Wellingtonia 112

Captured on the occasion of a visit to the Downs for the Derby. Carefully sequestered behind various fences on a roundabout just by the grandstand. Not quite sure why the roundabout was off-limits, but drink had been taken, there were a lot of security people about - not all civilians gathered up from odd parts of London - and it seemed better not to push it.

So I did not have the confirmation of a close encounter.

But I did wonder how it was that I had missed it, the tree clearly having been there for twenty years or more. Then this afternoon, it turned out that I had not, that I had marked it down as a candidate just about four years ago at reference 2, but never got around to confirmation, despite what I now regard as conclusive evidence gathered at the time. No other tree has scale leaves quite like it.

PS: on another matter, I noticed this afternoon that BH's rocking chair was covered in a sturdy, florally patterned fabric - with the pattern being woven into the fabric rather than printed onto it - the sort of thing now snapped above. Which looked to me to be both tricky and expensive. So I asked Gemini what such a fabric was called: 'what do you call a sturdy furnishing fabric, once common, in which the pattern, often floral, was woven into the fabric rather than printed onto it'. His first answer was 'tapestry', but on poking, he then came up with 'Jacquard', which Bing confirms is the right answer. Oddly a word which I do not think I have ever come across, although BH has. Perhaps the difference is that her childhood home contained some, while mine did not. With Jacquard looms once being powered by an early version of the punched cards which went on to power computers and which were still going strong when I started out in the early 1970s. Maybe one of the machines noticed at reference 4, over the pond? The fabric in the snap above can probably be bought from reference 5, where at least some of the fabrics on offer cost a lot more than we have ever paid for furnishing fabrics, even from places like Liberty's and Heal's.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/wellingtonia-111.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/reserved-judgement.html.

Reference 3: https://sewport.com/fabrics-directory/jacquard-fabric.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/10/ancient-and-modern.html.

Reference 5: https://www.andrewmartin.co.uk/.

Group search key: wgc.