Britannia Beach (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD!

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8 June finds me in Britannia Park on the Ottawa River after a day of running errands in Ottawa.  The setting sun glints through the Maples and the sails of boats on the river hardly seem to move except when they appear between different tree trunks.  People on the beach stand in groups in the sunset glow, and a woman walks toward me on the asphalt path.

Brittania Bay is rich in freshwater mussels and has a lot of natural shoreline.  Fred's from past visits record collections of the shells of Elliptio complanata, Strophitus undulatus, and three species of Lampsilis.  Today the view I have chosen stops me short of the beach, though I know he'll ask me what I found there...

Comments

  1. Fred SchuelerJune 14, 2010 at 4:40 PM

    It's more accurate to say that I've used three names for the Lampsilis from here. I'm totally uncertain of how shell morphology (in eastern Ontario) relates to biological species in this genus, or which names would apply to the biological species if I knew how they were delimited.

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