Monday 2nd April, 2012.

An allotment gardener of Nowhere, in particular, returns from, 'The Robinson, Mereschkowski, Margulis Triangle'.

This week I found myself again in the seedbeds of Nowhere searching for a lost expedition of Russian botanists, among them the spirit of Konstantin Mereschkowski. Their field expedition was intended as a survey of the similarities between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and of the symbiotic relationships between different organisms. Quite who they were intending to study, or who they studied, is a mystery. I'm sad to report I found no tangible trace of the inspirational botanists. I fear they may have mistakenly ventured along one of the public footpaths of Nowhere in particular and were overwhelmed by a fall of dog dung. I made a similar mistake when following the retinal imprint of a branch and blossom map of Nowhere. An approximation of this map is reproduced below -

While the imagined loss of the expedition is a tragedy - the botanists' legacy is well established. According to an account by Patrick Keiller, Robinson, in 'Robinson in Ruins', claims the botanists had influenced the eminent biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011). Robinson, according to the narration and commentary on his anti-capitalist perambulations, was 'inclined to biophylia, love of life and living systems, having discovered Lynn Margulis' view that symbiotic relationships between organisms, often of different phyla, are a primary force in evolution'. Interestingly my hastily handwritten transcription of the commentary rendered 'living' as a cursively scribbled 'lung'.

The branch and blossom map reveals a number of triangles and I have ventured into one of them - the Robinson, Mereschkowski, Margulis Triangle. It is here, or there, I heard the echoes of a 'denunciation of neo-Darwinism and all capitalistic competitive cost-benefit interpretations of Darwin' - another comment transcribed from the narration of, 'Robinson in Ruins'. The echo may have been of birdsong; birds singing denunciations of cost-benefit interpretations while a foxglove sways in a gentle breeze.

On the subject of Darwin, I recently discovered this field video clip recorded in August 2006, at the Natural History Museum -

At the time of that visit, Natural History Museum visitors were required as a part of the queuing to perform an evolutionary devolutionary stroll -

An allotment gardener is currently mapping some of the tomato seedbeds of Nowhere in particular.

 tomato seedlings undercover