We went down to visit our friends Karen & Ian over the Bank Holiday weekend. As we went to leave it was glorious weather imaginable and it was a wrench to get away, but I had to quickly pop up the hill and shoot an experimental panorama, which I’ve stitched and uploaded using Microsoft tools for the first time.

If you don’t have Microsoft Silverlight you’ll have to install it, but it’s easy (just click on the button) and I think it’s worth it!

You can see the full version here, or better still click on the full-screen button to the right of the [-] & [+]

For the technically minded, this was stitched together from 3 rows of 18 portrait format images shot handheld (no tripod) at 70mm 1/320th f8 ISO200 on a Nikon D300. Stitching was done using Microsoft Image Composite Editor and uploaded, hosted and embedded (including highlights feature) on Microsoft Photosynth.

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A test of the Android Wordpress application and postings from my mobile. Neat!

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I was recently prompted to pay a long overdue visit to the Horniman Museum, round in Forest Hill, south east London. So last Sunday morning Oliver and I set off for the day.

Wow, it had changed incredibly since my last visit, back in the days when I was working on plant uses in the Centre for Economic Botany at Kew (my first job at Kew). With brand new galleries, a new aquarium, and the temporary travelling exhibition Myths and Monsters (from the Natural History Museum team) it proved to be a great day out.

Myths and Monsters

Even the old natural history galleries, where one is rather fittingly invited to ’step back in time’, provided some engaging displays; for examples skeletons of apes and early man, together with moulds of brain sizes, give a stark reminder of how we have evolved. Somehow these rather erudite displays seem suitably complemented by the over-stuffed walrus
which takes pride of place in the middle of the gallery.

At the Horniman the theme of culture is a constant one, and we found ourselves watching videos of brass shields being made in Benin, looking at mummies from Egypt, and gazing at the most amazing displays packed full of musical instruments of all shapes and sizes (with a nice little side room where you can try some out, though not the expensive guitars, much to Oliver’s disappointment!).

I shouldn’t forget the gardens. It was hardly the best time of the year to visit a garden, nor was the weather on our side, but it’s good to see that they have just got nearly a million pounds of Lottery money to carry out an extensive refurbishment, including rebuilding the bandstand (from where you get amazing views looking north over central London).

He’d hate me for saying this, but whether it was the stepping back in time, the change in surroundings, or simply a rare chance for us to spend one-on-one time together, Oliver was transformed from ‘12 year old going on 18′ into the studious scholar, to the point where half the time he was telling me what things were!

Just goes to show the power of museums of all shapes and sizes, and you don’t get much wider a range of exhibit than the Horniman – well worth a visit, with a wide appeal to everyone.

Check out their website and their Facebook page

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Google today have a Doodle for Kew Gardens’ 250th birthday, and the Queen is paying a visit.

Kew's Google Doodle celebrating its 250th anniversary

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Kew botanist Jonathan Timberlake recording vegetation on the steep slopes of Mount Mabu. Photo: Tom Timberlake

There’s a nice audio slideshow, with some stunning pictures, now available on the BBC site – Audio slideshow: Discovering a ‘lost forest’.

It’s covered in more depth on the Kew site – “Google Earth helps Kew put ‘lost forest’ of Mount Mabu on the conservation map”

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Always nice to see Kew being featured on high profile programmes like newsnight, and especially on such a prominent news story (overly so if you ask me, but that’s not important here!).

I particularly like the montage of a giant George Bush in the temperate House….

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight | Obama’s first 100 days: Environment.

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Well, according to the FT Magazine article, Defining Moment – Japanese knotweed invades Britain, he was the person responsible for introducing Japanese knotweed to the British Isles, way back on 9 August 1850.

Mind you, he also got up to some fairly dodgy dealings in its native Japan. Perhaps as some sort of atonement he then gave them the piano, but I think he was dead before the magnitude of introducing one of Britain’s most pernicious weeds was realised.

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It’s nice to see the baobab story getting so much coverage, and even nicer to see that the editorial and factual quality of the articles, such as the new one on the BBC site (First taste of a magical fruit) is improving in leaps and bounds!

It reminds me of a book I was asked to proof for botanical accuracy, Miriam Moss’s enchanting children’s title This is the Tree.

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What could possibly be described using the following:
- retro touch
- aroma of wet corn
- some fruit and hint of cardboard
- proper nettley green hop aroma
- Mellow wine gum citrus
- buttery dunked Malted Milk
- a hint of sting
- Some cereal on the nose
- a deep, irn-bruey gold
- biscuit malts, citrus and yeast
- resinous lemon towards the finish

Well, it could only be Youngs Kew Gold, the new beer to replace the much missed Kew Brew.

I had my first bottle of it in the Coach & Horses on Kew Green last week, and I must say it was quite pleasant drinking – certainly a good beer for a warm summers’ evening (which unfortunately it wasn’t at the time!).

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The BBC is reporting that a New exotic fruit [is] to hit UK shops. New? What’s new about the baobab? Africa’s ‘upside down tree’. Well it’s certainly not a new species. It’s certainly not a new use. What appears to define this as ‘new’ is that the EU has just approved it.

What a sad world it is that something that has been used in it’s native countries for centuries can only be sold when it has been approved by bureaucrats sitting in an office in Brussels (or wherever they are – I can only assume it’s not even Nairobi, let alone out in Kenya’s beautiful countryside where these majestic trees can be found).

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