Saturday 9 December 2017

What Kevin did next: Part Two

On Wednesday we brought you news of botanist Kevin Widdowson's poster (on right) showing the fruits of some British and Irish wild flowers and asked if you could guess what they were.

The list giving names of all the plants featured is shown at the foot of this page - did you get many right? Click on the images to see them at full size.

We also featured photos on Wednesday of two extra mystery fruits, just for News & Views readers. They are shown on this page again today, but this time we can tell you what they are! 

One of the mystery plants is a Kidney Vetch (below) and the other is a Shepherd's-purse (on left) which has a special significance for the Widdowson family.

Elizabeth Widdowson, one of Kevin's three daughters, is officially The Measurer of the Tallest Shepherd's-purse Reported to Date in the World, as confirmed in January 2016 by Dr Tim Rich who wrote the BSBI Handbook on this family of plants (Crucifers of Great Britain & Ireland). 

Head over here to read the whole story and find out why Dr Tim thought that Elizabeth, then aged seven, should have double pocket money for her excellent work on Shepherd's-purse.


Kevin's fruity poster has been a huge success - he's been inundated with requests and keeps having to reprint another batch! I asked Kevin how he felt about this success and, modest as ever, he said:

"I'm completely overwhelmed by the response to my fruit poster. I can't quite believe that over 100 people have shown enough interest in it to buy one. I've got a real sense of achievement in having made something that people enjoy both looking at and learning from".

If you'd like to own your own copy of Kevin's poster, best head over here quickly before this latest batch is sold out. You can also follow Kevin on Twitter here and enjoy his wonderful wild flower photos free of charge whenever you like!



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