02 Sunday Oct 2016
Seed well and harvest better. ~ Sicilian proverb
They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. ~ Mexican proverb
With a little seed of imagination, you can grow a field of hope. ~ African proverb
A harvest of peace grows from seeds of contentment. ~ Indian proverb
All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew. ~ Turkish proverb
All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of yesterday. ~ Italian proverb
01 Saturday Oct 2016
Once upon a time there was a coral that decided it didn’t like living under the ocean. It didn’t like living on hard unyeilding rocks; it didn’t like always having dirty sand being washed around its clean white branches by the harsh ocean waves; and it certainly didn’t like having all manner of little fishes ducking and diving around and nibbling at its extremities. So, it rebelled! It upped roots and moved to the land, to a place where it could be sheltered by beech trees and conifers, where it could spread its delicate root system through the welcoming piles of buried wood and leaf litter, where it could stretch its little branches straight up towards the sky.
Nah, not really! This is a coral fungus, probably Ramaria stricta, the Upright Coral fungus. It is quite common in Britain, and can also be found from late summer through the autumn months in much of Europe and in North America. It looks for all the world like the coral you find on reefs in tropical seas and oceans around the world, hence my fanciful flight of imagination earlier.
At the same location in October 2015
30 Friday Sep 2016
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This little Harlequin ladybird was just one of the many insects – flies and hoverflies, honey bees, bumblebees and wasps, and a Red Admiral butterfly – that were enjoying the nectar and pollen to be found on these ivy flowers, an important source of food for so many insects in the autumn months.
29 Thursday Sep 2016
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Brimstone butterfly, British butterflies, butterfly, Gatekeeper, Gonepteryx rhamni, Pyronia tithonus, Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta
Though I love many things about the coming of autumn, it is also a time when many other things I love disappear for the year. The butterflies are one of those things. Gone now are the gorgeous Gatekeepers (Pyronia tithonus) that kept me company during my frequent wanders around my local cemetery.
Gone too is the pale, subtle beauty of the Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni). Though I searched for more, I saw only one this year, at the Parc Slip Nature Reserve.
I have noticed, over the past couple of weeks, a little resurgence of Red Admirals (Vanessa atalanta), as they feast on the ivy flowers that are just beginning to bloom here in Cardiff and are providing a late season banquet for bees, hoverflies and butterflies. All too soon, these creatures will also fade away, hopefully to come again in the springtime when the temperatures begin to rise and the days to lengthen.
25 Sunday Sep 2016
It’s fungi time! Well, strictly speaking, it’s fungi time all year round but autumn, with its rainy days and cooler night-time temperatures, always seems to be the time when fungi are most apparent, their colourful and plentiful fruiting bodies popping up wherever you look. One of the most colourful and plentiful, which can actually appear any time from April through to the time Jack Frost starts leaving his icy crust on the ground, is Sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare).
As you might guess from its name, its cap is usually quite a bright sulphur-yellow, though it sometimes has an orange tinge and a white band around the cap edge. It grows in large tufts or clumps, sometimes numbering several hundreds of individual mushrooms. Sulphur tuft is a wood-rotting fungus that happily devours both conifers and broadleaf hardwood trees, so can usually be seen in mixed woodland areas clustered on old stumps or bursting out of the cracks in the bark of fallen trees. As well as being very common in Britain and much of Europe, it’s also a frequent sight in North American woodlands. Sulphur tuft is poisonous so a feast for the eyes but not the belly.
18 Sunday Sep 2016
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berries, berry, Celtic beliefs, Greek mythology, Hebe, Mountain Ash, Norse mythology, Rowan, Rowan tree, Sorbus aucuparia
It’s berry time, and some of the loveliest berries to be seen at this time of year are those of the enigmatic Rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia) or Mountain Ash, as it’s also commonly known.
Why enigmatic? Well, the Rowan is surrounded by millenia of myths and legends. In Ancient Greek myth, Hebe, the beautiful young goddess who served ambrosia to the gods, lost her cup to demons and, when the gods sent an eagle to recover the cup, each one of the eagle’s feathers and drops of blood that fell to earth during the ensuing battle produced a Rowan tree. This also explains the Rowan’s red berries and its feather-shaped leaves.
The ancient Norse people believed the first woman was created from a Rowan tree, and a Rowan rescued the god Thor from drowning in a river in the Underworld. The Rowan also features in the ancient wisdom of the Celtic people. Fid na ndruad, its ancient Celtic name, means wizard’s tree; the Irish planted the Rowan near houses for protection against evil; the Scots believed that felling a Rowan would bring bad luck; and the Welsh planted Rowans in their graveyards to keep evil spirits at bay.
12 Monday Sep 2016
‘No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.’
~ John Donne, ‘Elegy IX: The Autumnal’, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose
08 Thursday Sep 2016
Posted in autumn, nature, wildflowers
“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in ’em,” said Captain Jim. “When I ponder on them seeds I don’t find it nowise hard to believe that we’ve got souls that’ll live in other worlds. You couldn’t hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn’t seen the miracle, could you?” ~ L. M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams
(Lucy Montgomery was the author of Anne of Green Gables; the House of Dreams is the fifth in her series of nine books about Anne Shirley. Captain Jim was the lighthouse keeper.)
05 Monday Sep 2016
It must be autumn – even if I chose to ignore the cooler evenings, the nights drawing in and the falling leaves, I can’t ignore the gorgeous cyclamen flowering in my local park!
The Wild cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium) is not native to Britain – it hails from the Mediterranean countries, though has, over time, made its way into more northern European countries, including Britain, where garden escapees have gradually become naturalised in many of the southern counties and here in Wales.
The word cyclamen comes originally from the Greek for circle, cyclamīnos, which is a nod to its round-shaped tuber, and the species name, hederifolium, is a combination of the Latin hedera (meaning ivy) and folium (meaning leaf), which refers to the shape and patterns on cyclamen leaves. More interesting though is its common name, sowbread, which apparently came about because pigs like to eat cyclamen, a fact reflected not only in the English common name but in several other languages as well: pain de pourceau in French, pan porcino in Italian, varkensbrood in Dutch, and ‘pigs’ manjū’ in Japanese.
16 Wednesday Dec 2015
Posted in autumn, nature, nature photography, wildflowers
Just two short weeks ago, my local cemetery was dotted with these vibrant little bursts of orange. Now they’ve all disappeared. This pretty little member of the daisy family is officially known as Pilosella aurantiaca but I much prefer its many common names: orange or tawny hawkweed (‘hawk’ because the Romans believed hawks ate the blossoms to enhance their vision and ‘weed’ because it can be very invasive in the right conditions); Grim-the-collier (after the character Grim, who appeared in English devil plays in the 1600s); devil’s paintbrush (another reference to the devil in those old plays or, maybe, because it can be a devil of a plant to get rid of!); and, my favourite, fox-and-cubs (perhaps because the yet-to-open flowers seem to hide beneath those that are open or, more likely, because the furry rosette of leaves sends out runners to produce more furry little plants). Love it or curse it, this little plant is rich in nectar so a favourite of bees.
earthstar 
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