May 19
![Tardigrades [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/tardigrade-300x157.jpg)
Tardigrades make me squee. These little relatives of the arthropods and velvet-worms are found in the water around mosses, and they are quite easy to find if you have a cheap microscope and a little patience. Like spiders, they have eight legs, but unlike the legs of a spider, they’re plump and stumpy, and end in the little ‘fingers’ …
May 19
![Passiflora foetida flower [CC-BY-3.0 Alex Lomas]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Passiflora_foetida_flower-300x295.jpg)
All science is either physics or stamp-collecting. This rather mean-spirited dismissal of chemistry and biology as “stamp-collecting” is attributed to Ernest Rutherford, the physicist usually (not wholly fairly) credited with discovering the atomic nucleus and the proton. Shortly after Rutherford’s death in 1937, particle physicists discovered the muon, pi mesons, kaons, the electron neutrino, the anti-proton, the lambda baryon, xi cascades, and …
Oct 06
![Vasates quadripedes on Acer saccharinum [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Vasates_quadripedes_on_Acer_saccharinum-300x256.jpg)
Today is the first day of the new (academic) year at $WORK, but – aside from a couple of intro lectures – this is the calm before the real storm, which arrives in the form of a deluge of biological chemistry in November. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a few mugshots of some weird ciliate or other around …
Sep 17
![Barnsley fern [Public domain]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/barnsley_fern-300x300.png)
Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. (Uncle Monty, Withnail and I) Our tiny garden has only passing acquaintance with sunshine, so about the only plants that really thrive in its dingy clutches are shade-loving ferns. This Japanese painted fern is my current favourite: who needs flowers anyway, when leaves look like this? The colour is spectacular, but …
Sep 06
![Magnolia ×soulangeana fruit [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Magnolia_×soulangeana_fruit-225x300.jpg)
A quickie this week: magnolia fruit look like something from another planet.
Aug 23
![Acanthus mollis [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Acanthus_mollis-225x300.jpg)
Plants can have some very odd names. Bears are not renowned for their trousers, and this spiky sod is the last thing anyone would want to make a pair of trousers from, but “bear’s breeches” it is. Even its Latin name is odd: acanthus means spiny, and mollis means smooth; a literal oxymoron. It might not look very familiar, but it may be the …
Aug 17
![Bucephalus minimus [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Bucephalus_minimus-260x300.jpg)
This is another of the things we have found down a microscope in one of our undergraduate practicals, but for once it’s not a ciliate. This is the larva of a parasitic fluke called Bucephalus, which is the Greek for ‘bull headed’. It’s appropriate for this fluke not because it looks like Alexander the Great’s horse, but because …
Aug 10
![Flea from Hooke's Micrographia [Public Domain: Steve Cook]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/micrographia_flea-300x225.jpg)
For three centuries, the Black Death was routinely epidemic in London. The first outbreak – in 1348 – probably killed half the population of England; the last outbreak – from 1665 to 1666 – probably killed a quarter of the population of London. In 1665, Isleworth was a small village several hours’ walk (or row) from …
Aug 03
![Orobanche minor [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Rosser1954]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Orobanche_minor-225x300.jpg)
My annual summer ritual to stave off death for one more year involves running round Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, which are situated conveniently close to $WORK. I lumbered merry as a shroud. That aches and sweats o’er trails and heights, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden parasites: Yellow rattle is a member of the broomrape family, which …
Jul 02
![Urtica dioica trichomes [CC-BY-SA-3.0 Frank Vincentz]](https://www.polypompholyx.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Urtica_dioica_trichomes-300x262.jpg)
Nettles have a rather unhappy reputation as bringer of painful welts, and – at this time of year – dribbling noses too. The welts are probably caused by histamine, and the pain by oxalic and tartaric acids, which the nettle injects into your skin through the tiny brittle hairs that cover its stems and leaves. If …