Back to the library

On the due day, back to Wisley to return the two orchid books I had borrowed a month or so previously, as noticed at reference 1.

A bright warm day, with BH at the wheel and the rollator in the boot. There was a substantial queue when we arrived, perhaps 11:00 or so, so we paused for tea and rock cake. Rock cake not bad at all, all the better for not being covered in sugar, in the way of the real thing from Yaverland. 

There was a modest invasion of models of Shaun the sheep and friends, but they were not too big and not too intrusive. Nothing like as bad as the wicker rabbits outside the big glass house. A smaller version of the cows noticed a few years ago at reference 3.

Wandered in the general direction of the handsome new library on the hill, taking in a collection of the odd plants snapped above, in among the long grass. The candy floss member of the small genus of smoke bushes, aka Cotinus. See reference 4.

Failed to find anything that appealed on the sale trolley, despite most of the books there going for a great deal less than what they had cost in the first place. Failed to find anything else to take out - at least in part because we don't visit often enough to make return very convenient - but succeeded in returning the two books on orchids.

Wandered in the general direction of the big glass house and the Glasshouse cafeteria next door. Taking in a bench from which we were able to tweet some very tame wrens. Wrens not being birds that we come across very often. Search of the archive was hampered by the fact that 'wren' appears in all kinds of other contexts, including the interior of other words, but there do appear to have been possible sightings in Ryde (2019), Ashburton (2016) and Epsom (2014). So quite a good tweet.

I took some kind of roast potatoes plus a take on spaghetti Bolognese at the cafeteria, which proved to be rather more than I wanted. Plus the potatoes were a bit dull and there was too much oil in the spaghetti and too much cheese on top of it. The pasta was actually something flat and rather heavy, from which I associated to whelks, which I have never had, but have never much liked the look of. I think BH did better with her choice.

A handsome hibiscus, which Google Images suggests may well be the 'white chiffon' cultivar of the Rose of Sharon, aka Hibiscus syriacus. Part of the mallow family. A family which includes our own common mallow, hollyhocks and the recently fashionable lavatera. Which last, as it happens, I have been pruning off the brick walk this very afternoon.

A handsome metaseqouia, a Chinese flavoured relative of the Wellingtonia. There are two of three of them at Hampton Court Palace.

On the way out, one is led through the shop, where I availed myself of the rollator to take a break, to be amused by the shed like construction around one of the book cases, probably made of real wood, unlike the extruded plastic rafters above.

A fox cuddler in the car park. Not the sort of thing a pest controller would go in for. Google Images could not advance the matter beyond the car being a Citroen C3.

Home to an afternoon snooze, followed up with the blackberries already noticed at reference 6.

PS: I notice at reference 1 a snap of a plant then identified as some epiphytic orchid, otherwise unspecified. But now I know better, following our trip to Ventnor, noticed at reference 2. Supplied with the cropped version included above, Google Images had no trouble confirming that it was an Elkhorn fern, or at least a close relative, Platycerium willinckii. With some authorities persisting in regarding this last as a sub-species of the earlier Platycerium bifurcatum. Indeed, a rather better specimen than that at Ventnor. I expect it liked being inside.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/wisleyan-pizza.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/botanics.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/pit-stop.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotinus.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_syriacus.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/blackberries-two.html.