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Botanical Wales: White Spring Mystery Cache

Hidden : 7/5/2011
Difficulty:
4 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:


Ok... So we have all sorts of puzzle caches. Good at ciphers? No problem! Enjoy sudoku? Plenty for you! I could go on. But there are very few (I have only found one other series) of caches where to find the cache, you have to identify plants and animals. And since geocaching is an outdoor activity and takes place amongst nature, I thought that it was time that I added some caches where a bit of botanical knowledge is required. What you have to do is to identify the plants from the photos below and to obtain their Latin names- geocaching is an international activity and the Linnean binomial system is the system in use internationally.

So each photo gives you two words and you need the number of letters in each word, to insert into the final equation to find out the cache location. Simple, isn't it? If you think that the Linnean name for the plant in picture A is Homo sapiens, then A=4 and a=7, because the generic (first) word always starts with an uppercase letter and the specific (second) word always starts with a lowercase letter. I can only emphasize that these are very common Welsh plants- if you identify one and it's description says it only occurs at one site in the UK, you have mis-identified the plant in the photo!

In this case, all the plants are spring flowering (all the photos were taken in April) and some occur very, very close to the cache site.

The cache is not at the published coordinates but is at:
N 52 (b-a)(d-D).(A-1)(D-E)(C-A) W 003 (c-5)(e-3).C(B-2)(d-b)

Picture A

Picture B

Picture C

Picture D

Picture E


You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

guerr srrg nobir tebhaq yriry

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)