Botanical awakenings: a line of street trees in the suburbs of Colchester. Long catkins, must be Hazel. But planted as a street tree?
Lady parts like sea-anemones? Check! So Hazel it is.
But a single trunk, and shaggy, gall-like remnants of last year? Pristine copy of Stace edition 4 to the rescue – Turkish Hazel Corylus colurna ‘now being planted as a street tree in Britain’
Even a trip to the garage can be a learning experience!
I learned a new word today, thanks to Weatherwatch in the Guardian. And what a useful word it is: Apricity – old English for the warmth of the sun on a winter’s day, something we all recognise and value, rousing us from winter slumber, even if as with the past two weeks it rings all sorts of alarm bells about climate change.
For some things, aprication is simply passive heating, for others it embraces disinfection by exposure to UV light. Whatever the role, the invertebrate life in Wivenhoe’s wildlife garden today was apricating abundantly. Among the hoverflies, ladybirds and Nursery-web Spiders was my first Red Admiral of the year, not unexpectedly perhaps, but also the first Hairy-footed Flower-bees emerging from hibernation, a good two or three weeks in advance of their usual date.
At least there are early nectar or pollen sources for the insects, as the prolonged warmth has coaxed Red Dead-nettles and Annual Mercury into flower, while in the hedges the first Cherry-plums have opened, catching the last dew-drops of a misty morn.
It all started with a chance meeting with a friend along West Quay…there was I, armed with my litter-picker and helpful bag-carrying husband…when she suggested I keep a ’ Rubbish Diary’, recording anything of interest that we discovered on our regular rubbish-clearing expeditions onto the marshes of Wivenhoe.
So here goes….
Episode 1. 21 Feb 2019; Seawall from West Quay until it joins the Trail
So, what did we find? A few items along the path itself, a helpful dog-walker kindly retrieving some things for us to dispose of.
And on the salt-marsh of course plastic in its many forms – bottles, lids, straws, syringe (but thankfully no needle); together with glass bottles, cans, crisp packets etc. Many of the marshland plants had a covering of small white objects. In the same vicinity were chunks of polystyrene in various sizes, so we were concerned that the white deposit was this disintegrating, both unpleasant and potentially dangerous to wildlife.
We took some samples home and following examination with a hand lens think that much of it is dead, bleached duckweed leaves from further up-river, together with other germinating salt-marsh seeds. No reason to be complacent, but hopefully not such a bleak outlook as we had first thought. And at least it made us look closely at the tideline deposits, which revealed their value as a food source for seed-eating birds.
An interesting (though out of reach) discovery was a yellow rubber duck. Possibly a bath-escapee, but did you know that in 1992 28,800 bath toys were lost at sea on their way from Hong Kong to USA. Since then they have been washed up on shores around the world, assisting the science of oceanography as they went. Could this be one of them?
February can be the cruellest of months. Spring is on its way, but so often just out of reach, held at bay by gloom and cold. Not so this year: mild daytime temperatures, often cloudless skies, gentle southerly airflows, and barely a trace (yet…) of ‘normal’ winter.
Our monthly venture to Beth Chatto’s was on one of those wonderful days of ‘Spring before its time’. After a winter’s dormancy, Nature displayed flagrantly to our hungry eyes – never mind the flowers, everything looked fresh and enticing, whether set against an azure sky….
…. or covered in mercurial dewdrops….
….or bathed in dramatic shadows cast by the low sun, throwing the saw-toothed leaves of Melianthus into sharp relief….
…or igniting the shreds of Paperbark Maple, as flames licking their way up the trunk.
Of course the flowers delighted as well, carpets of Snowdrops, Crocuses and Aconites sweeping colour through the garden:
The spring flowers en masse sometimes overwhelm the senses, both sight and smell, but such has been the dearth of flowery photo opportunities since last year, each flower beckoned, almost straining to show off its wonderful inner landscapes:
Even the less showy flowers have much to reveal in close up – witness the yellow pompoms of Cornelian Cherry and the translucent jade bells of Spurge-laurel – and of course getting up close and personal for a photo also highlights their fugitive scent, often lost among the brash wafts from the likes of Christmas Box.
All the spring flowers have one function, to attract passing pollinators – sometimes in short supply – to their nectar and pollen resources. Look closely at a Winter Aconite and the bounty becomes clear: yellow petal-like sepals surmounted by a ruff of green leaves, embracing the pollen-bearing anthers and crucially the cup-shaped petals, in this species modified into nectar-pits:
And today the investment in flower resources was paying off. Despite cool overnight temperatures, all sorts of insects were on the wing and raiding – hopefully also pollinating – the flowers: Queen bumblebees, Honeybees, solitary bees, hoverflies and other flies, amongst others….
One hoverfly gave us the runaround in identification terms, looking like nothing we have seen before. Nor like anything in the books. So it was the internet which came to our rescue, showing it to be the unusual dark form of the familiar Marmalade Hoverfly:
But best of all, if only for the gruesomely-minded, was spotted by Jude. Her insect-eyes, under-employed over the winter, latched onto the form of a fly at the very top of a spindly sapling, about 2 metres from the ground. In close up, the horror revealed itself: the fly had been devoured by an entomopathogenic fungus, now erupting from its abdomen and liberally producing a halo of spores, each potentially a death sentence to a passing fly. But before the end, the fungus takes over the mind of its host, changing its behaviour so that it crawls to the highest point available, all the better to be able to disperse the deadly spores into the wind…..
Just two months since our last visit to The Beth Chatto Garden (see blog here), and it is as though the winter shutdown never happened…indeed, thus far it really hasn’t, with barely a handful of frosts interspersed with unseasonable warmth. So it was no surprise to see those traditional harbingers of Spring, Snowdrops and Winter Aconites, in profuse bloom.
Being an insect-pollinated plant at this time of year is a rather dodgy strategy, given that insect flight is severely impaired by cold temperatures, but the flowers are still appearing, in the hope of attracting a passing early bumblebee into the illuminated lanterns of Spring Snowflake or the rich nectar-pits of Hellebores.
Some flowers advertise their wares visually, others by scent. And on a still winter’s day, the pool of fragrance surrounding the most extravagantly scented can and does stop us in our tracks. I challenge anyone to walk past a flowering Sweet Box without being uplifted by the olfactory promise of warmer days.
One of my favourite early spring flowers though is notable not for showing off, but for its demure flowering, requiring a search through severe spines, such that every one you find feels like a prize. Butcher’s-broom is showy enough in fruit, large red globes from a year previously, but its subtle flowers are each a gem. Three-parted, signifying its liliaceous ancestry, they are placed in the centre of the ‘leaves’; we may call them leaves but a developmental botanist would call them cladodes, in essence flattened stems, hence the oddly-positioned flowers.
While the new season flowers stole the crystal January limelight, and the previous two frosty nights no doubt kept insect life at bay, a few winter gnats danced in the still air, and a single, nymphal bark-louse demonstrated that Jude’s close-up vision has not suffered from lack of use since the autumn! Add to that a sprinkling of perennial fungi such as Diatrypella quercina, and it is reassuring that, irrespective of the turbulence of political life at the moment, the wonders of nature will keep on giving.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites, those places of recognised cultural or natural importance to the whole world, come in many shapes and sizes. And all too often we run off to find those in far-flung corners of the world – take the Taj Mahal or the Great Barrier Reef, for example – but lose sight of those places and their fascinating stories almost on our doorstep.
So it was that we headed out for a few of days by rail last week (incredible value at less than £70 in total, with railcard and Advance tickets) to two of the British sites that neither of us had visited before, Saltaire and Durham, both cultural sites but from very different eras.
Evening in Saltaire was foggy and intensely atmospheric, the diffuse lights in an industrial landscape seemingly transporting us into the art of Atkinson Grimshaw, and perfect for displaying the street art of their Living Advent Calendar.
Next morning, still grey skies but the fog had lifted, to reveal the Victorian ‘model village’ industrial architecture for which this site is inscribed on the UNESCO list. The eponymous Sir Titus Salt consolidated his textile empire and all its processes under one roof, on a greenfield site away from the worst of the pollution from West Yorkshire’s ‘dark, satanic mills’, and then set about consolidating his workforce there too, with purpose-built housing, social and civic facilities, astride the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, a vital artery for trade. While it undoubtedly benefitted his bottom-line, Salt’s philanthropy is remarkable by today’s standards. And the workers must have relished the opportunity to escape from some of the worst Victorian slums in Bradford.
Salts Mill itself has had a chequered history, almost falling to the demolishers until taken over in the 1980s by a latter-day philanthropist Jonathan Silver, who recognised its potential for post-industrial uses, including as an art space. Recognised AND realised to a considerable extent, though the site is huge and much still awaits transformation. Good reason to pay a return visit? Certainly if the art on display remains as exciting. David Hockney is a great supporter of the Mill, and we had chance to see a range of his work, including some of his most innovative pieces, including his fax-art from the 80s and the more recent i-pad art. His sequence ‘The Arrival of Spring’ particularly spoke to me, based as it is on Woldgate, near Bridlington, one of my childhood stamping-grounds as a budding naturalist.
Thence to Durham, much more classically historical and ‘chocolate-box’ beautiful, nestling within a tortuous loop of the River Wear. The view of the Cathedral and Castle, familiar to anyone who has travelled the East Coast Mainline, was the original inspiration for this trip when travelling down from Edinburgh in the summer, and as we arrived in the dark, it was suitably, dramatically lit, inviting our exploration.
And then again by day, the Cathedral especially magnificent both outside and especially in. Such a pity that, with the angles and light, ornamentation, stained glass and wall art, all inspirational subjects, no photography is allowed inside…but it was still worth the visit. Then there was so much more, the lanes and street layouts, churches and even more modern, though still classic, architecture like the 1960s concrete bridge of Ove Arup. Another familiar from my past, as an alumnus of UEA, where brutalist concrete set the backdrop for my early twenties.
But perhaps best of all, no doubt in part due to the welcome emergence of the sun, was the setting of the city – castle and cathedral as ever-present sentinels above the riverside walks. And there we could indulge in a little pre-Christmas wildlife watching (so much less stressful than shopping!), with Goosanders on the river and fungi fruiting among the trees, including Judas’ Ear, surprisingly on a Sycamore stump, its usual host being Elder.
Some years, Autumn exceeds all expectations. And 2018 has been one of those. It all started with that long, hot, dry period from late spring: it is widely recognised that those stressful conditions are a significant contributor to future autumn colours. Then early Autumn: few windy periods, which in some years strip the trees before they have chance to change. And finally the occasional sharp frost in later Autumn, to actually trigger the colour changes.
So it was that today, on what may well be one of the last ‘summery’ days of the year, in the Snaresbrook section of Epping Forest, that jewel in the crown of British historic woodland and plains, straddling the Essex-London border.
And at long last the hoped-for autumnal flush of fungi is under way, another phenomenon which depends on a complex series of environmental triggers, including the sufficiency of autumn moisture before the winter frosts bring the season to a halt.
The smells, sights and sounds of autumn!
The burnished fires of Autumn were rampant under crystalline skies as we strolled round Beth Chatto’s today:
Foliage and fruit – a colourful feast for the eyes as well as the hordes of berry-eating thrushes:
Usually a feature of the autumn, in common with most of the droughted south-east it seems, fungi were few and far-between:
And the remaining flowers: some expected, others more surprising hangers-on from the summer, but all valuable sources of nectar or pollen for late-season insects:
But amazing to see the number of insects on the wing, a nod to the wonderful summer past and a promise that the days will again be getting longer in just six weeks’ time. Hornets, Red Admirals and Common Darters are perhaps to be expected, at least until the first hard frosts, but Caddis Flies and Willow Emerald Damselflies? Strange times are afoot as the seasons disintegrate…:
For me it all began in the mid-1970s with the publication of Richard Mabey’s ‘The Unofficial Countryside’. As a naturalist and proto-conservationist, I had grown up fascinated by wildlife in close proximity to humans, in those places without a name apart from ‘wasteland’; at last there was a suitable, non-pejorative name for the places I inhabited as a child, chasing butterflies, building dens, and generally finding my own space.
My fascination with the unofficial countryside has remained unabated. As a professional conservationist one of my proudest achievements was the safeguarding of Canvey Wick (see blog), and the acceptance of what had now become called brownfield or post-industrial land, as having a legitimate part to play in ’proper’ nature conservation.
Forty years on, and there is a new book, introducing a new name – The Orphaned Spaces – written by MW Bewick and illustrated by Ella Johnston. And a new approach, going behind the science and the evident conservation values, into the personal reflections on how such places help mark the passage of time and of our lives. The poetic prose transports me to every orphaned space I have ever been and conjures up the unpredictable magic of the interface between human decay and natural bounty.
Written in diary format, mostly during the winter months, it also succeeds for me in highlighting the role of such places in guiding us through the low season. I am one of those who lives in the shadow of the winter gloom, from autumn equinox until the advancing daylength of January; the improbable pinpricks of nature which adorn our orphaned spaces are essential signposts to a brighter future. This book thus neatly bridges one Mabey theme – Unofficial Countryside – to another – Nature Cure.
The text may seem sparse, but sometimes just a few words can convey meaning which punches above their weight. Take the entry for 24 July:
Travelling thugs on the banks of the river by the derelict furniture warehouse. Giant hogweed and Himalayan balsam are rough brutes. The sewerage pipe trickles into the murk of almost stagnant water and the banks are littered with human detritus. A muddy trainer. Plastic bottles and old tin cans. A jumper. A half-submerged supermarket trolley. Just who is the invasive species?
…thus taking this book into the sphere of natural philosophy, giving voice to some of the questions which need repeating over and over in the modern world of spurious civilisation.
Of course as a scientist and therefore a nit-picker, I have my quibbles. The failure to observe standard typographic representation of scientific names for example. And the assertion of 1 May that ‘There is unique quality to overlooked spaces. More bio-diverse than an arable field.’ – damning with faint praise, to anyone with an ecological background. But such quibbles miss the point of the book…and the fact that I happily read it in one sitting should speak volumes.
And then there’s the subtitle. ‘The Orphaned Spaces: Waste ground explored’. Yes, maybe we called it wasteground as kids, but the adjectival use of ‘waste’, without even ironic quotation marks, upsets me greatly. And I think to anyone who approaches this book with an enquiring mind, you will find its thoughtful contents give the lie to the subtitle.
‘The Orphaned Spaces‘ by MW Bewick & Ella Johnston, publisher Dunlin Press, 2018.
Price £9.99 from Dunlin Press Online Shop.
Also available is a made-to-order boxed set, which should be a thing of beauty as well as a stimulating read.
For more on the wonders of our unofficial countryside, see my blogs on Canvey Wick and Gunnersbury Triangle, and for the delights of post-industrial ‘dereliction’ Orfordness and Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
A largely photographic record of three wonderful autumnal days, albeit feeling more like high summer, exploring the capital, tasting the architectural, artistic and natural riches it has to offer.
Canyons of glass and steel, capturing but not quite taming the sky:
Surprising juxtapositions of old with new, like a choral discord unsettling but thrilling. Churches everywhere, the legacy edifices of Wren and Hawksmoor, each subtly different, both inside and out: some uplifting, others deflating:
From spiritual to secular, a cathedral to power: Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Victorian engineering predating the practicality of electricity transmission. Now hosting an art gallery, but in reality the rusting fabric is art in itself:
Always the River, lifeblood of London and its maritime and mercantile history. Once we oversaw its death, but the Thames is now reborn: we even saw a Seal swimming through Tower Bridge!
And for our green needs, not a Royal Park or the wilder stretches of the Thames Path, but this time – and for our first time – the London Wetland Centre. And mightily impressed we were too! Birds from all over the globe, some brought in, others attracted there by its abundant resources: a metaphor for the melting-pot that is London.
‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’, yes, Autumn has crept up on us, and today we looked at some of the ways nature has been able to ‘fill all fruit with ripeness to the core’.
A visit to Wivenhoe car park may not be your first choice for a nature walk venue, but a quick look at the shrubs and bushes soon revealed that even there nature has been hard at work producing berries and seeds. Colourful, in an array of shapes and sizes , these are all intended to be noticed and eaten by birds and other wildlife, therefore enabling the plant to be multiplied and spread further than could be managed by just letting its seeds fall to the ground. Of particular interest were Berberis, Snowberry, Pyracantha and Viburnum, with Rose hips and festoons of White Bryony. Hollies were there too, some with and some without berries – the reason? Well, it is the female that bears the famous berries, whilst the male flowers (on separate trees) earlier in the season provided the necessary pollen to fertilise the female flowers, leading to the formation of the berries. Lots of ideas here for those wishing to improve their gardens as a resource for wildlife.
It was interesting to walk over KGV and see how the now-cut ‘Meadow’ is faring. This year’s ‘experiment ‘ in leaving a small portion of the field unmown for a few months proved very successful, the sheer variety of plants that sprung forth, and the benefit to butterflies, bees and other insects has been enormous. We trust the Council will allow, indeed encourage, this to be repeated next year and beyond.
We had hoped to find a variety of fungi today, but a reccie yesterday was disappointing (due to lack of rain over the past few weeks) so we spent only a short time in the woods. A Parasol mushroom was seen on the edge of the wood, and a patch of Honey Fungus on a dead tree stump further in.
We concluded our morning with a walk through Ferry Marsh, following an incongruous peanut trail! It was interesting to see how the marsh has fared through its unprecedented period of inundation this summer. It was good to see (and hear) the Reeds thriving on the re-wetted marsh, and just bursting into flower, as well as discover a few other marshland plants, including Sea Club-rush and Redshank.
The small oak on the edge of the seawall was rich in galls – Spangles, Silk-buttons and Smooth Spangles, as well as Oak Apple and Marble Gall. Each of these home to minuscule creatures, which we can only identify by the shape of their gall home and the plant on which it is found. At the foot of the tree was a tennis ball shaped Earthball fungus. When prodded this puffed out smoky spores: we had pre-empted the rain drops which were soon to fall and which would do the ‘prodding’ naturally.
What of the bugs promised on our walks? Well, given the cold and damp conditions, most creatures were tucked up in the warm somewhere, but we did find a few things of interest: Dolycoris baccarum (Hairy Shield-bug), a crane fly complete with gyroscopic halteres (modified hind wings), several newly-emerged caddis-flies and large Garden Spiders, everywhere, waiting…..
All the photos in this report are our own, but due to the poor light today, most were actually taken in more favourable conditions!
Thank you to all who turned out on this less-than-nice day, and to everyone who has supported our Botany and Bug walks this year. We hope to offer a new season of outings next year and hope that at least some of you will be able to come along. We may arrange a walk for November if conditions are right, and will advertise it accordingly.
The last knockings of a remarkable summer, as September slides into October: Cornwall – landscapes, both ancient and modern, and those innerscapes we so rarely take the time to see, let alone appreciate. Thank goodness for holidays, time to wait for lighting, perspective and detail to illustrate and illuminate the world around us.
St Michael’s Mount: even as the summer fades, flowers, both wild and cultivated, are still in bloom, some so bold they wouldn’t look amiss on the walls of Tate St Ives up the road. Natural Modernism, complementing the bold colours and shapes of the Patrick Herons. And where there are flowers there are insects…with spiders waiting their turn.
At St Ives, ‘twixt cobalt skies and azure seas, traditional seaside pursuits run alongside modern art and architecture. While everywhere there is natural art: rocks splashed with lichens; dappled sunlight filtering through Japanese anemones, illuminating the hairs on a Tobacco flower, and the start of next year’s hoverfly population.
Truro Cathedral – only a century old, but beautiful and artistically inspiring.
Revisiting the delights of rockpooling, with topshell and limpet.
Windswept, salt-pruned hedgerows, and hidden hollow-ways.
Ivy everywhere, its intoxicating scent attracting insects galore to late-season riches: Honeybee, Ivy Bee and Painted Lady.
Oaks also demonstrating their role in supporting the web of life: galls on every leaf and branch – artichoke, silk-button and spangles, miniwasps with very different larval homes.
In the race to feed before leaves fall, plants being pierced by bugs – Squash, Spittle and Green Shield – and munched by leaf-beetles and caterpillars – Alder Sawfly in its woolly extruded coat, and a Pale Tussock moth larva in defensive posture.
Even on a fairly dull day, Hedge Bindweed seems to generate its own sunlight.
And finally some birds. Kingfisher and Dipper in the River Fowey, loved by all. Not so perhaps the ubiquitous Herring Gulls, but really it is us intruding in their space, not the other way around. Struggling in the ‘natural’ world, who can deny them a piece of their pasty?
