Introduced, warm-season, perennial, prostrate legume, with rhizomes and usually less than 15 cm tall. Stems are hollow. Leaves have 5 leaflets, which are ovate to obovate, to 25 mm long and with long marginal hairs. Flowerheads are clusters of 8-14 yellow flowers (10-12 mm long) on the end of unbranched stalks. Pods are long and cylindrical. Flowering is from late summer to autumn.

A native of Europe and North Africa, it is sown and naturalized in high rainfall areas and on wet and waterlogged soils. It is tolerant of acid low-fertility soils. Seed is now difficult to obtain. Usually slow to establish, but will tolerate grass competition after 2-3 years. Can grow under low fertility conditions, but is responsive to increased phosphorus. Tends to die off in patches in hot, dry conditions; reshoot when conditions are favourable. Tolerant of wet conditions, but does not survive prolonged flooding. Low bloat risk. High tannin in some varieties can cause periods of lower palatability, but this can reduce overgrazing and help persistence. More tolerant of grazing than Lotus corniculatus, but some leaf should remain after grazing. Provide some rest in autumn to aid seed set and spread, but conditions may not be suitable every year for seed set.

National Arboretum Bonsai Collection

Training Date 1969

Prostrate speedwell, liggende ereprijs

In the Japanese garden at the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA.

In Hindu system of religion to worship the God in a human form is regarded as the highest form of worship. In old Vedic era it is the Acharya (The Master/Teacher) who was worshipped as the embodiment of the God. Even today all the popular religious beliefs, like Vaishnavism, Bauls and the others, consider a human form as a temple of the God.

 

Kumari puja is one such ritual where the Goddess durga is being invoked and worshipped within the form of a virgin girl whose age is between 1 to 16 years. This ritual is being observed mostly on the third day, that is "Maha Astami", of Durga puja while in some places the fourth day, that is "Maha Navami", is considered to be the day for it. Kumari puja is actually a Tantrik ritual of Sadhana (worship) which is believed to bring great blessings on the worshipper. Different Tantras have extensive discussions on the methods and procedures to be followed by different categories of Sadhakas (worshipper); however I think the ritual is not being observed in all its rigorous details now-a-days during the puja, at least that is not realistically possible.

 

The choice of the virgin for Kumari puja is not made based on caste, religion or social backgroung, rather the physical, emotional and mental characteristics are taken into consideration. Swami Vivekananda is said to have worshipped a Muslim girl as a Kumari. The girls at different ages are believed to represent the different manifestations of the Goddess: A girl of 1 year is called Sandhya, of 2 years Saraswati, of 3 years Tridhamurti, of 4 years Kalika, of 5 years Subhaga, of 6 years Uma, of 7 years Malini, of 8 years Kuvjika, of 9 years Kalasandarbha, of 10 years Aparajita, of 11 years Rudrani, of 12 years Bhairavi, of 13 years Mahalaksmi, of 14 years Pithanayika, of 15 years Ksetrajna and of 16 years Annada or Amvika.

 

At the end of the puja everyone present in the premise prostrate before the Kumari, irrespective of their ages, for Her blessings. "Charanamrita", the blessed water, is offered to the devotees.

 

Acknowledgement: I like to give thanks to the family members of Rani Rashmoni's house at Jaanbazar, Kolkata, for allowing me to photograph the rituals at their premises.

 

Jaanbazar, Kolkata.

 

October, 2007

Soom Cuprit (Black Frost) & Souldoll Shiva (4-Arms). This is a pose-test I did to see what I could get my girls to do. There's a scene I want to photograph (not in my office, with all that junk in the background of course!) of Sylpedae approaching the Snow Queen with a proposition. I wanted to see how Cuprit's wings would show up against a dark background (not well at all!) and I wanted to see how well Sypedae actually kneels (also not well at all.)

"Prostrate, lignotuberous shrub, 0.15-0.4 m high. Fl. yellow-brown, Dec or Jan to Feb. White or grey sand over laterite, sandy loam." florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/32211

 

2 Feb 2019 Plants returning after burn.

Threatened flora

Introduced, warm-season, short-lived perennial, prostrate to semi-erect legume with a shallow taproot. Leaves have 2 asymmetrical, obovate to rounded leaflets, each 12-35 mm long. Flowerheads consist of 1-2 flowers in the leaf axils,

each with 5 symmetrically arranged yellow petals. Pods are linear, flat, sparsely to very hairy and 35-40 mm long. Flowering is in the warmer months. A native of North and South America, it is sown for

grazing and naturalized in frost free areas. It is suited to free-draining, lower fertility, acid soils

and cannot tolerate heavy soils or waterlogging. Not

recommended for fertile soils. Frost can limit spread. Wynn is the only sown cultivar. Seeds germinate and establish quickly and plants can rapidly grow and spread. Produces good weight gains in cattle, but old stems

have low feed value. It has low palatability for cattle during the growing season and is not readily grazed until grass quality

has declined sufficiently in autumn. It is not grazed by horses. Grazing management should aim to limit selective grazing during the growing season and maintain plants in a low radiating growth habit. Short

duration heavy grazing with appropriate rest periods is best to achieve this. Grazing periods can be extended in winter in frost free areas when grasses

are dormant. In areas with heavy frosts grazing should occur before first frost to avoid total leaf loss. Continuous heavy grazing leads to a decline in companion grasses, dominance by round-leafed

cassia and invasion by weeds.

Introduced, warm-season, perennial, prostrate to erect, woody herb or shrub to 1 m tall. Stems are reddish, hairless, with weak opposite longitudinal ridges; they arise from rhizomes or woody crowns. Leaves are opposite, sessile, hairless, to 3 cm long and have many translucent dots (oil glands) that are easily seen when held to the light. Flowerheads are panicles or corymbose cymes. Flowers are numerous and 15-20 mm wide. Petals are yellow and have black glands on their edges. Styles are 3-branched. Fruit are sticky 3-valved capsules, 5 to 10 mm long. Flowers in late spring and summer. Found in neglected pastures, sparse bushland and disturbed areas. Tiny seeds spread by water and in soil, hay and livestock. Sticky fruits adhere to animals; long runners spread from crowns. Causes photosensitisation and numerous other disorders in livestock; animals tend to recover once removed. Established plants are very competitive and are best controlled by herbicides or, if suitable, by cultivation. Introduced insect (Chrysolina beetles) and mite (St John’s wort mite ) predators provide good levels of control in many areas. Promote dense, healthy pastures to compete with seedlings, which are not robust.

Introduced, warm-season, perennial, prostrate, climbing legume, with stolons. Leaves have 3 leaflets, each hairy, 1-9 cm long, round to ovate. The central leaflet has a longer stalk than the lateral leaflets. Leaf size varies with grazing pressure. Flowerheads are racemes of 2-5, blue, 5-9 mm long, pea-like flowers in the leaf axils. Pods are straight sided, narrow, flattened and 1-3 cm long. Flowering is in summer and autumn. A native of Africa, it is sown for grazing on wide

range of soils. Grows best on moist, fertile soils, but it will tolerate low fertility. It is tolerant of acidity, moderate levels of aluminium and light shade, but is sensitive to frost. Shaw is the only variety sown. Provides a good quality, high protein, non-bloating feed, it is of greatest value in late summer and autumn as the quality of pasture grasses declines. It is slow to establish and drought will kill it. Tolerates prolonged heavy grazing, but needs to be allowed to seed in the first and second year for longterm

persistence. Grazing pressure should be sufficient to produce a low leafy stand as undergrazed stands develop severe leaf disease.

Introduced, warm season, perennial, prostrate herb to 60 cm tall. Leaves and stems are hairy with glandular and non-glandular hairs. Leaves are alternate, lanceolate, deeply veined and stem clasping. Blue to mauve tubular flowers (with yellow stamens and throat) arranged caterpillar-like in 2 rows on one side of the flowering stem (scirpoid cyme). Flowers most of the year, but not in winter in southern areas. Grows on a wide range of soil types. Predominantly in areas that receive at least 50% of average annual rainfall in summer. It is mostly a problem of run down pasture and disturbed areas such as cropping paddocks, roadsides and waste land. Regenerates from seed and vegetatively from pieces of plant and roots. It is spread by water, fur of animals and in the gut of animals. A weed which is toxic to animals, quite invasive and difficult to control. Causes chronic liver damage in cattle, sheep and horses; can be fatal. Cultivation encourages its spread by stimulating germination and regrowth of plant parts. Management requires an integrated approach including herbicides, productive pasture, grazing management and biological control. There has only been one biological control agent released in Australia, the blue heliotrope leaf-beetle. At high densities, leaf-beetles can completely defoliate blue heliotrope, with both the larvae and adults feeding on the leaves.

Bertam, Pulau Pinang (Penang), Malaysia.

 

Pectis prostrata Cav. Compositae, alt. Asteraceae. CN: Spreading cinchweed, Cinchweeds. Native to Caribbean region, Central America, Mexico, and S United States. Annual herbs. Stems prostrate or ascending, 1-30 cm, puberulent, hairs in 2 rows (often mat-forming, densely leafy, especially distally). Leaves linear to narrowly oblanceolate, 10-30 × 1.5-7 mm, abaxially densely pubescent and dotted with conspicuous orbicular oil glands. Inflorescences of solitary terminal capitula or capitula in groups of 2 or 3; peduncles 1-2 mm, bracteolate. Autogamy has apparently assisted P. prostrata to spread rapidly as suitable new habitats have become available. Minor weed.

 

Synonym(s):

Chthonia prostrata Cass.

Lorentea prostrata (Cav.) Lag.

Pectis costata Ser. & Merc. ex DC.

Pectis multisetosa Rydb.

Pectis prostrata var. prostrata Greenm.

Pectis prostrata var. urceolata Fernald

Pectis urceolata (Fernald) Rydb.

 

Ref. and suggested reading:

www.theplantlist.org/browse/A/Compositae/Pectis/

www.theplantlist.org/tpl/record/gcc-32552

www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=2...

www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=2...

  

Introduced, warm-season, perennial, prostrate, climbing legume, with stolons. Leaves have 3 leaflets, each hairy, 1-9 cm long, round to ovate. The central leaflet has a longer stalk than the lateral leaflets. Leaf size varies with grazing pressure. Flowerheads are racemes of 2-5, blue, 5-9 mm long, pea-like flowers in the leaf axils. Pods are straight sided, narrow, flattened and 1-3 cm long. Flowering is in summer and autumn. A native of Africa, it is sown for grazing on wide

range of soils. Grows best on moist, fertile soils, but it will tolerate low fertility. It is tolerant of acidity, moderate levels of aluminium and light shade, but is sensitive to frost. Shaw is the only variety sown. Provides a good quality, high protein, non-bloating feed, it is of greatest value in late summer and autumn as the quality of pasture grasses declines. It is slow to establish and drought will kill it. Tolerates prolonged heavy grazing, but needs to be allowed to seed in the first and second year for longterm

persistence. Grazing pressure should be sufficient to produce a low leafy stand as undergrazed stands develop severe leaf disease.

It is not often now I will have the chance to see a new UK orchid species, however, over the border and over the border after that, in West Sussex, there is a place where they have two very rare species, seeded, but a wild UK orchid. Well, the Greater Tongue is not a native orchid, but there has now been four confirmed records of them growing in the UK, these being one of them. But the second species, the Loose-Flowerd Orchid, is only found in the Channel Islands, and here.

 

So, better go and prostrate myself at their lips. As it were.

 

There is a quick way, via the motorway, or the lazy way, taking the coast road. And as I planned to do two or three stops on the way, I would take the coast road.

 

Once I had dropped Jools off at work first.

 

Have you got your phone? Jools asked. Hell no. How will I know if anything goes wrong? You won't, but it'll be fine.

 

He hoped.

 

After coffee, we load up the car with work bag and cameras, and off into the bright dawn, or an hour after dawn, and onto the almost empty roads to Hythe.

 

Having dropped Jools off, I drive out of Hythe and out onto the Romney Marsh. The road meanders over ditches and the railway line, I make good time, getting to Rye just before eight.

 

Last year I saw a Tweet saying a rare plant was found in, what I thought was, Rye. Growing on the church wall.

 

No matter, I had not been there for ages, and wandering around it cobbled streets, looking at its wonderful ancient buildings is all the more enjoyable when you're the only one ding it, and with a soundtrack of the dawn chorus.

 

I check all the wall s of the churchyard, and find many plants growing on or out of the wall, but not what I was looking for.

 

Maybe, I thought, I meant they were in Winchelsea?

 

Maybe indeed. Anyway, Winchelsea is just a ten minute drive away, another ancinet town, this time set on a hill with the main road up from the marsh passing through a huge stone gate.

 

And the town itself is set on a grid system, and some would have you believe that this was the system New York was based on. I don't know, but it aint no Manhattan.

 

I park beside the church, walk in and look for the plant with round shaped leaves. None found. I then go to check on the church, and about eight feet up was a single plant.

 

I was so excited. So excited, I told a guy from English Heritage that I had found a rare plant. Oh really, what's it called? Wall Pennywort says I. Oh that grows everywhere in this town I was told.

 

I deflated, slightly.

 

And indeed I find it everywhere I looked. Anywhere made of stone, anyways.

 

I go back to the car and set sail to Eastbourne, in the west.

 

To get there I would have to pass through, ahem; Hastings, Bexhill then Eastbourne, then St Leonards.

 

The road meanders through towns, up and down downs, it takes a long time to get a little distance. Hastings is jammed with traffic due to a collapsed sewer. Pooey.

 

But further along, it is the endless traffic lights and roundabouts.

 

West of Eastbourne is Beachy Head. Not a beach. It is a high chalk cliff, which then goes on to make up part of the Severn Sisters, a line of undulating chalk cliffs.

 

I was there as I seem to remember being told, many years ago, of a hybrid Orchid growing near there, so after what might have been six years since being told, I was following up. And directions were very sketchy to say the least

 

I park in the main car park, but unlike everyone else, I walk away from the cliffs to the edge of a field, to scour the hedgerow and see if any pikes could be found.

 

I look and look, but see nothing orchid-like.

 

Drat.

 

But I do see butterflies. Lots of butterflies, including a pair of Wall Browns who land at my feet, mid-courtship, so I was able to snap them. There was also Brown Argus and a Common Blue, though the latter was flighty and I got no shot.

 

Back to the car, program the sat nav and I find I still had an hour and ten minutes to go. Best get a move on.

 

Sussex is a smarter and posher county than Kent, I pass my gated mansions, prep schools and villages I could not afford to look at let alone live.

 

As I drove, the sky clouded over, meaning my plan for top shots was being ruined.

 

Wakehurst is a National Trust property, but the gardens are maintained by Kew, it is where they have a lot of their wild plants. And in a quiet corner there was a small collection of orchids.

 

He hoped.

 

I pulled up at midday, and I realised i had not eaten; not a problem, but with it raining, best take a break, have lunch, and hopefully the weather would get better.

 

Being hungry, I order a panini, a sausage roll, and get a bowl of salad with the meal too. I had a lot of food.

 

Anyway, I sit down to eat and hope the weather blows over.

 

Which it does. Kinda. It at least isn't raining.

 

The kind staff had given me a map, and ringed the bank where the orchids were. So, I just had to find it.

 

I wander through beds of Korean, Chinese then Japanese plants, before finding a small dip, down that and up a grass track, and behind some simple low fencing was a small group of orchids.

 

I had found them.

 

So, I lay down, got my shots, then wandered round the grounds, down an ornamental valley, all overflowing with highly scented rhododendrons, all marvellous stuff.

 

But I was worried about getting back. So, I made my way back to the car, through the shop without buying anything.

 

The sat nav said one hour twenty minutes. Seemed short. I decided not to believe it, so drove out of the car park and towards the motorway at warp factor nine.

 

But it is true: just six miles to Gatwick, then six more to the M25, 15 to Kent then down the M20 towards Hythe. I was back in east Kent before three, meaning I had two hours to kill.

The statue of Benjamin Disraeli is an outdoor bronze sculpture by Mario Raggi, located at the west side of Parliament Square in London. It was unveiled in 1883 and became a Grade II listed building in 1970.

 

Description and history

The memorial features a bronze statue of the former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, dressed in his robes as 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, standing on a red granite pedestal. At the front, immediately below the statue, the pedestal bears the inscription "BEACONSFIELD", and the rear face has the inscription "BENJAMIN DISRAELI / EARL OF BEACONSFIELD / K.G. / 1804 – 1881".

 

The statue was made by Mario Raggi (sometimes known as Mario Razzi or Rossi) and cast by H. Young & Co, art founders of Pimlico. It was recognised as a good likeness, based on a bust that Raggi had made before Disraeli's death. The monument was unveiled by Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli's successor as leader of the Conservative Party, on the second anniversary of Disraeli's death, 19 April 1883, a date which became known as Primrose Day. For many years, into the 1920s, arrangements of primroses, reputedly Disraeli's favourite flower, were left at the memorial to commemorate the anniversary of his death.

 

Originally sited on the south side of the square facing south towards St Margaret's, Westminster, it was moved when the square was reconfigured in the 1950s, and resited in its present location, on the west side of the square facing east towards the Houses of Parliament. The statue became a Grade II listed building in 1970.

 

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, DL, JP, FRS (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.

 

Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, then a part of Middlesex. His father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue; Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 12. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837. In 1846, Prime Minister Robert Peel split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the House of Commons, becoming a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.

 

Upon Derby's retirement in 1868, Disraeli became prime minister briefly before losing that year's general election. He returned to the Opposition before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 general election. He maintained a close friendship with Queen Victoria who, in 1876, elevated him to the peerage, as Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli's second term was dominated by the Eastern Question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the desire of other European powers, such as Russia, to gain at its expense. Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company in Egypt. In 1878, faced with Russian victories against the Ottomans, he worked at the Congress of Berlin to obtain peace in the Balkans at terms favourable to Britain and unfavourable to Russia, its longstanding enemy. This diplomatic victory established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen.

 

World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support. He angered farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a massive speaking campaign, the Liberals defeated Disraeli's Conservatives at the 1880 general election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in Opposition. Disraeli wrote novels throughout his career, beginning in 1826, and published his last completed novel, Endymion, shortly before he died at the age of 76.

 

Early life

Disraeli was born on 21 December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, London, the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), née Basevi. The family was mostly from Italy, of Sephardic Jewish mercantile background. He also had some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors. He later romanticised his origins, claiming his father's family was of grand Iberian and Venetian descent; in fact, Isaac's family was of no great distinction, but on Disraeli's mother's side, in which he took no interest, there were some distinguished forebears, including Isaac Cardoso, as well as members of the Goldsmids, the Mocattas and the Montefiores. Historians differ on Disraeli's motives for rewriting his family history: Bernard Glassman argues that it was intended to give him status comparable to that of England's ruling elite; Sarah Bradford believes "his dislike of the commonplace would not allow him to accept the facts of his birth as being as middle-class and undramatic as they really were".

 

Three portraits; a man and two women

Disraeli's father, mother and sister—Isaac, Maria and Sarah

Disraeli's siblings were Sarah, Naphtali (born and died 1807), Ralph and James ("Jem"). He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers. Details of his schooling are sketchy. From the age of about six he was a day boy at a dame school in Islington, which one of his biographers described as "for those days a very high-class establishment". Two years later or so—the exact date has not been ascertained—he was sent as a boarder to Rev John Potticary's school at Blackheath.

 

Following a quarrel in 1813 with the Bevis Marks Synagogue, his father renounced Judaism and had the four children baptised into the Church of England in July and August 1817. Isaac D'Israeli had never taken religion very seriously but had remained a conforming member of the synagogue. His father Benjamin was a prominent and devout member; it was probably out of respect for him that Isaac did not leave when he fell out with the synagogue authorities in 1813. After Benjamin senior died in 1816, Isaac felt free to leave the congregation following a second dispute. Isaac's friend Sharon Turner, a solicitor, convinced him that although he could comfortably remain unattached to any formal religion it would be disadvantageous to the children if they did so. Turner stood as godfather when Benjamin was baptised, aged twelve, on 31 July 1817. Conversion enabled Disraeli to contemplate a career in politics. There had been Members of Parliament (MPs) from Jewish families since Sampson Gideon in 1770. However, until the Jews Relief Act 1858, MPs were required to take the oath of allegiance "on the true faith of a Christian", necessitating at least nominal conversion. It is not known whether Disraeli formed any ambition for a parliamentary career at the time of his baptism, but there is no doubt that he bitterly regretted his parents' decision not to send him to Winchester College, one of the great public schools which consistently provided recruits to the political elite. His two younger brothers were sent there, and it is not clear why Isaac chose to send his eldest son to a much less prestigious school. The boy evidently held his mother responsible for the decision; Bradford speculates that "Benjamin's delicate health and his obviously Jewish appearance may have had something to do with it." The school chosen for him was run by Eliezer Cogan at Higham Hill in Walthamstow. He began there in the autumn term of 1817; he later recalled his education:

 

I was at school for two or three years under the Revd. Dr Cogan, a Greek scholar of eminence, who had contributed notes to the A[e]schylus of Bishop Blomfield, & was himself the Editor of the Greek Gnostic poets. After this I was with a private tutor for two years in my own County, & my education was severely classical. Too much so; in the pride of boyish erudition, I edited the Idonisian Eclogue of Theocritus, wh. was privately printed. This was my first production: puerile pedantry.

 

1820s

In November 1821, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, Disraeli was articled as a clerk to a firm of solicitors—Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse and Hunt—in the City of London. T F Maples was not only the young Disraeli's employer and a friend of his father's, but also his prospective father-in-law: Isaac and Maples considered that the latter's only daughter might be a suitable match for Benjamin. A friendship developed, but there was no romance. The firm had a large and profitable business, and as the biographer R W Davis observes, the clerkship was "the kind of secure, respectable position that many fathers dream of for their children". Although biographers including Robert Blake and Bradford comment that such a post was incompatible with Disraeli's romantic and ambitious nature, he reportedly gave his employers satisfactory service, and later professed to have learnt a good deal there. He recalled:

 

I had some scruples, for even then I dreamed of Parliament. My father's refrain always was 'Philip Carteret Webb', who was the most eminent solicitor of his boyhood and who was an MP. It would be a mistake to suppose that the two years and more that I was in the office of our friend were wasted. I have often thought, though I have often regretted the University, that it was much the reverse.

 

The year after joining Maples' firm, Benjamin changed his surname from D'Israeli to Disraeli. His reasons are unknown, but the biographer Bernard Glassman surmises that it was to avoid being confused with his father. Disraeli's sister and brothers adopted the new version of the name; Isaac and his wife retained the older form.

 

Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father in the summer of 1824. He later wrote that while travelling on the Rhine he decided to abandon his position: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On their return to England he left the solicitors, at the suggestion of Maples, with the aim of qualifying as a barrister. He enrolled as a student at Lincoln's Inn and joined the chambers of his uncle, Nathaniel Basevy, and then those of Benjamin Austen, who persuaded Isaac that Disraeli would never make a barrister and should be allowed to pursue a literary career. He had made a tentative start: in May 1824 he submitted a manuscript to his father's friend, the publisher John Murray, but withdrew it before Murray could decide whether to publish it.

 

Released from the law, Disraeli did some work for Murray, but turned most of his attention to speculative dealing on the stock exchange. There was at the time a boom in shares in South American mining companies. Spain was losing its South American colonies in the face of rebellions. At the urging of George Canning the British government recognised the new independent governments of Argentina (1824), Colombia and Mexico (both 1825). With no money of his own, Disraeli borrowed money to invest. He became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, who was prominent among those encouraging the mining boom. In 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies. The pamphlets were published by John Murray, who invested heavily in the boom.

 

Murray had ambitions to establish a new morning paper to compete with The Times. In 1825 Disraeli convinced him that he should proceed. The new paper, The Representative, promoted the mines and those politicians who supported them, particularly Canning. Disraeli impressed Murray with his energy and commitment to the project, but he failed in his key task of persuading the eminent writer John Gibson Lockhart to edit the paper. After that, Disraeli's influence on Murray waned, and to his resentment he was sidelined in the affairs of The Representative. The paper survived only six months, partly because the mining bubble burst in late 1825, and partly because, according to Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited".

 

The bursting of the mining bubble was ruinous for Disraeli. By June 1825 he and his business partners had lost £7,000. Disraeli could not pay off the last of his debts from this debacle until 1849. He turned to writing, motivated partly by his desperate need for money, and partly by a wish for revenge on Murray and others by whom he felt slighted. There was a vogue for what was called "silver-fork fiction"—novels depicting aristocratic life, usually by anonymous authors, read by the aspirational middle classes. Disraeli's first novel, Vivian Grey, published anonymously in four volumes in 1826–27, was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of The Representative. It sold well, but caused much offence in influential circles when the authorship was discovered. Disraeli, then just 23, did not move in high society, as the numerous solecisms in his book made obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Murray and Lockhart, men of great influence in literary circles, believed that Disraeli had caricatured them and abused their confidence—an accusation denied by the author but repeated by many of his biographers.[50] In later editions Disraeli made many changes, softening his satire, but the damage to his reputation proved long-lasting.

 

Disraeli's biographer Jonathan Parry writes that the financial failure and personal criticism that Disraeli suffered in 1825 and 1826 were probably the trigger for a serious nervous crisis affecting him over the next four years: "He had always been moody, sensitive, and solitary by nature, but now became seriously depressed and lethargic." He was still living with his parents in London, but in search of the "change of air" recommended by the family's doctors, Isaac took a succession of houses in the country and on the coast, before Disraeli sought wider horizons.

 

1830–1837

Together with his sister's fiancé, William Meredith, Disraeli travelled widely in southern Europe and beyond in 1830–31. The trip was financed partly by another high society novel, The Young Duke, written in 1829–30. The tour was cut short suddenly by Meredith's death from smallpox in Cairo in July 1831. Despite this tragedy, and the need for treatment for a sexually transmitted disease on his return, Disraeli felt enriched by his experiences. He became, in Parry's words, "aware of values that seemed denied to his insular countrymen. The journey encouraged his self-consciousness, his moral relativism, and his interest in Eastern racial and religious attitudes." Blake regards the tour as one of the formative experiences of Disraeli's career: "The impressions that it made on him were life-lasting. They conditioned his attitude toward some of the most important political problems which faced him in his later years—especially the Eastern Question; they also coloured many of his novels."

 

Disraeli wrote two novels in the aftermath of the tour. Contarini Fleming (1832) was avowedly a self-portrait. It is subtitled "a psychological autobiography" and depicts the conflicting elements of its hero's character: the duality of northern and Mediterranean ancestry, the dreaming artist and the bold man of action. As Parry observes, the book ends on a political note, setting out Europe's progress "from feudal to federal principles". The Wondrous Tale of Alroy the following year portrayed the problems of a medieval Jew in deciding between a small, exclusively Jewish state and a large empire embracing all.

 

Two men and two women

After these novels were published, Disraeli declared that he would "write no more about myself". He had already turned his attention to politics in 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill. He contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania. The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as strange by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, he had objected to Murray about Croker's inserting "high Tory" sentiment: Disraeli remarked, "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Moreover, at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest.

 

Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and his desire to make his mark. At that time, British politics were dominated by the aristocracy, with a few powerful commoners. The Whigs derived from the coalition of Lords who had forced through the Bill of Rights 1689 and in some cases were their descendants. The Tories tended to support King and Church and sought to thwart political change. A small number of Radicals, generally from northern constituencies, were the strongest advocates of continuing reform. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, were anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig." There was a by-election and a general election in 1832; Disraeli unsuccessfully stood as a Radical at High Wycombe in each.

 

Disraeli's political views embraced certain Radical policies, particularly electoral reform, and also some Tory ones, including protectionism. He began to move in Tory circles. In 1834 he was introduced to the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, by Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis Sykes. She was having an affair with Lyndhurst and began another with Disraeli. Disraeli and Lyndhurst took an immediate liking to each other. Lyndhurst was an indiscreet gossip with a fondness for intrigue; this appealed greatly to Disraeli, who became his secretary and go-between. In 1835 Disraeli stood for the last time as a Radical, again unsuccessfully contesting High Wycombe.

 

Two men of Victorian appearance

Opponents of Disraeli: O'Connell and Labouchere

In April 1835, Disraeli fought a by-election at Taunton as a Tory candidate. The Irish MP Daniel O'Connell, misled by inaccurate press reports, thought Disraeli had slandered him while electioneering at Taunton; he launched an outspoken attack, referring to Disraeli as:

 

a reptile ... just fit now, after being twice discarded by the people, to become a Conservative. He possesses all the necessary requisites of perfidy, selfishness, depravity, want of principle, etc., which would qualify him for the change. His name shows that he is of Jewish origin. I do not use it as a term of reproach; there are many most respectable Jews. But there are, as in every other people, some of the lowest and most disgusting grade of moral turpitude; and of those I look upon Mr. Disraeli as the worst.

 

Disraeli's public exchanges with O'Connell, extensively reproduced in The Times,[66] included a demand for a duel with the 60-year-old O'Connell's son (which resulted in Disraeli's temporary detention by the authorities), a reference to "the inextinguishable hatred with which [he] shall pursue [O'Connell's] existence", and the accusation that O'Connell's supporters had a "princely revenue wrung from a starving race of fanatical slaves". Disraeli was highly gratified by the dispute, which propelled him to general public notice for the first time. He did not defeat the incumbent Whig member, Henry Labouchere, but the Taunton constituency was regarded as unwinnable by the Tories. Disraeli kept Labouchere's majority down to 170, a good showing that put him in line for a winnable seat in the near future.

 

With Lyndhurst's encouragement Disraeli turned to writing propaganda for his newly adopted party. His Vindication of the English Constitution, was published in December 1835. It was couched in the form of an open letter to Lyndhurst, and in Bradford's view encapsulates a political philosophy that Disraeli adhered to for the rest of his life: the value of benevolent aristocratic government, a loathing of political dogma, and the modernisation of Tory policies. The following year he wrote a series of satires on politicians of the day, which he published in The Times under the pen-name "Runnymede". His targets included the Whigs, collectively and individually, Irish nationalists, and political corruption. One essay ended:

 

The English nation, therefore, rallies for rescue from the degrading plots of a profligate oligarchy, a barbarizing sectarianism, and a boroughmongering Papacy, round their hereditary leaders—the Peers. The House of Lords, therefore, at this moment represents everything in the realm except the Whig oligarchs, their tools the Dissenters, and their masters the Irish priests. In the mean time, the Whigs bawl that there is a "collision!" It is true there is a collision, but it is not a collision between the Lords and the People, but between the Ministers and the Constitution.

 

Disraeli was elected to the exclusively Tory Carlton Club in 1836, and was also taken up by the party's leading hostess, Lady Londonderry. In June 1837 William IV died, the young Queen Victoria succeeded him, and parliament was dissolved. On the recommendation of the Carlton Club, Disraeli was adopted as a Tory parliamentary candidate at the ensuing general election.

 

Parliament

Back-bencher

In the election in July 1837, Disraeli won a seat in the House of Commons as one of two members, both Tory, for the constituency of Maidstone. The other was Wyndham Lewis, who helped finance Disraeli's election campaign, and who died the following year. In the same year Disraeli published a novel, Henrietta Temple, which was a love story and social comedy, drawing on his affair with Henrietta Sykes. He had broken off the relationship in late 1836, distraught that she had taken yet another lover. His other novel of this period is Venetia, a romance based on the characters of Shelley and Byron, written quickly to raise much-needed money.

 

Disraeli made his maiden speech in Parliament on 7 December 1837. He followed O'Connell, whom he sharply criticised for the latter's "long, rambling, jumbling, speech". He was shouted down by O'Connell's supporters. After this unpromising start Disraeli kept a low profile for the rest of the parliamentary session. He was a loyal supporter of the party leader Sir Robert Peel and his policies, with the exception of a personal sympathy for the Chartist movement that most Tories did not share.

 

Mary Anne Lewis c. 1820–30

In 1839 Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis, the widow of Wyndham Lewis. Twelve years Disraeli's senior, Mary Lewis had a substantial income of £5,000 a year. His motives were generally assumed to be mercenary, but the couple came to cherish one another, remaining close until she died more than three decades later. "Dizzy married me for my money", his wife said later, "But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love."

 

Finding the financial demands of his Maidstone seat too much, Disraeli secured a Tory nomination for Shrewsbury, winning one of the constituency's two seats at the 1841 general election, despite serious opposition, and heavy debts which opponents seized on. The election was a massive defeat for the Whigs across the country, and Peel became prime minister. Disraeli hoped, unrealistically, for ministerial office. Though disappointed at being left on the back benches, he continued his support for Peel in 1842 and 1843, seeking to establish himself as an expert on foreign affairs and international trade.

 

Although a Tory (or Conservative, as some in the party now called themselves) Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the aims of Chartism, and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class. After Disraeli won widespread acclaim in March 1842 for worsting Lord Palmerston in debate, he was taken up by a small group of idealistic new Tory MPs, with whom he formed the Young England group. They held that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen.

 

Disraeli hoped to forge a paternalistic Tory-Radical alliance, but he was unsuccessful. Before the Reform Act 1867, the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to persuade Bright to sacrifice his distinct position for parliamentary advancement. When Disraeli attempted to secure a Tory-Radical cabinet in 1852, Bright refused.

 

Four men

Clockwise from top left: Bright, Peel, Bentinck and Stanley

Disraeli gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately taking contrary positions. The young MP attacked his leader as early as 1843. However, the best known of these stances were over the Maynooth Grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The President of the Board of Trade, William Gladstone, resigned from the cabinet over the Maynooth Grant. The Corn Laws imposed a tariff on imported wheat, protecting British farmers from foreign competition, but making the cost of bread artificially high. Peel hoped that the repeal of the Corn Laws and the resultant influx of cheaper wheat into Britain would relieve the condition of the poor, and in particular the Great Famine caused by successive failure of potato crops in Ireland.

 

The first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in Parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby).

 

The split in the Tory party over the repeal of the Corn Laws had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Tory politician with experience of office followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. In Blake's words, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader." The Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded". If the Tory Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli now seemed to be guaranteed high office, but with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience and who, as a group, remained personally hostile to Disraeli. In the event the Tory split soon had the party out of office, not regaining power until 1852. The Conservatives would not again have a majority in the House of Commons until 1874.

 

Bentinck and the leadership

Peel successfully steered the repeal of the Corn Laws through Parliament and was then defeated by an alliance of his enemies on the issue of Irish law and order; he resigned in June 1846. The Tories remained split, and the Queen sent for Lord John Russell, the Whig leader. In the 1847 general election, Disraeli stood, successfully, for the Buckinghamshire constituency. The new House of Commons had more Conservative than Whig members, but the depth of the Tory schism enabled Russell to continue to govern. The Conservatives were led by Bentinck in the Commons and Stanley in the Lords.

 

Four men

In 1847 a small political crisis removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In that year's general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. As a practising Jew he could not take the oath of allegiance in the prescribed Christian form, and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as prime minister, proposed in the Commons that the oath should be amended to permit Jews to enter Parliament.

 

Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism", and asking the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" Russell and Disraeli's future rival Gladstone thought this brave; the speech was badly received by his own party. The Tories and the Anglican establishment were hostile to the bill. With the exception of Disraeli, every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in Parliament voted against the measure. The measure was voted down. In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being.

 

While these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. The possession of a country house and incumbency of a county constituency were regarded as essential for a Tory with leadership ambitions. Disraeli and his wife alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the rest of their marriage. The negotiations were complicated by Bentinck's sudden death on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 from Bentinck's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield. Within a month of his appointment Granby resigned the leadership in the Commons and the party functioned without a leader in the Commons for the rest of the session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries—indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted him. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.

 

Chancellor of the Exchequer

A stately-looking gentleman in a dark suit, sitting with a book

The Earl of Derby, Prime Minister 1852, 1858–59, 1866–68

In March 1851, Lord John Russell's government was defeated over a bill to equalise the county and borough franchises, mostly because of divisions among his supporters. He resigned, and the Queen sent for Stanley, who felt that a minority government could do little and would not last long, so Russell remained in office. Disraeli regretted this, hoping for an opportunity, however brief, to show himself capable in office. Stanley, in contrast, deprecated his inexperienced followers as a reason for not assuming office: "These are not names I can put before the Queen."

 

At the end of June 1851, Stanley succeeded to the title of Earl of Derby. The Whigs were wracked by internal dissensions during the second half of 1851, much of which Parliament spent in recess. Russell dismissed Lord Palmerston from the cabinet, leaving the latter determined to deprive the Prime Minister of office. Palmerston did so within weeks of Parliament's reassembly on 4 February 1852, his followers combining with Disraeli's Tories to defeat the government on a Militia Bill, and Russell resigned. Derby had either to take office or risk damage to his reputation, and he accepted the Queen's commission as prime minister. Palmerston declined any office; Derby had hoped to have him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli, his closest ally, was his second choice and accepted, though disclaiming any great knowledge in the financial field. Gladstone refused to join the government. Disraeli may have been attracted to the office by the £5,000 annual salary, which would help pay his debts. Few of the new cabinet had held office before; when Derby tried to inform the Duke of Wellington of the names of the ministers, the old Duke, who was somewhat deaf, inadvertently branded the new government by incredulously repeating "Who? Who?"

 

In the following weeks, Disraeli served as Leader of the House (with Derby as prime minister in the Lords) and as Chancellor. He wrote regular reports on proceedings in the Commons to Victoria, who described them as "very curious" and "much in the style of his books". Parliament was prorogued on 1 July 1852 as the Tories could not govern for long as a minority; Disraeli hoped that they would gain a majority of about 40. Instead, the election later that month had no clear winner, and the Derby government held to power pending the meeting of Parliament.

 

Budget

Disraeli's task as Chancellor was to devise a budget which would satisfy the protectionist elements who supported the Tories, without uniting the free-traders against it. His proposed budget, which he presented to the Commons on 3 December, lowered the taxes on malt and tea, provisions designed to appeal to the working class. To make his budget revenue-neutral, as funds were needed to provide defences against the French, he doubled the house tax and continued the income tax. Disraeli's overall purpose was to enact policies which would benefit the working classes, making his party more attractive to them. Although the budget did not contain protectionist features, the Opposition was prepared to destroy it—and Disraeli's career as Chancellor—in part out of revenge for his actions against Peel in 1846. MP Sidney Herbert predicted that the budget would fail because "Jews make no converts".

 

delivered the budget on 3 December 1852, and prepared to wind up the debate for the government on 16 December—it was customary for the Chancellor to have the last word. A massive defeat for the government was predicted. Disraeli attacked his opponents individually, and then as a force: "I face a Coalition ... This, too, I know, that England does not love coalitions." His speech of three hours was quickly seen as a parliamentary masterpiece. As MPs prepared to divide, Gladstone rose to his feet and began an angry speech, despite the efforts of Tory MPs to shout him down. The interruptions were fewer, as Gladstone gained control of the House, and in the next two hours painted a picture of Disraeli as frivolous and his budget as subversive. The government was defeated by 19 votes, and Derby resigned four days later. He was replaced by the Peelite Earl of Aberdeen, with Gladstone as his Chancellor. Because of Disraeli's unpopularity among the Peelites, no party reconciliation was possible while he remained Tory leader in the Commons.

 

Opposition

With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives returned to the Opposition benches. Disraeli would spend three-quarters of his 44-year parliamentary career in Opposition. Derby was reluctant to seek to unseat the government, fearing a repetition of the Who? Who? Ministry and knowing that shared dislike of Disraeli was part of what had formed the governing coalition. Disraeli, on the other hand, was anxious to return to office. In the interim, Disraeli, as Conservative leader in the Commons, opposed the government on all major measures.

 

In June 1853 Disraeli was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Oxford. He had been recommended for it by Lord Derby, the university's Chancellor. The start of the Crimean War in 1854 caused a lull in party politics; Disraeli spoke patriotically in support. The British military efforts were marked by bungling, and in 1855 a restive Parliament considered a resolution to establish a committee on the conduct of the war. The Aberdeen government made this a motion of confidence; Disraeli led the Opposition to defeat the government, 305 to 148. Aberdeen resigned, and the Queen sent for Derby, who to Disraeli's frustration refused to take office. Palmerston was deemed essential to any Whig ministry, and he would not join any he did not head. The Queen reluctantly asked Palmerston to form a government. Under Palmerston, the war went better, and was ended by the Treaty of Paris in early 1856. Disraeli was early to call for peace but had little influence on events.

 

When a rebellion broke out in India in 1857, Disraeli took a keen interest, having been a member of a select committee in 1852 which considered how best to rule the subcontinent, and had proposed eliminating the governing role of the British East India Company. After peace was restored, and Palmerston in early 1858 brought in legislation for direct rule of India by the Crown, Disraeli opposed it. Many Conservative MPs refused to follow him, and the bill passed the Commons easily.

 

Palmerston's grip on the premiership was weakened by his response to the Orsini affair, in which an attempt was made to assassinate the French Emperor Napoleon III by an Italian revolutionary with a bomb made in Birmingham. At the request of the French ambassador, Palmerston proposed amending the conspiracy to murder statute to make creating an infernal device a felony. He was defeated by 19 votes on the second reading, with many Liberals crossing the aisle against him. He immediately resigned, and Lord Derby returned to office.

 

Second Derby government

Derby took office at the head of a purely "Conservative" administration, not in coalition. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who declined. Disraeli was once more leader of the House of Commons and returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852, Derby led a minority government, dependent on the division of its opponents for survival. As Leader of the House, Disraeli resumed his regular reports to Queen Victoria, who had requested that he include what she "could not meet in newspapers".

 

During its brief life of just over a year, the Derby government proved moderately progressive. The Government of India Act 1858 ended the role of the East India Company in governing the subcontinent. The Thames Purification Bill funded the construction of much larger sewers for London. Disraeli had supported efforts to allow Jews to sit in Parliament with a bill passed through the Commons allowing each house of Parliament to determine what oaths its members should take. This was grudgingly agreed to by the House of Lords, with a minority of Conservatives joining with the Opposition to pass it. In 1858, Baron Lionel de Rothschild became the first MP to profess the Jewish faith.

 

Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring Gladstone, still nominally a Conservative MP, into the government, hoping to strengthen it. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this." In response, Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decisions then and previously whether to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby "broader than you may have supposed".

 

The Tories pursued a Reform Bill in 1859, which would have resulted in a modest increase to the franchise. The Liberals were healing the breaches between those who favoured Russell and the Palmerston loyalists, and in late March 1859, the government was defeated on a Russell-sponsored amendment. Derby dissolved Parliament, and the ensuing general election resulted in modest Tory gains, but not enough to control the Commons. When Parliament assembled, Derby's government was defeated by 13 votes on an amendment to the Address from the Throne. He resigned, and the Queen reluctantly sent for Palmerston again.

 

Opposition and third term as Chancellor

After Derby's second ejection from office, Disraeli faced dissension within Conservative ranks from those who blamed him for the defeat, or who felt he was disloyal to Derby—the former prime minister warned Disraeli of some MPs seeking his removal from the front bench. Among the conspirators were Lord Robert Cecil, a Conservative MP who would a quarter century later become prime minister as Lord Salisbury; he wrote that having Disraeli as leader in the Commons decreased the Conservatives' chance of holding office. When Cecil's father objected, Lord Robert stated, "I have merely put into print what all the country gentlemen were saying in private."

 

Disraeli led a toothless Opposition in the Commons—seeing no way of unseating Palmerston, Derby privately agreed not to seek the government's defeat. Disraeli kept himself informed on foreign affairs, and on what was going on in cabinet, thanks to a source within it. When the American Civil War began in 1861, Disraeli said little publicly, but like most Englishmen expected the South to win. Less reticent were Palmerston, Gladstone, and Russell, whose statements in support of the South contributed to years of hard feelings in the United States. In 1862, Disraeli met Prussian Count Otto von Bismarck and said of him, "be careful about that man, he means what he says".

 

The party truce ended in 1864, with Tories outraged over Palmerston's handling of the territorial dispute between the German Confederation and Denmark known as the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Disraeli had little help from Derby, who was ill, but he united the party enough on a no-confidence vote to limit the government to a majority of 18—Tory defections and absentees kept Palmerston in office. Despite rumours about Palmerston's health as he turned 80, he remained personally popular, and the Liberals increased their margin in the July 1865 general election. In the wake of the poor election results, Derby predicted to Disraeli that neither of them would ever hold office again.

 

Political plans were thrown into disarray by Palmerston's death on 18 October 1865. Russell became prime minister again, with Gladstone clearly the Liberal Party's leader-in-waiting, and as Leader of the House Disraeli's direct opponent. One of Russell's early priorities was a Reform Bill, but the proposed legislation that Gladstone announced on 12 March 1866 divided his party. The Conservatives and the dissident Liberals repeatedly attacked Gladstone's bill, and in June finally defeated the government; Russell resigned on 26 June. The dissidents were unwilling to serve under Disraeli in the House of Commons, and Derby formed a third Conservative minority government, with Disraeli again as Chancellor.

 

Tory Democrat: the 1867 Reform Act

It was Disraeli's belief that if given the vote British people would use it instinctively to put their natural and traditional rulers, the gentlemen of the Conservative Party, into power. Responding to renewed agitation for popular suffrage, Disraeli persuaded a majority of the cabinet to agree to a Reform bill. With what Derby cautioned was "a leap in the dark", Disraeli had outflanked the Liberals who, as the supposed champions of Reform, dared not oppose him. In the absence of a credible party rival and for fear of having an election called on the issue, Conservatives felt obliged to support Disraeli despite their misgivings.

 

There were Tory dissenters, most notably Lord Cranborne (as Robert Cecil was by then known) who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals". Even as Disraeli accepted Liberal amendments (although pointedly refusing those moved by Gladstone) that further lowered the property qualification, Cranborne was unable to lead an effective rebellion. Disraeli gained wide acclaim and became a hero to his party for the "marvellous parliamentary skill" with which he secured the passage of Reform in the Commons.

 

From the Liberal benches too there was admiration. MP for Nottingham Bernal Ostborne declared:

I have always thought the Chancellor of Exchequer was the greatest Radical in the House. He has achieved what no other man in the country could have done. He has lugged up that great omnibus full of stupid, heavy, country gentlemen--I only say 'stupid' in the parliamentary sense--and has converted these Conservative into Radical Reformers.

 

The Reform Act 1867 passed that August.[158] It extended the franchise by 938,427 men—an increase of 88%—by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at least £10 for rooms. It eliminated rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and granted constituencies to 15 unrepresented towns, with extra representation to large municipalities such as Liverpool and Manchester.

 

Prime Minister (1868)

Disraeli ministry

Derby had long had attacks of gout which left him bedbound, unable to deal with politics. As the new session of Parliament approached in February 1868, he was unable to leave his home but was reluctant to resign, as at 68 he was much younger than either Palmerston or Russell at the end of their premierships. Derby knew that his "attacks of illness would, at no distant period, incapacitate me from the discharge of my public duties"; doctors had warned him that his health required his resignation. In late February, with Parliament in session and Derby absent, he wrote to Disraeli asking for confirmation that "you will not shrink from the additional heavy responsibility". Reassured, he wrote to the Queen, resigning and recommending Disraeli as "only he could command the cordial support, en masse, of his present colleagues". Disraeli went to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where the Queen asked him to form a government. The monarch wrote to her daughter, Prussian Crown Princess Victoria, "Mr. Disraeli is Prime Minister! A proud thing for a man 'risen from the people' to have obtained!" The new prime minister told those who came to congratulate him, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."

 

First government, February–December 1868

Manning

The Conservatives remained a minority in the House of Commons and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of a new election once the new voting register had been compiled. Disraeli's term as prime minister, which began in February 1868, would therefore be short unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two major changes in the cabinet: he replaced Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor with Lord Cairns and brought in George Ward Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Derby had intended to replace Chelmsford once a vacancy in a suitable sinecure developed. Disraeli was unwilling to wait, and Cairns, in his view, was a far stronger minister.

 

Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate over the Church of Ireland. Although Ireland was largely Roman Catholic, the Church of England represented most landowners. It remained the established church and was funded by direct taxation, which was greatly resented by the Catholics and Presbyterians. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate with Archbishop Manning the establishment of a Catholic university in Dublin foundered in March when Gladstone moved resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The proposal united the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership, while causing divisions among the Conservatives.

 

The Conservatives remained in office because the new electoral register was not yet ready; neither party wished a poll under the old roll. Gladstone began using the Liberal majority in the Commons to push through resolutions and legislation. Disraeli's government survived until the December general election, at which the Liberals were returned to power with a majority.

 

In its short life, the first Disraeli government passed noncontroversial laws. It ended public executions, and the Corrupt Practices Act did much to end electoral bribery. It authorised an early version of nationalisation, having the Post Office buy up the telegraph companies. Amendments to the school law, the Scottish legal system, and the railway laws were passed. In addition, the Public Health (Scotland) Act instituted sanitary inspectors and medical officers. According to one study, "better sanitation was enforced throughout Scotland." Disraeli sent the successful expedition against Tewodros II of Ethiopia under Sir Robert Napier.

 

Opposition leader; 1874 election

Given Gladstone's majority in the Commons, Disraeli could do little but protest as the government advanced legislation; he chose to await Liberal mistakes. He used this leisure time to write a new novel, Lothair (1870). A work of fiction by a former prime minister was a novelty for Britain, and the book became a bestseller.

 

By 1872 there was dissent in the Conservative ranks over the failure to challenge Gladstone. This was quieted as Disraeli took steps to assert his leadership, and as divisions among the Liberals became clear. Public support for Disraeli was shown by cheering at a thanksgiving service in 1872 on the recovery of the Prince of Wales from illness, while Gladstone was met with silence. Disraeli had supported the efforts of party manager John Eldon Gorst to put the administration of the Conservative Party on a modern basis. On Gorst's advice, Disraeli gave a speech to a mass meeting in Manchester that year. To roaring approval, he compared the Liberal front bench to "a range of exhausted volcanoes... But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes and ever and again the dark rumbling of the sea." Gladstone, Disraeli stated, dominated the scene and "alternated between a menace and a sigh".

 

At his first departure from 10 Downing Street in 1868, Disraeli had had Victoria create Mary Anne Viscountess of Beaconsfield in her own right in lieu of a peerage for himself. Through 1872 the eighty-year-old peeress had stomach cancer. She died on 15 December. Urged by a clergyman to turn her thoughts to Jesus Christ in her final days, she said she could not: "You know Dizzy is my J.C."

 

In 1873, Gladstone brought forward legislation to establish a Catholic university in Dublin. This divided the Liberals, and on 12 March an alliance of Conservatives and Irish Catholics defeated the government by three votes. Gladstone resigned, and the Queen sent for Disraeli, who refused to take office. Without a general election, a Conservative government would be another minority; Disraeli wanted the power a majority would bring and felt he could gain it later by leaving the Liberals in office now. Gladstone's government struggled on, beset by scandal and unimproved by a reshuffle. As part of that change, Gladstone took on the office of Chancellor, leading to questions as to whether he had to stand for re-election on taking on a second ministry—until the 1920s, MPs becoming ministers had to seek re-election.

 

In January 1874, Gladstone called a general election, convinced that if he waited longer, he would do worse at the polls. Balloting was spread over two weeks, beginning on 1 February. As the constituencies voted, it became clear that the result would be a Conservative majority, the first since 1841. In Scotland, where the Conservatives were perennially weak, they increased from seven seats to nineteen. Overall, they won 350 seats to 245 for the Liberals and 57 for the Irish Home Rule League. Disraeli became prime minister for the second time.

 

Prime Minister (1874–1880)

Second term

Disraeli's cabinet of twelve, with six peers and six commoners, was the smallest since Reform. Of the peers, five of them had been in Disraeli's 1868 cabinet; the sixth, Lord Salisbury, was reconciled to Disraeli after negotiation and became Secretary of State for India. Lord Stanley (who had succeeded his father, the former prime minister, as Earl of Derby) became Foreign Secretary and Sir Stafford Northcote the Chancellor.

 

In August 1876, Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount Hughenden. The Queen had offered to ennoble him as early as 1868; he had then declined. She did so again in 1874, when he fell ill at Balmoral, but he was reluctant to leave the Commons for a house in which he had no experience. Continued ill health during his second premiership caused him to contemplate resignation, but his lieutenant, Derby, was unwilling, feeling that he could not manage the Queen. For Disraeli, the Lords, where the debate was less intense, was the alternative to resignation. Five days before the end of the 1876 session of Parliament, on 11 August, Disraeli was seen to linger and look around the chamber before departing. Newspapers reported his ennoblement the following morning.

 

In addition to the viscounty bestowed on Mary Anne Disraeli, the earldom of Beaconsfield was to have been bestowed on Edmund Burke in 1797, but he had died before receiving it. The name Beaconsfield, a town near Hughenden, was given to a minor character in Vivian Grey. Disraeli made various statements about his elevation, writing to Selina, Lady Bradford on 8 August 1876, "I am quite tired of that place [the Commons]" but when asked by a friend how he liked the Lords, replied, "I am dead; dead but in the Elysian fields."

 

Domestic policy

Legislation

Under the stewardship of Richard Assheton Cross, the Home Secretary, Disraeli's new government enacted many reforms, including the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, which made inexpensive loans available to towns and cities to construct working-class housing. Also enacted were the Public Health Act 1875, modernising sanitary codes, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875, and the Elementary Education Act 1876. Disraeli's government introduced a new Factory Act meant to protect workers, the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875, which allowed peaceful picketing, and the Employers and Workmen Act 1875 to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts.

 

The Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 prohibited the mixing of injurious ingredients with articles of food or with drugs, and provision was made for the appointment of analysts; all tea "had to be examined by a customs official on importation, and when in the opinion of the analyst it was unfit for food, the tea had to be destroyed". The Employers and Workmen Act 1875, according to one study, "finally placed employers and employed on an equal footing before the law". The Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 established the right to strike by providing that "an agreement or combination by one or more persons to do, or procure to be done, any act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute between employers and workmen, shall not be indictable as a conspiracy if such act committed by one person would not be punishable as a crime".

 

As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty."

 

Civil Service

London may have cost him votes in the 1868 election.

Gladstone in 1870 had sponsored an Order in Council, introducing competitive examination into the Civil Service, diminishing the political aspects of government hiring. Disraeli did not agree, and while he did not seek to reverse the order, his actions often frustrated its intent. For example, Disraeli made political appointments to positions previously given to career civil servants. He was backed by his party, hungry for office and its emoluments after almost thirty years with only brief spells in government. Disraeli gave positions to hard-up Conservative leaders, even—to Gladstone's outrage—creating one office at £2,000 per year. Nevertheless, Disraeli made fewer peers (only 22, including one of Victoria's sons) than had Gladstone (37 during his just over five years in office).

 

As he had in government posts, Disraeli rewarded old friends with clerical positions, making Sydney Turner, son of a good friend of Isaac D'Israeli, Dean of Ripon. He favoured Low church clergymen in promotion, disliking other movements in Anglicanism for political reasons. In this, he came into disagreement with the Queen, who out of loyalty to her late husband Albert preferred Broad church teachings. One controversial appointment had occurred shortly before the 1868 election. When the position of Archbishop of Canterbury fell vacant, Disraeli reluctantly agreed to the Queen's preferred candidate, Archibald Tait, the Bishop of London. To fill Tait's vacant see, Disraeli was urged by many people to appoint Samuel Wilberforce, the former Bishop of Winchester. Disraeli disliked Wilberforce and instead appointed John Jackson, the Bishop of Lincoln. Blake suggested that, on balance, these appointments cost Disraeli more votes than they gained him.

 

Final months, death, and memorials

Disraeli refused to cast blame for the defeat, which he understood was likely to be final for him. He wrote to Lady Bradford that it was just as much work to end a government as to form one, without any of the fun. Queen Victoria was bitter at his departure. Among the honours he arranged before resigning as Prime Minister on 21 April 1880 was one for his private secretary, Montagu Corry, who became Baron Rowton.

 

Disraeli's tomb at Hughenden

Returning to Hughenden, Disraeli brooded over his electoral dismissal, but also resumed work on Endymion, which he had begun in 1872 and laid aside before the 1874 election. The work was rapidly completed and published by November 1880.[251] He carried on a correspondence with Victoria, with letters passed through intermediaries. When Parliament met in January 1881, he served as Conservative leader in the Lords, attempting to serve as a moderating influence on Gladstone's legislation.

 

Because of his asthma and gout, Disraeli went out as little as possible, fearing more serious episodes of illness. In March, he fell ill with bronchitis, and emerged from bed only for a meeting with Salisbury and other Conservative leaders on the 26th. As it became clear that this might be his final sickness, friends and opponents alike came to call. Disraeli declined a visit from the Queen, saying, "She would only ask me to take a message to Albert." Almost blind, when he received the last letter from Victoria of which he was aware on 5 April, he held it momentarily, then had it read to him by Lord Barrington, a Privy Councillor. One card, signed "A Workman", delighted its recipient: "Don't die yet, we can't do without you."

 

Despite the gravity of Disraeli's condition, the doctors concocted optimistic bulletins for public consumption. Prime Minister Gladstone called several times to enquire about his rival's condition, and wrote in his diary, "May the Almighty be near his pillow." There was intense public interest in Disraeli's struggles for life. Disraeli had customarily taken the sacrament at Easter; when this day was observed on 17 April, there was discussion among his friends and family if he should be given the opportunity, but those against, fearing that he would lose hope, prevailed. On the morning of the following day, Easter Monday, he became incoherent, then comatose. Disraeli's last confirmed words before dying at his home at 19 Curzon Street in the early morning of 19 April were "I had rather live but I am not afraid to die". The anniversary of Disraeli's death was for some years commemorated in the United Kingdom as Primrose Day.

 

Despite having been offered a state funeral by Queen Victoria, Disraeli's executors decided against a public procession and funeral, fearing that too large crowds would gather to do him honour. The chief mourners at the service at Hughenden on 26 April were his brother Ralph and nephew Coningsby, to whom Hughenden would eventually pass; Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, Viscount Cranbrook, despite most of Disraeli's former cabinet being present, was notably absent in Italy. Queen Victoria was prostrated with grief, and considered ennobling Ralph or Coningsby as a memorial to Disraeli (without children, his titles became extinct with his death), but decided against it on the ground that their means were too small for a peerage. Protocol forbade her attending Disraeli's funeral (this would not be changed until 1965, when Elizabeth II attended the rites for the former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill) but she sent primroses ("his favourite flowers") to the funeral and visited the burial vault to place a wreath four days later.

 

A statue on a podium

Statue of Disraeli in Parliament Square, London

Disraeli is buried with his wife in a vault beneath the Church of St Michael and All Angels which stands in the grounds of his home, Hughenden Manor. There is also a memorial to him in the chancel in the church, erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His literary executor was his private secretary, Lord Rowton. The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of St Mawgan. Disraeli carried on a long correspondence with Mrs. Willyams, writing frankly about political affairs. At her death in 1865, she left him a large legacy, which helped clear his debts. His will was proved in April 1882 at £84,019 18 s. 7 d. (roughly equivalent to £9,016,938 in 2021).

 

Disraeli has a memorial in Westminster Abbey, erected by the nation on the motion of Gladstone in his memorial speech on Disraeli in the House of Commons. Gladstone had absented himself from the funeral, with his plea of the press of public business met with public mockery. His speech was widely anticipated, if only because his dislike for Disraeli was well known. In the event, the speech was a model of its kind, in which he avoided comment on Disraeli's politics while praising his personal qualities.

From the archives...September 29 2006. A pilgrimage to remote sacred Tirthapuri is considered essential to the traveler in the Kailash region. Tirthapuri is located on the Sutlej River. The traditional order of the pilgrimage is first to circumambulate Manasarovar, then Kailash, and then to go to Tirthapuri. This is almost always the final stop. Perhaps this has something to do with the soothing waters of the shallow hot springs.

Tirthapuri is best known for being a sacred place of Padmasambhava and his consort Yeshe Tsogyel. The monastery which was formerly connected with Hemis monastery in Ladakh was completely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt in 1980s. Behind the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh is a cave where Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogye both meditated and a granite rock with their embedded footprints. The hot springs are surrounded by pink and white limestone terraces.

Introduced, warm season, annual or short-lived perennial, prostrate herb with reddish

stems to 80cm long and a woody taproot. Leaves consist of 4-8 pairs of leaflets (4-12mm long); leaflets are dark green above and silvery-grey below; hairs mostly restricted to the midrib and margins. Solitary flowers in the axils are small, bright yellow and 5-petalled. Fruit have 5 segments each bearing short hard spines. Flowers from spring to autumn. A weed in pastures and fallowed cropping country. Often found around sheds, laneways and roadsides. In urban areas it is regarded as a nuisance weed on footpaths and playing fields. It easily attaches to machinery, tyres, animals and shoes aiding its spread. The spiny fruit can cause vegetable fault in wool and lameness to stock. Becomes dominant when other vegetation is removed by fallows, droughts or overgrazing. Prevention of spread is the best control measure. Establish competitive pastures to outcompete catheads. A wide range of herbicides can be used. Grazing with cattle is preferred as photosensitisation, nitrate poisoning and staggers in sheep have been known to occur.

amphora

Museum number1847,0806.26

DescriptionPottery: black-figured 'Tyrrhenian' amphora: Designs black on red ground; no accessories. (a) Combat of warriors over a fallen warrior: The prostrate man has helmet, cuirass, greaves, sword, and shield by his side; over him strides a fully-armed warrior with short bound-up chiton, parameridia (armour on thighs), and Boeotian shield, defending him with spear. On the left a warrior to right (helmet, short chiton, greaves, sword-belt, shield, and spear), is about to transfix another, with long hair, high-crested helmet, short chiton, greaves, shield, and sword, whom he has beaten down on his knees. On the right is a warrior fleeing to right and looking back, with helmet, short embroidered chiton, greaves, sword, and shield; next, a similar warrior moving to right, thrusting with spear at a warrior prostrate to right, of whom the legs and part of the body (in a short chiton) are alone visible. On the extreme right the head of another warrior is visible, with high-crested helmet.

(b) Athletic contests: On the left is a brabeus (arbitrator), bearded, in a himation; next to him, two wrestlers about to engage, the one on the left bearded; a bearded athlete to right with two leaping-poles, or spears for throwing, a similar athlete to right with halteres (weights used to aid momentum), leaping over eskammena (pegs fixed in the ground to mark the distance); a paidotribes (trainer) to left, bearded, in long chiton and himation, with staff, directing the movements of the last with right hand; a diskobolos (discus thrower) to right, bearded, with diskos in right hand, which he is about to throw. All the athletes are nude.

Below, three friezes of animals: (1) Two Sirens confronted, each having one wing advanced; between them a palmette- and lotus-pattern, of Corinthian type (cf. B 24-25) behind each Siren a panther; at the back, a group of two swans flanked by panthers; on the left a swan to right preening itself, on the right a goat to left. (2) Sphinx to right, with one wing advanced, flanked by a cock and panther on either side; at the back a panther and ram confronting a similar pair. (3) Goat to right, on either side a lion; at the back a panther to right, on either side a ram; before the panther, a rosette. www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collecti...

Introduced, warm-season, perennial, prostrate legume, with rhizomes and usually less than 15 cm tall. Stems are hollow. Leaves have 5 leaflets, which are ovate to obovate, to 25 mm long and with long marginal hairs. Flowerheads are clusters of 8-14 yellow flowers (10-12 mm long) on the end of unbranched stalks. Pods are long and cylindrical. Flowering is from late summer to autumn.

A native of Europe and North Africa, it is sown and naturalized in high rainfall areas and on wet and waterlogged soils. It is tolerant of acid low-fertility soils. Seed is now difficult to obtain. Usually slow to establish, but will tolerate grass competition after 2-3 years. Can grow under low fertility conditions, but is responsive to increased phosphorus. Tends to die off in patches in hot, dry conditions; reshoot when conditions are favourable. Tolerant of wet conditions, but does not survive prolonged flooding. Low bloat risk. High tannin in some varieties can cause periods of lower palatability, but this can reduce overgrazing and help persistence. More tolerant of grazing than Lotus corniculatus, but some leaf should remain after grazing. Provide some rest in autumn to aid seed set and spread, but conditions may not be suitable every year for seed set.

I was prostrate to capture my first image of the Green-veined White this year on the very low vegetation at Ketton Nature. Reserve

Kodak Retinette #160, FOMAPAN 100, F8, 1/50sec, 千葉県,　市川市

Introduced, warm-season, annual or short-lived perennial, more or less prostrate herb; to 25 cm tall and with thick, tough stems that put roots down where the nodes come into contact with the soil. Leaves are oval and usually lobed, with toothed margins; 3-7 veins radiate from the heart-shaped base. Flowers are solitary in the leaf axils and have 5 red to orange-red petals. Flowering is in spring and summer. A native of South America, it is a weed of disturbed areas, such as newly sown pastures and turf; less so

in crops. It is spread by seed and vegetatively by putting down roots where ever stem nodes contact the ground. It is salt and drought tolerant. Has caused occasional stock poisoning, but its very prostrate habit limits the quantity eaten. Control in pastures by promoting dense swards. Can be controlled by herbicides at the seedling stage, but it is extremely tolerant of glyphosate, often making it a problem weed of direct drilled crops and pastures.

Prostrate spreading plant to 6 cm high x to 15 cm wide. Purple flowers.

 

They grow in seasonal wet areas flowering into summer.

 

Photo: Fred

15 Dec 2017

 

I like the moss capsules at the front of the flower.

Introduced, warm season, perennial, prostrate herb to 60 cm tall. Leaves and stems are hairy with glandular and non-glandular hairs. Leaves are alternate, lanceolate, deeply veined and stem clasping. Blue to mauve tubular flowers (with yellow stamens and throat) arranged caterpillar-like in 2 rows on one side of the flowering stem (scirpoid cyme). Flowers most of the year, but not in winter in southern areas. Grows on a wide range of soil types. Predominantly in areas that receive at least 50% of average annual rainfall in summer. It is mostly a problem of run down pasture and disturbed areas such as cropping paddocks, roadsides and waste land. Regenerates from seed and vegetatively from pieces of plant and roots. It is spread by water, fur of animals and in the gut of animals. A weed which is toxic to animals, quite invasive and difficult to control. Causes chronic liver damage in cattle, sheep and horses; can be fatal. Cultivation encourages its spread by stimulating germination and regrowth of plant parts. Management requires an integrated approach including herbicides, productive pasture, grazing management and biological control. There has only been one biological control agent released in Australia, the blue heliotrope leaf-beetle. At high densities, leaf-beetles can completely defoliate blue heliotrope, with both the larvae and adults feeding on the leaves.

Dense, spreading, multi-branching, prostrate shrub, 2-5 cm high, 20 cm to 1+ m wide. Flowers to 4cm diameter, yellow with numerous stamens around 5 carpels.

  

Grows well in disturbed soil.

It is not often now I will have the chance to see a new UK orchid species, however, over the border and over the border after that, in West Sussex, there is a place where they have two very rare species, seeded, but a wild UK orchid. Well, the Greater Tongue is not a native orchid, but there has now been four confirmed records of them growing in the UK, these being one of them. But the second species, the Loose-Flowerd Orchid, is only found in the Channel Islands, and here.

 

So, better go and prostrate myself at their lips. As it were.

 

There is a quick way, via the motorway, or the lazy way, taking the coast road. And as I planned to do two or three stops on the way, I would take the coast road.

 

Once I had dropped Jools off at work first.

 

Have you got your phone? Jools asked. Hell no. How will I know if anything goes wrong? You won't, but it'll be fine.

 

He hoped.

 

After coffee, we load up the car with work bag and cameras, and off into the bright dawn, or an hour after dawn, and onto the almost empty roads to Hythe.

 

Having dropped Jools off, I drive out of Hythe and out onto the Romney Marsh. The road meanders over ditches and the railway line, I make good time, getting to Rye just before eight.

 

Last year I saw a Tweet saying a rare plant was found in, what I thought was, Rye. Growing on the church wall.

 

No matter, I had not been there for ages, and wandering around it cobbled streets, looking at its wonderful ancient buildings is all the more enjoyable when you're the only one ding it, and with a soundtrack of the dawn chorus.

 

I check all the wall s of the churchyard, and find many plants growing on or out of the wall, but not what I was looking for.

 

Maybe, I thought, I meant they were in Winchelsea?

 

Maybe indeed. Anyway, Winchelsea is just a ten minute drive away, another ancinet town, this time set on a hill with the main road up from the marsh passing through a huge stone gate.

 

And the town itself is set on a grid system, and some would have you believe that this was the system New York was based on. I don't know, but it aint no Manhattan.

 

I park beside the church, walk in and look for the plant with round shaped leaves. None found. I then go to check on the church, and about eight feet up was a single plant.

 

I was so excited. So excited, I told a guy from English Heritage that I had found a rare plant. Oh really, what's it called? Wall Pennywort says I. Oh that grows everywhere in this town I was told.

 

I deflated, slightly.

 

And indeed I find it everywhere I looked. Anywhere made of stone, anyways.

 

I go back to the car and set sail to Eastbourne, in the west.

 

To get there I would have to pass through, ahem; Hastings, Bexhill then Eastbourne, then St Leonards.

 

The road meanders through towns, up and down downs, it takes a long time to get a little distance. Hastings is jammed with traffic due to a collapsed sewer. Pooey.

 

But further along, it is the endless traffic lights and roundabouts.

 

West of Eastbourne is Beachy Head. Not a beach. It is a high chalk cliff, which then goes on to make up part of the Severn Sisters, a line of undulating chalk cliffs.

 

I was there as I seem to remember being told, many years ago, of a hybrid Orchid growing near there, so after what might have been six years since being told, I was following up. And directions were very sketchy to say the least

 

I park in the main car park, but unlike everyone else, I walk away from the cliffs to the edge of a field, to scour the hedgerow and see if any pikes could be found.

 

I look and look, but see nothing orchid-like.

 

Drat.

 

But I do see butterflies. Lots of butterflies, including a pair of Wall Browns who land at my feet, mid-courtship, so I was able to snap them. There was also Brown Argus and a Common Blue, though the latter was flighty and I got no shot.

 

Back to the car, program the sat nav and I find I still had an hour and ten minutes to go. Best get a move on.

 

Sussex is a smarter and posher county than Kent, I pass my gated mansions, prep schools and villages I could not afford to look at let alone live.

 

As I drove, the sky clouded over, meaning my plan for top shots was being ruined.

 

Wakehurst is a National Trust property, but the gardens are maintained by Kew, it is where they have a lot of their wild plants. And in a quiet corner there was a small collection of orchids.

 

He hoped.

 

I pulled up at midday, and I realised i had not eaten; not a problem, but with it raining, best take a break, have lunch, and hopefully the weather would get better.

 

Being hungry, I order a panini, a sausage roll, and get a bowl of salad with the meal too. I had a lot of food.

 

Anyway, I sit down to eat and hope the weather blows over.

 

Which it does. Kinda. It at least isn't raining.

 

The kind staff had given me a map, and ringed the bank where the orchids were. So, I just had to find it.

 

I wander through beds of Korean, Chinese then Japanese plants, before finding a small dip, down that and up a grass track, and behind some simple low fencing was a small group of orchids.

 

I had found them.

 

So, I lay down, got my shots, then wandered round the grounds, down an ornamental valley, all overflowing with highly scented rhododendrons, all marvellous stuff.

 

But I was worried about getting back. So, I made my way back to the car, through the shop without buying anything.

 

The sat nav said one hour twenty minutes. Seemed short. I decided not to believe it, so drove out of the car park and towards the motorway at warp factor nine.

 

But it is true: just six miles to Gatwick, then six more to the M25, 15 to Kent then down the M20 towards Hythe. I was back in east Kent before three, meaning I had two hours to kill.

View large on black

Prostrating all the way to Lhasa (500 km or more)

The thin blue line appeared in the original photo

I love Lantana. I know it's a weedy thing, but I plant it wherever I live!

 

I worked at a number of plant nurseries from 1977 through 1984, all in Southern California, which is a wonderful place for gardening. These labels, hang tags, signs and placards are from a stash I acquired during those years.

 

Most were salvaged from rubbish during my work as a "bed cleaner." Tags would fall off, varieties would change so signs were discarded and when the withered bare root roses leftover at the end of the season were tossed out, I pulled out the paper labels from the root ball wrappings.

  

"Close", bronze, Antony Gormley, 1993.

Introduced, warm-season, short-lived perennial, prostrate to semi-erect legume with a shallow taproot. Leaves have 2 asymmetrical, obovate to rounded leaflets, each 12-35 mm long. Flowerheads consist of 1-2 flowers in the leaf axils,

each with 5 symmetrically arranged yellow petals. Pods are linear, flat, sparsely to very hairy and 35-40 mm long. Flowering is in the warmer months. A native of North and South America, it is sown for

grazing and naturalized in frost free areas. It is suited to free-draining, lower fertility, acid soils

and cannot tolerate heavy soils or waterlogging. Not recommended for fertile soils. Frost can limit spread. Wynn is the only sown cultivar. Seeds germinate and establish quickly and plants can rapidly grow and spread. Produces good weight gains in cattle, but old stems

have low feed value. It has low palatability for cattle during the growing season and is not readily grazed until grass quality

has declined sufficiently in autumn. It is not grazed by horses. Grazing management should aim to limit selective grazing during the growing season and maintain plants in a low radiating growth habit. Short

duration heavy grazing with appropriate rest periods is best to achieve this. Grazing periods can be extended in winter in frost free areas when grasses

are dormant. In areas with heavy frosts grazing should occur before first frost to avoid total leaf loss. Continuous heavy grazing leads to a decline in companion grasses, dominance by round-leafed

cassia and invasion by weeds.

Diocese of Phoenix ordains first auxiliary bishop

 

By Andrew Junker | July 20, 2010 | The Catholic Sun

 

AVONDALE — Eduardo Alanís Nevares was ordained a bishop July 19 during a three-hour long Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. He will assist Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted and serve the Diocese of Phoenix as its first auxiliary bishop.

 

“I come with great faith and great trust,” Bishop Nevares said after the Mass. “I’m going to go around preaching the Gospel to everyone.”

 

The day was historic for the diocese not only because Bishop Nevares is its first auxiliary bishop, but also because he is its first Hispanic bishop. In light of the recent immigration law SB 1070, many have seen the bishop’s appointment as heaven-sent — a fact he alluded to after Mass.

 

Describing himself as a “bridge person” who can draw people together, Bishop Nevares said the timing of his new assignment is something “providential.”

 

“I will help Bishop Olmsted,”Bishop Nevares said. “He has asked especially that I animate the Hispanic community and raise up men and women to the priesthood and religious life.”

 

At the same time, the newly ordained bishop stressed that he will not just be a bishop for Hispanic Catholics.

 

“He’s here to serve everybody,” said Jose Robles, director of Hispanic Ministry for the diocese.

 

During the Mass, Bishop Nevares was greeted by a number of different local ethnic groups, including Chinese, Korean, Sudanese, Tongan, Native American and more.

 

“I must admit that now I know I am not in Tyler,” the bishop joked about his previous diocese in east Texas after the procession ended. “I’ve never been greeted by so many beautiful ethnic groups.”

 

During his homily, Bishop Olmsted encouraged his new auxiliary to view his office as one of service, not of prestige.

 

“It is our privilege and our duty to serve and not to be served, to put others’ needs ahead of our own, and to resist all temptations to lord it over anyone,” Bishop Olmsted said.

 

“This is the example that the Lord Jesus left for us, when he washed the feet of the Apostles, and then said to them, ‘What I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do,’” he said.

 

Bishop Olmsted also emphasized the need for a bishop to live without fear, and quoted the famous Polish Cardinal Wyszynski who said, “Lack of courage in a bishop is the beginning of a disaster.”

 

“It is our honor and privilege, as well as our first obligation, to make known the Gospel of Christ in all its purity and integrity,” he said.

 

After the homily, Bishop Nevares knelt before Bishop Olmsted while two deacons held the Book of Gospels over his head. Bishop Olmsted then anointed Bishop Nevares’ forehead with oil. Finally, more than 20 visiting bishops — including Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles — laid their hands on the new bishop’s head and prayed for him.

 

At one part during the Mass, the soon to be ordained bishop lay prostrate in front of the altar while the congregation chanted the Litany of Saints, an emotional and profound moment for him.

 

“God, here’s my life. It’s for you,” Bishop Nevares described his thoughts during the liturgy.

 

A number of priests, friends and family from Texas attended the ordination. Bishop Olmsted credited the Nevares family a number of times during Mass for supporting Bishop Nevares’ vocation. He said he looked forward to their future visits to the Valley.

 

“Nuestra casa es su casa,” the bishop said.

 

Bishop Nevares’ parents were Mexican immigrants who came to the United States while he was in the womb. Born and raised in Houston, the 11-year-old future bishop was inspired by a visiting missionary who talked of his work in Madagascar.

 

As a teenager, he attended a junior seminary for the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, into whose order he was ordained a priest in 1981. In 2007, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Tyler, where he had been serving for years.

 

Known for his outreach to Hispanics, Bishop Nevares formed the area’s first Spanish-speaking program to train men to be permanent deacons.

 

It’s this reputation that has excited so many local Hispanics since learning of his appointment in Phoenix.

 

“We have someone like ourselves in this position. We can identify with him,” said Manuel Torres Caballero, a parishioner at St. Martin de Porres. “We feel that also with our Bishop Olmsted, because he speaks Spanish, but with Bishop Nevares, we get something else. I don’t know how to describe it.”

 

Caballero said it’s a difficult and fraught time for Hispanics locally and Bishop Nevares’ ordination provides some joy and hope.

 

“We feel hope in a difficult time, joy and happiness,” he said. “We feel supported."

 

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Diocese of Phoenix ordains first auxiliary bishop

 

By Andrew Junker | July 20, 2010 | The Catholic Sun

 

AVONDALE — Eduardo Alanís Nevares was ordained a bishop July 19 during a three-hour long Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. He will assist Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted and serve the Diocese of Phoenix as its first auxiliary bishop.

 

“I come with great faith and great trust,” Bishop Nevares said after the Mass. “I’m going to go around preaching the Gospel to everyone.”

 

The day was historic for the diocese not only because Bishop Nevares is its first auxiliary bishop, but also because he is its first Hispanic bishop. In light of the recent immigration law SB 1070, many have seen the bishop’s appointment as heaven-sent — a fact he alluded to after Mass.

 

Describing himself as a “bridge person” who can draw people together, Bishop Nevares said the timing of his new assignment is something “providential.”

 

“I will help Bishop Olmsted,”Bishop Nevares said. “He has asked especially that I animate the Hispanic community and raise up men and women to the priesthood and religious life.”

 

At the same time, the newly ordained bishop stressed that he will not just be a bishop for Hispanic Catholics.

 

“He’s here to serve everybody,” said Jose Robles, director of Hispanic Ministry for the diocese.

 

During the Mass, Bishop Nevares was greeted by a number of different local ethnic groups, including Chinese, Korean, Sudanese, Tongan, Native American and more.

 

“I must admit that now I know I am not in Tyler,” the bishop joked about his previous diocese in east Texas after the procession ended. “I’ve never been greeted by so many beautiful ethnic groups.”

 

During his homily, Bishop Olmsted encouraged his new auxiliary to view his office as one of service, not of prestige.

 

“It is our privilege and our duty to serve and not to be served, to put others’ needs ahead of our own, and to resist all temptations to lord it over anyone,” Bishop Olmsted said.

 

“This is the example that the Lord Jesus left for us, when he washed the feet of the Apostles, and then said to them, ‘What I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do,’” he said.

 

Bishop Olmsted also emphasized the need for a bishop to live without fear, and quoted the famous Polish Cardinal Wyszynski who said, “Lack of courage in a bishop is the beginning of a disaster.”

 

“It is our honor and privilege, as well as our first obligation, to make known the Gospel of Christ in all its purity and integrity,” he said.

 

After the homily, Bishop Nevares knelt before Bishop Olmsted while two deacons held the Book of Gospels over his head. Bishop Olmsted then anointed Bishop Nevares’ forehead with oil. Finally, more than 20 visiting bishops — including Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles — laid their hands on the new bishop’s head and prayed for him.

 

At one part during the Mass, the soon to be ordained bishop lay prostrate in front of the altar while the congregation chanted the Litany of Saints, an emotional and profound moment for him.

 

“God, here’s my life. It’s for you,” Bishop Nevares described his thoughts during the liturgy.

 

A number of priests, friends and family from Texas attended the ordination. Bishop Olmsted credited the Nevares family a number of times during Mass for supporting Bishop Nevares’ vocation. He said he looked forward to their future visits to the Valley.

 

“Nuestra casa es su casa,” the bishop said.

 

Bishop Nevares’ parents were Mexican immigrants who came to the United States while he was in the womb. Born and raised in Houston, the 11-year-old future bishop was inspired by a visiting missionary who talked of his work in Madagascar.

 

As a teenager, he attended a junior seminary for the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, into whose order he was ordained a priest in 1981. In 2007, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Tyler, where he had been serving for years.

 

Known for his outreach to Hispanics, Bishop Nevares formed the area’s first Spanish-speaking program to train men to be permanent deacons.

 

It’s this reputation that has excited so many local Hispanics since learning of his appointment in Phoenix.

 

“We have someone like ourselves in this position. We can identify with him,” said Manuel Torres Caballero, a parishioner at St. Martin de Porres. “We feel that also with our Bishop Olmsted, because he speaks Spanish, but with Bishop Nevares, we get something else. I don’t know how to describe it.”

 

Caballero said it’s a difficult and fraught time for Hispanics locally and Bishop Nevares’ ordination provides some joy and hope.

 

“We feel hope in a difficult time, joy and happiness,” he said. “We feel supported."

 

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It is not often now I will have the chance to see a new UK orchid species, however, over the border and over the border after that, in West Sussex, there is a place where they have two very rare species, seeded, but a wild UK orchid. Well, the Greater Tongue is not a native orchid, but there has now been four confirmed records of them growing in the UK, these being one of them. But the second species, the Loose-Flowerd Orchid, is only found in the Channel Islands, and here.

 

So, better go and prostrate myself at their lips. As it were.

 

There is a quick way, via the motorway, or the lazy way, taking the coast road. And as I planned to do two or three stops on the way, I would take the coast road.

 

Once I had dropped Jools off at work first.

 

Have you got your phone? Jools asked. Hell no. How will I know if anything goes wrong? You won't, but it'll be fine.

 

He hoped.

 

After coffee, we load up the car with work bag and cameras, and off into the bright dawn, or an hour after dawn, and onto the almost empty roads to Hythe.

 

Having dropped Jools off, I drive out of Hythe and out onto the Romney Marsh. The road meanders over ditches and the railway line, I make good time, getting to Rye just before eight.

 

Last year I saw a Tweet saying a rare plant was found in, what I thought was, Rye. Growing on the church wall.

 

No matter, I had not been there for ages, and wandering around it cobbled streets, looking at its wonderful ancient buildings is all the more enjoyable when you're the only one ding it, and with a soundtrack of the dawn chorus.

 

I check all the wall s of the churchyard, and find many plants growing on or out of the wall, but not what I was looking for.

 

Maybe, I thought, I meant they were in Winchelsea?

 

Maybe indeed. Anyway, Winchelsea is just a ten minute drive away, another ancinet town, this time set on a hill with the main road up from the marsh passing through a huge stone gate.

 

And the town itself is set on a grid system, and some would have you believe that this was the system New York was based on. I don't know, but it aint no Manhattan.

 

I park beside the church, walk in and look for the plant with round shaped leaves. None found. I then go to check on the church, and about eight feet up was a single plant.

 

I was so excited. So excited, I told a guy from English Heritage that I had found a rare plant. Oh really, what's it called? Wall Pennywort says I. Oh that grows everywhere in this town I was told.

 

I deflated, slightly.

 

And indeed I find it everywhere I looked. Anywhere made of stone, anyways.

 

I go back to the car and set sail to Eastbourne, in the west.

 

To get there I would have to pass through, ahem; Hastings, Bexhill then Eastbourne, then St Leonards.

 

The road meanders through towns, up and down downs, it takes a long time to get a little distance. Hastings is jammed with traffic due to a collapsed sewer. Pooey.

 

But further along, it is the endless traffic lights and roundabouts.

 

West of Eastbourne is Beachy Head. Not a beach. It is a high chalk cliff, which then goes on to make up part of the Severn Sisters, a line of undulating chalk cliffs.

 

I was there as I seem to remember being told, many years ago, of a hybrid Orchid growing near there, so after what might have been six years since being told, I was following up. And directions were very sketchy to say the least

 

I park in the main car park, but unlike everyone else, I walk away from the cliffs to the edge of a field, to scour the hedgerow and see if any pikes could be found.

 

I look and look, but see nothing orchid-like.

 

Drat.

 

But I do see butterflies. Lots of butterflies, including a pair of Wall Browns who land at my feet, mid-courtship, so I was able to snap them. There was also Brown Argus and a Common Blue, though the latter was flighty and I got no shot.

 

Back to the car, program the sat nav and I find I still had an hour and ten minutes to go. Best get a move on.

 

Sussex is a smarter and posher county than Kent, I pass my gated mansions, prep schools and villages I could not afford to look at let alone live.

 

As I drove, the sky clouded over, meaning my plan for top shots was being ruined.

 

Wakehurst is a National Trust property, but the gardens are maintained by Kew, it is where they have a lot of their wild plants. And in a quiet corner there was a small collection of orchids.

 

He hoped.

 

I pulled up at midday, and I realised i had not eaten; not a problem, but with it raining, best take a break, have lunch, and hopefully the weather would get better.

 

Being hungry, I order a panini, a sausage roll, and get a bowl of salad with the meal too. I had a lot of food.

 

Anyway, I sit down to eat and hope the weather blows over.

 

Which it does. Kinda. It at least isn't raining.

 

The kind staff had given me a map, and ringed the bank where the orchids were. So, I just had to find it.

 

I wander through beds of Korean, Chinese then Japanese plants, before finding a small dip, down that and up a grass track, and behind some simple low fencing was a small group of orchids.

 

I had found them.

 

So, I lay down, got my shots, then wandered round the grounds, down an ornamental valley, all overflowing with highly scented rhododendrons, all marvellous stuff.

 

But I was worried about getting back. So, I made my way back to the car, through the shop without buying anything.

 

The sat nav said one hour twenty minutes. Seemed short. I decided not to believe it, so drove out of the car park and towards the motorway at warp factor nine.

 

But it is true: just six miles to Gatwick, then six more to the M25, 15 to Kent then down the M20 towards Hythe. I was back in east Kent before three, meaning I had two hours to kill.

It is not often now I will have the chance to see a new UK orchid species, however, over the border and over the border after that, in West Sussex, there is a place where they have two very rare species, seeded, but a wild UK orchid. Well, the Greater Tongue is not a native orchid, but there has now been four confirmed records of them growing in the UK, these being one of them. But the second species, the Loose-Flowerd Orchid, is only found in the Channel Islands, and here.

 

So, better go and prostrate myself at their lips. As it were.

 

There is a quick way, via the motorway, or the lazy way, taking the coast road. And as I planned to do two or three stops on the way, I would take the coast road.

 

Once I had dropped Jools off at work first.

 

Have you got your phone? Jools asked. Hell no. How will I know if anything goes wrong? You won't, but it'll be fine.

 

He hoped.

 

After coffee, we load up the car with work bag and cameras, and off into the bright dawn, or an hour after dawn, and onto the almost empty roads to Hythe.

 

Having dropped Jools off, I drive out of Hythe and out onto the Romney Marsh. The road meanders over ditches and the railway line, I make good time, getting to Rye just before eight.

 

Last year I saw a Tweet saying a rare plant was found in, what I thought was, Rye. Growing on the church wall.

 

No matter, I had not been there for ages, and wandering around it cobbled streets, looking at its wonderful ancient buildings is all the more enjoyable when you're the only one ding it, and with a soundtrack of the dawn chorus.

 

I check all the wall s of the churchyard, and find many plants growing on or out of the wall, but not what I was looking for.

 

Maybe, I thought, I meant they were in Winchelsea?

 

Maybe indeed. Anyway, Winchelsea is just a ten minute drive away, another ancinet town, this time set on a hill with the main road up from the marsh passing through a huge stone gate.

 

And the town itself is set on a grid system, and some would have you believe that this was the system New York was based on. I don't know, but it aint no Manhattan.

 

I park beside the church, walk in and look for the plant with round shaped leaves. None found. I then go to check on the church, and about eight feet up was a single plant.

 

I was so excited. So excited, I told a guy from English Heritage that I had found a rare plant. Oh really, what's it called? Wall Pennywort says I. Oh that grows everywhere in this town I was told.

 

I deflated, slightly.

 

And indeed I find it everywhere I looked. Anywhere made of stone, anyways.

 

I go back to the car and set sail to Eastbourne, in the west.

 

To get there I would have to pass through, ahem; Hastings, Bexhill then Eastbourne, then St Leonards.

 

The road meanders through towns, up and down downs, it takes a long time to get a little distance. Hastings is jammed with traffic due to a collapsed sewer. Pooey.

 

But further along, it is the endless traffic lights and roundabouts.

 

West of Eastbourne is Beachy Head. Not a beach. It is a high chalk cliff, which then goes on to make up part of the Severn Sisters, a line of undulating chalk cliffs.

 

I was there as I seem to remember being told, many years ago, of a hybrid Orchid growing near there, so after what might have been six years since being told, I was following up. And directions were very sketchy to say the least

 

I park in the main car park, but unlike everyone else, I walk away from the cliffs to the edge of a field, to scour the hedgerow and see if any pikes could be found.

 

I look and look, but see nothing orchid-like.

 

Drat.

 

But I do see butterflies. Lots of butterflies, including a pair of Wall Browns who land at my feet, mid-courtship, so I was able to snap them. There was also Brown Argus and a Common Blue, though the latter was flighty and I got no shot.

 

Back to the car, program the sat nav and I find I still had an hour and ten minutes to go. Best get a move on.

 

Sussex is a smarter and posher county than Kent, I pass my gated mansions, prep schools and villages I could not afford to look at let alone live.

 

As I drove, the sky clouded over, meaning my plan for top shots was being ruined.

 

Wakehurst is a National Trust property, but the gardens are maintained by Kew, it is where they have a lot of their wild plants. And in a quiet corner there was a small collection of orchids.

 

He hoped.

 

I pulled up at midday, and I realised i had not eaten; not a problem, but with it raining, best take a break, have lunch, and hopefully the weather would get better.

 

Being hungry, I order a panini, a sausage roll, and get a bowl of salad with the meal too. I had a lot of food.

 

Anyway, I sit down to eat and hope the weather blows over.

 

Which it does. Kinda. It at least isn't raining.

 

The kind staff had given me a map, and ringed the bank where the orchids were. So, I just had to find it.

 

I wander through beds of Korean, Chinese then Japanese plants, before finding a small dip, down that and up a grass track, and behind some simple low fencing was a small group of orchids.

 

I had found them.

 

So, I lay down, got my shots, then wandered round the grounds, down an ornamental valley, all overflowing with highly scented rhododendrons, all marvellous stuff.

 

But I was worried about getting back. So, I made my way back to the car, through the shop without buying anything.

 

The sat nav said one hour twenty minutes. Seemed short. I decided not to believe it, so drove out of the car park and towards the motorway at warp factor nine.

 

But it is true: just six miles to Gatwick, then six more to the M25, 15 to Kent then down the M20 towards Hythe. I was back in east Kent before three, meaning I had two hours to kill.

Used at www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-jobs/news/don-t-gi...

Introduced, cool-season, annual, low-growing, hairless legume, with prostrate to ascending stems. Leaves have 3 leaflets, each oblong to round and 4-13 mm long. The central leaflet has a distinctly longer stalk than the lateral ones. Flowerheads are loose to somewhat dense hemispherical clusters (6-7 mm long) of 3-20 yellow pea-like flowers. Flowering is in spring. A native of Europe, it is found in pastures, woodlands, lawns and roadsides. Although it often occurs at reasonably high density in short pastures, productivity is low and it has a high proportion of stem to leaf. It is palatable and grows from autumn to early summer (very dependent on rainfall), but only produces useful amounts of feed in spring. Requires moist soil for growth, so tends to burn-off rapidly in late spring as temperatures rise and soil moisture often remains low. Growth increases with applied phosphorus as long as pastures are kept short in late winter and early spring, but the response is likely to be too small to be economic.

Prostrate decumbent shrub to 18 cm high, c. 10 stamens on one side of two villous carpels, staminodes on both sides of carpels. Flowers yellow.

Introduced cool-season biennial or short lived perennial legume; stems are semi prostrate to erect, thick and 30-160 cm tall. Leaves are pinnate with 7-15 pairs of round to oval leaflets and succulent; upper surface is hairless and lower surface is hairy. Flowerheads are racemes with up to 35 pea-like flowers; petals are red to crimson. Pods are 3-8-segmented and have a rough short thorny surface. A native of the Mediterranean region, it is sown as a short-term ley legume in cropping systems. It produces large quantities of high quality feed in winter and spring. It can be grazed or cut for hay (less leaf drop than lucerne, but thicker stems are more difficult to dry) or silage, but is not suitable for use in grass/legume pastures.

Woman prostrating around the Barkhor

 

www.yowangdu.com/tibetan-buddhism/prostrations.html

Sr Rose and Mother Sofia prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament the evening before the profession

Crown of life hovers over Anne Drury 1633 wife of Sir John Deane 1625 www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/14428597446/ The monument by William Wright of Charing Cross was erected by her son Sir Dru Deane in 1634 who lies "prostrate at her feete".

"Let all time remember ye worthynes of ye Lady Deane who lived ye faithfull wife & died ye constant widow of Sir John Deane of Mapplested in ye county of Essex knight

Let no sorrowe forget that she departed this life on ye 25th of May 1633 of whome truth testifies. To whose beloved memory Dru Deane her eldest son here prostrate at her feete erects this monument

Her shape was rare: Her beauty exquisite

Her wytt accurate: Her judgement singular

Her entertainment harty: Her conversation lovely

Her harte merciful: Her hand helpful

Her courses modest: Her discourses wise

Her charity Heavenly: Her amity constant

Her practise holy: Her religion pure

Her vowes lawful: Her meditations divine

Her faith unfaygned: Her hope stable

Her prayers devout: Her devotions diurnall

Her dayes short: Her life everlasting"

Anne was the daughter of daughter of Sir Dru Drury of Riddlesworth by Catherine Finch ++++ www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/1083936330/

Children - 2 sons and 6 daughters.

1. Dru +++ Lucy daughter of George Goring 1st Earl of Norwich by Mary daughter of Edward Nevill, 8th or 1st Baron Bergavenny & Rachel Lennard of Chevening

2. John

1. Anne m Sir Anthony Wingfield son of Sir Thomas Wingfield d1609/10 by 2nd wife Elizabeth Drury (buried at Letheringham which he inherited on the death of his brother) daughter of Sir Dru Drury of Riddlesworth and Lynstead and Catherine Finch ++++ www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/1083936330/ (Thomas Wingfield m1 Radcliffe Gerrard www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/13985510334/

2. Katherine

3. Frances

4. Elizabeth m John Tyndall son of Deane Tyndall by Amy Weston

5. Joan

6. MIldred

 

+++ Children of Dru Drury and Lucy Goring

1. Anthony === m Jane daughter of Sir Edward Barkham 1667 of Southacre by Frances daughter of Thomas Berney of Redham

  

=== Anthony (Sir Drue's eldest surviving son) was aged 8 at the death of his father and was placed under the guardianship of Deane Tyndal, of Chelmshaw House in Great Maplestead, a zealous Parliamentarian, and one of the Parliamentary Committee for the Preservation of Peace in Essex. But youug Anthony was sprung from a Royalist family on his father's side, and his mother was a daughter of the celebrated George Goring, Earl of Norwich, the Royalist leader, so it is probable that he also was inclined to the King's side ; at any rate he conducted himself in a reckless manner, marrying aged 18 to Jane daughter of Sir Edward Barkham and immediately on his coming of age in 1652 negotiating for the sale of the family property, which he effected Feb. 1st, 1653, when he conveyed Dynes Hall to Col. John Sparrow son of John Sparrow of Gestingthorpe flic.kr/p/PsXdC for the sum of £6,000

After this transaction he completely disappears from the scene, and it is probable that he died shortly afterwards leaving a son Anthony Deane of Monk Soham

- Church of St Giles Great Maplestead, Essex

The Ibadah of Imam Zaynul Abideen (A.S.)

In His name, the Beneficent, the Merciful Dear Readers, Salamun 'Alaykum.

 

Today is 25th of Muharram 1416 AH. Today the Shi'ah Muslims are commemorating the martyrdom of Imam 'Ali Zaynul 'Abideen, 'alayhis-salaam. His titles Zaynul-'Abideen (adornment of worshippers) and Sayyidus-Sajideen (chief of those who prostrate) indicate that he was a great worshipper.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the great 'ibaadah (worship) of our fourth Imam and refelect upon possible reasons why some of us do not find the taste and pleasure in worshipping the Almighty. Why don't we enjoy performing salaat (both obligatory and recommended prayers), doing Du'as (supplicating and invoking the Almighty), and the tilawah (reading from the Holy Qur'an) the way the Holy Prophet (s) and Imams (a) used to?

 

Let me begin by narrating few incidents from the life of Imam as-Sajjad (a).

 

Incident 1

Shaykh al-Mufid states in Kitaab al-Irshaad that once Imam Abu Ja'far Muhammd al-Baqir visited his father Imam 'Ali bin al-Husayn. He saw that Imam as-Sajjad had reached an unprecedented state of 'ibadah. "His color had paled from keeping awake all night; eyes sored from weeping; forehead and nose bruised due to prolonged sajdahs; and his feet and ankles were swollen from standing in salaat." Such was the state of our fourth Imam during the worship that our fifth Imam says that he could not help breaking into tears. "I wept out of compassion that I felt for him," commented Imam al-Baqir. Some time passed before the Imam realized that his son has come. Upon seeing him, Imam as-Sajjad asked for the parchments which describe the great 'ibadah of Imam 'Ali bin Abi Talib (a). The fourth Imam read something from it and let it go from his hands in exasperation commenting, "Who has the strength to worship like 'Ali b. Abi Talib, 'alayhis-salaam?"

 

Incident 2

Shaykh al-Toosee writes that once Abu Hamzah al-Thumaalee saw Imam 'Ali ibn al-Husayn saying his prayers and his cloak slipped from his shoulders. The Imam did not arrange it. After the prayers Abu Hamzah asked him about it. The Imam responded: Woe to you, don't you know before whom I stood (Wayhaka, atadaree bayna yaday man kuntu)?

 

Incident 3

It is said that Imam al-Sajjad did twenty hajj everytime travelling on foot Mecca.

 

Incident 4

The fourth Imam had a large farm of date trees. He offered two raka'at payers besides each date tree.

 

Incident 5

His daily practice of salaat. His father Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (a) states: "'Ali b. al-Husayn, 'alayhimas-salaam, used to pray a thousand rak'aat during the day and the night. The wind would sway (his body) forward like an ear of corn." reports al-Mufid in al-Irshaad.

 

Incident 6

His style of entreating the Almighty is well known to all of us who have had a chance of reading from his famous du'as found in AL-SAHEFAAT AL-SAJJADIYYAH. I invite you all to study, or just have a brief look at, the Du'a Abu Hmazah al-Thumalee found in almost all books which cover the A'maal of Holy Ramadhan.

 

Reflection Upon Our Ibadaat Compared to That of the Imam (A)

 

When I say our 'ibadaat I do not mean that each and every one of you offer such salaat. I mean some unfortunate people, this humble and abject servant of the Ahlul-bayt being no exception, who consider various types of worships a burden and sometimes even a waste of time and energy.

 

1. Our life style, it is claimed, is busier and more demanding than that of our parents and grand parents. We have more to do and lot to worry about comapred to our forefathers. Those of us who live in big cities, for instance, spend long hours commuting to work, Islamic centers and carrying out domestic chores. Another example, society and extended family system no longer take care of our children in helping them to follow Islam and have good morals. We have to spend a lot of efforts and time in both educating (ta'leem) and upbringing (tarbiyah) of children.

 

Result of this: we sometimes believe that we must shorten our 'ibadah to bare minimum. We insist on limiting to what is wajib or faridah (obligatory/ mandatory). Any Imam of Jam'ah or an 'Alim who lenghtens prayer and other rituals is considered out of fashion.

 

Imam al-Sajjad used to say a lot of mustahab (supererogatory) prayers. The Imam also had to look after his family members (15 children), the poor and destitute, also his business ( e.g. date farms). It is said that he used to purchase hundreds of slaves whom he used feed, clothe, house and train them and then free them. All this required wealth. He used to work to earn this money.

 

2. We live in a world which is preoccupied with inventing gadgets and equipments to ease our life styles. This of course is not obecjtionable (to a limit). But the ease and comfort in carrying out various day to day activities has sometimes inundated our 'ibadaat. We would like to make things easier and comfortable when it comes to worshipping. We would like to offer our salaat in spacious places which have air conditions, fans, good carptes, etc. Also, the A'maal (rituals) which we perform in congregation only once a year need to be curtailed as much as it is possible. Often there are requests that why don't we say 10 times the salaam and la'nat (curses to the wicked who were responsible for massacre in Kerbala) in the recitation of the Ziyarat of 'Ashoora instead of 100 times. It is reasonable if such requests is on account of the weak state of seniors, the handicapped or the parents who have to take care of hyper children. However, such requests invariably come from young and energetic members of the community!

 

Why would Imam al-Sajjad go on foot to Mecca. Crossing the desers of Arabia under that hot scorching sun, and those long distances! Why endure all these difficulties and hardships? He could have chosen, at least, camels instead of horses? Perhaps he wanted to demonstrate that when going to the House of God, one should adopt most humble and humiliating way. Or was it to show that when being grateful (doing shukr) for the unceasing favours from God one has to also give some time and put efforts when worshipping the Sustainer?

 

Why would the Imam weep so much that the eyes used to become sore? Was it due to the awe and fear of the Almighty? After all the Qur'an declares that the most fearful amongst God's creatures are the learned (35:28). The Imam was indeed learned and must have felt that he was unable to worship his Creator and Provider in a way that befits Him.

 

The Imam spent long hours offering his worship because he found pleasure in it. Perhaps he had tasted the spiritual plesure and wanted the more of itý? Do we, my dear brothers and sisters, find plesure in offering our salaat? Is it a fascination when the time of salaat arrives or a burden? Is offering of salaat a great opportunity to communicate to the King of kings or release of an obligation imposed upon us?

 

Suggested Solutions

 

How can we also find plesure in 'Ibadaat? How can we also enjoy saying salaat? What should we do that we can concentrate in our salaat so that we feel that we are indeed worshipping the Creator instead of merely carrying out a ritual?

 

1. We think and ponder over our creation. One reason of the creation is mentioned in the Qur'an (51:56). Go did not create us and the jinns but for His worship. Of course 'Ibadah is rich and wide in meaning. It covers basically all those actions done to please the Almighty God. But it surely covers the acts of worship such as salaat, du'a and tilawah.

 

2. Reflect upon the great worship of the Prophet and the Imams. Read and re-read books which describe the outstaning 'ibadaat of those who were nearer to the mercy of the Almighty. Also take inspirations from the worship offered by other servants of God.

 

3. In the Qur'anic language God often refers to His beloved servants by words such as "My worshippers" (2:186) or "the sincere worshippers of God" (37:40, 74, 128, 160, 169). In farsi and Urdu, also, the servant of God is referred to as "Banda-e- Khuda", literally the one who worships (does bandaghi) of God.

 

4. Do not give into waswasah (Satanic insinuations, devilish whisperings), wicked thoughts and unnecessary doubts. Thoughts and doubts such as: excessive worship is meant for only those who have nothing else to do, prolonged worshipping of God is a waste of time as well as energy, a learned has a more important thing to do than worshippping, 'ibadah is means to taqwa (piety and God-fearing) and now that some of us have achived it we do not need to go back, we are not Ma'sumeen (the infallibles) therfore we do not need to immitate them, we are better than others who do not pray at all, prolonged and devoted worship is alien to Islam which is introduced by outsiders, etc.

 

5. Before beginning our obligaotory prayers we need to spend sometime in either listening to the Qur'anic recitations or saying nawafil (supererogatory prayers) so that our minds settle down and we are able to concentrate better in the salaat.

 

6. The time we alot for worshipping should be given in its entirety for the purpose. During this time we should not entertain other activities such as answering to telephone calls, responding to pagers, playing with our children, or attending to domestic chores. Both physically and mentally we give ourselves to worshipping the Almighty Creator and Sustainer.

 

7. Repeatedly appraise ourselves. Why is it that we do not find the pleasure and enjoyment in the worship that others find? Is it because of the company of people we keep who are skeptics? Is it because of the literature we read or the tv programs we watch? Is it on account of our attachment to materialistic things? Or is it because we have not given serious thought to this aspect? For the pleasure in worship is certainly there. Others get it and partake of it. The Ma'sumeen (a) used to taste of it. When the time of prayers arrived, for instance, the Holy Prophet used ask Bilal (the Muadhdhin) "please me O Bilal," instead of "go and give Adhan O Bilal."

 

The above is the summary of the majlis delivered to the Mu'mineen and Mu'minaat of the Vancouver Jamaat on the wafat anniversary of Imam Zaynul 'Abideen (a).

May the Almighty accept the humble efforts.

 

Contributed by Br. HK Ali

Introduced, warm-season, annual or short-lived perennial, more or less prostrate herb; to 25 cm tall and with thick, tough stems that put roots down where the nodes come into contact with the soil. Leaves are oval and usually lobed, with toothed margins; 3-7 veins radiate from the heart-shaped base. Flowers are solitary in the leaf axils and have 5 red to orange-red petals. Flowering is in spring and summer. A native of South America, it is a weed of disturbed areas, such as newly sown pastures and turf; less so

in crops. It is spread by seed and vegetatively by putting down roots where ever stem nodes contact the ground. It is salt and drought tolerant. Has caused occasional stock poisoning, but its very prostrate habit limits the quantity eaten. Control in pastures by promoting dense swards. Can be controlled by herbicides at the seedling stage, but it is extremely tolerant of glyphosate, often making it a problem weed of direct drilled crops and pastures., but its very prostrate habit limits the quantity eaten. Control in pastures by promoting dense swards. Can be controlled by herbicides at the seedling stage, but it is extremely tolerant of glyphosate, often making it a problem weed of direct drilled

crops and pastures.