :-)
Previous image in the series
www.flickr.com/photos/naggobot/10440361204/
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Three exposures shot at ISO3200 (.jpg),15 mm, -3, -1, +1 EV around 1/30s, f/5.6.
Processed with Luminance HDR 2.0.2 (prof6) and tonemapped with Mantiuk06 contrast equalization.
Post processing with Gimp and G'Mic (Dream smoothing, bg lights darkened, curve adjusted)
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This photo is Creative Commons licensed so you can distribute it freely and you may use it for any non-commercial purpose. CC license also means that you may not use, distribute, abuse or steal this image under any such license that you pay of, namely you may not use or distribute this image under Finnish Copyright Groups Digilupa bit.ly/ozwGtt or corresponding license.
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Five months ago, Bill was in good spirits, could joke about his cancer, was happy to have me take his picture.
Two months ago, he had difficulty walking unassisted, spent at least half the day sleeping, spent most of our lunch together talking obliquely about his personal relationship with god.
Yesterday morning, he was dead.
On instagram I was...I focused on the mood at my mother's house. My stepfather had a large family, he was estranged from most of them until my mom came on the scene, she's the one who worked to repair those relationships. I know my mom takes a look at my instagram from time to time, so I was diplomatic, sparing in my personal feelings.
The first decade of their twenty year marriage was a delight. Bill was a real salt of the earth type, big laughs, loved cooking and good beer.
The last few years, he found too much comfort in alcohol, became small and petty, often petulant.
We suspect he was aware something was wrong with him for several months before his official diagnosis. That he was in denial about what the pain was trying to tell him. Instead, more drinking.
And so the 9 months he lived and died with his cancer were difficult. It did not make him his best self.
I wrestle with that as I write remembrances of him, as I speak about him to others. I have to give adjustments to their expectations.
In looking back, I will say, every photo I ever took of him was one where he was laughing, happy, full of life. Perhaps that's all that needs remembering.
I had difficulty IDing this Sparrow and it turns out I was wrong with my initial impression. Thanks to Dave (birding4ever), I think I now have the correct ID. Flickr contacts are the best!!!
White-crowned Sparrow - immature
Zonotrichia leucophrys
Member of the Nature’s Spirit
Good Stewards of Nature
© 2014 Patricia Ware - All Rights Reserved
“There is a saying, “Your own experience need to be treated as knowledge.”
For example if you had gone through some sort of hardships or difficulties in life, you should treat people nicely, instead of feeling, “I had a very difficult time, so I should make life of others difficult too.”
From the view of Bodhisattva or Bodhicitta practice, you should not feel or act like this.
Your experience should be treated as a knowledge, and this knowledge should really make you a more compassionate, more loving and kinder person”
(His Holiness Jigme Pema Wangchen, the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa)
This pillar stands in a temple room of the ancient palace in Leh, the capital of Ladakh in the Himalayan hills, which was modeled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa (Tibet) and is the highest building in the world of his own times.
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One of the more used symbols in our culture is the one of the black and dark tunnel, with a light at the end. The tunnel means the problems, the difficulties that surround to us. What shut in us and and what we cannot win against. The tunnel can be more or less long, and it can be more or less heavy to us to cross it. It is our punishment, the moment to make amend for our sins by means of the suffering. And there, at the end of the way, it is the light, like a distant light that enlarges little by little as we approached. It is the lantern, the guide, the hope that calls to us and it gives breath us. The heat as opposed to the cold.
All we needed a light at the end of the tunnel. Unless it, it would not have sense to live…
[Photo of a tunnel of the train station of Atocha (MADRID). Taken in October 2006. Adjustments of light and color made with Photoshop]
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Uno de los símbolos más utilizados en nuestra cultura es la del túnel negro y oscuro, con una luz al final. El túnel significa los problemas, las dificultades que nos rodean. Lo que nos encierra y contra lo que no podemos vencer. El túnel puede ser más o menos largo, se nos puede hacer más o menos pesado atravesarlo. Es nuestro castigo, el momento de expiar nuestros pecados mediante el sufrimiento. Y allí, al final del camino, está la luz, como un lejano faro que se agranda poco a poco a medida que nos acercamos. Es la linterna, la guía, la esperanza que nos llama y nos da aliento. El calor frente al frío.
Todos necesitamos una luz al final del túnel. Si no, no tendría sentido vivir…
[Foto de un túnel de la estación de trenes de Atocha (MADRID). Tomada en octubre del 2006. Retoques de luz y color, con Photoshop]
Young Adults In Transition To College & Work
We often think of young adults as ready to launch easily into college, career and dynamic adult social scenes. Yet this transition from a supportive and protective home or school environment to independent living is a bridge to adulthood that many young adults find fraught with great difficulty, confusion and profound loneliness. Older teens and young adults in their twenties are often not adapting well to work place environments and find they do not possess the necessary interpersonal skills to succeed in adult and work relationships. Additionally, economic pressures are more extreme than ever and they often have unrealistic hopes of independence and financial self-direction. They feel thrown into a world without a real understanding of how to survive or succeed in it. Much is written about this "quarter life crisis." Young adults need to find a more realistic view for their own lives. They need help as they face the hard realities that they haven't accomplished certain necessary adult tasks and milestones of young adult success. These tasks include finding a college or career, mastering public transportation, navigating agreements with financial sponsors and parents, establishing adult roles in the home, dorm or apartment, managing a grocery budget, cooking, healthy living, multi-tasking, delayed gratification, or allotting appropriate time to significant priorities. Unexpected difficulties can derail even the most successful young adult or college student. Parents and their young adult sons and daughters who were once in alignment when planning the launch to college or independent living are often faced with the pain of unmatched expectations, disorganized time-lines, and resentful conversations. Young adult lives and good relationships can quickly turn upside down. Young adults in transition are students between high school and college, post-college, or returning home from boarding schools, gap-years, or military service. They seek to set new goals and define new directions for their future. These normal, yet rapid young adult changes can be especially tough on parents. Parents often need guidance and coaching as they redefine their new roles as parents to adult children. Young adults need adult wisdom and strong guidance, but in their need to differentiate, they often respond negatively to parental support. Coaching can change that dynamic by producing skill building and management practices that can benefit both the student and their parents.
What Do Young Adult Coaches Do? Encourage you to express yourself and your personal goals Advocate for you with your parents Establish appropriate areas of independence Navigate personal financial arrangements with sponsors & parents Teach time management
Help you devise a workable daily schedule Listen and learn from your ideas and dreams- take you seriously! Assign homework and tasks that move you towards your goals
Make necessary connections to adult mentors and guides Help you accomplish/produce results more quickly than you imagined Assist with applications to college and internships
Questions Young Adults & Parents Frequently Ask: What Is Young Adult Coaching?
With your young adult coach you will identity the actions and thoughts and words that best support and move you towards your goals. Often young adults create goals and then are challenged by staying aligned with them. Our coaches will help you develop the action plan and steps towards living a life that keeps you true to yourself and more accountable in your relationships.You may be facing a more conventional transition, such as moving away to college or starting a new job, or the unique challenges of beginning college as a student who has experienced physical, emotional, or mental health problems. Learning disorders or family crises may add additional stresses and young adults desire coaching support to be ready and able to meet these demands. Coaching can empower you and help you launch yourself with confidence and skill. How Does Coaching Differ From Counseling?
Coaching is not the same as therapy. It is a more immediate and directive process. Coaching involves action, action that meets goals. Although our coaches are credentialed therapists, their additional training in coaching allows them to better support you in present and future focus, whereas therapy often focuses on current emotional issues, and at times the past. Coaching is both in-person and in-the-moment by phone, text, and email; supporting you no matter where you are located and when you need it. Customized Coaching Options: Individualized Coaching Packages support you in academic skill building, as well as vocational and personal goals. Life skill development includes competency in money management, time and organizational management, and refining of executive thinking skills for greater success. Parent and Family Coaching to support your positive and personalized launch into adult life and your parent's adaptation to your new role as an adult Unique learning opportunities when in transition, such as internship programs, resume/portfolio building options, 5th or gap year choices, and more Accountability systems: ways to optimize the support & communication between young adults and their parents Supervised living and residential arrangements High School Diploma Completion
Top level tutors-current college and university level instructors to help you improve skills and provide learning support Each young adult transition plan is completely customized to your young adult and family needs.
Come in to this most difficulties place have good colors for the nice temperature , Soon from last autumn to now , i been come to here more then 10 time , this morning yes ~~~i just can say thank you so mouch .
花一整個冬天的時間,不斷的研究氣象與五分的地勢與風向,上山不下十次,終於可以大聲說一句 "我征服五分山了" 謝謝老莫,老周和小S的相伴,相信我一定出景的誓言哈哈ㄚ我們好幸運,
PS: 這是35mm定焦刷黑卡喔~~
Finishing off this photo via my Laptop. Desktop having some difficulties. A second shot processed from this Red Rock Park in Las Vegas NV ( Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, Las Vegas, Nevada ). Hard to believe, there really are no pretty (man/woman made) lights in this one. For Vegas, who would have thought of such beauty without lights installed (LOL)! Was a great time climbing and exploring these rocks for a couple of hours, so I will have various vantages of the lines, colors, and textures of these glorious formations as time goes along.
I was not happy with the original sky from this shot (See "Red Rock" below for the original sky), so this is a sky from the Healdsburg Ca. area instead. I liked the contrast between a classic blue sky with Cumulus clouds tossed in....against the rich red of the rocks!
All photos on this site belongs solely to Mark Shepley ( © www.MarkShepley.com ) Images may not be copied, downloaded, or used in any way without the expressed, written permission of the photographer.
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Thank You for viewing. High quality prints of this piece are available. Just drop me a line a02toyota @ yahoo.com This shot was cropped @ a 11"X14" aspect ratio. Print sizes offered: 8"X8", 8"X10", 11"X14",8"X12", 12"X12", 12"X18", 16"X20", 20"X30"...just let me know your needs. Your high quality print will not contain my signature (or watermark:) on the finished work, just contact info on the back side.
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The alpine marmot (Marmota marmota) is a large ground-dwelling squirrel, from the genus of marmots. It is found in high numbers in mountainous areas of central and southern Europe, at heights between 800 and 3,200 m (2,600–10,500 ft) in the Alps, Carpathians, Tatras and Northern Apennines. In 1948 they were reintroduced with success in the Pyrenees, where the alpine marmot had disappeared at end of the Pleistocene epoch.
The alpine marmot originates as an animal of Pleistocene cold steppe, exquisitely adapted to this ice-age climate. As such, alpine marmots are excellent diggers, able to penetrate soil that even a pickaxe would have difficulty with, and spend up to nine months per year in hibernation.
Since the disappearance of the Pleistocene cold steppe, the alpine marmot persists in the high altitude alpine meadow. During the colonization of Alpine habitat, the alpine marmot has lost most of its genetic diversity through a bottleneck effect. It could not rebuild its genetic diversity ever since, as its lifestyle adapted to the Ice Age climate slowed its rate of genomic evolution. The alpine marmot is indeed one of the least genetically diverse wild-living animals
An adult alpine marmot is between 43 and 73 cm (17–29 in) in head-and-body length and the tail measures from 13 to 20 cm (5–8 in). The body mass ranges from 1.9 to 8 kg (4.2–17.6 lb), with the animals being significantly lighter in the spring (just after hibernation) than in the autumn (just before hibernation). The alpine marmot is sometimes considered the heaviest squirrel species, although some other marmot species have a similar weight range, making it unclear exactly which is the largest. Its coat is a mixture of blonde, reddish and dark gray fur. While most of the alpine marmot's fingers have claws, its thumbs have nails.
As its name suggests, the alpine marmot ranges throughout the European Alps, ranging through alpine areas of France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia and Austria. They have also been introduced elsewhere with sub-populations in the Pyrenees, France's Massif Central, Jura, Vosges, Black Forest, Apennine Mountains, and the Romanian Carpathians. The Tatra marmot (Marmota marmota latirostris Kratochvíl, 1961) represents an endemic subspecies of Alpine marmot that originated during the Quaternary period. Tatra marmots inhabit Tatry Mountains and Nízke Tatry Mountains. Marmots are abundant in their core population; in the Romanian Carpathians, for example, the population is estimated at 1,500 individuals. Alpine marmots prefer alpine meadows and high-altitude pastures, where colonies live in deep burrow systems situated in alluvial soil or rocky areas.
Marmots may be seen "sun bathing", but actually this is often on a flat rock and it is believed they are actually cooling and possibly this is a strategy to deal with parasites. Marmots are temperature sensitive and an increase in temperature can cause habitat loss for the species as a whole.
Alpine marmots eat plants such as grasses and herbs, as well as grain, insects, spiders and worms. They prefer young and tender plants over any other kind, and hold food in their forepaws while eating. They mainly emerge from their burrows to engage in feeding during the morning and afternoon, as they are not well suited to heat, which may result in them not feeding at all on very warm days. When the weather is suitable, they will consume large amounts of food in order to create a layer of fat on their body, enabling them to survive their long hibernation period.
When creating a burrow, they use both their forepaws and hind feet to assist in the work—the forepaws scrape away the soil, which is then pushed out of the way by the hind feet. If there are any stones in the way, the alpine marmot will remove them with its teeth provided that the stones aren't too large. "Living areas" are created at the end of a burrow, and are often lined with dried hay, grass and plant stems. Any other burrow tunnels that go nowhere are used as toilet areas. Once burrows have been completed, they only host one family, but are often enlarged by the next generation, sometimes creating very complex burrows over time. Each alpine marmot will live in a group that consists of several burrows, and which has a dominant breeding pair. Alpine marmots are very defensive against intruders, and will warn them off using intimidating behavior, such as beating of the tail and chattering of the teeth, and by marking their territory with their scent. One can often see an alpine marmot "standing" while they keep a look-out for potential predators or other dangers. Warnings are given, by emitting a series of loud whistles, after which members of the colony may be seen running for cover.
An alpine marmot at the end of summer. Note the fattened belly.
The mating season for alpine marmots occurs in the spring, right after their hibernation period comes to a close, which gives their offspring the highest possible chance of storing enough fat to survive the coming winter. Alpine marmots are able to breed once they reach an age of two years. Dominant females tend to suppress reproduction of subordinates by being antagonistic towards them while they are pregnant which causes stress and kills the young. Once the female is pregnant, she will take bedding materials (such as grass) into the burrow for when she gives birth after a gestation period of 33–34 days. Each litter consists of between one and seven babies, though this number is usually three. The babies are born blind and will grow dark fur within several days. The weaning period takes a further forty days, during which time the mother will leave the young in the burrow while she searches for food. After this period, the offspring will come out of the burrow and search for solid food themselves. Their fur becomes the same color as adult alpine marmots by the end of the summer, and after two years they will have reached their full size. If kept in captivity, alpine marmots can live up to 15–18 years.
As the summer begins to end, alpine marmots will gather old stems in their burrows in order to serve as bedding for their impending hibernation, which can start as early as October. They seal the burrow with a combination of earth and their own faeces. Once winter arrives, alpine marmots will huddle next to each other and begin hibernation, a process which lowers their heart rate to five beats per minute and breathing to 1–3 breaths per minute. During hibernation their stored fat supplies are used slowly, which usually allows them to survive the winter. Their body temperature will drop to almost the same as the air around them, although their heart and breathing rates will speed up if the environment approaches freezing point. Some alpine marmots will starve to death due to their layers of fat running out; this is most likely to happen in younger individuals.
For more information, please visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_marmot
Difficulty 9/10. It is a fast flying bug never stops moving even when on the grass. The bug is a bit larger than a regular small wasp.
Alive bug in nature, super macro 5X, f11, MFocus. I don't shoot macro of dead or frozen bugs in studio.
This MOC started as a project to use Lego part 9767, the Lego TC Logo controller's Apple II interface card. It's probably the rarest part I own, and certainly not one I'd ever seen used in a MOC before. (Well, actually, I've never even seen another one at all.)
I finally decided go for irony, and make the MOC about the impossibility of using the part in a MOC. The System-compatible minifigures have plugged the card into a faithful Lego replica of the original Apple II hardware it would have rested in, are testing it with a System-built voltmeter, and are bewildered that everything is not working together like it always does when building with Lego products.
This also afforded the opportunity to use another very-seldomly-used element, the minifigure speech bubbles from set 81087.
What a mess Flickr was the night before last! I had difficulty adding titles to my uploaded images, comments didn't save and, after I had added a description to each of the 20 photos, the descriptions all disappeared. When I opened Flickr next morning, there was still no sign of them. Then, suddenly, they re-appeared. I also discovered that all the hundreds of photos from this trip that I added to the map are no longer on the map!!! Someone on the Help Forum told someone else to refresh a page and the map will appear again - and it works. Now, I can't add photos to albums - it looks like they are added, but when I check the album, some of yesterda's photos had not appeared. Suddenly, now appeared. Also, my descriptions appeared in duplicate! Today, 13 May 2019, everything I try to do on Flickr takes a long time to do.
My photos taken at the National Butterfly Centre, Mission, South Texas, have now come to an end, so you can sigh a huge sigh of relief : ) Today I added 22 photos taken at another place that we called in at later in the afternoon, the Valley Nature Centre, in Weslaco. Unfortunately, we only had an hour there before closing time, but how glad we were that we found this place. The highlight there was watching 25 Yellow-crowned Night-Herons coming in to roost for the night in the trees, right where we were standing! What a great sight this was, and we were lucky enough to have a good, close view of these gorgeous birds, though in very poor light. We also saw some Purple Martins and their circular, hanging nesting "gourds".
On Day 6 of our birding holiday in South Texas, 24 March 2019, we left our hotel in Kingsville, South Texas, and started our drive to Mission, where we would be staying at La Quinta Inn & Suites for three nights. On the first stretch of our drive, we were lucky enough to see several bird species, including a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Hooded Oriole, Red-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Pyrrhuloxia male (looks similar to a Cardinal) and a spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. This stretch is called Hawk Alley.
We had a long drive further south towards Mission, with only a couple of drive-by photos taken en route (of a strangely shaped building that turned out to be a huge, deserted seed storage building). Eventually, we reached our next planned stop, the National Butterfly Centre. This was a great place, my favourite part of it being the bird feeding station, where we saw all sorts of species and reasonably close. Despite the name of the place, we only saw a few butterflies while we were there. May have been the weather or, more likely, the fact that I was having so much fun at the bird feeding station. We also got to see Spike, a giant African Spurred Tortoise. All the nature/wildlife parks that we visited in South Texas had beautiful visitor centres and usually bird feeding stations. And there are so many of these parks - so impressive!
Tomorrow, I will be able to start sorting and editing images taken on Day 7 of our 13-day trip!
Hindmarsh Island.
Our access to Hindmarsh Island from Goolwa is via the bridge which opened in 2001. The bridge is 319 metres long and 19 metres high. Hindmarsh Island leads to the Murray River Mouth beside Mundoo Island and the start of the Coorong. It is 15 kms long and about 6 kms wide and roughly one third of the island is now part of the Coorong National Park. In 1990 the SA government passed an act of parliament allowing the developers to construct a bridge so that the developers could create a marina and housing development on the island. But the SA government accepted legal liability for the financing of the bridge. The bridge became one of the great fiascos and controversies in South Australian history. Some members of the Ngarrindjeri people objected to the proposed bridge in 1994 on the basis of the water channel being part of “secret women’s business” and it being a sacred site. The controversy ended in a Royal Commission and the decision that “secret women’s business” was a fabrication. The Ngarrindjeri group then took their case to the Supreme Court in Canberra which doubted that “secret women’s business” was a fabrication but did not endorse it. The Keating federal government then banned construction of the bridge because of this Supreme Court finding. A few years later the Howard Federal government legislated for the bridge to be constructed. The controversy became a conflict point with much conflict and many competing interests. It involved state and federal governments, locals and outsiders, white and non-white Australians, men and feminists, developers and anti-development people, lawyers for and against it, anthropologists for and against it and much secrecy about the significance or otherwise of the bridge site. This conflict point mainly had direct impacts on the local people – the town of Goolwa was divided over the issue as were the inhabitants of Hindmarsh Island, the Ngarrindjeri women were divided as some opposed the concept of “secret women’s business” and others said it was nonsense. The main people to gain were the developers who had eventual success with their marina and housing estate. The “outsiders” including professors, archaeologists, anthropologists, politicians, bankers and lawyers all made gains – in monetary, publicity or humanitarian rights terms. Their moments of glory seldom acknowledged the difficulties the whole controversy had caused for the Ngarrindjeri people. Ngarrindjeri people have accepted the outcome of the conflict point and whilst they still maintain that the area is a sacred site for Ngarrindjeri women and their “secret business” they allow their people to use the bridge to gain access to their cultural lands.
Captain Charles Sturt on his epic voyage down and up the Murray River in 1829/30 named Point McLeay after one of his officers on their rowing boat and Point Sturt after himself both on the edges of Lake Alexandrina. The large island near the Murray Mouth was named later by Captain John Blenkinsop after the first SA Governor Sir John Hindmarsh. Captain Charles Sturt later became an early settler in Adelaide. After he resigned his commission with the British Military Service he was granted 5,000 acres in NSW in 1835 near what was to become Canberra much later. He purchased a further 1,950 acres in NSW at Mittagong. Two years later he purchased a further 1,000 acres near Sydney where he intended to make a new home. He then overlanded cattle from NSW to South Australia in 1838 to revive his fortunes. This did not work but he was feted in Adelaide as a hero and so he sold all his lands in NSW to accept a government appointment as Commissioner of Lands in South Australia in 1839. He was soon after demoted by the Governor to Assistant Registrar. In 1844 Sturt led an expedition to the Barrier Range area of NSW and he went further trying to cross what was named Sturts Stony Desert. When he returned in 1846 he was made Colonial Treasurer which was a much higher paying position. He returned to England in 1847 to receive the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society in London for his inland explorations. Sturt returned to SA and lived on his 380 acre farm and orchard on the Port River near Grange Beach. This was where he had built Grange cottage in 1841. He returned to England permanently in 1853 so his children could be educated in England. The Grange was sold by members of his family in 1877 to finalise his estate as Sturt had died in 1869.
Early pastoralists recognised the value of Hindmarsh Island as a well-watered spot surrounded by water supplies so Dr John Rankine of Strathalbyn took out occupational licenses on most of Hindmarsh Island in 1844. He had a boat as a ferry at Clayton to cart his sheep back and forth across the channel. But in 1851 the Hundred of Alexandrina was declared and surveyed into 80 acre sections for sale to farmers. The land was quickly taken up when made available for sale in 1854 and the wealthy of Strathalbyn including the Rankins, Gollans and Maidment family bought some land. One of the early farming settlers was Charles Price. Price and his family arrived in Melbourne in 1853 when he was aged 48 but he decided he did not like Melbourne and he voyaged to Port Adelaide. From here he took up land on Hindmarsh Island in 1853 against the wishes of Dr Rankine and he was the first to import cattle from his home county Hereford in 1866. He was also the first to import Shropshire sheep from the neighbouring county of Hereford earlier in 1855. He ran his Hereford cattle stud on the island from 1867 till his death in 1886 and during this time he sold prized stud cattle to George Fife Angas and John Riddoch. His 983 acres were sold at £5 per acre and his son moved on to Eyre Peninsula. Charles Price was buried in the Island Cemetery. Not far away is the Hindmarsh Island School which started in 1880 and closed in 1954. The building is now a part time café of sorts. Next to that is the island butter factory with grand buttresses. It operated from the late 19th century until 1936. Not far away is the Murray Mouth. There was also a Wesleyan Methodist Church on the island which opened in 1857 and closed around 1887 and was then demolished.
The local residents erected a stone cairn memorial to Captain Charles Sturt on the island in 1930 one hundred years after his discovery of the island in 1830. It is also a memorial to the other early explorer of these parts Captain Collet Barker (1784-1831) who explored here in 1831 just after Sturt. As a military officer he had served in India and explored areas in WA including King George Sound where Albany is located. Here he was in charge of the settlement at Raffles Bay with a group of convicts to control. His name was later used for the inland settlement of Mt Barker north of Albany. He was recalled to Sydney with the convicts in 1831 and Raffles Bay settlement was closed down. The Governor of NSW told him to explore the Fleurieu Peninsula region on his way back to Sydney. In SA he climbed Mt Lofty which had been named by Captain Matthew Flinders in 1802. Barker named the Sturt River which he discovered. Collet Barker then explored areas from Cape Jervis to the mouth of the Murray River. Here he was speared by local Aboriginal people. There is a fine memorial to Collet Barker in St. James Anglican Church in Sydney from his fellow officers. Barker’s journals were especially important as they convinced Sturt that the mountain he had seen from Lake Alexandrina was not Mt Lofty but another mountain. Sturt altered his maps and charts and named the second mountain after Collet Barker. This was done by Sturt in 1834.
Icelandic turf houses (Icelandic: torfbæir) were the product of a difficult climate, offering superior insulation compared to buildings solely made of wood or stone, and the relative difficulty in . . . All Information’s, Saga and Camera settings you will find on: www.patreon.com/RafnSig
Candid street shot, Wellington Somerset, UK.
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Difficulties learning to use new technologies: A significant majority of older adults say they need assistance when it comes to using new digital devices. Just 18% would feel comfortable learning to use a new technology device such as a smartphone or tablet on their own, while 77% indicate they would need someone to help walk them through the process. And among seniors who go online but do not currently use social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, 56% would need assistance if they wanted to use these sites to connect with friends or family members.
Ok some of these statistics look grim, but don't forget we (50 - 70 year olds) started the digital revolution,
Bill Gates is 60 this year, Steve Jobs died in 2011 at the age of 56. I started programming computers back in 1973.
Remember all of this technology is just electronics, the devices are just tools; no different to a hammer of hair dryer. Once you have mastered the controls they are basically simple.
And remember:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Sir Arthur C. Clarke)
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This is my review of the Transformer Autobot Inferno MOC aka Firechief by Alex Jones, build with Webrick parts.
Total points = [91/100] 👌
I assume most of you will recognize this Generation 1 ("G1") Transformer Inferno, but especially people like me who grew up in the 1980s 😊.
You would think this could never work, so much details and moving parts in a relatively small build, but Alex has done it! This is where you see his background as a toy designer and being a Lego Master Germany winner.
If there would be something to complain, it would be the weak mid-section and some of the older and more expensive parts. Still, it holds up well in standing position and the ladder helps to balance the MOC, and but for many of the older parts, you can find a cheaper Lego alternatives.
Review:
Build [17/20]
Detail [19/20]
Display [20/20]
Instructions [18/20]
Parts [17/20]
Details:
Parts: 495
Difficulty: medium
Building time: 2.0-2.5 hours
Instructions: EUR 7.99 // USD 8.20
About Webrick:
Webrick is offering a bricks service for MOC builders. You upload the part list via their website and you instantly get the % of available bricks and their cost.
In the case of the Firechief, 16 parts were not available. I looked them up on BL or my own inventory. This makes a +96% hit rate on part list.
They mainly use GoBricks parts. The pieces are really good, super color consistency and only few scratches.
I hope you like the review and let me know what you think!
Still having difficulty in scheduling visits and comments during the normal waking hours. I hope this will soon resolve. Best seen in LARGE format.
A.I. Response:
Opening a silverfish petting zoo would present unique difficulties related to public perception and appeal, biosecurity and animal containment, animal welfare and exhibit management, and potential health concerns.
Difficulties and Solutions
DifficultyDescription / How to Overcome
Public Perception and Appeal
Silverfish are widely considered household pests that destroy property (books, clothing, etc.), making a "petting zoo" an inherently unappealing and potentially off-putting concept for the average person.
Rebranding and Education: Position the attraction as an "Invertebrate Discovery Center" or "Mini-beast Metropolis" focused on education about their ecological role. Emphasize their ancient lineage and unique biology rather than the "petting" aspect to manage expectations and foster appreciation.
Animal Containment and Management
Silverfish are small, fast, and thrive in dark, humid, hard-to-reach places. This makes them extremely difficult to contain within a designated exhibit, especially in a hands-on environment. An escape could lead to a large-scale infestation of the facility and potentially surrounding buildings.
Escape-Proof Habitats: Use highly secure, purpose-built, escape-proof enclosures, potentially with fine mesh covers and sealed entry points. Employ integrated pest management (IPM) strategies to monitor for escapes without harming the exhibit population. Ensure strict operational protocols for handling and guest interaction, potentially limiting direct "petting" to highly supervised viewings or none at all.
Health and Hygiene Risks
Silverfish droppings and shed skins can trigger allergies and asthma in sensitive individuals. There is also the general biosecurity concern of visitors transferring potential pathogens, though silverfish themselves do not transmit diseases harmful to humans.
Strict Hygiene Protocols: Implement mandatory hand-washing stations with running water and soap before and after interacting with any exhibit area. Provide clear signage about potential allergy risks. Ensure excellent ventilation in exhibit areas to minimize airborne allergens from shed scales.
Animal Welfare and Visitor Interaction
Silverfish are delicate, sensitive to light, and easily stressed. They are not naturally "interactive" or robust enough for typical petting zoo handling, which could lead to frequent injury or death, a major animal welfare concern.
Hands-Off Observation Focus: Shift the focus from "petting" to close observation. Use magnifying glasses and macro-photography displays to showcase their intricate details. If interaction is necessary, use specialized, robust tools or supervised "touch boxes" that allow interaction with the environment rather than direct handling.
Logistics and Sourcing
Large numbers of silverfish would be needed to sustain the exhibit and allow for losses. Culturing and maintaining such a large, genetically diverse, and healthy population could be logistically challenging.
Dedicated Breeding Program: Establish an in-house breeding facility to ensure a sustainable supply of animals, control genetics, and maintain animal health. This would require specific conditions (humidity, diet) to thrive.
Legal and Regulatory Hurdles
While not typically subject to the same regulations as exotic vertebrates, commercial animal establishments have health, safety, and operational regulations to follow.
Consult with Authorities: Engage with local and national animal welfare and public health authorities early in the planning phase to ensure all regulations regarding captive invertebrates, public health, and facility safety are met.
AI responses may include mistakes
Explored number 21 on 16 August 2018 - thank you so much everyone ! Not sure how it got there !
Louco in Portuguese means "crazy". Very like me recently with all the problems on my computer ! I really love this really old Fado music. So soulful. Perhaps you've experienced some sort of 'madness' yourselves.... anyone who hasn't is fortunate.
Love is a kind of madness, some say, thank goodness we have it though ! These roses are the same ones I posted a couple of shots back and they have bloomed magnificently - so pale and delicate.
Edited in Topaz Studio, with enormous difficulty, as a recent update on my usual computer disabled it. This was created on a very, very slow computer which somehow manages to still support Topaz software.
Thank you for your comments and faves .. I appreciate them all.
designer : shuki kato
folder : Mohamed Tamer
book : tantedian magazine 151
difficulty level : intermediate high
Model type : dinosaurs
paper ratio : square
Tilly Losch,” circa 1935, by Joseph Cornell, Construction, 10 x 9¤ x 2⁄ inches ©The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York City
May 17, 2005
A Critic Takes On the Logic of Female Orgasm
By DINITIA SMITH
Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction.
But the Darwinian logic behind the female orgasm has remained elusive. Women can have sexual intercourse and even become pregnant - doing their part for the perpetuation of the species - without experiencing orgasm. So what is its evolutionary purpose?
Over the last four decades, scientists have come up with a variety of theories, arguing, for example, that orgasm encourages women to have sex and, therefore, reproduce or that it leads women to favor stronger and healthier men, maximizing their offspring's chances of survival.
But in a new book, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University, takes on 20 leading theories and finds them wanting. The female orgasm, she argues in the book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," has no evolutionary function at all.
Rather, Dr. Lloyd says the most convincing theory is one put forward in 1979 by Dr. Donald Symons, an anthropologist.
That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.
In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Dr. Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined.
In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."
Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Dr. Lloyd pointed out.
While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.
The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."
Dr. Lloyd said scientists had insisted on finding an evolutionary function for female orgasm in humans either because they were invested in believing that women's sexuality must exactly parallel that of men or because they were convinced that all traits had to be "adaptations," that is, serve an evolutionary function.
Theories of female orgasm are significant, she added, because "men's expectations about women's normal sexuality, about how women should perform, are built around these notions."
"And men are the ones who reflect back immediately to the woman whether or not she is adequate sexually," Dr. Lloyd continued.
Central to her thesis is the fact that women do not routinely have orgasms during sexual intercourse.
She analyzed 32 studies, conducted over 74 years, of the frequency of female orgasm during intercourse.
When intercourse was "unassisted," that is not accompanied by stimulation of the clitoris, just a quarter of the women studied experienced orgasms often or very often during intercourse, she found.
Five to 10 percent never had orgasms. Yet many of the women became pregnant.
Dr. Lloyd's figures are lower than those of Dr. Alfred A. Kinsey, who in his 1953 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" found that 39 to 47 percent of women reported that they always, or almost always, had orgasm during intercourse.
But Kinsey, Dr. Lloyd said, included orgasms assisted by clitoral stimulation.
Dr. Lloyd said there was no doubt in her mind that the clitoris was an evolutionary adaptation, selected to create excitement, leading to sexual intercourse and then reproduction.
But, "without a link to fertility or reproduction," Dr. Lloyd said, "orgasm cannot be an adaptation."
Not everyone agrees. For example, Dr. John Alcock, a professor of biology at Arizona State University, criticized an earlier version of Dr. Lloyd's thesis, discussed in in a 1987 article by Stephen Jay Gould in the magazine Natural History.
In a phone interview, Dr. Alcock said that he had not read her new book, but that he still maintained the hypothesis that the fact that "orgasm doesn't occur every time a woman has intercourse is not evidence that it's not adaptive."
"I'm flabbergasted by the notion that orgasm has to happen every time to be adaptive," he added.
Dr. Alcock theorized that a woman might use orgasm "as an unconscious way to evaluate the quality of the male," his genetic fitness and, thus, how suitable he would be as a father for her offspring.
"Under those circumstances, you wouldn't expect her to have it every time," Dr. Alcock said.
Among the theories that Dr. Lloyd addresses in her book is one proposed in 1993, by Dr. R. Robin Baker and Dr. Mark A. Bellis, at Manchester University in England. In two papers published in the journal Animal Behaviour, they argued that female orgasm was a way of manipulating the retention of sperm by creating suction in the uterus. When a woman has an orgasm from one minute before the man ejaculates to 45 minutes after, she retains more sperm, they said.
Furthermore, they asserted, when a woman has intercourse with a man other than her regular sexual partner, she is more likely to have an orgasm in that prime time span and thus retain more sperm, presumably making conception more likely. They postulated that women seek other partners in an effort to obtain better genes for their offspring.
Dr. Lloyd said the Baker-Bellis argument was "fatally flawed because their sample size is too small."
"In one table," she said, "73 percent of the data is based on the experience of one person."
In an e-mail message recently, Dr. Baker wrote that his and Dr. Bellis's manuscript had "received intense peer review appraisal" before publication. Statisticians were among the reviewers, he said, and they noted that some sample sizes were small, "but considered that none of these were fatal to our paper."
Dr. Lloyd said that studies called into question the logic of such theories. Research by Dr. Ludwig Wildt and his colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 1998, for example, found that in a healthy woman the uterus undergoes peristaltic contractions throughout the day in the absence of sexual intercourse or orgasm. This casts doubt, Dr. Lloyd argues, on the idea that the contractions of orgasm somehow affect sperm retention.
Another hypothesis, proposed in 1995 by Dr. Randy Thornhill, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and two colleagues, held that women were more likely to have orgasms during intercourse with men with symmetrical physical features. On the basis of earlier studies of physical attraction, Dr. Thornhill argued that symmetry might be an indicator of genetic fitness.
Dr. Lloyd, however, said those conclusions were not viable because "they only cover a minority of women, 45 percent, who say they sometimes do, and sometimes don't, have orgasm during intercourse."
"It excludes women on either end of the spectrum," she said. "The 25 percent who say they almost always have orgasm in intercourse and the 30 percent who say they rarely or never do. And that last 30 percent includes the 10 percent who say they never have orgasm under any circumstances."
In a phone interview, Dr. Thornhill said that he had not read Dr. Lloyd's book but the fact that not all women have orgasms during intercourse supports his theory.
"There will be patterns in orgasm with preferred and not preferred men," he said.
Dr. Lloyd also criticized work by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who studies primate behavior and female reproductive strategies.
Scientists have documented that orgasm occurs in some female primates; for other mammals, whether orgasm occurs remains an open question.
In the 1981 book "The Woman That Never Evolved" and in her other work, Dr. Hrdy argues that orgasm evolved in nonhuman primates as a way for the female to protect her offspring from the depredation of males.
She points out that langur monkeys have a high infant mortality rate, with 30 percent of deaths a result of babies' being killed by males who are not the fathers. Male langurs, she says, will not kill the babies of females they have mated with.
In macaques and chimpanzees, she said, females are conditioned by the pleasurable sensations of clitoral stimulation to keep copulating with multiple partners until they have an orgasm. Thus, males do not know which infants are theirs and which are not and do not attack them.
Dr. Hrdy also argues against the idea that female orgasm is an artifact of the early parallel development of male and female embryos.
"I'm convinced," she said, "that the selection of the clitoris is quite separate from that of the penis in males."
In critiquing Dr. Hrdy's view, Dr. Lloyd disputes the idea that longer periods of sexual intercourse lead to a higher incidence of orgasm, something that if it is true, may provide an evolutionary rationale for female orgasm.
But Dr. Hrdy said her work did not speak one way or another to the issue of female orgasm in humans. "My hypothesis is silent," she said.
One possibility, Dr. Hrdy said, is that orgasm in women may have been an adaptive trait in our prehuman ancestors.
"But we separated from our common primate ancestors about seven million years ago," she said.
"Perhaps the reason orgasm is so erratic is that it's phasing out," Dr. Hrdy said. "Our descendants on the starships may well wonder what all the fuss was about."
Western culture is suffused with images of women's sexuality, of women in the throes of orgasm during intercourse and seeming to reach heights of pleasure that are rare, if not impossible, for most women in everyday life.
"Accounts of our evolutionary past tell us how the various parts of our body should function," Dr. Lloyd said.
If women, she said, are told that it is "natural" to have orgasms every time they have intercourse and that orgasms will help make them pregnant, then they feel inadequate or inferior or abnormal when they do not achieve it.
"Getting the evolutionary story straight has potentially very large social and personal consequences for all women," Dr. Lloyd said. "And indirectly for men, as well."
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You’ve experienced and continue to encounter so much difficulty, decay, harm and pain in your experiences and carry the awful effects of this within your body, mind and spirit. And you are working so hard, at a pace and in a way that is appropriate for you, to keep growing through when all the extreme adversity tries to destroy you.
[image created on 3–3-2024]
____________________________
As a way to cope with circumstances beyond my control, survive and work to keep fighting for life I decided to try to take at least one photo (or more) each day. I call this “a photo (or more) a day.” Practicing this form of therapeutic photography helps me work to focus on the present moment, gives me something familiar and enjoyable to focus on as I use photography skills that have become like second-nature to me and being able to view the images I capture helps me recall what I was thinking, feeling and noticing at the moment when I created the photos. More of the photos from this series can be seen on my Instagram account
I may not always have the energy, time or capacity to share photos from this series—especially with the very challenging circumstances my family and I are experiencing—and will do my best to continue taking a photo (or more) a day even if I’m not able to share.
If you would like to support my work and my family, one way you can do so is by ordering my zines:
Many thanks for your support.
Apologies for the sudden stop in uploads. A broken laptop has resulted in a trip back home in order to pick up a borrowed laptop.
Except, I'm not home. Due to complications with the upward chain, we've been in the process of 'moving house' for a few weeks.
The temporary house however did produce this lovely little H reg Micra, looking very original and rust free. I've been told it rarely leaves that spot.
It's only a short story, but If you want to see photos of locomotives and railways in the sunshine don't read on ...
Well, I could tell you a romantic story, but I won't ... Because it was pretty hard to receive these keys and become a locomotive engineer ! I had to do a laser surgery on both eyes and succeeded many difficulties. The training and exams were tough and not all colleagues were collegial guys. In fact the professional Railway wasn't waiting for me with open arms as I expected - and still doesn't ! I'm just a replaceable worker who operates a machine and has to do his responsible duty all alone and copes with physically demanding working conditions. But if you are spared from a forced coexistence with annoying workmates, the solitude is also a benefit. Nevertheless operating a machine all alone gives you no human development possibilities ...
However, driving a locomotive and a train is a great feeling ! But it's not so cool how you think it is, before you really routinely experience it. Especially when you do it always and many times a day. So you have no perception of the landscape or surrounding details as you probably romantically imagine. But you are responsible for a lot of issues, when you are the only one in the forefront ! Your view is always focussed between the same quickly passing tracks, signals and poles, concentrated at the duties and devices in the cab and the stops at the stations. If you overrun a red signal, you will be suspended from the cab and job temporal or forever ...
So far so clear. When other people enjoy free time activities and meet friends, you are at work ! At weekends, at evenings, at holidays. And what about the wake-sleep cycle and potential sleeping problems, if you sometimes have to start work at night ? No comment, better don't ask ... Of course, like every other job the work of a locomotive engineer has advantages and disadvantages. But if we talk about the health risks of variable long workshifts the negatives definitely prevail and certainly also reduce your lifespan ! Anyway, the predictable automation of technical processes will kill this job within 30 years. So I belong to the last generation of this legendary profession and after all I have achieved what I was dreaming about:
The Railway determines and dominates my life ...
Timetable-Book, 07 / 11
Thanks to all the suggestions I received in several groups I was able to get a decent solution for the problem I had designing this. I've decided to go with transparent parts which will get a custom decal on top to get the effect of the grid-like shape. So, I was able to build a bit more, there's still plenty of difficulties ahead but I've made some nice progress. What you see in the render is 54 studs wide. This will be place on to a "wooden" deck which I estimate to be around 70 studs wide. Lengthwise, I have no idea where it's going to go but my first guess is around 100 studs. As the building isn't just a depot but served as a station as well (in the gold rush era) this doesn't seem to be to big.
View from Mt Difficulty Vineyard in Bannockburn where we are having lunch. April 27, 2016 Central Otago in the South Island of New Zealand.
The Cellar Door at Mt Difficulty Wines is known as much for its dramatic views of rugged rock and thyme landscapes as it is for its stylish wine and food.
The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.
For More Info: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.html
Rocket Stories / Magazin-Reihe
- Irving E. Cox, Jr. / Apprentice to the Lamp
- James E. Gunn / Killer
- Chester Cohen / Flower Girl
- Stanley Mullen / The Robot Moon
- Jerome Bixby and Algis Budrys / Underestimation
- Kirby Brooks / Technical Difficulty
- Noel Loomis / Day's Work
- Harry Harrison [as by Felix Boyd] / An Artist's Life
cover: Civllitti
Editor: Harry Harrison [as by Wade Kaempfert]
Space Publications, Inc. / USA 1953
Reprint: Comic-Club NK 2010
ex libris MTP
A couple weeks ago I posted on the difficulties of spotting Oophaga lehmanni in the wild, and its threatened status (www.facebook.com/paul.bertner/posts/1954323497983506). After deliberating for a week, while cooped up with the flu and a sprained finger, and rummaging online for records of O. lehmanni, I was struck not only by the overall dearth, but by the almost complete lack of 'in situ' images, with not a single one illustrating behaviour or a decent representation of the environment. For a critically threatened species, one whose risk of extinction is quite high, this to me represented a tremendous oversight. Though I'd already tried and failed to capture some behaviour shots on a short previous expedition, I decided to dedicate a week to the endeavour, if for no other reason than to have a record befitting such an elegant species.
Travelling to the same site as before, I settled in to photograph calling behaviours. Setting aside a week to get this rather modest shot was giving myself quite a lot of latitude I thought...I was wrong. Three days in and I had little to show for my efforts, resorting to shooting at 300mm + 1.4X TC, I was still struggling to surprise this elusive gem. Though I could hear the frogs calling, and could even see them doing so, creeping up on them and getting a respectable photo was proving an altogether different kind of a problem.
I tried remote shooting (however they rarely returned to the same perch, causing the framing to be off), I tried hides (though after waiting 2-3hrs in mosquito infested areas with the slightest movement causing the frogs to go diving back into root tangles proved frustrating to say the least). Nothing seemed to work, and I was beginning to despair.
This begged the question, "Why would a poisonous species which supposedly has no known predators be so timid?" The answer somewhat surprised me, "researchers". Apparently the frequent capture-release monitoring of the local populations has resulted in a rather poignant behavioural change. A species which would otherwise be fearlessly hopping the rainforest understory has had its buzzing call muted. It was a potent reminder of our influence on the natural world, whether it represents a kind of Schroedinger's cat problem, in which our very observation and monitoring of a species ultimately impacts its natural behaviours, or whether it's something more intrusive or sinister like manipulation for an aesthetic image or poaching, respectively.
We have to go further in I told the guide. And so we walked, and we walked and still the frogs fell silent at the sound of our approaching footfalls. 6 hours later, 2 of which we left the already weedy trail completely to bushwhack, and we came to a spot where we crept up upon a calling frog. It continued its buzzing call despite undoubtedly having already seen us. I made sure to shoot without flash and with a long lens to prevent any kind of potential habituation/aversion. Moments later a second male appeared from behind a leaf and they immediately began to wrestle. They flipped one another repeatedly, interspersed with calls. Rather evenly matched, this went on for almost 15 minutes. Finally the victor held his ground, whilst the vanquished retreated from the hallowed ground.
Upon reviewing the photos and videos, I felt privileged to have witnessed such a behaviour from a vanishing species. This is perhaps even truer than I'd originally thought, the two males despite their verisimilitude actually appear to be different species/sub-species. While one has all the characteristics befitting O. lehmanni, the other whose white fingertips, slightly broadened head and differing banding patterns indicates some degree of hybridization with the very closely related Oophaga histrionica. Perhaps extinction will not come in the form of habitat loss or extinction (though harbour no illusions that this undoubtedly plays its role), but through hybridization, and its absorption into a larger more robust population. To purists and hobbyists this would still represent a tragedy, though perhaps it's a gentler swan song, a muting of a call rather than its abrupt silencing.
Photos from the Cauca Valley, Colombia.
pbertner.wordpress.com/ethical-exif-ee/
---------------------
EE Legend
-Health injury/stress levels (scale 1-10-->☠️)
👣-Translocation
⏳-time in captivity
📷 -in situ
- Manipulated subject
🎨 -Use of cloning or extensive post processing
↺ -Image rotation
*Copyright © 2010 Lélia Valduga, all rights reserved.
*Reprodução proibida. © Todos os direitos reservados.
*Imagem protegida pela Lei do Direito Autoral Nº 9.610 de 19/02/1998.
As ruas nevadas de Londres - Inglaterra.
A maior nevasca dos últimos 18 anos parou Londres hoje02/02/2009 - 12h14, com escolas fechadas, cirurgias hospitalares reduzidas, estradas bloqueadas, aeroportos parados ou operando no mínimo, futebol suspenso e até o prefeito de Londres sendo obrigado a ir de bicicleta para o trabalho pelas dificuldades de tráfego.
As autoridades advertiram para as próximas horas de "condições meteorológicas severas" e pediram aos cidadãos que evitem usar as estradas se não for estritamente necessário.
A advertência meteorológica é para toda a Inglaterra, País de Gales e partes do leste da Escócia, já que a neve deve continuar até a tarde de amanhã.
A tempestade de neve vem acompanhada de baixas temperaturas, em torno de -5ºC, no inverno mais frio do Reino Unido nos últimos 14 anos.
O sistema ferroviário funcionou com muitos problemas e grandes atrasos, e as estradas se acumularam quilômetros de engarrafamentos, com centenas de caminhões presos na neve, enquanto os aeroportos que fecharam ou operaram com pouquíssimos voos.
Em Londres, todos os ônibus foram retirados do serviço, segundo o Transport for London, serviço de transporte da capital inglesa, devido ao "tempo adverso e às perigosas condições para a condução".
Para piorar, o metrô deve seguir com atraso até o fim do dia.
A maioria das linhas do metrô londrino tem estações externas, motivo pelo qual alguns trens não puderam seguir devido a trilhos congelados.
Fonte: viagem.uol.com.br
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The snowy streets of London - England.
The biggest blizzard of the last 18 years stopped hoje02/02/2009 London - 12.14, with schools closed, reduced hospital surgeries, blocked roads, airports stopped or operating at minimum, football and even suspended the mayor of London being forced to go by bike to work by the difficulties of traffic.
The authorities have warned for the next hour of "severe weather" and urged citizens to avoid using the roads is not strictly necessary.
The weather warning is for all England, Wales and parts of eastern Scotland, since the snow would continue until tomorrow afternoon.
The snow storm is accompanied by low temperatures around -5 ° C in the coldest winter the UK in the last 14 years.
The rail system has worked with many problems and long delays, and the roads have built miles of traffic jams, with hundreds of trucks stuck in the snow, as the airports closed or operated with very few flights.
In London, all buses were withdrawn from service, according to Transport for London, shuttle service from the English capital, due to "adverse weather and dangerous conditions for driving."
To make matters worse, the subway is delayed until after the end of the day.
Most of the subway stations outside London is, why some trains could not move due to frozen track.
One of Australia’s most elegant birds, the snowy-white Eastern Great Egret is often seen wading in a range of wetlands, from lakes, rivers and swamps to estuaries, saltmarsh and intertidal mudflats. They usually feed in shallow water, standing and waiting for fish, frogs, insects and other small aquatic creatures to appear before stabbing them with its long, yellow bill. They also walk slowly through the water, on the lookout for prey. Large fish are eaten with difficulty, and are often snatched from the bill of the egret by raptors.
I tried something different for a local photo competition. The theme was altered reality. The photos had to be digitally manipulated. Being a nature photographer I have difficulties with "altered reality" Would love to hear your take on them.
As if this Joshua tree didn't already have enough trouble, trying to exist in a crack between two huge rocks. But then something caused its trunk to snap
“Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.” - Rabindranath Tagore
My friend moved to a new, very old house in the country - Good luck!!!
With many thanks to NinianLif for the texture.
FREE texture from NinianLif
Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Scotland, the United Kingdom and the British Isles. The summit is 1,345 metres (4,413 ft) above sea level and is the highest land in any direction for 739 kilometres (459 miles). Ben Nevis stands at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Highland region of Lochaber, close to the town of Fort William.
The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 130,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Mountain Track from Glen Nevis. The 700-metre (2,300 ft) cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.
The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period is still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.
Ben Nevis is the Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic name Beinn Nibheis. Whilst Beinn is the common Scottish Gaelic word for 'mountain' the origin of Nibheis is unclear.
Nibheis may preserve an earlier Pictish form, *Nebestis or *Nebesta, involving the Celtic root *neb, meaning 'clouds' (compare: Welsh nef )., thus 'Cloudy Mountain'.
Nibheis may also have an origin with the words nèamh meaning 'heaven' (which is related to the modern Scottish Gaelic word neamh meaning 'bright, shining') and bathais meaning 'the top of a man's head'. Thus, Beinn Nibheis could derive from beinn nèamh-bhathais, "the mountain with its head in the clouds", or 'mountain of heaven'.
The Scottish Gaelic word neimh can be translated as 'malice', 'poison' or 'venom' giving 'venomous mountain', possibly describing the storms that envelop the summit.
As is common for many Scottish mountains, it is known both to locals and visitors as simply the Ben.
Ben Nevis forms a massif with its neighbours to the northeast, Càrn Mòr Dearg, to which it is linked by the Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête, Aonach Beag and Aonach Mòr. All four are Munros and among the eleven mountains in Scotland over 4,000 feet (1,200 m) (of which nine are currently listed as Munros).
Western flank of the Nevis massif; from Sgùrr Dhòmhnuill
The western and southern flanks of Ben Nevis rise 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) in about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) above the River Nevis flowing down Glen Nevis – the longest and steepest hill slope in Britain – with the result that the mountain presents an aspect of massive bulk on this side. To the north, by contrast, cliffs drop some 600 metres (2,000 ft) to Coire Leis
A descent of 200 metres (600') from this corrie leads to the Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut (known as the CIC Hut), a private mountain hut 680 metres (2,230 ft) above sea level, owned by the Scottish Mountaineering Club and used as a base for the many climbing routes on the mountain's north face. The hut is just above the confluence of Allt a' Mhuilinn and Allt Coire na Ciste.
In addition to the main 1,345-metre (4,413 ft) summit, Ben Nevis has two subsidiary "tops" listed in Munro's Tables, both of which are called Càrn Dearg ("red hill"). The higher of these, at 1,221 metres (4,006 ft), is to the northwest, and is often mistaken for Ben Nevis itself in views from the Fort William area. The other Càrn Dearg (1,020 m (3,350 ft)) juts out into Glen Nevis on the mountain's southwestern side. A lower hill, Meall an t-Suidhe (711 metres (2,333 ft)), is further west, forming a saddle with Ben Nevis which contains a small loch, Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe. The popular tourist path from Glen Nevis skirts the side of this hill before ascending Ben Nevis's broad western flank.
Ben Nevis is all that remains of a Devonian volcano that met a cataclysmic end in the Carboniferous period around 350 million years ago. Evidence near the summit shows light-coloured granite (which had cooled in subterranean chambers several kilometres; miles beneath the surface) lies among dark basaltic lavas (that form only on the surface). The two lying side by side is evidence the huge volcano collapsed in on itself creating an explosion comparable to Thera (2nd millennium BC) or Krakatoa (1883). The mountain is now all that remains of the imploded inner dome of the volcano. Its form has been extensively shaped by glaciation.
Research has shown igneous rock from the Devonian period (around 400 million years ago) intrudes into the surrounding metamorphic schists; the intrusions take the form of a series of concentric ring dikes. The innermost of these, known as the Inner Granite, constitutes the southern bulk of the mountain above Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, and also the neighbouring ridge of Càrn Mòr Dearg; Meall an t-Suidhe forms part of the Outer Granite, which is redder in colour. The summit dome itself, together with the steep northern cliffs, is composed of andesite and basaltic lavas.
Ben Nevis has a highland tundra climate (ET in the Köppen classification). Ben Nevis's elevation, maritime location and topography frequently lead to cool and cloudy weather conditions, which can pose a danger to ill-equipped walkers. According to the observations carried out at the summit observatory from 1883 to 1904, fog was present on the summit for almost 80% of the time between November and January, and 55% of the time in May and June. The average winter temperature was around −5 °C (23 °F), and the mean monthly temperature for the year was −0.5 °C (31.1 °F). In an average year the summit sees 261 gales, and receives 4,350 millimetres (171 in) of rainfall, compared to only 2,050 millimetres (81 in) in nearby Fort William, 840 millimetres (33 in) in Inverness and 580 millimetres (23 in) in London. Rainfall on Ben Nevis is about twice as high in the winter as it is in the spring and summer. Snow can be found on the mountain almost all year round, particularly in the gullies of the north face – with the higher reaches of Observatory Gully holding snow until September most years and sometimes until the new snows of the following season.
The first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis was made on 17 August 1771 by James Robertson, an Edinburgh botanist, who was in the region to collect botanical specimens. Another early ascent was in 1774 by John Williams, who provided the first account of the mountain's geological structure. John Keats climbed the mountain in 1818, comparing the ascent to "mounting ten St. Pauls without the convenience of a staircase". The following year William MacGillivray, who was later to become a distinguished naturalist, reached the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdui.
The summit observatory was built in the summer of 1883, and would remain in operation for 21 years. The first path to the summit was built at the same time as the observatory and was designed to allow ponies to carry up supplies, with a maximum gradient of one in five. The opening of the path and the observatory made the ascent of the mountain increasingly popular, all the more so after the arrival of the West Highland Railway in Fort William in 1894. Around this time the first of several proposals was made for a rack railway to the summit, none of which came to fruition.
In 1911, an enterprising Ford dealer named Henry Alexander ascended the mountain in a Model T as a publicity stunt. The ascent was captured on film and can be seen in the archives of the British Film Institute. A statue of Alexander and the car was unveiled in Fort William in 2018.
In 2000, the Ben Nevis Estate, comprising all of the south side of the mountain including the summit, was bought by the Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust.
In 2016, the height of Ben Nevis was officially remeasured to be 1344.527m by Ordnance Survey. The height of Ben Nevis will therefore be shown on new Ordnance Survey maps as 1,345 metres (4,411 ft) instead of the now obsolete value of 1,344 metres (4,409 ft).
The 1883 Pony Track to the summit (also known as the Ben Path, the Mountain Path or the Tourist Route) remains the simplest and most popular route of ascent. It begins at Achintee on the east side of Glen Nevis about 2 km (1.2 mi) from Fort William town centre, at around 20 metres (60') above sea level. Bridges from the Visitor Centre and the youth hostel now allow access from the west side of Glen Nevis. The path climbs steeply to the saddle by Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe (colloquially known as the 'Halfway Lochan') at 570 m, then ascends the remaining 700 metres (2000') up the stony west flank of Ben Nevis in a series of zig-zags. The path is regularly maintained but running water, uneven rocks and loose scree make it hazardous and slippery in places. Thanks to the zig-zags, the path is not unusually steep apart from in the initial stages, but inexperienced walkers should be aware that the descent is relatively arduous and wearing on the knees.
A route popular with experienced hillwalkers starts at Torlundy, a few miles north-east of Fort William on the A82 road, and follows the path alongside the Allt a' Mhuilinn. It can also be reached from Glen Nevis by following the Pony Track as far as Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, then descending slightly to the CIC Hut. The route then ascends Càrn Mòr Dearg and continues along the Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête ("CMD Arête") before climbing steeply to the summit of Ben Nevis. This route involves a total of 1,500 metres (5000') of ascent and requires modest scrambling ability and a head for heights. In common with other approaches on this side of the mountain, it has the advantage of giving an extensive view of the cliffs of the north face, which are hidden from the Pony Track.
It is also possible to climb Ben Nevis from the Nevis Gorge car park at Steall at the head of the road up Glen Nevis, either by the south-east ridge or via the summit of Càrn Dearg (south-west). These routes require mild scrambling, are shorter and steeper than the Pony Track, and tend only to be used by experienced hill walkers.
The summit of Ben Nevis comprises a large stony plateau of about 40 hectares (100 acres). The highest point is marked with a large, solidly built cairn atop which sits an Ordnance Survey trig point. The summit is the highest ground in any direction for 459 miles (739 km) before the Scandinavian Mountains in western Norway are reached.
The ruined walls of the observatory are a prominent feature on the summit. An emergency shelter has been built on top of the observatory tower for the benefit of those caught out by bad weather. Although the base of the tower is slightly lower than the true summit of the mountain, the roof of the shelter overtops the trig point by several feet, making it the highest man-made structure in the UK. A war memorial to the dead of World War II is located next to the observatory.
On 17 May 2006, a piano that had been buried under one of the cairns on the peak was uncovered by the John Muir Trust, which owns much of the mountain. The piano is believed to have been carried up for charity by removal men from Dundee over 20 years earlier.
The view from the UK's highest point is extensive. Under ideal conditions, it can extend to over 190 kilometres (120 mi), including such mountains as the Torridon Hills, Morven in Caithness, Lochnagar, Ben Lomond, Barra Head and to Knocklayd in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
A meteorological observatory on the summit was first proposed by the Scottish Meteorological Society (SMS) in the late-1870s, at a time when similar observatories were being built around the world to study the weather at high altitude. In the summer of 1881, Clement Lindley Wragge climbed the mountain daily to make observations (earning him the nickname "Inclement Rag"), leading to the opening on 17 October 1883 of a permanent observatory run by the SMS. The building was staffed full-time until 1904, when it was closed due to inadequate funding. The twenty years worth of readings still provide the most comprehensive set of data on mountain weather in Great Britain.
In September 1894, C. T. R. Wilson was employed at the observatory for a couple of weeks as temporary relief for one of the permanent staff. During this period, he witnessed a Brocken spectre and glory, caused by the sun casting a shadow on a cloud below the observer. He subsequently tried to reproduce these phenomena in the laboratory, resulting in his invention of the cloud chamber, used to detect ionising radiation.
Ben Nevis's popularity, climate and complex topography contribute to a high number of mountain rescue incidents. In 1999 there were 41 rescues and four fatalities on the mountain. It has also been estimated that there are several deaths annually on Ben Nevis.
In two avalanches that occurred on Ben Nevis in 2009 and 2016 two people died on both occasions. In two avalanches that occurred in 1970 and 2019 three people died on both occasions. A climber died in an avalanche on the north face in 2022.
Some accidents arise over difficulties in navigating to or from the summit, especially in poor visibility. The problem stems from the fact that the summit plateau is roughly kidney-shaped and surrounded by cliffs on three sides; the danger is particularly accentuated when the main path is obscured by snow. Two precise compass bearings taken in succession are necessary to navigate from the summit cairn to the west flank, from where a descent can be made on the Pony Track in relative safety.
In the late 1990s, Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team erected two posts on the summit plateau to assist walkers attempting the descent in foggy conditions. These posts were subsequently cut down by climbers, sparking controversy in mountaineering circles on the ethics of such additions. Critics argued that cairns and posts are an unnecessary man-made intrusion into the natural landscape, which create a false sense of security and could lessen mountaineers' sense of responsibility for their own safety.
Supporters of navigational aids pointed to the high number of accidents that occurred on the mountain. Between 1990 and 1995 alone there were 13 fatalities, although eight of these were due to falls while rock climbing rather than navigational error. Also there is a long tradition of placing such aids on the summit, and the potentially life-saving role they could play.
In 2016, the John Muir Trust cleared a number of smaller informal cairns which had recently been erected by visitors, many near the top of gullies, which were seen as dangerous as they could confuse walkers using them for navigation.
The north face of Ben Nevis is riven with buttresses, ridges, towers and pinnacles, and contains many classic scrambles and rock climbs. It is of major importance for British winter climbing, with many of its routes holding snow often until late April. It was one of the first places in Scotland to receive the attention of serious mountaineers; a partial ascent and, the following day, a complete descent of Tower Ridge in early September 1892 is the earliest documented climbing expedition on Ben Nevis. (It was not climbed from bottom to top in entirety for another two years). The Scottish Mountaineering Club's Charles Inglis Clark hut was built below the north face in Coire Leis in 1929. Because of its remote location, it is said to be the only genuine alpine hut in Britain. It remains popular with climbers, especially in winter.
Tower Ridge is the longest of the north face's four main ridges, with around 600 metres (2000') of ascent. It is not technically demanding (its grade is Difficult), and most pitches can be tackled unroped by competent climbers, but it is committing and very exposed. Castle Ridge (Moderate), the northernmost of the main ridges, is an easier scramble, while Observatory Ridge (Very Difficult), the closest ridge to the summit, is "technically the hardest of the Nevis ridges in summer and winter". Between the Tower and Observatory Ridges are the Tower and Gardyloo Gullies; the latter takes its name from the cry of "garde à l'eau" (French for "watch out for the water") formerly used in Scottish cities as a warning when householders threw their waste out of a tenement window into the street. The gully's top wall was the refuse pit for the now-disused summit observatory. The North-east Buttress (Very Difficult) is the southernmost and bulkiest of the four ridges; it is as serious as Observatory Ridge but not as technically demanding, mainly because an "infamous" rock problem, the 'Man-trap', can be avoided on either side.
The north face contains dozens of graded rock climbs along its entire length, with particular concentrations on the Càrn Dearg Buttress (below the Munro top of Càrn Dearg NW) and around the North-east Buttress and Observatory Ridge. Classic rock routes include Rubicon Wall on Observatory Buttress (Severe) – whose second ascent in 1937, when it was considered the hardest route on the mountain, is described by W. H. Murray in Mountaineering in Scotland – and, on Càrn Dearg, Centurion and The Bullroar (both HVS), Torro (E2), and Titan's Wall (E3), these four described in the SMC's guide as among "the best climbs of their class in Scotland".
Many seminal lines were recorded before the First World War by pioneering Scottish climbers like J. N. Collie, Willie Naismith, Harold Raeburn, and William and Jane Inglis Clark. Other classic routes were put up by G. Graham Macphee, Dr James H. B. Bell and others between the Wars; these include Bell's 'Long Climb', at 1,400 ft (430 m) reputedly the longest sustained climb on the British mainland. In summer 1943 conscientious objector Brian Kellett made a phenomenal seventy-four repeat climbs and seventeen first ascents including fourteen solos, returning in 1944 to add fifteen more new lines, eleven solo, including his eponymous HVS on Gardyloo buttress. Much more recently, an extreme and as yet ungraded climb on Echo Wall was completed by Dave MacLeod in 2008 after two years of preparation.
The north face is also one of Scotland's foremost venues for winter mountaineering and ice climbing and holds snow until quite late in the year; in a good year, routes may remain in winter condition until mid-spring. Most of the possible rock routes are also suitable as winter climbs, including the four main ridges; Tower Ridge, for example, is grade IV on the Scottish winter grade, having been upgraded in 2009 by the Scottish Mountaineering Club after requests by the local Mountain Rescue Team, there being numerous benightments and incidents every winter season. Probably the most popular ice climb on Ben Nevis is The Curtain (IV,5) on the left side of the Càrn Dearg Buttress. At the top end of the scale, Centurion in winter is a grade VIII,8 face climb.
In February 1960 James R. Marshall and Robin Clark Smith recorded six major new ice routes in only eight days including Orion Direct (V,5 400m); this winter version of Bell's Long Climb was "the climax of a magnificent week's climbing by Smith and Marshall, and the highpoint of the step-cutting era".
The history of hill running on Ben Nevis dates back to 1895. William Swan, a barber from Fort William, made the first recorded timed ascent up the mountain on or around 27 September of that year, when he ran from the old post office in Fort William to the summit and back in 2 hours 41 minutes. The following years saw several improvements on Swan's record, but the first competitive race was held on 3 June 1898 under Scottish Amateur Athletic Association rules. Ten competitors ran the course, which started at the Lochiel Arms Hotel in Banavie and was thus longer than the route from Fort William; the winner was 21-year-old Hugh Kennedy, a gamekeeper at Tor Castle, who finished (coincidentally with Swan's original run) in 2 hours 41 minutes.
Regular races were organised until 1903, when two events were held; these were the last for 24 years, perhaps due to the closure of the summit observatory the following year. The first was from Achintee, at the foot of the Pony Track, and finished at the summit; It was won in just over an hour by Ewen MacKenzie, the observatory roadman. The second race ran from new Fort William post office, and MacKenzie lowered the record to 2 hours 10 minutes, a record he held for 34 years.
The Ben Nevis Race has been run in its current form since 1937. It now takes place on the first Saturday in September every year, with a maximum of 500 competitors taking part. It starts and finishes at the Claggan Park football ground on the outskirts of Fort William, and is 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) long with 1,340 metres (4,400 ft) of ascent. Due to the seriousness of the mountain environment, entry is restricted to those who have completed three hill races, and runners must carry waterproofs, a hat, gloves and a whistle; anyone who has not reached the summit after two hours is turned back. As of 2018, the record for the men's race has stood unbroken since 1984, when Kenny Stuart of Keswick Athletic Club won with a time of 1:25:34. The record for the women's race of 1:43:01 was set in 2018 by Victoria Wilkinson.
Ben Nevis is becoming popular with ski mountaineers and boarders. The Red Burn (Allt Coire na h-Urcaire) just to the North of the tourist path gives the easiest descent, but most if not all of the easier gullies on the North Face have been skied, as has the slope once adorned by the abseil poles into Coire Leis. No 4 gully is probably the most skied. Although Tower scoop makes it a no-fall zone, Tower Gully is becoming popular, especially in May and June when there is spring snow.
In 2018 Jöttnar pro team member Tim Howell BASE jumped off Ben Nevis which was covered by BBC Scotland.
On 6 May 2019, a team of highliners completed a crossing above the Gardyloo Gully, a new altitude record for the UK.
Also in May 2019, a team of 12, led by Dundee artist Douglas Roulston carried a 1.5-metre (4.9-foot) tall statue of the DC Thomson character Oor Wullie to the top of the mountain. The statue, which had been painted by Roulston with a 360-degree scene of the view from the summit was later sold at the Oor Wullie Big Bucket Trail charity auction to raise money for a number of Scottish children's charities.
The Ben Nevis Distillery is a single malt whisky distillery at the foot of the mountain, near Victoria Bridge to the north of Fort William. Founded in 1825 by John McDonald (known as "Long John"), it is one of the oldest licensed distilleries in Scotland, and is a popular visitor attraction in Fort William. The water used to make the whisky comes from the Allt a' Mhuilinn, the stream that flows from Ben Nevis's northern corrie. "Ben Nevis" 80/‒ organic ale is, by contrast, brewed in Bridge of Allan near Stirling.
Ben Nevis was the name of a White Star Line packet ship which in 1854 carried the group of immigrants who were to become the Wends of Texas. At least another eight vessels have carried the name since then.
A mountain in Svalbard is also named Ben Nevis, after the Scottish peak. It is 922 metres (3025') high and is south of the head of Raudfjorden, Albert I Land, in the northwestern part of the island of Spitsbergen.
A comic strip character, Wee Ben Nevis, about a Scottish Highlands boarding school student with superhuman strength and his antics were featured in the British comic The Beano from 1974 to 1977, named after the mountain.
Hung Fa Chai, a 489-metre (1605') hill in Northeast New Territories of Hong Kong was marked as Ben Nevis on historical colonial maps.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.
Climate
The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.
Places of interest
An Teallach
Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)
Arrochar Alps
Balmoral Castle
Balquhidder
Battlefield of Culloden
Beinn Alligin
Beinn Eighe
Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station
Ben Lomond
Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore
Cairngorm Mountains
Caledonian Canal
Cape Wrath
Carrick Castle
Castle Stalker
Castle Tioram
Chanonry Point
Conic Hill
Culloden Moor
Dunadd
Duart Castle
Durness
Eilean Donan
Fingal's Cave (Staffa)
Fort George
Glen Coe
Glen Etive
Glen Kinglas
Glen Lyon
Glen Orchy
Glenshee Ski Centre
Glen Shiel
Glen Spean
Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)
Grampian Mountains
Hebrides
Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.
Highland Wildlife Park
Inveraray Castle
Inveraray Jail
Inverness Castle
Inverewe Garden
Iona Abbey
Isle of Staffa
Kilchurn Castle
Kilmartin Glen
Liathach
Lecht Ski Centre
Loch Alsh
Loch Ard
Loch Awe
Loch Assynt
Loch Earn
Loch Etive
Loch Fyne
Loch Goil
Loch Katrine
Loch Leven
Loch Linnhe
Loch Lochy
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Loch Lubnaig
Loch Maree
Loch Morar
Loch Morlich
Loch Ness
Loch Nevis
Loch Rannoch
Loch Tay
Lochranza
Luss
Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)
Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran
Rannoch Moor
Red Cuillin
Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83
River Carron, Wester Ross
River Spey
River Tay
Ross and Cromarty
Smoo Cave
Stob Coire a' Chàirn
Stac Polly
Strathspey Railway
Sutherland
Tor Castle
Torridon Hills
Urquhart Castle
West Highland Line (scenic railway)
West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)
Wester Ross
I had difficulties with Nanami for a while. I quess it was just the fact that she's more beautiful than cute.But when I now redressed her with more casual clothes and stopped being afraid to mess her curly long hair, I love her again ^^ Funny how simple the solution can be.
These pics were taken just supaquick because the sun was already going down. That's why her clothes are so wrinkled too :<
The over the head, backwards throw (and he made it, two points - it stuck in the center of the big tire).
The tire-thrower, the other players and I were impressed - it was a perfect toss.
Ici aussi des insectes viennent boire dans les yeux du caïman comme sur ma photo déjà postée sur les papillons avec les tortues. flic.kr/p/LPoKR5
Mais ce sont des guêpes qui viennent chercher les minéraux qu'elles peinent à trouver ailleurs.
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Here also insects come to drink in the eyes of the caiman as on my photo already posted on the butterflies with the turtles.
But it is wasps which come to look for minerals which they have difficulty in finding somewhere else.
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Aquí también insectos vienen para beber en los ojos del caimán como sobre mi foto ya enviada sobre las mariposas con las tortugas
Pero son avispas que vienen para buscar los minerales que apenan encontrar en otro lugar.
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.
April 23, 2015 on our trip to the blipmeet at Wanaka, Central Otago in New Zealand. www.polaroidblipfoto.com/browse/me
Our first morning in Cromwell. We woke to heavy fog which took a while to lift. We have arrived at Mt Difficulty Estate Winery so John can do some tasting.
The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.
For More Info and photos: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.html