- Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 30569 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | NONE Lecanora esculenta | Entry Book Number | ||
| Artefact Name | Vernacular Name | ||||
| Iso Country | Iran | TDWG Region | Iran | ||
| Parts Held | Geography Description | Persia | |||
| Uses | Use: User: | TDWG use | |||
| Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Donor No | ||||
| Donor Date | Donor Notes | ||||
| Collector | Collector No | ||||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | ||||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
| Number Components | Publication | ||||
| Notes: | Label source: Daily Express April 14 1932. Of Manna, 'Popcorn' from the skies. Mystery 'Gift' After Cattle Losses. Natives Joy. A sensation has been caused has been caused in South Africa by a shower of Manna on a farm near Vryheid in Natal. The circumst, ances are related by Mr Theunis Botha, a cousin of the great Boer leader, who awoke one morning to find a patch of wasteland about 700 yards long and 60 feet wide covered with a white substance resembling snow. Natives were in the midst of it, eating it g, reedily and stowing it in baskets. They regarded it as heavenly compensation for the destruction of their cattle by drought. Mr Botha collected some of the substance in a bottle and took it into Vryheid, 18 miles away, for examination. It was identical wi, th that described in Exodus 16, verse 14 'And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing as small as the hoar frost on the ground'. Verse 16 adds a further description, 'And the house of Israe, l called the name there of Manna, and it was, like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.' Honey sweet- the samples Mr Botha produced looked like popcorn, with, here and there, flaky pieces. The colour was dead white,, without any shine or gloss, and the Manna was slightly rough to the touch. The taste was exactly in accordance with the Biblical description - pleasantly honeysweet - and the little balls of Manna dissolved on the tongue like icing sugar. The fall of Mann, a was confined to the one small spot on Mr Botha's farm and on none of the farms nearby did it appear. It has been believed in the past that Biblical Manna was exuded from the Tamarisk tree but in this case the substance was found on a treeless veldt. Acc, ording to report, a similar fall occurred in 1856 at the time of the battle at the Tugela between Cetewayo and his brother Umbulazi. It is a curious fact that although the oldest natives on Mr Botha's farm had never before seen Manna, they all ate it with, out hesitation as though knowing instinctively that it was a food which would do them no harm. | ||||