The Eye of Hokusai

2014   documentary

about the life and work

of

the legendary 18th/19th century

Japanese painter and print-maker

Katsushika Hokusai

Going Bananas

Turdus m. merula - Junior
A little more than a week ago we saw Junior for the first time with its mother and father. It was fed by its mother with little pieces of pear and apple, that we had thrown out onto a raised  bed close to our breakfast table on the patio. The next day we saw in our kitchen that somebody had picked a hole in one of our bananas. We suspected our local robin, but came to the conclusion that the damage was too big for such a little one. We put the banana out on the favoured spot of the blackbird family and, shortly after, we witnessed the whole family devour it within an hour. This morning we saw Junior on its own looking around for food. We had one banana left which we put it out for our young adolescent, as you can see on the photograph below. 

Junior

Daddy

                                                  Photographs © Hans van den Bos

A birthday present

Xanthoceras sorbifolium

Photograph © Hans van den Bos

Xanthoceras sorbifolium (yellowhorn, shiny leaf yellowhorn, goldenhorn, Chinese flowering chestnut) is a woody perennial in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae, and the only species in the genus Xanthoceras. It is native to northern China in the provinces of Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Liaoning, Nei Monggol, Ningxia, Shaanxi, and Shandong. It is also cultivated in Russia, having been imported there since the 19th Century.

Photograph © Kiewscience - Plants of the world online

It is a large shrub or small tree growing to 8 m tall. The leaves are arranged alternately, 12–30 cm long, and are pinnate, with 9–17 leaflets, the leaflets 3–6 cm long, with a sharly serrated margin. The flowers are 2–3 cm diameter, with five white petals, and are produced in erect panicles 10–20 cm long in mid spring. The fruit is an oval leathery capsule 5–6 cm diameter, which splits into three sections at maturity to release the 6–18 seeds; the seeds are black, 1.5 cm diameter, resembling a small horse chestnut seed.

The genus (which translates as "yellow horn") is considered to be the most basal member of the family. The specific epithet refers to the leaves, similar to those of rowans (Sorbus). It was originally spelled as sorbifolia, but this is a grammatical error that was corrected to sorbifolium under the ICBN.

X. sorbifolium has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

The leaves, flowers, and seeds of yellowhorn are all edible.

--source Wikipedia--