15-40 hours: This is a reconstruction of  Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii - one of the most common plants in the Rhynie ecosystem (about 400 million years ago).

I have no idea why I have not posted something for so long. It is not that I have been doing lots of significant things. But after New Year various things have turned up - like going to Ipswich hospital for an Xray (taking an hour or so - hardly a reason for not writing). A combination of getting yet more stuff out of my boat, scrubbing the bottom of boats at the sailing club, sanding my rudder in the bath, trying to write documentation, trying to 'do' plant fossils, having visitors and doing the normal things of life. 

The reconstruction is of  Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii - a member of an extinct group of primitive plants called the rhyniophytes, characterised by simple branching and naked stems.  But why is this here? - I have been torturing the brain trying to understand things about plant evolution- for the U3A geology group. We have now reached the Devonian. There are some cherts (from the village of Rhynie in north east Scotland, about 50km north west of Aberdeen) with a whole ecosystem preserved in detail in the chert. And I am unfamiliar with all the concepts and all the vocabulary - - .