By Mark Hayes

Field Journal Notes of Philander Jones

Lead research botanist and chemist of the Hopeless Horticultural Society

Notes on The Triple Ribbed Red Bloomers.

This fungi is most notable for its long thick stalk, its protruding, slightly bulbous, rounded tip and ovoid root stems than generally grow in pairs. Generally known to grow swiftly predawn and has been known to frighten both maidens and older women, when they come across one unexpectedly on as morning. There are rumours that adventurous young ladies have been known to seek out these woody tubers, but we of the society dismiss such suggestions as there seems to be no scientific reason for doing so.

The current research orphan, replacing the previous one who died some days ago of experimental pharmacology (see notes on toad licking below) is a feisty young lad. When we handed him a freshly gathered triple ribbed red bloomer however he became inordinately shy, bright red, and refused to talk about it. An effect that has been noted with adventurous young ladies as well.

It was posited this was all to doing with handling the thick stalk, we suspected a mild mood altering pharmacological agent that enters the body via the dermis but no one else but the young orphan seemed to be affected, though Mrs Krumpet, the house keeper, did burst out laughing when she saw him holding the fungi, somehow the sound of her laughter caused the effects of holding the parturient fungi to amplify.

Notes on Lesser Hollow Toad licking

There is a verity of Toad on the island that we believe is unique to lesser Hollow, a small wooded area with a deep blow of earth that has a pond at the bottom.

Some believe Lesser Hollow was formed by the toads themselves which live and breed vociferously around the pond but nowhere else on the island. The Lesser Hollow toads never sit on toad stools or go anywhere near a toad table. Instead, they frequently sit on each other. Mid breeding season (between March and October most years) the toads breed so quickly that they develop toad towers that sometimes reach up to the lip of the hollow, the highest recorded to our knowledge is a thirty-seven toad tower.

It was posited by Young Mr Candlewick of our sister organisation ‘The Hopeless Zoological Society’ that the reason the toads manage to make such high towers was that they excreted a stickly glue-like substance through their epidermis. In the spirit of cross society cooperation, we lent the HZS a research orphan, whom they encouraged to lick one of the toads to determine possible psychotropic properties of the dermis excretions. As they had read toad licking could be ‘quite fun’ in some odd journal that washed up after the shipwreck last month.  

Sadly, they were unable to determine if any psychotropic properties were present as the glue-like nature of the toads skin slime caused the research orphan to get his tongue stuck to the toad. Attempts to remove the toad stripped away several layers of skin from the orphans face and then Mr Candlewick had to remove the lingua with a pair of sheers.  

The orphan sadly expired due to blood loss, or possibly blood retention in his lungs, we are not sure which. His tongue, however. is still stuck to the back of the toad in question, and is now part of one of the largest toad towers ever seen on the island.

So, some success there.

We look forward to more cross experimentation with the zoological society  in coming weeks when we intend to feed a night potatoes to dust-cats to see what will happen