I'm nuts!!.... about 'beaning'!

click HERE to join


MACRO MONDAY


Yesterday, I mentioned that this past week I found a mythical 'oddity of the sea' while combing the beach. Actually, I found two. I'll feature just one; the one that has been cleaned up of the seaweed and sand....









They're called a MERMAID'S PURSE by legend. I know nothing about how the origin of the naming goes tho. Perhaps the story below in link will give you some incite, tho this is probably a 'make believe' story in itself. Lately, I've been conversing via email with Ed Perry --a sea bean author and noted website master of such findings of the Gulf Waters...he too doesn't know how the name began since we last 'talked'. Anyway, they're actually egg sacks from those in the sea, such as sharks, fish, and skates [a stingray shaped fish]. I believe the two I found are from skates since I've seen several swimming in the shallow tides around our beaches oftentimes. See the tendrils hanging from the sack? In the sea the tendrils are much longer before they hit the air when washed ashore...very long and thinning to a hair width...they're fragile enough to break off easily once dried out. The tendrils, I'm told by reading and researching, is swirled around and around by the momma skate attaching them to seaweed up until the egg matures and a baby skate hatches. Also, the momma skate feeds...by leaving her egg sack, only to return and lovingly swirls around and around her offspring that remains in the egg sack...to produce air bubbles around the sack itself for life breathing oxygen for the unborn.



Legend storyteller : A Mermaid's Purse©

PHOTO OF A SKATE

MERMAID PURSE ...jewelry



- - -<><><>- - -


MONDAY MORSELS

It's another beach combing addiction. When I first found a whole sand dollar I was ecstatic. It soon became a fixation each time we walked along the surf/low tide I was searching for more. At the beginning, I was picking up every one I found. Even the broken ones. Now I'm more picky...just the WHOLE sand dollars. Then, one day during the hurricane season, walking along the Whitecap Beach area to watch the high violence of the wave action from an incoming storm, I looked down and found a seed that was shaped like a heart. A beautiful specimen. Getting online to search for a clue as to what I actually found, I realized that I wasn't the only one with avid interest...there are 'beaners'. And, yep...I'm now nuts about beans...seeds that drift from far away places like the Caribbean Sea, or some as far as Africa. After reading about the sea heart and its legends, I was hooked.

Like a mythical "Jack and the Bean Stock", the Entada Gigas is one of nature's largest vines and its fruit are the world's longest Legumes. The giant green beans are made up of many seed compartments connected by a tough woody cord. Large beans have 12 - 18 seedpod segments and can measure THREE to SIX feet or more in length!
Since my first find, I have come across ones that are as shiny as the first day they fell from the pod, and others can be CAKED with slime and scum from their long journey. They are 'tough as nails'! The seed can be sanded, run through a rock tumbler and still come out close to perfection.

- - -

So, today, I'm going to 'take you on a journey'...a journey all about going nuts!! In all technicality they should be referred to as either drift seeds or sea beans. Personally I prefer drift seeds to the sea beans. But either way, we now know what we're talking about. Okay...NUTS! I have found some actual nuts. Walnuts that have drifted ashore from the tropics, some Nickar Nuts...often classified as sea pearls. Oh yes...the crazies fanatics online have such a romantic flair about them. Pearls indeed. I'll begin by showing you one I found just this past week...a sea pearl. It's really a Grey Nickar Nut. Another name for the Caesalpinia bonduc seed specifically is Nickar Nut, from a Jamaican word 'nickar'. They are initially green and large; shrinking and turning grey. Nickar seems to have come from the Dutch word 'knikker', which was a boy's baked clay marble. From the West Indies:

A GREY NICKAR NUT
[or nickernut]
specifically Antigua

- - -

Next comes along the Water Hickory. There really isn't much traveling for these as far as I can find. They are native to the wetlands, clay swamps of Southern America. From the Carolinas to Florida and around the Gulf to Mississippi.

WATER HICKORY

- - -

Caesalpinia major. Another Nickar Nut...this one isn't much of a pearl in shape, but certainly worth finding. Supposedly they are very RARE finds. Only very few make it to our shores. This one is also Caribbean in origin.

BROWN NICKAR NUT
[or brown nickerbean]

- - -

Of course, who doesn't know that my love of food is also an addiction at times? Especially hamburgers. Which I crave but only consume one about every two months. Afterall, I can't stop living, yet, I try to make it an award for eating more healthy before I go out for a burger. Anyway, yes....there are sea beans or drift seeds called HAMBURGER Beans!! Teeny tiny seeds that are colored much like a hamburger in a bun. Some come from Costa Rica, others from Belize [another is from Hawai'i...but they aren't found here as far as I know] This one particular photo I'm sharing is BEFORE I cleaned it...it's just as I found it on the beach...

HAMBURGER DRIFT SEED

- - -

Better yet....is a cheeseburger! This is also a 'hamburger bean'...but colored entirely different, and from a different part of the Caribbean I'm sure. I must confess tho, when I found it this week, my first thought was..."NOW YOU'RE TALKIN'!!!! A hamburger is so much better with double cheese". The reasoning behind my thought is the coloration of this species...it's orange around the 'burger'!!! It is also known as a sea purse....there y'go again...romanticizing it all.

SEA PURSE









Be sure, if time allows, to click on the link of the sea heart near the top of my post...it will show you the seed pod from where they came....the world's LARGEST seed pod.