Hot and Bothered

Vulcan was the Roman god of fire, covering anything from volcanoes (the same root word) to a blacksmith's forge. I thought his mythological status would be enough to explain the adoption of the name by both Star Trek and Dr Who, but it's a bit more indirect than that. In the real 19th century, the existence of a theoretical, unobserved planet was suggested by an astronomer called Urbain Le Verrier to explain the puzzling movement of the planet Mercury; he chose 'Vulcan' as its name. Eventually Einstein came up with General Relativity, and that is enough to explain the non-Newtonian nature of Mercury's orbit, so the search for planet Vulcan was abandoned, but the seed was planted in the minds of SciFi writers

It's February: hedge-cutting season. Wednesday's bike ride yielded three punctures, thanks to the off-road section that was a bit more off than I anticipated. Mending them today, while cursing the blackthorn, I dragged the word 'vulcanisation' from distant memory. Some manufacturers describe the adhesive with which you fix a patch to an inner tube as 'vulcanising fluid'. If it really is, it is a 'cold vulcanisation' process - a room-temperature chemical bonding of rubber to rubber. This is a broadaning of the term invented by Charles Goodyear in 1839, when he accidentally dropped rubber and sulphur into a hot frying pan, and discovered he had created a product far superior to basic rubber for tyre production. Heat, fire and sulphur - Vulcan's realm

Crocus was not a god but a mortal, who fell in love with a nymph. Either the gods turned him to a saffron flower, or he was accidentally killed by the gods and his blood gave rise to the saffron. No version of the myth provides me a link to Vulcan, or an excuse for a picture of one (and another in the background) of five blooms that literally appeared overnight: yesterday I could see only leaves, today there are five splashes of colour. Mythical - or perhaps just the extraordinary warm weather

But if you go back far enough, Vulcan has his origins in the Greek god 'Velchanos', who was considered the supreme deity by the people of Crete. And the first wild precursor of the saffron flower was Crocus cartwrightianus, which (plausibly) originated on Crete. So, as far as I'm concerned, they are siblings who grew up together. Tenuous? It's my middle name