Project Pancake Flora – Plants and Nature Conveying Augmented Knowledge for Everyone The list of Flora being interpreted into Maltese Sign Language as part of the PANCAKE Project includes a tree with quite a rare distribution worldwide and which happens to be the National Tree of Malta. Also known as the Arar Tree...
Project Pancake Flora – Plants and Nature Conveying Augmented Knowledge for Everyone Continuing with our list of Flora being interpreted into sign language comes the floral queen of the Maltese Islands – the National Plant of Malta. A well deserved entry into the dictionary of Maltese Sign Language! Maltese Rock Centaury (MT: Widnet...
Project Pancake Flora – Plants and Nature Conveying Augmented Knowledge for Everyone In our December 2021 newsletter, we introduced the project PANCAKE which is being led by FoEMalta and includes international partners from 3 other countries with the aim to bring the silent world of plants accessible to the deaf community by creating new...
Around this time of year this winter flowering evergreen shrub paints one of the prettiest natural landscapes by colouring pink the limestone garigue and valley sides with its clusters of bell-shaped flowers (occasionally found in darker shades or, rarely, almost white). This native plant, the only one represented in Malta from the species-rich Ericaceae family...
One of the most spectacular archaeophytes of Malta, introduced in ancient times, is the Carob Tree, with its dome-like canopy providing a shady refuge for both wildlife and humans all year round. After these autumn rains it is not only the visual landscape which changes around us, but even the olfactory one as flowering male...
Enter Autumn! (or so we hope…for the sake of all farmers, all wildlife and all gardens in need of some rest from the heat…) The Autumn Squill is the miniature equivalent of the Sea Squill we introduced last August as our plant of the month. This tiny indigenous flower of less than a cm is...
Alongside the Sea Squill (featured in August) the Ground Thistle is one of the only species to flower boldly at this time of year. Its first signs of life come as quite a surprise in the form of a bright pink flower emerging from the drab landscape and dried up foliage from the preceding season....
August is one of the toughest months for all wildlife and few plants have the resilience to survive the scorching heat and drought of the Maltese dry season. Annual species usually complete their life cycle before the heat while perennials adopt extreme strategies such as by having tiny but tough leaves, by going dormant in...
