Fooled you . . . or did we? Okay, maybe it’s still March but we figure you need plenty of time to prepare for the glorious First of April, when we dig up past idiocies. Or did they really take place? As a good gardener, you doubtlessly can separate the wheat from the chaff – or the fertilizer from the compost. But can the black thumb brigade?
3. The satirical Ig Noble Chemistry Prize this year went to an inventive Japanese team that worked out how to use wasabi (the pungent green Japanese horseradish) in a fire alarm system for the hard-of-hearing. The group even has a patent pending on the idea. A team from Shiga University determined the ideal density of airborne wasabi to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency.
4. Football games have been postponed because of heavy rains, lightning, power outrages: and now, fire ants, observed
The Miami Herald. A game in South Carolina was postponed after the referee decided the field was unplayable because of fire ants. Referee Steve Hook said he found 15 to 20 large active fire ant mounds shortly before the game.
5. A couple in England has been told that their newly built four-bedroom house must be demolished to rid it of an invasion of Japanese knotweed. The weed has spread along the brick walls, forced its way through flooring and sprouted over skirting boards. What was once their dream house in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, is in danger of collapse [Source:
Mail on Sunday].
6. The six-foot-wide flight route £650,000 bridge n North Wales was designed to stop a rare lesser horseshoe bat colony from being hit by lorries, according to The Sun tabloid. But the concrete and steel bridge, to be planted with trees and bushes, caused fury among local who want a footbridge for pedestrians to cross the bypass in Porthmadog
7. It’s a garden 30 feet wide and three-quarters of a mile long . . . and yours for £340,000. The new owner of The Gables at Alne, 11 miles from York, England, will need to be prepared for more than a little gentle weeding, warns the
Mail on Sunday. The North Yorkshire two-bedroom house has a hedge running down one side of the property. The former railway worker’s cottage garden was originally a private railway, removed in the 1950s, located next to a level crossing.
8. The 800 British wildflowers used in a living billboard took two months to grow and the display required daily care to keep it looking good – but it was still dismantled at the Westfield shopping centre, West of London, after just two weeks. Workers spent 12 hours carefully putting together the floral picture of wine being poured from a bottle. Once it was taken down, the wildflowers were replanted in local communities.
9. Field studies are underway to see if a foreign weed – a dandelion – could become a source of rubber and cash. In fact, the Russian dandelion
Taraxacum kok-saghyz, was grown for its root rubber content during World War Two, both in the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. The University of Guelph’s David Wolyn is one of a handful of Canadian scientists working in this country to create natural rubber from the dandelions as a crop.
10. How do female butterflies avoid the attention of over-zealous males? A team in Japan has found that female butterflies that have mated fold their wings up but virgin females left them open.
11. Playing music to fermenting grape juice in wine that tastes better, according to a group of winemakers in Austria. Markus Bachmann, a French horn player, has created a tiny speaker that can be immersed into the liquid and plays a mixture of classical, jazz and electronic tunes. But Werner Gruber, a University of Vienna physicist, dismissed Bachmann’s method as “rubbish.”
12. A spider that likes the smell of gasoline so much that it chooses to build its webs in car emission systems caused the recall of 52,000 Mazda cars in North America. The venomous yellow sac spider,
Agriope aurantia, is known from Toronto and other parts of southern Ontario. It’s the hydrogen oxide in gasoline which attracts the arachnid, especially common in the eastern U.S. The webs may restrict a vent line, which could cause the emission control system to increase pressure in the fuel tank, say experts. The build-up of webs could lead to fuel tank cracks and possible leaks.
13. The U.K. government department in charge of pest control was closed after insect infestation: officials at Nobel House, the Westminster headquarters of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, were forced to call in pest controllers after complaints about an infestation of clothes moths.
14. The World’s Snail Racing Championships were held on a soggy cricket pitch in Congham, Norfolk, last month. The molluscs raced over a 13-inch course with ‘Zoomer’ coming in first with a time of 3 minutes 23 seconds. However, this is far slower than the record time of exactly 2 minutes, achieved a decade ago by a snail called ‘Archie’
15. City councillors in Barrie, Ontario, called for a solution in the midst of an outbreak of wild turkeys attacking vehicles and chasing people. City staff says they will seek a solution, although since wild turkeys are a protected species, little can be done
16. A rash of ‘exploding’ watermelons has hit farmers in eastern China after they sprayed their crops too liberally with the growth-accelerating chemical ‘forchlorfenuron, a legal additive also used in the U.S. About 20 farmers and 45 acres of watermelons around the city of Danyang were affected.
17. John Hinton, 76, a retired insurance broker from Bosham, West Sussex, spent £1,000 and two years creating an amphibious vehicle from a large sit-on mower and an old wood rowboat. He built it to travel from his house to the harbour near Chichester, England. The pensioner contacted leading lawnmower maker Honda, who also make boats, to suggest mass production of the vehicle, an offer the Japanese firm declined.
18. The number one best selling fruit in New Zealand is the banana at $142 million last year. This has “disappointed” Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Peter Silcock in that an imported fruit should claim such a significant portion of the fresh fruit and vegetable sector – but at least kiwi fruit came second.
19. North America’s walnut sphinx caterpillar employs a newly discovered defence when under attack: it whistles. Researchers from Canada’s Carleton University and elsewhere found it forces air through tiny abdominal openings called spiracles, producing high-frequency sounds, bare audible to people. In laboratory tests, the alarm startled birds and made them fly away.
20. Christopher Doughty of the University of Oxford and Adam Wolf of Princeton University think we just might be able to detect trees on alien worlds. They say the shadows cast by trees would change the amount of light a planet reflects as it orbits its star. When the planet is behind its star as seen from earth – as the moon is during its full phase – the trees would cast little shadow. Future telescopes should be able to search for these changes
Congratulations – you were right. Every one of these is true! And to the black thumbers, who dare to question your authenticity, merely smile indulgently and tell them that it is wonderful what a gardening hobby can teach you . . .
