Most gardeners regard horsetails or scouring rushes (Equisetum) as one of their worst enemies – once this invasive weed is in your garden or allotment, it will spread everywhere and is almost impossible to get rid of (Fig. 1). But of course from the plant’s perspective this is a success story – they are doing what is best for them, not for us!

Today, this genus of highly invasive plants consists of only 15 species (Fig. 2), but they are found throughout the world except in Antarctica. They also have an immensely long evolutionary history spanning over 350 million years.

Fossils of horsetails are commonly found in the Carboniferous age coalfields such as in South Wales. The star-shaped leaf whorls (Annularia) are among the iconic fossils found in these rocks. We now know they were parts of tree-sized plants up to 10 metres or more tall – I have often wondered what today’s gardeners would think if they encountered a living one of these giants!

Fig. 3. Fossil horsetail (Annularia paisii) from the uppermost Carboniferous of Portugal, showing insect gall. Insert shows close-up of gall. Specimen in the Museum of Natural History and Science, Porto (UP-MHNFCP-155167).

A couple of years ago, my colleague Pedro Correia sent me a photograph of a fossil Annularia that he had found in Portugal (Fig. 3). In itself, this wouldn’t have been too unusual, but this one had a strange structure attached among the leaves. It almost looked as though it was a seed but of course that was impossible – horsetails do not have seeds, but reproduce by spores, in the same way as ferns. We shared this photograph with other European colleagues and a debate ensued as to what on Earth this could be. For a time it remained a puzzle. But then we showed it to another colleague, Conrad Labandeira from the Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC), who is one of the world’s leading palaeontological experts on insect – plant interactions. He suggested that this was probably a structure known as a gall.  Most galls today are produced when an insect injects chemicals into the plant to produce a swelling, in which it lays an egg. The resulting larva then develops within the gall.

There is evidence of Annularia leaves having been eaten by insects, such a chew-marks around the leaf edge. Conrad had also published evidence some years ago of an insect gall in a Carboniferous tree fern stem. But a gall on a Carboniferous horsetail is most unusual.  For a time we thought this example might be unique. But we then found a paper published back in 1931 by the American palaeobotanist Maxim Elias, who claimed to have found a seed attached to an Annularia. But it is now clear that Elias hadn’t in fact discovered a seed-bearing Annularia, as he had thought, but an insect gall similar to ours.

Fossil galls of this age are extremely rare. What insect produced this one is unknown. The organism was not preserved and most of today’s gall-producing insect groups do not have a fossil record extending this far back in time. All that we can say is that it was probably caused by a member of a now-extinct insect group that presumably produced larvae as part of its life cycle (Fig. 4).

Most horsetails have thick, almost leathery stems and I still find it rather strange that insects produce galls on them. But they do today on at least some horsetails, and it has clearly been of benefit to insects for millions of years. We haven’t yet found one in the Welsh coalfields but, now we know what to look out for, we will be keeping our eyes open!

Correia, P., Bashforth, A.R., Šimůnek, Z., Cleal, C.J., Sá, A.A. & Labandeira, C.C. 2020. The history of herbivory on sphenophytes: a new calamitalean with an insect gall from the Upper Pennsylvanian of Portugal and a review of arthropod herbivory on an ancient lineage. International Journal of Plant Sciences, 181(4).

VE Day Celebrations in London, 8 May 1945

8th May 2020 marks the 75th Anniversary of VE Day. Victory in Europe Day in 1945 celebrated the end of World War Two when fighting against Nazi Germany came to an end in Europe. Celebrations erupted throughout the western world, especially in the UK and North America, with more than one million people taking to the streets, village greens and town centres to celebrate across Britain.

The National Wool Museum had a VE Tea Party planned to mark this day, but as we’re all staying safe at home, our team would like to share some of their delicious VE Tea recipes with you in the hope that you can create your own celebration to mark this important occasion.

 

LEMON SPONGE

Lemmon Cake

8oz. margarine

8oz. castor sugar

4 eggs, lightly beaten

9oz. self - raising flour

1 dessert spoon lemon juice

 

TOPPING

2 Tablespoons caster sugar

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

 

​Preheat oven at 180°C  350° F  Gas mark 4

Grease and line 11" x 7" tin.  Cream butter and sugar until pale and creamy, then beat in the eggs.  Add a tablespoon of flour with the last amount of egg to prevent curdling.  Add the lemon juice.  Fold in the rest of the flour with a metal spoon.

Place in tin and bake for about 45 mins​.

Meanwhile make topping by mixing lemon juice and castor sugar.

Remove from oven, prick all over with a skewer and spoon topping over the hot cake.  Leave to cool in tin until topping is absorbed.

 

SCONES

Scones

1 lb. self- raising flour

1 teaspoon salt

4 oz. butter

2 oz. castor sugar

½ pint milk

beaten egg to glaze

For the filling:

strawberry or raspberry jam

quarter pint double cream, whipped

 

Preheat oven 230° C  450° F  Gas mark 8

Sift flour and salt into a bowl.  Rub in butter until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Add castor sugar and mix to a soft dough with the milk.

Turn onto a lightly floured table, knead quickly, then roll out to ¼ inch thickness. Cut into 20 rounds with a 2½  inch cutter. Place scones on greased baking trays and brush tops with beaten egg or milk. Bake in oven for 8 - 10 minutes.  Cool on a wire tray.

When cold, split and serve with jam and whipped cream.

 

On a Monday morning in January 2016 I received a phone call from the Museum’s archaeology department in Cardiff. It turned out that the storm a few days earlier had shifted the sand in Oxwich Bay on the Gower. Apparently a wreck had been uncovered and some old wooden casks were visible!

Because National Waterfront Museum in Swansea is the home of our Maritime Collection, I was asked to take a look and grab a few images before the sand covered it up again. As curator I’m part of the National Museum’s History & Archaeology Department, and I studied archaeology at Trinity College Carmarthen so I was well up to the task. Now, as much as I love a field trip, it was January and a cold wind was blowing from the Atlantic, but the weather in two days’ time was supposed to be fine. I hunted for my wellies (found in the boot of the car eventually) and charged my camera batteries.

So Wednesday morning bright and early found me in the car park for Oxwich Bay. Time was on my side, as at nine o’clock the tide was out as far as it would go that day. I had vague directions to follow as to where on the beach the barrels had been found – a very crude ‘X marks the spot’ hand drawn map. There was no scale on the map so I started at the western end of the beach and worked my way across it, zig-zagging to check out every little bump in the sand.

There were a lot of bumps too! Many pieces of metal, plainly from ships that had ended up there. Bits of steel rope, hull plating and rusty conglomerates. It was a lovely day for the search even though a keen wind was

Barrel exposed on the beach

blowing from the north now making the tops of the breakers misty. Then in the distance I spotted a larger disturbance in the sand and I could make out barrel shapes. There appeared to be six barrels and pieces of broken barrels, none of them were intact. They were lovely wooden casks and we had all hoped that they might be at least a few hundred years old. Alas, their proximity to a piece of steel hull spoke of a more recent wreck. Throughout the Twentieth Century, during WW2 and just after, a number of ships ended up on Oxwich Beach. Some were re-floated but others were broken up for scrap.

With such scant evidence it was impossible to tell which our ship was. The barrels contained a hard concrete-like substance, which later proved to be lime - originally a powder, it hard set hard in the sea water. Lime is used for a number of things such as making cement or lime mortar; as a soil improver just spread on the land, and for marking white lines on football pitches!

Wooden barrel containing hardened lime revealed by winter storms at Oxwich Bay

I took plenty of images and luckily had remembered to take a 30cm ruler with me to give a scale to the casks. As I worked I noticed the tide had turned and was getting closer and closer soon to cover the scene. It was time to leave and make my way back to the Waterfront Museum.

Are the barrels still visible? I don’t know. The power of the sea shifts the sand about after every storm revealing and then hiding historic treasures away maybe for another seventy years, maybe never to be seen again….

In my previous blog I explained what rafting bivalve shells are and how Caribbean bivalves are ending up on British and Irish shores attached to plastics. There are numerous records of non-native bivalves on plastics in the southwest of Ireland and England but nothing has yet been reported in Wales, which is something that I’m trying to rectify. To encourage recording I’m enlisting citizen scientists – volunteers from the general public – who can help to spot and identify these rafting species in Wales. But first of all, I want to check to see if there are rafting species turning up on our shores so I began talking to groups who already go out on the shores to survey, beach clean or educate.

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

In December 2019 I met with a fantastic group of people at PLANED in Narbeth. PLANED have excellent coastal community links and everyone I spoke to was enthusiastic and willing to incorporate the rafting bivalves project into their usual activities of beach cleans, foraging, outdoor activities or education.  They were keen to help record any rafting species that they discover and we talked about how to identify any bivalves found. Since then I have been working on an identification guide that I plan to develop with the help of these community groups.

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

Pembrokeshire National Parks staff and volunteers looking for plastics at Freshwater West beach

In early March two colleagues and I attended the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society’s

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

Presenting the rafting project at the annual Porcupine Marine Natural History Society Conference at SAMS (Scottish Association for Marine Science).

If you would like to help record non-native bivalves on plastics on Welsh beaches then do contact me at Anna.Holmes@museumwales.ac.uk

Can you imagine how you would feel today if you were told that you couldn't buy your favourite food?

Or, if you could, you could only buy a small amount that would have to last you a week and you would have to queue up for it?

This is what happened to people during the Second World War (1939 -45) when rationing was introduced in Britain.

Why was rationing introduced in Britain during the Second World War?

Adolf Hitler, Germany's dictator, tried to force an early end to the war by attacking ships carrying food and other resources heading for Britain.

He wanted to starve the nation into defeat and his weapon was a fleet of submarines or U boats which travelled across the Atlantic.

In Wales, as in other parts of the country, their planes also targeted ports and docks, as well as goods trains in industrial places such as Newport, Swansea and Cardiff.

What was Rationing in the Second World War?

Certain items, in particular food, were in very short supply and difficult to buy in people's usual shops.

People started to panic buy in a manner similar to recent times as in the petrol or Covid crisis.

So, the Government introduced rationing as a fair system to allow people to have a certain amount of food each week.

Other countries involved in the war such as America had rationing too. Some people remembered rationing as it had also taken place during the First World War (1914 -18).

When did Food Rationing start in Britain in the Second World War?

With the shortage of food during the First World War still fresh in the memory, the government introduced the food rationing scheme in January 1940.

How did the rationing system work?

Every person in the country, including children, received a ration book and each home had to register with a local butcher, grocer and milkman who had to ensure they had enough food for their customers.

The ration books contained coupons which had to be presented when items were bought. Everyone had a ration book, including members of the Royal Family.

The list of foods which were rationed grew as the war continued.

The rules were very strict and people who were caught trying to cheat were fined or sent to prison.

Often people who were poor or unemployed and undernourished in the pre-war years were much better fed in wartime because of rationing.

How did rationing affect people's lives in the Second World War?

 

Dig for Victory, by Mary Tunbridge.

In 1939 the government began its "Dig for Victory" campaign and it issued a series of colourful posters to encourage people to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

Some of these posters can be seen in Blaenwaun Post Office and the tailor's shop at the Museum.

Surplus products were made into jam, pickles or chutney which could be eaten in the winter.

People also kept goats, chickens, rabbit and pigs. Pigs were particularly popular as they would eat virtually anything and could be fattened up quickly to be killed for their meat.

Woolton Pie was a pastry dish of vegetables and was widely served in the war.

It enabled people to use the both the vegetables they grew and those which were rationed, thus giving them a nutritious diet.

Who were Potato Pete and Doctor Carrot?

To make the campaign appealing, two characters, Potato Pete and Doctor Carrot were created to promote eating vegetables.

They appeared in most recipes in books and magazines.

What sort of food was rationed in Britain during the Second World War?

Here is an example of a ration for one adult during the war:

• Bacon and ham 4oz
• Butter 2oz
• Cheese 2oz
• Margarine 4oz
• Cooking fat 4oz
• Milk 3 pints
• Sugar 8oz
• Jam 1lb every two months
• Tea 2oz
• Eggs, 1 a week, if available powdered egg packet every four weeks.

Children, because they were still growing, received extra milk, orange juice and cod liver oil.

Many non - food items were also rationed such as soap, clothing, petrol and paper.

When did rationing end after the Second World War?

In 1945 the war ended but rationing continued.

Because of poor weather conditions, bread was rationed until 1948 and potatoes were also in short supply.

Some food was not restricted at all e.g. whale meat but, not surprisingly, this never proved popular with British people!

It was only in the early 50s that some foods were no longer rationed i.e. tea in 1952, eggs, cream, sugar and sweets in 1953 cheese, and butter, cheese and cooking oil in 1954 and meat and bacon in 1954.

Here is a photo of Mrs. Barbara Donaldson from Aberdare, Mid Glamorgan.

She remembered rationing quite clearly as she was 13 years old when war broke out.

The dried egg was quite tasty and had a great deal of uses, she said.

After the war, she always refused to buy margarine as she said it had an artificial taste and reminded her of the war years and "The White Cliffs of Dover" a song she was never keen on!

Lesser known facts about Rationing in the Second World War.

Whale meat was 'off ration', i.e. it was available for people to buy without ration books.

It was not popular with the British public as they thought it had an unpleasant smell and tasted bland even when spices were added to it.

Because bananas were imported i.e. brought from countries abroad, they were one food item which was not available at all during the Second World War.

Some fruiterers would put sign in their windows stating, "Yes, we have no bananas!" to raise people's spirits. This was inspired by a 1920s American catchy and fun song of the same name.

Other fruits which many children never saw until the war was over were oranges, lemons, pineapples and grapes all of which were also imported.