Stamp of the Day: Hammarby

Not far from Uppsala, a little to the southeast on the large flat plains of glacial clays deposited just a hudnred thousand to a couple of million years ago, is a farm on a little hill.  It is Hammarby, Carl von Linne (Linnaeus)'s18th century farm, where he lived when he work as a professor of medicine and botany in Uppsala.  In town he had his scientific garden, and out here (within riding or walking distance) he had his farm and wild plants.

There are a couple of buildings at Hammarby, most built of horizontal logs that are painted with the typical red iron oxide paint of Sweden ('falu rödfärg').  This is where he lived with his family, the famous scientist that was convinced that he was put on this Earth to catalogue all living species and put it into some kind of reasonable system. And so he did.  Plants, Animals, Fossils, Rocks... all got a Latin name, a binomial of a genus and species epithet.  Like 'Homo sapiens'.

This Swedish stamp from 50 years ago shows Linnaeus in his garden outside the main building.  If you walk up the creaky and narrow (and extremely worn) stairs to the second floor and then take a right, you end up in his bedroom.  All the walls in there are covered with botanical prints, used as wall paper.  He was surrounded by plants, and even while asleep or in midwinter.  Tropical trees, orchids, fleshy flowers from far-away places were pasted onto the walls with starchy wall paper glue.  I assume there was regular wall paper printed in the mid 1700's, maybe not?  It is a bit strange today to see these antique and extremely valuable prints from the 1700s pasted up on the walls, covering every surface, and now stained with water, insect droppings, and dust.  Some of the prints are colored, maybe by hand. 

Hammarby is a great place to visit, so go there next time you are close to Uppsala.  And then go to the Cathedral inside Uppsala ('Domkyrkan') where you can step (or dance) on Linnaeus' grave.  His gravestone is set in the floor.

Elusive woodpeckers

Talking about woodpeckers made me think about an illustration in our grandparents house. The great possibly extinct Ivory-billed woodpecker. Native to USA, and searched for 2005-2010 without any solid proof of their existence.

 Ivory-billed Woodpecker by John James Audubon/Courtesy Harvard University Press

over 8 million species on Earth they say now...

And most of them have never been described, never given a name, yet...

Great story here, just out yesterday about the new census of Life.

Botanical potpourri

Ever wondered what kind of plants really are in those scented, dyed bathroom potpourris?  Now you can find out. By using the Dried Botanical ID (image below), you can key out dried fruits, flowers, branches, branches and wood by using a visual key on their website. It is a great tool for the home botanist or just curious person!

Bits and pieces from the internet: species edition

There is a bird inside this pistol.  Seriously! And it sings. Seriously wonderful things from the past. 

Why do we call it the 'human race' and not the 'human species'?  Personally I think it is because people didn't want to be thought of as on the same level as other species, such as monkeys, flowers, and sheep. Humans are supposed to be bigger, better, smarter and of higher value than other species in the world.  But we really are just a species... Wikipedia is solving this by redirection human race and human species to just 'human'.

A nice little interactive guide to endangered species of different parts of North America. (New York Times)

And don't you wonder what kind of living species might be found on the exoplanet Gliese 581d?  In our lifetime, do you think we will be able to know if there is life on other planets?  And if there is life, then there are probably different species.