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Monday 1 February 2021

Spot The Frippet: bulb.

 It's mid-winter in England, and as I write this we have snow. Still, there are catkins on the trees outside by window, and the first flowers are emerging.

There are snowdrops and crocuses and even the odd daffodil (a very odd daffodil, which is probably wishing it hadn't been so keen).

People will walk past the house and say I see your bulbs are coming up (or they would if we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic) but of course this is quite wrong. The bulbs aren't coming up, the bulbs stay firmly below ground unless the silly squirrels dig them up and eat them - and crocuses, as the botanists among you have been shouting at the screen for ages, aren't bulbs at all, but corms.

photo by someone who calls himself Meneerke bloem

Still, if you're feeling pedantic, there are other bulbs to spot. Onions are bulbs, and you might see a bulb on a thermometer or a turkey-baster. 

Or even, just possibly, a car horn:


photo by Medvedev

And there are even commoner bulbs than those.

Mind you, a lot of light bulbs aren't always really bulbs, either, are they?

photo by Secretlondon 


Spot the Frippet: bulb. This word comes from the Greek bolbos, which means onion.

photo by darwin Bell


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