I found it on iPlayer. Her name was Amelia Griffiths, the Queen of Seaweed.
See The Queen of Seaweeds – the story of Amelia Griffiths, an early 19th century pioneer of marine botany. | Philip Strange Science and Nature Writing
During the COVID lockdown, I built a list of women ‘overlooked’ by the scientific community.
Amongst them was Mary Anning, fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist (1799 – 1847). She worked the Jurassic fossil beds at Lyme Regis. Her discoveries were the basis of many scientific papers, and it is believed the tongue-twister “She sells seashells…” was written about her.
But, being female, she was not allowed to become a member of the Geological Society of London (her family’s religion also barred her from prestigious universities and many professions). Her contributions were seldom acknowledged.
That’s really interesting, Amadan. Gosh - it’s hard to believe how badly women were treated back then.
This is the genus that was named after Amelia Griffiths: Marine Botany at FHL
And, according to Bargain Hunt, there is a product still used in medicine which is named after her…
Re: Bargain Hunt - Amelia Griffiths is one of the naturalists featured in dejayM’ celebration series, see: Amelia Griffiths' Birthday | Observation | UK and Ireland | iSpot Nature And, here is a link to the actual Scientific Citations project: Scientific Citations | Project | UK and Ireland | iSpot Nature
There was a piece on BBC SE Today at lunch time about how several rare moths are making a come-back due to habitat restoration. I cannot find a link on the BBC website but I did find a story about one of the moths mentioned from a few months ago: Kent Farmers help conservationists to revive rare moth - BBC News
Whales are always impressive & news of increasing populations is always a bonus.
Good news from Scotland
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I listened to some of a programme on BBC Radio 4 when I was cooking lunch about the environment and the General Election. I thought that the head of the wildlife trusts made some very interesting observations connecting the ‘win-win-win’ of regenerative-farming, reducing imports, improving people’s mental well-being.
If it was on at lunch time today it was plagued with silly sound effects.
They went on about burning north sea oil. The stuff is called “sweet oil” in the trade and is sold at a premium price for making optical and medical grade plastics. Perhaps the dregs at the end of a few batches might end up in an oil fired stove.
Celestial climate change has been omitted from the news feeds for some years now. The evidence is there on the land where the land was shaped by glaciers during the ice ages.
If ice ages were ended by man made climate change I would be demanding to know where they got the time machine from.
Both read with interest, thanks
Good news from North Devon.
Only just heard about the pod of whales stranded and nearly all wiped out on the Orkney beach yesterday. Completely devastating.
Yes, very sad. About 70 dead or dying. Apparently it’s a beach on Sanday where few people go so they were found too late to save them.
Just completely tragic.
The Sanday Islanders, particularly, are upset by this
This reports a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
News of new life forms at ocean depths . But not much of a future for them….
……. Because the work was partly funded by Canada’s The Metals Company, which is aiming to start mining the nodules in the CCZ next year.
August is the start of the French Fungal Food Forays. France records rise in mushroom poisonings in 2022 | Food Safety News
Rising numbers of poisonings reported… and advice « don’t give wild mushrooms to young children or use only mobile apps for identification, due to the high risk of error. »
ISpot does have a warning, of course.
The first line in that article “Almost 2,000 poisonings linked to wild mushrooms were recorded in France in 2022”
Don’t know what the figure is for UK but suspect a lot less as UK people, before the fad for eating wild mushrooms, were terrified of them.
Interesting that the article implies that is it mainly those who have little or no knowledge that were the ones poisoned. On one hand this is not surprising as they would be most likely to make a mistake but on the other hand why were they eating things that could kill them without having good knowledge.
Even when you do have good ID skills it is still possible to make mistakes and anything biological can be variable e.g. Boletus edulis normally brown but can be white, how many apps would say that.
When I visited Belarus, I was told that foraging for wild mushrooms is very much part of the culture. Sadly, there are large tracts of forest which were contaminated with Strontium-90. But mushrooms are still marketed, even with 10 times the recommended maximum amount of radioactivity.
Foraging wild mushrooms is indeed very much part of culture over large parts of Europe, Russia and some other parts of the world. However the traditional knowledge is being lost and indeed probably has been lost from large chunks of the population. I have seen ‘locally’ foraged fungi for sale (or indeed fungi festivals) in many parts of Europe although in an increasing number of cases local may be a different country far away.
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