Jan 21
![Pinguicula esseriana flowers [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Pinguicula_esseriana_flowers-274x300.jpg)
After the trip to Königssee, I was inspired to retail therapy and bought myself as many butterworts as Hampshire Carnivorous Plants could supply: They did me proud over this summer, with two of them flowering despite the root disturbance (on which butterworts are not keen), the chunky cultivar ‘Tina’: and the daintier species P. esseriana: In …
Jan 19
![Marlowe's longboat [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/marlowe_longboat-300x225.jpg)
Marlowe, the cellar spider who has been living behind my beside cabinet for the last 18 months, disappeared a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t too worried as they’d done that before and then turned up again a few weeks later, fatter and of greater span. On Monday, however, Alex found Marlowe’s mortal remains beneath …
Aug 26
![Pinguicula moranesis glands [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]: microscopic stalked glands covering the leaf surface secrete mucilage](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Pinguicula_moranensis_glands-300x234.jpg)
A recent hike in Königssee to see Germany’s highest waterfall was a little underwhelming but the hydrological shortcomings were entirely forgotten when I spotted this beauty growing in a crevice above the lake: Butterworts are amongst my favourite carnivorous plants: their murderous ways are so delicately concealed. Who would suspect such a pretty bank of flowers to be a veritable morgue …
Aug 01
![Gore Vidal [Carl van Vechten 1948]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/gore_vidal_by_carl_van_vechten_1948-222x300.jpg)
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise Being an avowed atheist, a form of words appropriate to death has always eluded me: “rest in peace” has always seemed inappropriate, implying – as it does – that something is left after death that could be at rest or …
Apr 16
![Utricularia (Polypompholyx) mutifida [CC-BY-SA-2.0 h3_six@flickr]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/polypompholyx.png)
Several years ago, I pulled my old website, as it had become a compost-heap of reformatted lecture notes that I no longer had time to maintain, and which Wikipedia had rendered redundant in any case. The pleasures of writing HTML by hand had begun to pall, and the hand-rolled CGI guestbook made even a coding …
