It was third time lucky for our evening walk around Barrier Marsh and Wivenhoe Waterfront, postponed once because of extreme heat and once more through illness. Our third attempt with an eager throng of friends was still warm, around 24°C at 7pm when we set off, but a delicious, gently cooling easterly breeze made conditions very pleasant.

Starting at the Shipyard, our block-paving population of Four-leaved Allseed seems to be having an outstandingly successful year, seemingly impervious to extreme drought and chemical onslaught. First found here during the pandemic, its distribution is still expanding from its original haunts of south Cornwall and the Scilly Isles.

The saltmarshes have no showy flowers at the moment, at least until the Sea Aster comes out later this month, although Common Cord-grass is in flower along with Sea Purslane. The super-salty hit of the leaves of the latter, covered in the excretions from its desalination cells were a surprise to many. And Marsh Samphire was, as is typical of some forms at this stage of the season, shot through with succulent emerald.

The Sailing Club hedge was starting to look very autumnal, with sloes, hips and haws all filling nicely, surprisingly perhaps given that it has not rained a drop here for more than a month. These will of course become vital winter bird food, assuming the hedge is not attacked by the ‘tidy brigade’…

As usual, Strawberry Clover was looking magnificent along the extreme high tide line, and an interesting new feature, a microcosm of Orford Ness, has recently been installed:

Below the Barrier, the estuary widens and the local moulting Black-headed Gulls were joined by the first returning Curlews, plus Oystercatchers and Redshanks, some at least of which may be local breeders.

The seaward face of the sea wall was in places clothed with the grey, absinthe-scented leaves of Sea Wormwood, although it has yet to come into flower.

Crossing the grazing marshes on The Chase, it was, as everywhere, very parched, especially so on the tops of the numerous anthills illuminated beautifully by the slanting, setting sun.

Few flowers were showing apart from occasional Hairy Buttercups and patches of Creeping Thistles, on one of which Jude (of course!) spotted a beetle Anthocomus rufus, sometimes known as the Red Malachite-beetle, a species closely associated with coastal habitats. Although it appeared to be feeding in the flowers, it is primarily a predator of other insects, and so may have been searching rather than supping. And with the aid of our bat detector she also picked up the song of a Dark Bush-cricket. But nobody could hear it unaided…. we are all of a certain age!

Birds were few and far-between, just a calling Green Woodpecker and skulking Whitethroats and Reed Warblers in scrub and reedbeds respectively. That is until sunset, when the birds woke up, with Robin and Cetti’s Warbler singing and groups of Little Egrets heading down river presumably to a communal roost.

All that remained was to potter back along the Wivenhoe Waterfront in the glorious gloaming, buy a welcome cooling pint at the Rose & Crown, and settle down outside to watch and hear the first hunting Common Pipistrelle, as well as a remarkable chorus of House Crickets. From the bottom of Anchor Hill to Bethany Street, there were multiple singing males, many more than we heard last year, the first time we recorded them here. Instant transportation to the southern climes of Europe, and a thrilling, trilling end to a lovely walk!

As is by now traditional, we organised a WildEssex walk in high summer around Lower Lodge nature reserve, near Wivenhoe. Lower Lodge is a lovely, flower -rich grassland site, mostly mown on a three- or four-year rotation by Colchester City Council, producing a diversity of habitat structure, from woodland, to dense scrub, to scattered scrub to open grassland. All components have their value, although the open grassland is especially diverse for both insects and flowers.

But we hadn’t planned on a summer like the current one. An unprecedentedly hot, dry summer with three heatwaves and droughts already, and it is only mid-July. So it was with some trepidation we set out onto the site to see what we could find. At least there were plenty of pollen- and nectar-bearing flowers, particularly Wild Carrot, Hogweed, Common Knapweed, Field Scabious, Creeping Thistle and the beautiful bicolored form of Field Bindweed.

From a distance there were a few butterflies flitting around, but I was stopped in my tracks at the very first Carrot umbel: Ectophasia crassipennis! A stunning parasite-fly that lays its eggs on unfortunate shield bugs before the fly larvae devour the bug from the inside. Slowly….

It is a species I know well from the Pyrenees that first reached the UK in 2019; it is now found widely along the south coast, but is only just starting to head our way. So far as I can ascertain there are only a couple of other records from Essex, one at Wrabness in the year of its first arrival and one last year that I found in Beth Chatto Gardens.

We then carried on on the parasite-fly theme, recording two more species, Tachina fera and Eriothrix rufomaculata.

What a great start and although individual numbers of most insect species were not high we kept on finding things of interest until the end of the two hours when the other absolute highlight performed as the very last insect of the walk. This was a Hummingbird Hawkmoth, always good to see and reasonably common this summer. But what was it doing hovering its way through, not over, the grass, avoiding the flowers, completely oblivious to us as it flew between us, and occasionally touching down? And then it twigged, ‘it’ was a ‘she’, she was laying eggs on the Hedge Bedstraw plants growing in the grassy sward. This is not a behaviour I have ever seen before, so our walk ended with me as excited as when we started!

Sadly, unless any larvae develop very quickly such that the next generation is out by early autumn, they are unlikely to survive our winter. But maybe, just maybe, a warm winter could allow it to succeed.

Other moths we saw during the walk were many and varied, from grass moths like Agriphila straminella (all very brown and flittery) to the stunning Brassy Longhorn (a specialist moth dependent upon Field Scabious, seemingly very scarce in Essex) and of course the Six-spot Burnets, resplendent in their black and red livery in the sun, whirring around, occasionally landing to feed, and some new emergers just drying out close to their vacated pupal cases.

Other flies feeding on the umbels included the hoverfly Chrysogaster solstitialis and lots of Flesh-flies, while sitting around on the leaves, either mating or on the lookout for insect prey were Kite-tailed Robberflies, alongside tiny sweat-bees Lasioglossum sp.

Another selection of insects feeding on flowers comprises a parasitic ichneumon wasp (the nemesis of caterpillars), Turnip Sawfly, a Knapweed Bug Oncotylus viridiflavus (for which there are only a couple of records east of Colchester), Hairy Shieldbug, Seven-spotted Ladybird, Thick-thighed Beetle and Hogweed Bonking-beetle. A veritable cornucopia of delights!

So among the insects that leaves just the butterflies. Gatekeepers were the most numerous, with just a few Meadow Browns, good numbers of pristine Painted Ladies, and a very few Small Skipper and Common Blues.

In addition, but not photographed, were Small and Green-veined Whites, single Red Admiral, Brown Argus, Small Heath and a Purple Hairstreak that had a lucky escape from a spider’s web up in an oak canopy.  And flying around the fields there were Emperor, Brown Hawker and Common Darter dragonflies, and Willow Emerald and Common Blue Damselflies.

Aside from insects, there was plenty more of interest, including a spider Enoplognatha with its hoverfly prey, abundant Oak Mildew, artichoke and marble galls on Oaks, and a good fruiting of sloes.

And just to finish off, the things we didn’t see as a group, but which I found on my recce a couple of days previously: leaf mines on oak and galls on Wild Rose (we just didn’t have time to hunt them all out on the walk)…

… Box Bug and Cinnabar caterpillars

… Ringlet and Small Copper

… and a hoverfly Xanthogramma pedissequum, known aptly as the Superb Dayglower.

Yes, Lower Lodge performed very well as always, a powerhouse of biodiversity on our doorstep!

Each year, the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland organises a New Year Plant Hunt, encouraging botanists and other interested folk out of their midwinter slumber to see what plants are flowering. And traditionally this has been our first #WildEssex event of the year, a walk around Wivenhoe Waterfront on New Year’s Day, except as in 2025 when forecast bad weather dictated otherwise.

All data collected in this citizen science project are fed into the national record of what is flowering at this time: for more information see New Year Plant Hunt 2026. It is important to be part of a bigger project to aid learning about how British and Irish wildflowers are responding to climate change.

New Year’s Day 2026 was certainly more clement than 2025, sunny although pretty cold, barely above freezing, or should we say ‘normally cold’ by the norms we grew up with… Our band of 15 friends accompanied Jude and I and our special helper, scribe, photographer and flowerfinder Eleanor as we wandered round the usual route in the standard hour. It produced a good number of the ‘usual suspects’, shrubs that routinely flower in the depths of winter such as Gorse (apart from the usual Hazel that had been cut back severely) and annuals that flower at any time of year if the previous few weeks have been mild (as they were last autumn), including Annual Mercury, Petty Spurge, Shepherd’s-purse and Annual Meadow-grass.

The few areas of permanent grass on our route had Daisies and Dandelions sparkling sparsely on them, together with Common Knapweed and Oxeye Daisy as a distant memory of the summer long gone, and Sweet Violet, the promise of spring. Along the fringes of the recreation area, Hedgerow Crane’s-bill was a new species for our NYPH list, as was Cut-leaved Dead-nettle, never very common in these parts, and growing alongside its more familiar relative, Red Dead-nettle, with more shallowly divided leaves and larger, darker flowers.

In the heart of the village, the older walls and brickwork supported Mexican Fleabane, Trailing Bellflower, Pellitory-of-the-wall and Ivy-leaved Toadflax, while it was quite a surprise to find Ivy flowers still open in places.

Along the waterfront itself, in the cracks of the block paving, our two specialists of this habitat, Four-leaved Allseed and Jersey Cudweed were both found just in flower along with the undoubted star of today’s show, White Ramping-fumitory. Rather scarce nationally, but  widespread around coastal north Essex, it was in exuberant flower in planters and cracks along the waterfront, untroubled by any frosts so far this winter.

And at the end of the hour we found ourselves at the saltmarsh, where Common Cord-grass with its naughty bits glistening in the sinking sunlight added a final species to our tally:

All in all, 39 species in flower represents a new high for us (see full list here New Year Day PLANT HUNT Year on year) compared with 37 in 2025, 34 in 2024, 23 in 2023, 35 in 2022 and 30 in 2021, although one should fall short of celebrating – many of these plants should not be flowering now, and are doing so only because of the harm we have inflicted upon our climate…

There is of course another way of looking at it. Plants are not the only things responding to climate change: although we saw no insects being active on the day of our walk, it is undeniable that fewer insects are hibernating than used to be the case. And year-round activity needs year-round nectar and pollen resources, so any insect-attracting flowers such as Gorse and dead-nettles are important, even in the context of much richer supplies inside our gardens, as for example the gorgeous, subtly showy blooms of Virgin’s-bower Clematis cirrhosa. Happy New Year!!

These NYPH events are always free to participants, being as much as anything a chance to reconvene with old friends, both botanical and human, after the midwinter lull and start to look forward to the riches of the summer that is surely to come. But this year we did suggest that satisfied customers may like to contribute to the crowd funder to seek justice for the much-loved community oak tree in Wivenhoe, Old King George.

This tree has dominated our lives for the whole of 2025. The first part was covered in my blog of February: Saving Wivenhoe’s Old King George Oak Tree | Chris Gibson Wildlife. In essence, the tree is caught up in the grip of the insurer Aviva and Wivenhoe Town Council. Blaming it for subsidence, a death sentence was issued. This was fended off last winter by peaceful occupation by the Protectors, but the sentence was reaffirmed last month. And still now, as previously, all evidence pertaining to its guilt has been withheld from the public gaze. Despite the fact that the Protectors and their supporters funded and produced an (openly available) independent expert report which challenged the presumption of guilt. And another independent report with similar conclusions to ours was prevented from consideration by the council.

So we have had to take recourse in law. All we are asking for is full transparency: if the guilty verdict is supported by indisputable evidence, we would reluctantly accept it. A few days ago our legal team successfully won an injunction in the High Court to pause its felling which had been planned for early this year. A pause for democracy to be seen to be done.

Of course, this is expensive, hence the launch of our new CrowdJustice funder. Please consider contributing if you can using this link: Save Wivenhoe’s Old King George Oak tree

Our first #WildEssex walk after an enforced break of more than four months took us up to Wivenhoe Park with a large bunch of friends. This is a semi-regular autumnal walk venue for us, hoping to find fungi, fruits and foliage colours to usher us into winter.

Best laid plans! So much of what we hoped for is dependent upon preceding weather conditions, the sort of thing that is becoming less predictable as we continue in our arrogance to push our world inexorably beyond the agreed +1.5°C safe threshold.

It is always good when nature contradicts our assumptions. A hot, droughty summer followed by autumn rains and no sign yet of frost, I would have thought, seems a perfect recipe for a spectacular emergence of fungi. But it was not to be: even the ‘little brown jobs’ were few and far-between, and larger fungi even more so. There were Common Earthballs, some intact and others rupturing to liberate spores, together with a patch of Honey Fungus, and  Aniseed Funnel  and Deer Shield. But nothing compared with the rich array of some years.

Bracket fungi are usually more reliable, so it was not a surprise to see Birch Brackets, the nemesis of many a Birch tree, and Beefsteak Fungus, the latter growing from the buried roots of a veteran Oak.

But the most common fungus, covering the leaves of almost every sapling Oak was Oak Mildew. This at least seems to have found this summer’s weather to its liking.

For most trees and shrubs, the summer has produced copious fruiting, a so-called ‘mast year’, except bizarrely for Beech, the tree whose seeds are called ‘mast’.

Not that copious fruiting is necessarily a good sign. It way well be a response to stress, for example caused by the past three-drought summer. Although of course those things that eat the fruits are in for a bonanza: winter thrushes arriving in this country will be very happy to find an abundance of berries, here on Hawthorn and Cockspur Thorn.

On Yew as well, although strictly speaking those are not berries as the flesh doesn’t entirely envelop the (very poisonous) seed. Botanically, the Yew ‘berry’ is termed an aril.

Foliage colour is of course the epitome of autumn. But it is variable between years, again dependent on preceding weather. We had been hoping after the heat of summer for an autumn palette of shocking reds, but again ’twas not to be. The lack of any frost yet means that native trees are mostly turning yellow: here English Oak, Hornbeam, Field Maple, Beech and Aspen.

And even planted trees are not firing up as much as they can: Red Oak has just gone brown, although Tulip-tree has a bit more body to it, and Dawn Redwood is the most subtle peach just before the needles fall.

As always at this time of year, galls were numerous. On the leaves of Beech, there was the Hairy Beech Gall caused by the fly Hartigiola annulipes, a gall recorded from only about half a dozen other sites in Essex.

Some of the leaves also bore the signs of leaf-miners. This is the larval mine of Stigmella tityrella, a micromoth: the larva has exuded a chemical that delayed the senescence of its part of the leaf, giving time in the ‘green island’ to complete development.

Galls are caused by many different types of organism. The lumpy upward pouches on the delightfully scented leaves of Walnut are caused by and make a home for vast numbers of microscopic mites, Aceria erinea.

Very familiar under the leaves of English Oak are Common Spangle Galls, caused by the tiny gall-wasp Neuroterus quercusbaccarum. But other oaks are available. And there were similar galls under the giant leaves of the Far Eastern Daimyo Oak Quercus dentata. Similar but not quite the same, being more blobby and rounded rather than a flattened disc. Perhaps this is the shape of galls caused by the interaction with a relatively novel host plant: certainly this is the opinion of Essex Gall Recorder Jerry Bowdrey, who informs us it was first recorded on this host in a survey of Kew Gardens at the end of the 19th century, and that he  has also found it more recently at Marks Hall.

Also living on Daimyo Oak leaves was a Green Shieldbug , while a Hairy Shieldbug was also found.

A Red Admiral was spotted by some of the group, and one of the day’s highlights was expertly spotted by Jude, a Feathered Thorn moth wonderfully camouflaged against a brown Red Oak leaf. Autumnal moths are often shades of brown, yellow or russet for camouflage. But this one has additional darker lines that match the veins of the dying leaf.

It was a lovely walk in lovely weather: it is good to be back!

A lovely walk was had by our group on a dull and rather chilly morning along the sea wall of Barrier Marsh, downstream of Wivenhoe in late April.

Quite unintentionally, the theme of Native/Non-native developed as we looked at various plants in flower along our route.  Hard to avoid at this time of year is Alexanders, a robust plant which is not a native, though a long-term inhabitant, brought here by the Romans (being fully edible), and is rather contentious, being thought of as a thug by some.  The current climate suits it well and it now flowers from March, just at the time when our insects are waking and need sustenance.  Our ‘native’ plants are often not in flower so early in the year, but our insects are up and going earlier and earlier due to the collapse of our climate, with our mild winters and so need this plant to survive. On sunny days particularly it is alive with insects of all sorts – not so today given the cool wind.

Cow Parsley, once thought of as the harbinger of a richness of summer beasties, was only just coming into flower …. too late for the modern first flush of insects.

So the discussion had begun – does it matter if a plant is ‘native’ or is an introduction?  The answer is an emphatic No!! – if a plant can provide for our pollinators when they need pollen/nectar then, with just a few exceptions, they should be welcomed. Other non-natives that certainly pay for their keep in our countryside included Three-cornered Leek and Large Mediterranean Spurge.

As we walked we looked at various plants, starting with English Scurvygrass, the first inkling of summer and autumn saltmarsh shades.

Along the sea wall there were plenty of buttercups, all showing the downturned sepals characteristic of Bulbous Buttercup and very few others, although the photo shows a potential pitfall – those on the left are fresher flowers and the sepals have yet to turn down…

Not in flower, but readily identifiable by the ‘scrunch and sniff’ test was Sea Wormwood, on the seaward face of the sea wall, bearing the scent of absinthe, apparently. So, one in the eye for the apps there!

The block paving around the Barrier also produced a fascinating variety of small, white flowered crucifers (Brassicaceae), all very similar in flower but easily differentiated by their seed pods: long and cylindrical (Thale Cress); short, fat and heart-shaped with a septum at right angles to the plane of flattening (Shepherd’s Purse); and short and oval, with a septum along the plane of flattening (Common Whitlow-grass)…

And finally, a real surprise. While we have found Cornsalad sporadically as a colonist of block paving hereabouts, we found lots today, sheets of it, more than we have ever seen before:

An excursion down into Barrier Marsh was interesting from the historical point of view (the path, ‘The Chase’, originally belonged to the otherwise landlocked Elmstead Market and was their access to the water for trading purposes). Also the many, many anthills are fascinating  – much more numerous and larger on one side of the path than on the other, the disparity due to the side nearest Wivenhoe being commissioned as agricultural land during the war and used to grow vegetables – so their numbers only began building since the 1940s as opposed to 400+ years ago on the other side.  The anthills weren’t really flowering at their best just yet – each is a microcosm with its own community of tiny flowers which are aided by the warmth and well-drained soil produced by the activities of the ant colony below and will certainly be worth a look after the forecast heatwave next week.

However, one of the nationally scarce plants of that marsh, Divided Sedge, was in full flower, forming very dense swards, and led naturally to a discussion about the differences between grasses, sedges and rushes, and then the diversity of flower structures in the grasses, an important part of their identification, as covered in Chris’s new book…

As usual Jude was on the lookout for insects.  Not a huge amount on the wing given the cool conditions, but a couple of interesting beetles were discovered.  Neon-striped Tortoise-beetles were on Sea Beet next to their holes, a regular spot to find them, from now for the next month, but a beastie we have never found elsewhere in the area. And on the same plant, a couple of 24-spot Ladybirds, next to some ‘grazings’ – maybe they’d had their dinner first to get the strength for their subsequent activity!

And a couple of things with very different ways of not being eaten: the caterpillars of Brown-tail moth, largely protected by irritant hairs, and a micromoth Notocelia cynosbatella, basically a bird-dropping!

While we don’t focus especially on birds, treating them on a par with all other wonders of nature, they certainly made their presence known, with singing Cetti’s Warblers, Whitethroats, Lesser Whitethroats, single fairly distant Nightingale and Cuckoo, and a swooping Swallow. So all in all, a very varied couple of hours, and as usual we would like to thank everyone who joined us for our amble for their interest and involvement.

*********************************************************************************

By way of a prologue, to reinforce what we wrote above about the enduring value of Alexanders to early insects, it is worth going back fewer than 24 hours, when we walked from Colchester to Wivenhoe along the trail. The weather could hardly have been more different: calm, sunny and really rather warm. And the Alexanders was buzzing with all manner of insects. Most obviously it was the St Mark’s Flies, emerging a day before their appointed date, all dangly legs and carrying their loads of pollen in their abundant hairs.

There were also numerous nomad wasps zipping around, together with a more stately Box Bug, our first of the year. And an Alderfly hiding under one of the leaves.

And then the specials. Firstly, the grass bug Stenodema calcarata: although not rare locally, we don’t see this with any regularity. And then the Plain-winged Spring Bee-grabber Myopa testacea, again not uncommon nationally but it would appear with only two previous records in north-east Essex.

Alexanders is truly a bedrock of biodiversity!

Each year, the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland organises a New Year plant hunt, encouraging botanists and other interested folk out of their midwinter slumber to see what plants are flowering. And traditionally this has been our first #WildEssex event of the year, a walk around Wivenhoe Waterfront on New Year’s Day. Sadly not in 2025: as seems to be getting more frequent, we were subject to a severe weather alert for strong wind and heavy rain so for reasons of comfort and safety we took the decision to cancel.

All data collected in this citizen science project are fed into the national record of what is flowering at this time: for more information see New Year Plant Hunt – Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (bsbi.org). It is good to be part of a bigger project to aid learning about how British and Irish wildflowers are responding to climate change, so it is fortunate we did a recce a couple of days prior to our planned walk, applying the same rules, and more or less following the same route as in previous years.

Our recce produced the ‘usual suspects’, shrubs that routinely flower in the depths of winter and annuals that flower at any time of year: Gorse, Hazel, White Dead-nettle, Groundsel, Annual Mercury, Shepherd’s-purse, Hairy Bittercress, Sun and Petty Spurges and Common Chickweed were among those we found, together with Daisies and Dandelions sparkling sparsely in lawns. 

Some of the older walls and brickwork supported Mexican Fleabane, Trailing Bellflower and Ivy-leaved Toadflax, while other showy plants included Green Alkanet, Greater Periwinkle, Pot Marigold, Sweet Violet and Common Knapweed.  And it was quite a surprise to find Ivy flowers still open in places.

Along the waterfront itself, in the cracks of the block paving, Four-leaved Allseed is more abundant than it has ever been since its arrival here around the time of the pandemic, but try as we might we could not find any in actual flower. But other subtle flowers such as Guernsey Fleabane and Pellitory-of-the-wall made it onto our list after close scrutiny, a real test for my newly-decataracted eye! The rapidly spreading Water Bent also increases in abundance every year.

On the salt-marsh, a few Sea Aster flowers remained from late summer, and some spikes of Common Cord-grass dangled their naughty bits wantonly to the wind. But much more dramatic were the very numerous, huge fruiting bodies of Cord-grass Ergot, a fungus we found around here less than a decade ago and which now seems very prevalent.

Carrying on the seaside theme, three plants we have not recorded before on these forays are garden escapes that have put on their first flowering appearance outside the confines of cultivation: Sea Campion and Rock Samphire, native plants of sand and shingly beaches, and Sweet Alison, a familiar bedding plant, but often found wild in coastal areas, as reflected in its scientific name Lobularia maritima.

All in all, 37 species in flower represents a new high for us (see full list here New Year Day PLANT HUNT Year on year) compared with 34 in 2024, 23 in 2023, 35 in 2022 and 30 in 2021, although one should fall short of celebrating – many of these plants should not be flowering now, and are doing so only because of the harm we have inflicted upon our climate…

But our feeling was that while we saw more species in flower, there were fewer flowers of each species to be found: the landscape was much less floriferous, more akin perhaps ‘proper winters’ of decades past. I got exactly the same impression at Boxted the day previously where I led a village wildflower walk for the second New Year in succession.

There is of course another way of looking at it. Plants are not the only things responding to climate change: although we saw no insects being active in the dully, foggy weather of our walk, it is undeniable that fewer insects are hibernating than used to be the case. And year-round activity needs year-round nectar and pollen resources, so any insect-attracting flowers such as Gorse and dead-nettles are important, even in the context of much richer supplies inside our gardens, as for example the gorgeous, subtly showy blooms of Virgin’s-bower Clematis cirrhosa.

While there is a little turnover of species year upon year, in some way there is also comfort to be found in the litany of names, old friends in many cases, even down to actual individual plants, recited in a ritual that echoes that of the Shipping Forecast. In spite of our best efforts at self-destruction, the world still turns! Happy New Year!!

#WildEssex today resumed its tradition of offering a fungi walk in November.  This year we stayed local to Wivenhoe, exploring both cemeteries to hunt out not only fungi, but also foliage, fruits and an interesting addition to our town this year – Firebugs! An ‘effing’ good time was in prospect!!

But the weather dampened things a little. Light rain for much of our two hours (we stayed in the wooded Old Cemetery when it turned more purposeful) gave way to occasional warm sunshine, and a magnificent double rainbow. And the raindrops certainly embellished the tips of the beautiful Bhutan Pine…

The fungi are always unpredictable, even in these cemeteries, renowned as one of the best locations for fungus-hunting in the area. But this time, we managed to hit the peak (probably) of a good year. Under the trees there were numerous Death Caps (appropriate for cemeteries!), a single Fly Agaric, parasols and Clouded Agarics:

In addition we discovered fungi growing on dead wood (Turkey Tail types) and microfungi on leaves: Sycamore Tar Spot plus various rust fungi, not to be confused with leaf-mines, galls and other blemishes:

In the more open New Cemetery, the important grassland fungi put on a great show, with six or more waxcaps, from white, through yellow, orange and scarlet, to black; Golden Spindles; puffballs and earthballs; milkcaps and cheesecaps; plus numerous LBJs  (Little Brown Jobs).

In a footnote to the above, just a couple of weeks after this walk, we were out on the King George Field. Grassland fungi were coming up there too, including at least four waxcaps and one club fungus (photos below). I have not seen fruiting like this at this location here since 1987. It was this half-remembered diversity that guided my choice of the southwest corner for the first Wivenhoe haymeadow seven years ago. Comprehensive fungal survey certainly needs patience!

And the rich flora was not completely over either, with Field Scabious, Mouse-eared Hawkweed, Ox-eye Daisy and Yarrow still flowering, although the Ivy Broomrape (possibly its only site in Essex, discovered this summer) was well over. Having said that , as a parasitic plant with no chlorophyll it always looks dead anyway!

Fruits abounded on Cotoneaster, Holly, Yew, Ivy and Stinking Iris – all important resources for birds:

And autumn-tinted foliage lit up the paths as we walked through the cemeteries:

As always we were on the look-out for insects. Some gravestones (particularly those under Lime trees) proved popular meeting places for large numbers of Firebugs. These lovely creatures have only been known in UK for a few years, and now have a foothold here in Wivenhoe. How they manage to disperse and spread is all rather mysterious as the vast majority of individuals do not have wings and so cannot fly.

Other invertebrates included a rather splendid ichneumon wasp, Virgin Bagworm moths and a single Parent Bug, while the final discovery of the day was an Issus coleoptratus, a bug which we have seen very few of in recent years.

In addition to general nature walks, this year WildEssex have introduced ‘Botany Club’ events. These are for anyone interested in learning more about the craft of identifying wildflowers, and no previous experience is required.  Using Chris’ book ‘British & Irish Wild Flowers and Plants’, a few samples are collected each time and then the process of identifying explained. More events of this type are to be arranged next year. For more details of these, or our other, events please contact Jude at jmgibson1959@btinternet.com.