Kei Apple

This is Dovyalis caffra, the Umkokola, or Kei apple, growing in my garden. It is a small to medium-sized tree, native to southern Africa. Its distribution extends from the Kei River in the south, from which the common name derives, northwards along the eastern side of the continent to Tanzania. The ripe fruits are tasty, reminiscent of a small apple.

It is a usually found in dry types of woodland when it grows to 6m tall. In moister types of open woodland it reaches its greatest size of about 8–9 meters. It is a rather straggly tree, with sharp, 3–6 cm long stem spines in the leaf axils. Buds at the base of the spine produce clusters of alternately arranged simple ovate leaves 3–6 cm long.

The flowers are inconspicuous, solitary or clustered, with no petals. It is dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, though some female plants are parthenogenetic.

The fruit is an edible, bright yellow or orange globose berry 2.5–4cm diameter, with the skin and flesh of a uniform colour and containing several small seeds. Production is often copious, weighing down the branches during the summer. They are juicy, tasty and acidic. I found a lot of them lying under the trees and, to my surprise, untouched by my tortoise. I would have thought that she would like them, as she has a real feast when my peach tree drops the peaches.

Torti - she's a Mountain Tortoise (or Leopard Tortoise - Geochelone pardalis)

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Rhino horn myth

I believe that there is a special place in hell for people who de-horn Rhinos...

Ink sketch and colour wash on Bockingford 300gsm

All we ever read in the media is statistics of all the Rhino atrocities, and nothing as to what can actually be done to stop this. Education is and always will be the best tool.

With today’s network of communication tools, such as social media, it is now possible for scientific studies to reach a global audience like never before – and we can move closer to busting these persistent myths about rhino horn, which are indeed the root of the rhino crisis. By raising public awareness and educating others about the truth behind rhino horn, we can make a difference.

As part of continued efforts to set the record straight on rhino horn’s so-called curative properties, three scientific studies were re-introduced, confirming that rhino horn has no medicinal value. The studies were conducted by different teams of researchers at separate institutions. In each case, the results were conclusive: There is no scientific evidence to support claims of rhino horn’s usefulness as a medicine.

The studies “found no evidence that rhino horn has any medicinal effect as an antipyretic and would be ineffective in reducing fever, a common usage in much of Asia.” Testing also confirmed that “rhino horn, like fingernails, is made of agglutinated hair” and “has no analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmolytic nor diuretic properties” and “no bactericidal effect could be found against suppuration and intestinal bacteria”,. And medically, "it’s the same as if you were chewing your own nails”.

When there were still at least 15,000 black rhinos on the African continent, WWF and the IUCN commissioned a pharmacological study of rhino horn, hoping that science would trump cultural myths. Tragically, by 1993, ten years after the study was published, Africa’s black rhino population had plummeted to just 2,300.

Conducted by Hoffmann-LaRoche, the research was published in "The Environmentalist"

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March gifts

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."
- Charles Dickens

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Echeverias taking in the early-morning sun

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A metal Lizard on a rock

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A feather resting on an air-plant

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Caught in the act!

THE GAMEKEEPER'S REVENGE

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The hedgehog is welcomed by the gardener, but not by the gamekeeper; it is viewed as vermin, accused of eating the eggs and nestlings of ground-nesting birds. Some gamekeepers feel it necessary to control hedgehog numbers on their estates, sometimes killing hundreds of animals in a single year. In the 18th century, some parishes paid a bounty for each hedgehog killed.

The hedgehog only occasionally takes nestlings or eggs from the nests of pheasants and partridges. Research has shown that the major mammalian predator of game birds' nests is the fox, while domestic cats and dogs and farm machinery are just as serious culprits as the poor old hedgehog.
Info from "Everything You Want To Know about Hedgehogs - Dilys Breese"

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Return to me....

“To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he said, ”you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived…”
- From Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

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Watercolour in Moleskine Watercolour sketch-book - 8" x 5"

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I've just returned from a short visit to the North Coast in KwaZulu Natal (South Africa), and one of my favourite past-times is watching and feeding the seagulls. Something I didn't know, is that Seagulls are most closely related to the terns (family Sternidae) and only distantly related to auks, skimmers, and more distantly to the waders. But whoever they are related to, I personally would categorise them with Crows, one of my favourite, most intelligent birds!

The same as crows, most gulls will take live food or scavenge opportunistically. And their love for man-made "junk food" defies belief! They will go to ANY length for some tasty hot potato chips with tomato sauce, and are VERY diligent in their pursuit of these tasty snacks. This chap managed to grab my bag of potato crisps right out of my hand, flying off to settle on some rocks not far from me to enjoy his prize. But it was short-lived, he was soon flocked by all the other seagulls, relinquishing his prize to return to me for an easier snack!

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