White Shell Wednesday

Heart cockles are such pretty shells. These heart shaped shells are strong, compact, and can be rolled over the sands and banged about without any damage to the mollusk living inside. Sounds a like lot the human heart which can take a lot, both physically and emotionally, and still continue to strongly beat on.

The shell features are completely symmetrical and have equal sized valves giving it the apearance of a perfect heart, which makes this such a popular shell to find. They can be the purest of white or tan stripped. Cockles, like scallops, are filter feeders and act as little Brita filters for the environment as well.

Let us also not forget this lovely idiom in our language “warms the cockles of my heart.” Yes, the emotion or feeling of warming one’s innermost being. This expression turns up first in the middle of the seventeenth century, and that the earliest form of the idiom was "rejoice the cockles of one’s heart. "

Did this have its origins in the shape or what is contained inside the shell? Who knows. I just know that cockles are a type of bivalve mollusk and were once a staple part of the diet for the coastal communities of the British Kingdom. Fat free and high in protein, the meat of the cockle will truly warm your heart.