The Plastic of the Future

The Tinder Fungus Fomes fomentarius (Fr. Amadouvier) could be used to replace certain plastics and be used in a variety of sectors, such as medicine. It's a common fungus in the Northern Hemisphere, growing on wood and can reach up to 50 cm across. Used as a firelighter since prehistoric times, it has also already been used in medicine in a number of ways (cauterisation, bandage, compress) and has been used to make clothes or decorative objects. 

Growing on a fallen log in the forest.

The biomaterials industry has been flourishing for some years. Mycomaterials in particular are popular because they have numerous advantages -- they are organic, biodegradable and their manufacture requires much less CO2. They are also more economical.

I discovered this one on a recently felled log, neatly sliced across to reveal the structure.

Today mycomaterials present an interesting alternative to leather and synthetic textiles. They can also replace certain synthetic polymers to make packaging, furniture and even used as building construction materials and insulation.

Tinder fungus on display at an exhibition put on by the Association de Botanique et de Mycologie de Sainte Maure de Touraine.

Tinder fungus has three layers with different qualities: the crust, which is a bit porous but dense and relatively uniform; the flesh, which is spongey, soft and leathery; and the tubes, which are hollow and parallel. Tests show that the flesh and tubes have qualities which are comparable to pine, leather and crossply, but the mycomaterial weighs less. Another possible advantage is that the fungus can be manipulated into growing into a particular form.

Growing in the forest.

Scientists and engineers are working on mycomaterials in nanocomposites and polysaccharides. The product could also be used in a medical context as engineered tissue or make orthopedic implants.

Aurore and the Unicorn

'Mon seul desir', depicting the supreme courtly virtue of largesse, being generously distributed.

This year conservators have been testing the fibres and dyestuffs on La Dame et la Licorne (the Lady and the Unicorn) tapestries in the Cluny museum. They want to know for sure what the chemical components of the dyes are so they can reproduce them, and develop a strategy for protecting the colours.

The panels depicting hearing or joy, and sight or leisure. 

Joy is playing her portable organ, Leisure is enticing the unicorn in her mirror.

In the early days of the 19th century a little girl called Aurore Dupin would come down to the Berry countryside to stay with her grandmother in Nohant-Vic. Later, as a young woman with her own young family, she inherited the house at Nohant and came to live there to escape her husband and the political troubles in Paris. Although Aurore came from a wealthy family, because her husband controlled the purse strings she was forced to earn her own living. And thus, the novelist George Sand was born.

A genet, domesticated in medieval times in preference to cats to catch rodents around the house.

At Nohant Aurore/George was free to indulge love affairs with Chopin, Prosper Mérimée (Inspector General of Historic Monuments) and the artist Manceau, amongst others. Her children were raised in an atmosphere of creativity and independence. Everyone in the household wrote, made art or performed.

A rotund heron doing backstroke in 'Mon seul desir'.

In the 1830s and 40s many wealthy aristocratic and bourgeois people quit Paris as the political situation was not stable. One of George Sand's friends holed up in Boussac in the Creuse and set up a printing press there. She visited Boussac several times and on one of these visits came across an extraordinary set of tapestries hanging in the local chateau, at that time the offices of the local authority. She saw immediately that they were something special and invited Prosper Mérimée down to view them. As a result they were heritage listed in 1865 and in 1882 sold to the Cluny.

The lion, who appears in all the panels, carrying the crescent moon arms of Antoine le Viste.

The medieval Chateau of Boussac was one of George Sand's favourites and she used it as the setting in one of her novels, describing it as 'irregular, graceful and pretty in its simplicity'. Who commissioned the tapestries was long a mystery but now studies suggest that it was Antoine le Viste in about 1500. The modern scholarly opinion is that they can be read in multiple ways and represent both allegories around the five senses and the six Courtly Virtues (frankness, beauty, joy, largesse, riches and leisure) of Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose. In addition they contain a bestiary and a flora. Antoine le Viste was married to a member of the powerful Tourangelle family the Briçonnets (who built Chenonceau and Candé about a decade after the tapestries were probably woven). The mystery surrounding the set of tapestries is compounded and continues because George Sand wrote of eight panels -- and yet only six exist at the Cluny.

A terrier on a cushion, in 'Mon seul desir'.

Prosper Mérimée mentions in correspondence that he was told by the local mayor that there were other, even more beautiful tapestries at one time in the chateau, but a former owner had cut them up to make cart covers and carpets. Were these the missing panels, or is there some forgotten corner of the chateau hiding them behind a collection of battered furniture or rolled up in an old cart?

A Hero of the Resistance

As we were walking back to our garage from lunch at a pizza restaurant with our mechanic and a friend in Saint Pierre des Corps one day I noticed this commemorative street name plaque on an ordinary private house. Who was Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves I wondered. And what a mouthful of a name!

He turns out to be a fascinating character, a real old school patriot. He was born in 1901 into an old aristocratic family, became a French naval officer, and when France surrendered in the Second World War he joined de Gaulle's Resistance in London. With the Dutch Resistance fighter Yan Doornik and fellow Frenchman Maurice Barlier he set up the Free French information and communications network Nemrod. 

His mother was a Vilmorin [link], the family of famous horticulturalists and seed merchants (botany was an aristocratic pursuit back in the day...). At one stage he seriously courted his cousin Louise Vilmorin, but at the time she preferred Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Just before Christmas 1940 he and a radio operator called Georges Marty (real name Alfred Gaessler) crossed the Channel and established themselves in the Nantes home of Resistance members, a couple called Clément. Theirs was the first radio communications link between Occupied France and London. He then went to Paris to get his friend Max André to set up a network there. When he returned to Nantes it became clear that Alfred Gaessler was a double agent, but the group found out too late and 23 members of the network were arrested.

D'Estienne d'Orves was condemned to death along with 8 of his comrades. They were not executed immediately though, and kept in prison until a real showcase moment occurred. He was arrested in January 1941, but not shot until August of that year, an act of reprisal against the assassination of a German officer in Paris. Barlier and Doornik died alongside him.

Further Reading: an article in History Net on the 80th anniversary of his death [link].

How Many Baguettes!?

One hectare of soft French winter wheat will yield 25 000 baguettes. Nine million hectares are sown to wheat in France and the yield is about six tonnes a hectare (so it takes 6 tonnes of wheat to make those 25 000 baguettes). That wheat, ground into flour, costs the boulanger about 10c per baguette.

The French wheat harvest is 30 to 40 million tonnes annually and France is the fifth largest wheat producer in the world, and second largest exporter of wheat (Australia is the ninth biggest producer and fourth biggest exporter, mostly of hard wheat, unlike France). 

Chances are your baguette in France was made with wheat grown in Centre Val de Loire. The Region is the biggest cereal producer in Western Europe.

Mazarine Blue

The Mazarine Blue Cyaniris semiargus (Fr. Azuré des anthyllides) is a small blue butterfly. The upper side of the males is violet blue with a dark brown edge and white fringe. Females are brown all over. The undersides of both sexes are beigey grey, with a few tiny black dots.

The caterpillars overwinter in the nests of ants, which take care of them. Prior to that they eat Red Clover Trifolium pratense (Fr. Trèfle des prés). The adult butterflies fly from April to October. 

The species occurs all over temperate Europe and Asia, up to 2500 metres above sea level. In France it is widely distributed but not common in the north-west. I photographed these near Lac du Gaube in the Pyrenees. They were with an Adonis Blue Polyommatus bellargus (Fr. Azuré bleu céleste) - the bright blue butterfly in the photo - sucking minerals from some unidentified poo. 

Typically they are found in damp grassland and scrub, where the host plant grows. The population appears to be stable and it is not considered to be at risk of extinction.

A Spot of Birdwatching in the Brenne

A couple of weeks ago Ingrid and I were early for a rendez-vous with a botanist in the Brenne so we opted for a spot of birdwatching from the Etang Purais hide [link]. It's the biggest hide in the LPO Chérine Reserve, but on a dull summer morning we had it all to ourselves.

The Etang Purais, near Lingé in the Brenne, Indre.

A pair of Mute Swans (Fr. les Cygnes tuberculés) take off.

A Mute Swan taking off.

Eurasian Coots (Fr. les Foulques macroules) obligingly perch on the artfully placed fallen tree that is right in front of the hide so that birdwatchers can get a good view of anything using it.

Mute Swan.

Red-crested Pochards (Fr. les Nettes rousses) in non-breeding plumage. In the past 50 years the Brenne has become a significant breeding location for this species of diving duck.

Mute Swan.

A Whiskered Tern (Fr. Guifette moustac) preens on a post. Etang Purais is one of their most important breeding sites in France, where they nest on the floating water lily leaves.

Info board in the carpark at the Etang Purais.

A flying flock of Ouessant sheep, an ancient breed from Brittany, being used for conservation grazing, a technique for maintaining the reserve.

Inside the hide. There are a number of nice paintings of different bird species on the walls.

Vuelta España Stage Three

When we were Andorra last month we decided we wanted to do a walk in our customary fashion: take a gondola and chairlift ride to the top of a mountain and walk down. We were defeated by the weather - it was foggy, windy, and threatening to rain.

Having driven to the base of the gondola we decided to ride the first step of our walk. Luckily, when we arrived at the top of the ride the weather wasn't too wild and there was a veritable garden of wildflowers for Susan to explore.

What we didn't realise is that we had arrived at the finish of this coming Monday's stage of the Vuelta España. (Stage three, 28/8)

What is even more remarkable is that, purely by chance, on our way back to our apartment we drove (in reverse) the last 36km of the stage.

The cyclists will travel up these roads to the Coll d'Ordino

 

down the other side to the town of Ordino, and up the valley

and up the hill to the finish at Arinsal

 

Strawberry Clover

Valérie showed me a species of clover that was new to me the other day, in the field we crossed to get to the Etang Purais. It was Strawberry Clover Trifolium fragiferum (Fr. Trèfle à fraises). 

This little clover takes its name from its large pink fruits, which, with a little imagination, resemble strawberries. It's a creeping plant with a stem rooted at the nodes. Its stems and petioles are hairy. It can be found in lawns and along roadsides. Wet pasture such as where we found it in the Brenne is a typical habitat for the species.

It is uncommon enough to be a ZNIEFF determinant species (so it is a sign of good biodiversity on a site with scientific interest).

Growing Mushrooms Underground

Julien Delalande is the fourth generation of his family to be growing mushrooms in La Cave des Roches at Bourré, in Loir et Cher, where there are about 600 kilometres of underground galleries under the village.

Chestnut mushrooms growing in La Cave des Roches.

Julien and his brother grew up in Bourré and their family have been mushroom farmers since 1893. Before that their ancestors were quarrymen, stone cutters and river boatmen.

Yellow oyster mushrooms growing in La Cave des Roches.

La Cave des Roches is what is left of the old Saint Roch co-operative of mushroom growers, one of the last growing button mushrooms underground on a large scale up to the beginning of the 20th century.

Shiitake mushrooms growing in La Cave des Roches.

According to Julien the family's underground galleries extend for several hundred kilometres, on seven levels (although some are now dangerous and no longer accessible). This maze of underground passages was where the fine white limestone that was used to build the most beautiful chateaux such as Chenonceau and Chambord was extracted.

Underground mushroom cultivation in La Cave des Roches.

But today the site is no longer used to extract stone, and has become a major production site for mushrooms. Julien Delalande produces several varieties all year long, for example shiitakes, grey and yellow oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms and wood blewits. In fact, 40% of the world's wood blewit (Fr. pieds bleus) production (approximately 400 kg per week) comes from these troglodyte caves.

Cooking wood blewit mushrooms.

Thanks to the ventilation, the hygrometry, the constant temperature of 12C° these troglodyte caves allow cultivation for a longer season, and the mushrooms are of a higher quality, with a firmer texture and finer taste.

Cave grown wood blewit mushrooms.

Julien advises that the best way to cook them is to pan fry them in neutral oil (not walnut or olive) for 7 to 12 minutes depending on the variety. You have to cook the varieties separately then in the middle of cooking add a little garlic, fresh chopped parsley then finish with a knob of butter.

Cultivated wood blewits in La Cave des Roches.

He loves growing mushrooms, but also discovering new grafitti by the quarrymen on the walls of the tunnels.

Carving in the underground village.

Julien's father, Maurice Delalande, had the idea of an underground village, which he and two friends, Slobodan Bugaric and Christian L'Hermitte started making in 1998. It is a fairytale space carved into the solid rock that can be visited from April to November and during the winter holidays. The guided tours are a good hour during which you will learn about the work of the mushroom grower and that of the quarryman.

Carved representation of a blacksmith's workshop in the underground village.

La Cave des Roches [link].

The Sydney Opera House

In 1967 my family arrived in Sydney*.

One of the first things I remember is seeing the Sydney Opera House with only half its tile cladding in place. I knew nothing about the building except that to my not quite seven year old eyes it was amazing. At the time I had no idea about the controversy surrounding it, and I suspect many outside Australia still don't.

"52 years ago (1968), with the help of David Attenborough, a 24-year-old Australian filmmaker named John Weiley wrote and directed Autopsy on a Dream. It screened just once. Weiley's film was a critical look at the turbulent, drawn-out creation of Australia's greatest landmark, from buoyant beginnings to a final act shrouded in controversy, as young Peter Hall inherited a gargantuan task from dismissed, beloved architect Jørn Utzon." (Sydney Opera House).

The film is fascinating for a number of reasons: the controversy behind the Opera House, the footage and sounds of Sydney in 1968, and the people interviewed.

It's almost an hour long, but for anyone interested in Australian history it's fascinating, and an hour well spent.

* for that story click here https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/search?q=Emigrating+to+Australia

One-flowered Wintergreen

 Apologies for the poor photos but I thought the plant was interesting enough to post even with bad images. It is One-flowered Wintergreen Moneses uniflora (Fr. Pyrole à une fleur), photographed at the Pont d'Espagne near Cauterets in the Pyrenees.

This is a small herbaceous plant that survives several years thanks to its fine, branched underground rhizome. The round leaves grow in a rosette, evergreen and glossy, 1 to 2 cm in diameter. There is only one flower per rosette, nodding on a 5 to 10 cm stem. The white, slightly crinkled petals are spread wide and flat. Flowering is from May to October.

The species is distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, wherever it is cool and damp (so often restricted to the mountains). It grows especially in damp shady conifer forests, amongst moss. Commercial pine plantations have caused its range to expand in Europe.

Celebrating National Acadian Day and Going to the Guinguette

15 August is a public holiday, Ascension, in France, but in Canada it is la Fete Nationale de l'Acadie, celebrating the French Canadians known as Acadians, who found themselves in difficulties when the British took over the French territories in Canada in 1759.

This year several places locally decided to celebrate as well. Many Acadian families came from the area just to our south and west, and the history is well known here.

La Halle, the popular guinguette in Boussay, staged a 'Fete Acadienne' on the eve, featuring French Canadian 'artists' such as 'Carine' Dion, 'Jules' Vigneault and 'Foie' de Pirate. I actually don't know who the performers really were, but a lot of the audience clearly did. The crowd loved it. I must admit, I was expecting a more zydeco infused evening, but there wasn't  an accordion in sight.

 

I joined friends (after aquagym) and it was a great night out. The poor staff at La Halle were overwhelmed by numbers though and we didn't get to eat until 10 pm. Even for France in the summertime, that's a bit late! The meal was a set menu of cooked ham, mashed potato and salad, followed by squidgy chocolate cake, costing €17.

Two nights earlier I had been there for a different local group, and got to witness a respected regional television journalist starting a conga line (Fr. une chenille). I was invited to join (she's one of my swimming buddies) but being uptight and anglo I declined.

August in France is all about going to the guinguette in the evening! A guinguette is a summer pop up open air bar that serves simple food, has live music and dancing and is almost always situated on a river or a lake. We have an equally popular one in the old public laundry, La Lavoir, in Preuilly, and recently we went with clients to the big one in Montbazon for that authentic French holiday experience.

Collecting Tiny Flies in the Brenne

For more than 20 years I have been in touch on and off with Professor Valery Korneyev, a Ukrainian entomologist now living in exile in Berlin. For some years he has been reviewing various genera of fruit flies Tephritidae and this year I was lucky enough to be in a position where I could help a bit with his research. These days, by the way, he is funded by the Humboldt Foundation Researchers at Risk fund at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. Back in Ukraine he is Collections Manager and Head of Entomology for the Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv.

 

Valery posing with the postcard I sent him.

Photo courtesy of Professor Valery Korneyev.

He wanted specimens of a tiny fly called Myopites blotii from France, preferably as close to Paris as possible. The fly causes galls in Common Fleabane Pulicaria dysenterica, so the easiest way to find the flies is to find a patch of fleabane.

 

Me checking fleabane flowers for galls in the field.

Photo courtesy of Ingrid de Winter.

I enlisted my botanist contact Valérie Lagny to find a suitable location and she picked the Etang Purais, part of the LPO Chérine Reserve in the Brenne. This meant that if we wanted to take samples we would need permission, but it was for a good cause, so it was just a question of asking.

 

Me pooting flies. My pooter uses the venturi principle, so I blow in it and it sucks up tiny insects. It was made for me by my friend Paul.

Photo courtesy of Ingrid de Winter.

On the day we had arranged to do the field work the weather was distinctly iffy, trying to rain all morning. Valérie took me to a nice big patch of fleabane and I set to work. The flies were not super abundant, but there were enough that I managed to collect 12 for Valery. I was impressed at how good Valérie had got at spotting the flies since they aren't in her normal line of work. My friend Ingrid, who is a Dutch nature guide and one of my swimming buddies, had also accompanied us and spent the morning practicing with her new camera. 

 

Me on site at the Etang Purais. The fleabane is the yellow flowered plant.

Photo courtesy of Ingrid de Winter.

Once home I put half the flies in alcohol to preserve them and the others in the freezer. Once I was ready to send them to Valery the frozen flies got gently transferred to kitchen paper impregnated with a little alcohol, then slid into a small box supplied by my friend Tim. Everything was labelled appropriately to show species name, date caught, location caught and who caught them.

 

Entomologists often stick their heads in their nets. It's a good way of seeing what you've got whilst blocking escape.

Photo courtesy of Ingrid de Winter.

Everything was put into a snaplock bag then into a cardboard box sealed with lots of tape, along with a covering note on a postcard I'd picked up at the Polish Institute in Brussels in March. It seemed like the perfect moment to use it.

 

Myopites blotii on Common Fleabane Pulicaria dysenterica at the Etang Purais, Indre.

Photo courtesy of Ingrid de Winter.

I posted the box to Valery in Berlin and he got it in two days. He says the flies arrived in good condition and he is really happy. I'm pleased. Valérie and I are now awaiting his scientific note on the species with interest.

 

Some of the specimens of Myopites blotii I collected for Valery. They are about 3 mm long.