Apple blossom syrup and pond dipping

Ms Kabitsch's "Bluetenmenues" (Flower menus) continue to fascinate and the tedium of mowing the back garden lawn brought the first flowering apple tree to my notice.

Whilst MS Kabitsch recommends harvesting flowers shortly after the morning's dew has evaporated (by a young virgin in a diaphanous gown as an optional extra), my weekends tend to start somewhat later. In order to preserve the floriferous splendour of the tree, I harvested only one flower per flower head, yet still accumulated a good bowl full.

The petals were stripped from the flowers, placed in a jar and then had 60%w/w boiling sugar solution poured over them. They were left to perfuse in the sealed jar for a couple of days. A quick taste in the evening already detected a subtle flavour, though not quite the apple fruit expected.

Later the in the afternoon, we accepted the invitation of Ms Fletcher and Mr Snoswell for some pond dipping in their garden. It was a most fecund water feature, with a profusion of water plants and frog spawn, rams horn snails and dragonfly nymphs. Smooth newts slithered across and feasted on the frogspawn like miniature antediluvian monsters.

What intrigued Ms Flemming however, was a colony of 2 to 4mm white rods that slowly migrated up and down with the light but were to small to identify by eye. I had brought along my microscope for precisely this purpose. At 80x magnification, the organisms were revealed to be elongated motile ciliated beings.

The Herren Stebler and Krauter's identification guide "Das Leben im Wassertropfen" pointed to a likely candidate, a giant single celled ciliate Spirostomum ambiguum. This could be confused with planarians but for one vital feature, S. ambiguum could swim forwards AND backward, a feature frequently displayed in Ms Flemings specimens.

Ms Ann Bishop FRS wrote an extensive article on S. ambiguum, its culture and physiology in 1923, in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science 1923 s2-67: 391-434, "Some Observations Upon Spirostomum ambiguum (Ehrenberg)".

You can find an excellent picture of S. ambiguum on Dr Ralf Wagner's page of ciliates.