- Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 30566 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | NONE Lecanora affinis | Entry Book Number | ||
| Artefact Name | Vernacular Name | ||||
| Iso Country | Turkey | TDWG Region | Turkey | ||
| Parts Held | Geography Description | Asia Minor, Anatolia | |||
| Uses | Use: User: | TDWG use | |||
| Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Faraday Prof (Collection) | Donor No | |||
| Donor Date | Donor Notes | ||||
| Collector | Collector No | ||||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | ||||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
| Number Components | Publication | ||||
| Notes: | Label source: Manna from Asia Minor. At a late meeting of the members of the Royal Institution, Mr Faraday mentioned that he had received through our ambassador at Constantinople, a substance gathered from the ground in Anitolia in Asia Minor and called, by the natives Manna. It appears that it can only be procured from the earth in the morning after a heavy fall of dew; and as it covers the surface of the country the natives superstitiously believe that it falls with the dew. The French physician who co, llected the specimen described it as not being of vegetable origin. This however turns out to be a mistake. The substance is in small rounded dark coloured masses about the size of a pea and speckled with small white spots. Mr Brown the eminent botanist h, as ascertained that it belongs to the family of Lichens although of unknown species. Mr Faraday found on examination that independently of some insoluable matter and oxalate of lime, it contains the amylaceous principle lichenin, the solution in water ac, quiring a deep purple colour with iodine like that caused by this substance in a decoction of Iceland Moss. The natives make it into a kind of bread and eat it; but its nutritious properties like those of the tripe de roche of North America are of course, very feeble; and although called Manna it has not the slightest relation to the inspissated vegetable juice known under that name. The following ingraving (see diagram), is enlarged to about 5 diameters. The white terminations of the prominences appear to, be shields being borded in several by a semi translucent rim and the surface more or less depressed, though at first view they might be regarded as mere abrasions of the dark external coating exhibiting the chalk like substance of the interior. It is unl, ike any British species of Lichen but considering the circumstances under which it is found perhaps it approaches nearest to the genus Collema. From the London Medical Gazette, May 15th 1846. | ||||