I found this ball of trumpets on the background image of this blog: Further: Strange Attractor & beyond (which is quite good).
What’s it all about then? The ball of trumpets? It’s BRILLIANT. I love it. It reminds me of something I saw many years ago, when I was a nipper, possibly in some strange foreign animation on Channel Four, but it’s only a half memory, like something from a feverish childhood hallucination (we couldn’t afford Calpol). It makes me feel strange. I like it very much.
Someone’s going to tell me it’s a Victorian botanist’s impression of an organism that causes an STD, aren’t they.
Update!
Mark Pilkington, editor of Further: Strange Attractor & beyond, reveals all:
“The ball of trumpets is actually an engraving of a rhabdosphere from a nice Victorian encyclopedia I have called ‘The World of Wonders’ – they’re surface dwelling plankton-like critters”
I found some pictures of the genus rhabdosphaera on Google, but couldn’t find a trumpety species. I did however find the awesomely trumpety “Discosphaera tubifera” at the Natural History Museum Picture Library
DISCO!
Plankton is ace.
