No set course for denizens of the deep

RAIN has been sparse and sporadic. On the country lanes, the hart’s tongue ferns are half dead.

Usually upright, green and shining, they loll from the ditches like the tongues of patients in a fever ward.

Last week, I wrote about the extraordinary barnacles that make a buoy for themselves on which to sail the Seven Seas. I also mentioned gooseneck barnacles, a species which attach themselves to flotsam and jetsam.