RANK by rank they go, forward and back, wheeling and turning and lining up again, their precision defined by their black bearskins. No matter how the sun beats down, their lines do not falter. We wonder how they fare under that tall, traditional headgear, but the guardsman’s bearskin, officially a ‘cap’, is mercifully not as weighty and ungainly as it appears. The covering, black skin from a Canadian bear culled to control numbers, is stretched over a lightweight frame woven from Somerset willow—3,500 acres of the Levels are devoted to the moisture-loving trees. The cap weighs only 1½lb.
There are willows and willows. Botanical observation over the centuries added steadily to the family members. Pliny described eight varieties as ‘among the most aquatic of trees’, the white willow salix alba furnishing long props to support Roman vines and bark strips for binding shoots. In his Synopsis Methodica of 1660, the scholar John Ray noted 10 species growing near Cambridge and the 1724 edition of his work supplied Carl Linnaeus with material for his 1737 classification of 19 willows. The number rose to 31 in his 1753 revision, although he made a mistake on the way. Encountering a new variety with dramatically drooping branches in a garden in The Netherlands in 1736, he took a lead from Psalm 137 that relates how the exiled Israelites sat down and wept by the waters of Babylon, hanging their harps on the willows there. Linneaus, therefore, classified the ‘weeping willow’ as Salix babylonica, unaware that the drooping trees along the Euphrates were actually poplars.
Denne historien er fra February 12, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 12, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
