Category Archives: Exploration

Plant of the Month: March 2017

Posted on 26/03/2017 by carolinemmurray

I have to confess that I had hoped that the Persian ironwood tree, Parrotia persica, had obtained its botanical name (first applied by C.A. von Meyer in 1831) because it was observed to be a favourite perch for parrots, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, Exploration, Gardens, History, Natural history | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Plant of the Month: January 2017

Posted on 09/01/2017 by carolinemmurray

My mahonia is looking pretty cheerful at the moment: as good a reason as any to find out a bit more about it – including, I hope, the reason for its flowering in the coldest months of the year, when … Continue reading →

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Plant of the Month: November 2016

Posted on 13/11/2016 by carolinemmurray

I was parking my car outside a friend’s house in leafy western Cambridge when something squidged from above on to the bonnet and disintegrated most messily. I opened the car door and was assailed by a most appalling smell of … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, Exploration, Gardens, London, Natural history | Tagged , , , , , | 18 Comments

Object Of The Month: September

Posted on 23/09/2016 by carolinemmurray

For one reason and another (one being the Christmas craft fair events for charity, which are looming), I am busier with knitting at the moment than usual. Hedgehogs and Christmas puddings are lining up unseasonably early, though I guess I … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Exploration, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Plant of the Month: May

Posted on 27/05/2016 by carolinemmurray

At the beginning of May last year, wisteria was flowering its head off in Venice. This year, at the same time, it was almost over, except for some plants on very shadowed or north-facing walls. And back at home, it … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Botany, Cambridge, Exploration, Gardens, Natural history | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Arsenic in the Arctic

Posted on 18/04/2016 by carolinemmurray

It is perhaps surprising that one of the best known U.S. Arctic explorers first felt the Call of the North in land-locked Cincinnati, Ohio. Charles Francis Hall (1821–71) was born in Vermont, and apprenticed to a blacksmith in Rochester, New … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Exploration | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Plant of the Month: March

Posted on 27/03/2016 by carolinemmurray

Far be it from me to suggest that great minds work alike, but on returning from a happy expedition to photograph the species tulips in the alpine house at CUBG, I found that the Garden’s own ‘plant of the month’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, Exploration, Gardens, Natural history | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Object(s) Of The Month: March

Posted on 14/03/2016 by carolinemmurray

Some of the most ancient artefacts which have survived to grace our modern museums were carved from bone or ivory: hardwearing substances, which survive almost anything except a severe conflagration or a deliberate act of grinding them to shards or … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Art, Cambridge, Exploration, History, Museums and Galleries, Natural history, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

‘Hee Gathered Many Notable Things’

Posted on 14/01/2016 by carolinemmurray

I was recently given one of the most infuriating books it has ever been my misfortune to read. Bound in Venice: The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book, by Alessandro Marzo Magno, translated from the Italian by Gregory … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bibliography, Exploration, History, Literature, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Meeting Venus

Posted on 11/12/2015 by carolinemmurray

I had come across Jules Sébastien César Dumont D’Urville when we reissued his Voyage au Pole Sud et dans l’Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée: Exécuté par ordre du roi pendant les années 1837–1838–1839–1840 (in 10 volumes: the … Continue reading →

Posted in Exploration, History, Natural history | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments