North Coast Cafe, South

Botanical Drawing

As an aspiring, no- talent, botanical artist, I admire these drawings. If you haven't seen my post about Margaret Mee, please do. She was one of the best.

This web site, presented by the Missouri Botanical Garden Library features 46 digitized volumes from its rare book collection.

Our goal is to digitize and preserve beautifully illustrated and botanically significant books in our private holdings in order to make them available to an international audience. This project will result in a large database of botanical and gardening illustrations and text available to scholars, gardeners, and book enthusiasts.em>

Pliny & Natural History

Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus, (23-79 A.D.), considered by some the founder of Natural History, wrote many historical and scientific works including Naturalis Historia. a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume encyclopedia of the natural sciences.

Pliny lived at Misenum, at the time of the great eruption of Vesuvius, which overwhelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum. A desire to observe the phenomenon from a nearer point of view, and also to rescue some of his friends, from their perilous position on the shore of the Bay of Naples, led to his launching his galleys and crossing the bay where he suffocated and perished from exposure to the sulfurous fumes of erupting Mt. Vesuvius.

Pliny was an adherent to the Stoics and he also came under the influence of Seneca. The Stoics were given to the study of nature, while their moral teaching was agreeable to one who, in his literary work, was unselfishly eager to benefit and to instruct his contemporaries.

He was also influenced by the Epicurean and the Academic and the revived Pythagorean schools. But hi~ view of nature and of God is essentially Stoic.

It was only (he declares) the weakness of humanity that had embodied the Being of God in many human forms endued with human faults and vices. The Godhead was really one; it was the soul of the eternal world, displaying its beneficence on the earth, as well as in the sun and stars.

The existence of a divine Providence was uncertain but the belief in its existence and in the punishment of wrong-doing was salutary and the reward of virtue consisted in the elevation to Godhead of those who resembled God in doing good to man.

From 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Origins of Modernity

One of the most wonderful things about the Internet and Weblogs is the vast amount of information available from every nook and corner of the planet. What are the chances otherwise I would have ever seen this material housed in a library down under?

Natural History today refers to the study of all natural objects with a special emphasis on classification and taxonomy.

It is in this sense that the works displayed at the ">University of Sydney's Online Exhibit "Origins of Modernity" are works of natural history. However, it should be noted that ‘natural history’ had quite a different meaning in the early modern period.

In the seventeenth century natural histories were vast collections of facts which, following the method of Francis Bacon, were to be used as the raw materials for producing true natural philosophical knowledge.

These beautiful books with their copious illustrations of insects etc. are hard to resist. For instance:
The ornithology of Francis Willughby of Middleton in the County of Warwick Esq…
Willughby, Francis (1635-1672)
London : 1678.

Thanks to Giornale Nuovo for the link.

Fall Foliage & Autumn Leaves

The origin of Leaf Day

It's a bit of silliness less amusing as I mature. In 1964, as a college freshman, I encouraged a group of friends to skip afternoon classes on October 17 to walk through an orchard near campus in honor of the falling leaves. I admit alcohol was involved but the celebration was great fun and not so silly, in retrospect, for first year college students.

The silliness comes in later when year-after-year this self-invented 'holiday' was celebrated by handmade greeting cards, dinner parties, days off, vacations, special trips and events all timed for October 17 each year.

I gave up making cards about five years ago. But still, any chance I get to wish my friends a Happy Leaf Day I do. Happily, October 17 everywhere I've ever visited has provided a colorful display of Nature at its best. My two favorite places for Leaf Day celebrations are Italy and the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Cape Cod is also very nice on Leaf Day. London not so nice. Coastal Connecticut is okay but Maine, especially around Bar Harbor is wonderful. Vermont is spectacular, New Hampshire north a kaleidoscope of yellow, white and green. The Finger Lakes are exquisite with the added amenity of mixed aroma from grape crushing and wine-making, but not as great as Alsace thick with the perfume of fermented grapes and musky white wine in every golden village. France on Leaf Day is wonderful.

How is your Leaf Day?

Contrails

As I walked with my Golden Retriever, Riley, this morning along the towpath on the Erie Canal, I glanced up at the sky and was surprised to see seven separate contrails in varying degrees of solidity. Two planes, at high altitude were laying fresh trails, sharp, bright and straight across the clear blue atmosphere.
It made me think about what gases, if any, were being pumped into air high above and what consequence, if any, there may be to air quality as a result. If seven contrails marked the sky in my little patch of the planet this morning, imagine how many others were being created elsewhere around the globe. My curiosity led me to this by Matt Rasmussen
By turns I think contrails beautiful and appalling, just as any human construction can be viewed with admiration or disdain. I'm not sure which perspective is winning me over, now that I've stopped to ponder the question.
More in Orion

Storm Birds

Hurricane Isabel swept across the North Coast late Friday carrying with it waterbirds seldom seen this far inland. Bird watchers had a field day Saturday and Sunday capturing sight of pelagic birds thrown off course by the storm. Many of these birds were trapped early on in Isabel's eye and were unable to alter their course because of the fierce winds circling the inner calm of the storm's center.

Among the rare sights were

Long-tailed Jaegers

Red-necked Phalaropes, and

Black-legged Kittiwakes

The North Coast is fortunate to experience an exceptional abundance and diversity of migratory waterbirds. Studies show upwards of 50 species on North Coast flyways every year. In fact, the North Coast has been designated as a Globally Important Bird Area by the American Bird Conservancy and the National Audubon Society.

Canada Geese had just started to fly over the North Coast, honking their distinctive alert that autumn is on the way, when the storm blew up along the flyway. I suspect those geese smart enough to lay over in your golf course or public park will soon be on their way again. ( If the blockheadded town/village/city leaders didn't shoot or poison them yet.)

Teasel

In 19th Century North Coast pioneer settlers cultivated the common teasel and sold it for pennies per thousand to East coast and European wool manufacturers who used the dried spiny flower heads to raise the nap of finished wool cloth. To this day, the word tease means to and raise the fibers of; or to straighten out or unsnarl. Fuller’s teasel (D. fullonum) is a biennial with origins in the Balkans and Mediterranean, but it has spread to not only America, but as far as India and South Africa. The teasel is also a popular plant for nectar loving birds and insects, especially honey bees. The teasel today, is sometimes considered a noxious weed, but it is often used for flower arrangements especially in it's dried form. Creative life sciences and nature educators use teasel as a demonstration tool because the shallow cup of liquid captured in the leaf clusters along its stem contains a microcosm of biota for young students to discover and explore.

Need a teasel teacher? Click here.

Meet Margaret Mee

Anyone unfamiliar with the amazing watercolours British artist- naturalist- explorer Margaret Mee created during her lifetime trasping through the Brazilian rainforest has missed an opportunity to learn what supreme talent, dedicated hard work, love of nature and a bit of wimsy can accomplish.

Margaret Mee (1909-1988) ived and worked in Brazil for 36 years, sketching and painting beautiful and intricate studies of the flamboyant indigenous plants of Amazonia. She mounted at least fifteen expeditions deep into the rainforest often travelling by dug-out canoe with a single Indian guide to observe and collect species of plants in some cases previously unknown. Several species of epiphytesto now bear her name in recoginition of her research of Amazonian flora.

On her final journey to the flooded forests of the Rio Negro Mee fulfilled a long-standing dream --to find and paint the elusive Moonflower a rare night-flowering cactus.

Margaret Mee died tragically in a car crash in England in 1988.

"I know my death will not be the end of my work. Wherever I go I will try to influence those who are destroying our planet, so the earth will have a chance to survive"
Margaret Mee in Brazil, 1988

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The North Coast in Autumn

My favorite time of year. It comes early in 2003. Maybe to warn us to get ready for what's yet to come. The Farmer's Almanac predicts a long hard winter, but then it's predictions are 48% correct over time. May as well flip a coin. Scientists claim a 20-year cooling trend has just begun and we should expect at least a score of hard cold winters. Much of the North Coast benefits from a delay in winter freezes because of the moderating influence of warm lake waters. Fruit and vegetable growers here can harvest a few weeks later than inland and take advantage of a slightly longer growing season. It's time for apple cider, butternut squash, and cabages the size of Honda Civics.

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

Guess who

Our National Forest

The North Coast's closest National Forest is the Finger Lakes National Forest nestled between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes about 75-miles south of Rochester. The Forest encompasses 16,032 acres and has over 30 miles of interconnecting trails that traverse gorges, ravines, pastures, and woodlands.

A finer example of North Coast natural history cannot be found.

If you go