Mark U. Delivers on Another Mystery Plant and Beta Blogger is Up

A Yew Shrub, the berries are favored by many migrating birds, including Rusty Blackbirds and the Trushes.

Mark comes through again.

Mark U. the gold star plant researcher, who identified the Boston Ivy, has done it again. He's come up with the name of another plant that I've been wondering about. It's a horticultural shrub version of the Yew. It has the red berries that are often the first to be eaten in The Bird Park by native birds.

The only time I've seen a Rusty Blackbird in the BP, we don't have the moist ecosystem they prefer, a seemingly exhausted individual suddenly appeared in front of me, landed on the bush, lost it's grip, struggled to stay on the twig, and then began to voraciously eat the berries. Somewhat strengthened by his meal, he flew over to the traffic circle until I left. Then he returned as I was locking the gate, and began to eat more.

As we're speaking of the Yew tree and it is near the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt...the French, the English...Henry V, remember? The decisive victory of the incredibly outnumbered English over the French historically has been lain at the feet of the English Archer.

And what about the Yew? There was a law in Briton that every church yard had to have a relative of the shrub, the Yew tree in it.

Because Yew is the wood of choice, hands down, for bows. The excellence comes from the difference in the inner and outer layers of the wood giving the bow more power and spring. The government always wanted to make sure that the famed English archers, more likely Welsh, Scots, and Irish actually, always had the stuff available to make their weapons.

These days bows are often made of laminated materials which mimic the special layering of Yew wood.

NEW VERSION OF BLOOGER IS UP!

The new version of Beta-Blogger is now up. And it seems to working very well in the usage department but there were some glitches in the transfer from the old program. The comments section has disappeared from the previous entries, as well as some of the entries themselves. The engineer page tells me that these problems are being worked on and the full blog without glitches will be up very soon.

Also concerning comments, there is a new feature of Beta-Blogger. Comments are directly emailed to me, before being posted, so it's a super way for you to contact me personally. Though one might have to register in order to place a comment at all in the new system, I'm not sure. We'll see as things progress.

Donegal Browne