Etty would not have approved of Doug or his lawn.
Etty was the daughter of Charles Darwin and she helped her father with his editing, alas, often with an eye to bowdlerizing biology to conform with her Victorian sensibilities.
Etty’s oddest campaign was her attempt to cleanse the world of, what she viewed as, an obscene fungus. As Etty’s niece reports:
Armed with a basket and a pointed stick, and wearing special hunting cloak and gloves, she would sniff her way round the wood, pausing here and there, her nostrils twitching . . . then at last, with a deadly pounce, she would fall upon her victim, and poke his putrid carcass into her basket. At the end of the day’s sport, the catch was brought back and burnt in the deepest secrecy on the drawing-room fire, with the door locked; because of the morals of the maids.
Douglas Sly is a lakeside resident who has harboured in his lawn the object of Etty’s moral outrage: a common stinkhorn. This fungus’ scientific name tells all: Phallus impudicus—the shameless phallus. Here is Doug’s picture of it.
Douglas Sly’s picture is used with permission.
Alistair, every classroom in the world should experience your way of teaching. The kids (or we) would never forget the topic.
And on a different note – what magic is behind your headers? They change each time when I return to the same topic, that is really neat. Is it a program that one can insert?
Jana, I have written you privately about how to do this.
Impudent indeed. Hilarious. But wasn’t there a relative who wrote some good poetry in homage to
fungi and all manner of vegetable life?
Pamella, I hadn’t heard; tell me more.
I believe it’s Darwin’s grandfather I was thinking of. The romantics of the time – poets – endorsed his
writing initially, but then repudiated him. I don’t know if his was fine poetry, but I think it splendid that one should write poems to/about fungi, liverworts, water striders, beetles.
Thanks for the great chuckle.