22 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, leaves, nature, spring, trees
I didn’t venture far today but I didn’t even have to leave home for this blog post. I figured the recent high winds would’ve blown away all the blossom on my Cherry tree while I was away and I was right, but I hadn’t really considered how much the growth of the new leaves would have progressed. The first photo was taken on 4 March and the second today. What a difference 18 days makes!
09 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, leaves, nature, plants
I find leaf skeletons fascinating. The structure of a leaf, in particular its veins and midrib, are usually hidden, or at least made less obvious by the tissue of the leaf. But, when the leaf has detached from its tree and the tissue has disintegrated, the structure that remains is wonderfully sculptural, like this Holly leaf I discovered in a local park.
18 Sunday Nov 2018
When anyone asks me what my favourite season is I can never decide because they each have their good points but, this year, our late-arriving autumn has certainly been magnificent. On Wednesday I caught the train to Radyr for a meander around Forest Farm Nature Reserve and it was sublime. From bright golden yellows to rustling red-browns, with some leaves still decorating spreading branches above my head and others carpeting the woodland floor beneath my feet, I spent a marvellous day, my eyes admiring, my feet kicking, my neck craning and all my senses spilling over. Ah, autumn!
11 Sunday Nov 2018
Although it’s now late autumn, as the weather has been so mild, it’s only in the past couple of weeks that I’ve been seeing the change of seasons reflected in the trees around me on my meanders. So, here’s some glorious autumn colour from recent walks at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park.
07 Wednesday Nov 2018
Tags
#treefollowing, Acer mono, Acer mono ssp pictum, Acer pictum, autumn colour, autumn leaves, Bute Park, I'm following a tree, Mono maple
At the end of September, various circumstances combined to prevent me from visiting my Mono (Acer pictum ssp. mono), the tree I’m following this year, but I did manage to pay it a visit on 19 October. And I’m so glad I did, as I managed to get some photos of it in all its autumn glory, before last weekend’s storm-force winds blew most of its leaves off.
So, here it is on 19 October, a blaze of orange loveliness …
A closer shot of the leaves still on the tree, and another looking up through the canopy from underneath.
Some close-ups of the leaves on the ground. I love the variety of colours in these.
And here’s Mono on 2 November, a shadow of its former gloriousness, though what remains is a lighter, more yellow colour than before. It’s interesting to note, too, how more leaves remain on the left side of the tree, presumably because that side is a little more shaded and sheltered.
Soon, all that will remain will be this carpet of leaves below the tree and skeletal branches above.
09 Sunday Sep 2018
I expected my tree, this magnificent Acer pictum aka Acer mono, to be looking a little autumnal when I visited it in Cardiff’s Bute Park on Friday, but no.
There were leaves that almost looked burnt, were dry and curling up, but that looked more like a hangover from the several weeks of drought and high temperatures we had in July and August, rather than the slow changing of colour you’d expect to see during autumn.
Spot the Speckled wood butterfly perched high in the canopy – one of two I saw up there.
Most of the foliage was still looking lush and vibrant and very green.
Though a few lay scattered beneath the tree, most of its seeds were also still attached. I brought a couple of seed pods home, thinking to look at the seeds inside them. It wasn’t until I checked them later that I realised all the seeds had burst out of their pods. Next time …
18 Wednesday Jul 2018
Tags
Cameraria ohridella, Horse chestnut leaf-mining moth, Horse chestnut tree, leaf mines, leaf-mining larvae, leafminer, moth larvae, moths
You may well have noticed that many (most?) of the Horse chestnut trees around you are starting to look a bit manky. Their leaves have become covered in white and brown blotches.
Those blotches are actually leaf mines, home to the larvae of Cameraria ohridella, the Horse chestnut leaf-mining moth (the brown blobs in the mines). According to the UK moths website
This species was discovered near Macedonia in 1985, and since then has spread rapidly to other countries in Europe. It was first discovered in Britain at Wimbledon in south-west London in 2002, but possibly had arrived the previous year, as it was quite plentiful. It is thought that the species may be expanding partially due to accidental transportation by man, either by road or rail. It has now been found quite extensively in the south-east of England.
Obviously, since that website entry was written, the moths have now spread from south-east England to south Wales and, indeed, to parts much further north. You’re mostly likely to see the blotches between June and September and, though you might not like the look of them, they’re not thought to inflict any permanent damage on the tree because, of course, the leaves are shed in the autumn anyway.
18 Wednesday Apr 2018
I love this little miracle that happens every spring, and I couldn’t resist having ‘bud burst’ as this week’s words after seeing many beautiful examples when I was out walking on Monday.
During winter, deciduous trees look so bare and barren, yet, safely enclosed within the protective cases of their ‘bud scales’, tiny leaves are beginning to grow. Then, once temperatures start to warm up, the trees’ roots absorb more water and the sap begins to rise. The leaf buds grow and swell to the point when their scales just can’t contain them any more and then, one day …
Shazam! The buds burst out and begin to expand and soak up the spring sunshine!
05 Monday Feb 2018
Tags
bark, bracket fungi, lichen, nature's patterns, patterns, patterns in nature, reeds, water, wood
The ‘undiscovered country of the nearby’ ~ Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places
24 Wednesday Jan 2018
Chlorophilia: from the Greek khlōros, meaning green, and philia, meaning loving; thus, loving all things green and growing.
Now, that sounds straightforward enough and many of us would willingly admit to having chlorophilia but a word of caution. I’ve just been reading on the Wiki Knowledge Dump blog (the place where rejected Wikipedia articles often get resurrected) that the word (which does not appear in standard dictionaries) was ‘invented’ in 2004 to describe a physical or sexual attraction to plants. Tree-huggers, take note!
