Flowers

In the course of yesterday's bake I noticed that the vegetable oil presently in use in the dough, from Tesco's, says nothing on the bottle about what sort of vegetable it came from, beyond whatever it is being suitable for vegetarians. But there is a picture of a flower which could be a rape flower and there is certainly a lot of rape about, so it seems likely that that is what this oil is. BH says that the Tesco marketing people decided that rape was a bad word and removed it from all packaging, a sensibility which does not seem to have reached the Sainsbury's marketing people. Not to mention the health faddists who think, I believe, that rape seed oil is the bees knees, full of trans-omega-alkaloids or some such.

Today's other flowery point being that I have noticed that celandines, while only average this year in my garden, are definitely, along with sunflowers, heliotropical, with their open faces swinging around from east to west during the course of a sunny day, and then shutting at night. There is also the colour heliotrope, a variety of purple, and the flower heliotrope. Not sure if I have ever seen the latter, not if it is anything like those pulled up by the Professor.

Next question is the number of petals. A quick check suggests that it is usually eight, but is it always eight? Then what about the florets of a dandelion, of which there are a lot. Is that always the same number, barring casualties? Or always a power of two, or something of the sort? I have the thought that the number of petals is an important clue in plant identification, but that might just be a senior moment rather than a true fact left over from O-level biology (my prize for which notwithstanding).