500words

        During Elizabeth I’s long reign her ambition was to anglicise Ireland.  By the 1590s she had been more or less successful with the exception of Ulster but Ulster appeared to be safe enough, cut off as it was from the rest of the country by a natural barrier of mountains and lakes.  So long as the Northern chiefs were quiet it was safe enough to leave them alone. In Munster Elizabeth made a concentrated effort to anglicise the province.  Fighting dragged on for three years and almost all Munster was laid waste.  Although Elizabeth won this conflict it had the effect of uniting the native Irish and the Old English settlers, the descendants of the Normans, in their common faith of Catholicism.  This strengthened the government’s belief that to be Roman Catholic was synonymous with treason.  A land settlement in Monaghan had undermined traditional life there and the establishment of military garri...

  High Flying Reindeer Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen! …  Now, come on! Reindeer can’t fly, can they? A quick Google search for ‘reindeer flying’ brought up two suggested questions: How do reindeer fly? and Are reindeer real? I did wonder why people who were old enough to type into a search engine bar would ask these questions, but then, I realised that I had just done it too. Most of the results were, unsurprisingly, related to Santa’s reindeer, but it turns out that the 1823 poem ‘The Night before Christmas’ with authorship claimed by Clement C Moore in 1837, isn’t the beginning of the flying reindeer story. There are beliefs and legends surrounding reindeer taking flight dating back to prehistory. In the central and eastern regions of Mongolia, and into parts of Northern Europe and Asia, carved Reindeer Stones stand up to 15 feet high. The earliest of these unusual stones is thought to be between 5000 and 7000 years old with most dating to the Late Bronze age...

  Air travel produces huge amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses and it is widely agreed that this urgently needs to be addressed. Dale Vince, a green energy tycoon, plans to launch the UKs first electric airline.   Planes will run on engines that convert green hydrogen into electricity.   The aviation industry is researching other options to decarbonise including sustainable aviation fuel (biofuel made from agricultural products).   Dale Vince declared SAF “bullshit”.   “There is nowhere near enough land to grow the crops you’d need.” What about airships?   Airships require less energy than any other aircraft.   They are lighter-than-air craft that travel under their own power, gaining lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.   BUT there will be some serious PR work required because of their unfortunate history! The Past Airships have been a concept since 1670 when Francesco Lana de Terzi (the Father or Ae...

Propagation Propagation, the act of producing a new plant from a parent plant happens in various ways, the most common of these is by setting seeds.  Propagation can also be effected by bits of the parent plant breaking off and making new plants. Two trees that self propagate in unusual ways are the Mangrove and the Banyan.  The Banyan, a species of fig, by developing accessory trunks which allow the tree to spread outward indefinitely, and the Mangrove by dropping already germinated seeds into the sea.  Mangroves grow in harsh coastal conditions that other plants could not tolerate.  Living in saline conditions, ranging from brackish water through pure seawater to water concentrated by evaporation to twice the salinity of ocean seawater, they are specially adapted to take in extra oxygen and remove salt.  The Mangrove’s adaption to oxygen deprivation is by means of lenticels in the bark and also by aerial roots (pneumataphores) which stick out of the grou...

    Propagation is the ‘action of widely spreading and promoting an idea, theory, etc” and therefore a description of the spread of Nazi-ism throughout Germany and into Europe.   The initiation of the process of propagation is an idea – in this case, Hitler’s idea, expanded to the 25 points of the Nazi Party to be the foundation of the principle of German nationalism and land ownership with race purity (German blood) could be a countryman.     The growth of the Nazi party and the adoption of the party’s ideals was promulgated through propaganda, the material and ideals shared through propagation.   The Nazis wanted Germans to support the Nazi dictatorship and believe in Nazi ideas.   To accomplish this, they tried to control forms of communication, using propaganda principles to spread the messages they wished to promote.     The act of propagation requires the means to disseminate the propaganda - to facilitate this the Nazis too...

  Propagation, oo-oo-oo Propagation Propagation's what you need, If you want to plant a seed, make a rose bush or a reed, Propagation’s what you need! If you’d like to make new roots, or grow some tasty fruits, Propagation’s what you need! If you want to grow a plant, but think that you can’t, Oo-oo propagation's what you need! Do you want to be a propagate-er, Ooooo!!! For those of a certain age, you may have broken into song. Memories of Roy Castle and the McWhirter brothers on Record Breakers have been (dare I say it?) propagated in your mind!   Plants for free! There are lots of different ways in which plants can be propagated; the most common is by sowing seeds, after all, this is how it is usually done in nature. Because seed production relies on flowers producing seed by combining male pollen with female ovule, the resulting seed may produce a plant with different coloured flowers from the mother plant’s, leaves might be larger or smaller, ...

  While it is great to take cuttings and seeds from our friends and family’s plants to expand our collections, there is legislation in place, and some practices are less OK thank others.   Apparently plant breeders, plant sellers and plant owners have rights too! Of course it is usually fine to take cuttings and create new plants from purchased plants too, but Plant Breeders’ Rights give breeders control over the propagating materials from their new cultivar (that they spent ages creating) for up to 20 years!   That even includes cuttings and seeds from generations of “daughters” of a patented plant.   So, you might buy a lovely strawberry plant or gorgeous shrub from a garden centre, but propagating from it could be a violation of plant patent and regarded as stealing.    I wouldn’t worry too much - the plant-police are unlikely to come knocking at your garden gate if you are propagating for your own use - but you can be prosecuted if you intend to sell ...