Shades of pink and blue

04 Sunday Apr 2021

Tags

Bluebells, British wildflowers, Cornsalad, Cuckooflower, Doves-foot cranes-bill, Ground ivy, Lords-and-ladies, Lungwort, Red dead-nettle, Spring colour

All of a sudden, the countryside has been splashed and daubed and sprinkled with these pretty shades of pink and blue.

210404 bluebells

Bluebell (Hyacinthoides sp.), not the native species but still pretty

210404 corn salad

Common Cornsalad (Valerianella locusta), also known as Lamb’s lettuce

210404 cuckooflower

Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis), which you might know as Milkmaids or Lady’s smock

210404 ground ivy

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), this little beauty has some wonderful vernacular names, including Gill-over-the-ground and Run-away Robin

210404 lords and ladies

Lords-and-ladies (Arum maculatum), another wildflower named for a bird: Cuckoopint

210404 lungwort

Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis), also known as Our Lady’s milk and Mary’s tears

210404 red dead-nettle

Red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum), which seems to be under every hedge, along every woodland edge right now

210404 Round-leaved crane's-bill

Dove’s-foot crane’s-bill (Geranium molle), found growing around the base of a local power pole yesterday

Mossy gravestone

27 Saturday Feb 2021

Posted by sconzani in bryophytes, nature, plants

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

moss, moss on gravestone, mosses

Graves may not be everyone’s idea of wildlife-friendly spaces but I’ve found cemeteries and grave-filled churchyards can hold some interesting, often unusual flora and fauna.

210227 mossy gravestone (1)

Mosses grow very easily on next to nothing. They have no roots, and only need moisture and shady conditions to grow.

210227 mossy gravestone (2)

I presume the indentations of the inscription on the gravestone, though shallow, would be deep enough to accumulate a little moisture and a modicum of dusty soil, and that’s all these little mosses required to thrive. The churchyard is also well shaded by hedges and tall trees, as well as the church building itself – again, perfect for the mosses.

210227 mossy gravestone (3)

Some people might think mosses and lichens should be scrubbed off gravestones or sprayed with chemicals to kill them. Not me. I can think of nothing nicer than to have my gravestone be home to little beauties like these, and my personal details spelled out in mosses.

210227 mossy gravestone (4)

Elvish beauty

09 Tuesday Feb 2021

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature, winter

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

British fungi, Elfcups, fungi, red elfcups, Ruby elfcup, Scarlet elfcup, woodland fungi

As I walked through a local woodland yesterday, in light sleet and a biting wind, I was seduced by these gorgeous elfcups, punctuating the dull greens and dirty browns with their glorious pops of bright red.

210209 red elfcups (1)

And there were lots of them: tucked under draping fern fronds, nestled amongst lush mosses, almost every rotting log and every broken branch had its cup of scarlet (or ruby) red.

210209 red elfcups (2)

I’m not sure if anyone has ever checked, microscopically, to determine whether the elfcups in these woodlands are Scarlet (Sarcoscypha austriaca) or Ruby (Sarcoscypha coccinea).

210209 red elfcups (3)

And, though it would certainly be good to add them to the local biodiversity records, it was enough yesterday to simply feast my eyes on their magical elvish beauty.

210209 red elfcups (4)

Bluebell rust

05 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by sconzani in nature

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Bluebell rust, Bluebells, rust fungi, rust on Bluebells, rust on plants, Uromyces muscari

Now that the lush leaves of Bluebells are poking their fleshy heads above the soil, it’s time to check for Bluebell rust (Uromyces muscari), which can be found on native, cultivated and hybrid Bluebells.

210205 bluebell rust (2)

I’ve been looking during my recent local exercise walks but have found most of the locals are rust-less, except in one location, which is where I found these examples.

210205 bluebell rust (3)

This rust won’t affect the flowers, of course, and, as far as I’m aware, it doesn’t affect the health of the plant. In fact, most people won’t even notice it’s there but now you know about it, you might.

210205 bluebell rust (1)

Dead man’s fingers

29 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature

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British fungi, Dead man's fingers, fungi, wood-rotting fungi, Xylaria polymorpha

210129 dead man's fingers
Be afraid! A dead man is poking his rotting blackened fingers up from the leaf litter, reaching for the passing ankles of unwary walkers.

Nah, not really, though the ‘fingers’ – really the fungal fruiting bodies of the aptly named Dead man’s fingers (Xylaria polymorpha) – can look rather spooky when first encountered.

As the First Nature website explains, these wood-rotting fungi play an important environmental role:

they specialise in consuming neither the softish cellulose nor the much tougher lignin but rather the polysaccharides … As a result, when these and various other ascomycetous fungi have consumed what they can of a dead stump the remainder is a nutrient-rich soft mess that insects and other small creatures are able to feed upon.

Wild word: pupa

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, plants

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British leaf mines, Cerodontha iridis, leaf-mining fly pupae, leafminer, pupa, pupae of Cerodontha iridis

Pupa: Noun (pl. pupae); An insect in its inactive immature form between larva and adult, e.g. a chrysalis; Origin: late 18th century modern Latin, from Latin pupa ‘girl, doll’ (Oxford Dictionary).

210120 pupa cerodontha iridis (2)

I don’t find pupae very often so I was very pleased to find these – all the black oblong shapes, not just the one outside the leaf – the pupae of the leaf-mining fly Cerodontha iridis. More about that creature in my blog post of 7 December.

210120 pupa cerodontha iridis (1)

364/366 A vibrant treat

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature, winter

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

blue fungus, British fungi, Cobalt crust, Terana caerulea

It would be fair to say that my fungi-finding year was fairly dismal: only about 20 of this year’s 366 blog posts were about fungi. The highlight, though, was brilliant – the vibrant, intense, almost unreal blue of the Cobalt crust (Terana caerulea) that I posted about earlier this month, in Not just any stick. I haven’t yet been back for a second look at it – I’ve been saving that for a New Year treat!

345/366 Italian Alder aphid

10 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by sconzani in insects, leaves, nature, trees

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aphids, Crypturaphis grassii, Italian Alder, Italian Alder aphid

At first I thought this incredibly tiny creature was the early instar of a shield bug but, when I couldn’t find any pictures that resembled it on the British Bugs website, I turned to Twitter for help. Luckily, a botanist I know, Karen, had seen something similar posted recently in a Facebook group and very quickly supplied me with a name, Crypturaphis grassii, the Italian Alder aphid, so named because it’s only ever found on Italian Alder trees (Alnus cordata).

201210 Crypturaphis grassii (1)

I found online a report published in 2011, on the first records of this species in Cornwall, which provides some interesting detail about these aphids. Apparently, Crypturaphis grassii is ‘native to southern Italy and Corsica and [was] first recorded in the UK in 1998’. Intrigued, I returned to the tree I’d found my first specimen on and found many more of these creatures, with variations in colour and markings. The report explains that:

Viviparous individuals [those able to birth live young] are yellowish-green to yellowish-brown, with brown spots extending along the dorsal surface, around the edge of the abdomen and on the head. Compound eyes are reddish in colour. … Immature apterae [wingless individuals] are similar but smaller, paler and lacking in dark spots, more translucent and slightly more elongate in shape. Oviparous apterae [wingless individuals that are able to lay eggs] are similar in size and shape to viviparous apterae but are brown in colour, with transverse darker abdominal stripes, rather than spots.

201210 Crypturaphis grassii (3)

The Italian Alder, on which the aphid feeds, was ‘commonly planted as a roadside, waterside and/or windbreak species’ during the 1980s, and, by 2011 when the report was published, the aphids had already spread widely throughout Britain, including having established colonies in the Vale of Glamorgan, which is where I found the aphids in my photographs.

Citation: Luker, Sally. (2011). CRYPTURAPHIS GRASSII (STERNORRYNCHA: APHIDIDAE): FIRST RECORDS FOR CORNWALL. British Journal of Entomology and Natural History. 24. 205.

335/366 In praise of Beech

30 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by sconzani in autumn, leaves, nature, trees

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

autumn colour, autumn leaves, beech, British trees

In his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, Keats wrote of a ‘light-winged Dryad of the trees’ singing of summer in ‘some melodious plot of beechen green’. The beechen green has now become beechen gold and brown, but I can still imagine Dryads singing of the beauty of mighty Beech trees, in all their autumnal finery, and even performing paeans in praise of their statuesque forms once those golden leaves have fallen.

201130 beech (3)

324/366 Simply red

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by sconzani in autumn, fungi, leaves, nature, plants

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autumn colour, colour red, red fruit, red fungi, red leaves, red stems

Stop! Danger! With green, Christmas. Anger (seeing red). Passion (red hot). And, in Nature, red leaves, red breasts (though I’ve always thought of the Robin as more of an orange breast), red fungi, red fruit, red feathers, red eyes…. Here’s a selection of reds from my recent meanders.