Thursday 4 June 2020

Roadside rape


A fine display of what might be rape down the verge of Hook Road, seemingly missed by the council's shearers. That is to say oilseed rape, otherwise Brassica napus. According to Wikipedia, rather oddly named for the Latin for turnip, another member of the large Brassica family.

However, the flowers are not very big and inspection of the various pictures offered by Bing has left me unsure as to what this is. With one difficulty being that plants grown intensively may have a different form from sports in the rough ground beside roads.


A little earlier, I had come across a cache of roadside washers at the top of Meadway, rather carelessly snapped when I got home. Now washed and jam-jarred against use in creative play: to be counted, arranged, strung on shoes laces or to be used as currency in a make believe shop. Perhaps trying to work in the teaching point that the Chinese used to have coins called cash which had holes in them. I may even use one or two of them for the purpose intended, being of a size that I am rather short of. No idea how so large a number of them came to have been dumped.



However, checking, I find another memory defect. The Chinese and their neighbours did indeed have coins called cash with holes in them, but the holes were generally square. See reference 1. But slightly redeemed by reference 2, which explains that plenty of other countries have had coins with circular holes in them, with a sample in the snap above. Bit dubious though about Laos, with a hole through the middle of an important elephant.


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