cracked lens: Comment on downe

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us." -- On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Charles Darwin, 1859).

What Darwin knowingly called 'interesting' came as an explosive revelation to modern thinkers. Hitherto suffocated by the strictures of a desperate and censorious Church, our understanding of the world around us was propelled forward by leaps and bounds through the courage of a man willing to depend upon the strength of his own logic and empiricism in order to bring to light a theory so contrary to popular thought that it could destroy him.

His 'tangled bank', regarded as a significant contributor to his inspired thinking, remains in wonderful condition near his former home in the village of Downe, in Kent.

Downe Bank, also known famously as Darwin's 'orchis bank' and so named because of the eleven species of orchid found there, while inevitably missing a species or two since Darwin's time, is an incredible and species rich place to explore. To think that it lies so near to the biological sterility of central London (twenty minutes by train from Waterloo East) is almost a work of satire.

Seen growing on the bank itself last weekend, Ophrys insectifera (Orchidaceae), the fly orchid, is one of the species that Darwin would have been familiar with. Actually pollinated by a wasp, this orchid, as with most related bee orchids, is dependent on insect mimicry for reproduction -- truly, then, a very sexy flower.

Comments on: downe

And a very sexy post :)

I must take issue with your suggestion that central London is biologically sterile, though. As you know better than I, the rapaciousness of life is such that the driest, hottest, coldest and most chemically inimical corners of the Earth are colonised; the same is certainly true of our fair city, to its very last millimetre. It may lack the flamboyance of a Downe Bank or a Malaysian rainforest, but there's still a great deal going on.

Posted by matt at June 2, 2006 01:09 PM

I could have used 'denuded', or 'poor', both of which it is, but in relative terms, it is homogeneous enough to be regarded as sterile in non-literal terms. I elect to retain the selected usage on the understanding that poetic license gives me license to be poetic!

I can tell you where one of the inner-most recorded stands of wild British orchid grows in the capital, but it is unimpressively far out of Zone 1. As for lichens, orchids are a good indicator of biological quality and concomitant species diversity.

Perhaps I should have used 'vacuum'? ;)

Posted by Alastair at June 2, 2006 04:08 PM

Long post, long comments. I'm just gonna say: clever flower, super shot :)

Posted by CurlyToes at June 3, 2006 10:58 PM

Ottima fotografia, complimenti

Posted by fotografiamo at June 19, 2006 09:50 PM

the flower looks like a little person!! amazing..cheers :)

Posted by david at June 28, 2006 04:03 AM

Great detail and color.

Posted by Brandon Crain at June 29, 2006 10:12 PM

Great colors and dof. nice one

Posted by Ameen at June 30, 2006 12:29 PM

Comments on: downe

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