01 Saturday May 2021
I think you’ll agree this female Orange-tip butterfly has nailed this camouflage scenario.
She kept completely and utterly still, even when I got within a couple of inches of her for some macro photos. Amazing effort!
30 Friday Apr 2021
’Tis that magical time of year when the woodland floor comes to life, with wildflowers blooming and the sap rising up to green the trees and the fronds of ferns slowly unrolling.
The curled up top of a young fern frond is called a crosier, sometimes a fiddlehead. When its first cells are touched by the warming sunlight of spring, they begin to grow; as they grow, they expand; as they expand, they lengthen; and as they lengthen, they unfurl.
There is perhaps no more powerful symbol of the reawakening of the land in springtime than a fern frond unfurling.
22 Thursday Apr 2021
Tags
British insects, British shieldbugs, Dolycoris baccarum, gorse, Gorse shieldbug, Hairy shieldbug, Piezodorus lituratus, shieldbugs on gorse
I had expected to find Gorse shieldbugs on these glowing gorse bushes (the clue’s in the name) but, in fact, the most numerous were the Hairy shieldbugs (of which there must have been at least 20).
The Gorse shieldbug (Piezodorus lituratus) (above left) looks very like a Common green shieldbug but its red antennae are a distinctive identification feature. The Hairy shieldbug (Dolycoris baccarum) (above right, and below) is a much more colourful character, a stylish combination of purple-brown and green, and it also has distinctive antennae, this time three white bands on a black base.
09 Friday Apr 2021
Posted in flowers, plants, spring, wildflowers
Tags
ancient woodland, British wildflowers, Herb-Paris, Paris quadrifolia, spring wildflowers, wildflowers in ancient woodland
During my weekly walks in local ancient woodland, I’ve been monitoring the development of this plant, watching it arise from the damp soil, waiting for its leaves to grow and its flower to emerge … and yesterday the first of the blooms were finally open.
This is Herb-paris (Paris quadrifolia), and I think you can see the reason I have been so keen to see these stunning flowers again.
Their structure is remarkable, a combination that Richard Mabey describes thus in Flora Britannica: ‘a star of four very narrow yellow-green petals and four wider sepals, topped by a crown of eight golden stamens, and later a single shining black berry – the “devil-in-the-bush” that was one of the plant’s obsolete names’.
The plants are looking particularly abundant this year and many flowers have yet to open so I will definitely be returning to feast my eyes on these beauties many times before they disappear for another year.
02 Friday Apr 2021
Posted in plants, spring, wildflowers
Tags
Adoxa moschatellina, British wildflowers, Good Friday plant, Moschatel, Spring colour, Town Hall clock
This couldn’t have been more appropriate if I’d planned it, which I assure you I didn’t. Until yesterday’s wander through a local woodland, I’d never seen Moschatel before. Its scientific name is Adoxa moschatellina but one of its vernacular names is Good Friday plant, because it usually begins flowering at the beginning of April and is often first seen in bloom at Easter.
Another of its common names is Townhall clock, which Richard Mabey explains in Flora Britannica is because the small flowers ‘are arranged in a remarkable fashion, at right angles to one another, like the faces of a town clock – except that there is a fifth on top, pointing towards the sky’. My photos don’t show this very well so I might have to revisit to get more.
05 Friday Mar 2021
Posted in plants
Tags
Each week I try to find some new or interesting fungi for my Friday post but this week I’ve failed miserably. So, here’s a lovely fresh ready-to-unroll fern frond instead.
01 Monday Mar 2021
Tags
Agromyzidae, Chromatomyia scolopendri, Hart's tongue, leaf mine on Hart's tongue, leaf miners, leaf mines, leaf-mining fly larvae
Another week, another leaf mine – in fact, lots of mines in the glossy, lush leaves of Hart’s-tongue ferns (Asplenium scolopendrium).
I have actually blogged about these before (Leaf mine in Hart’s-tongue, January 2018) but those finds were made in Somerset and I’m now finding lots of these mines in my local area in south Wales. The mines are made by the larvae of the fly Chromatomyia scolopendri, one of the Agromyzidae family of flies, and their long, winding gallery mines are unmistakeable.
You can read more about these flies on the newly launched Agromyzidae Recording Scheme website, and, if you’re interested in finding out which leaf mines to look out for and when, the scheme has a page that lists which species are most commonly recorded each month. Can you find Chromatomyia scolopendri mines in your area?
28 Sunday Feb 2021
Posted in flowers, plants, wildflowers, winter
The results are in! After a concerted effort to check as many different local habitats as possible, walking 31.5 miles over 5 days, I managed to find 29 different wildflowers in bloom this week. Two (Ragwort and Smooth sow-thistle) were too distant for good photos; the other 27 feature in this week’s little video. I hope you’re also seeing plenty of flowers in your areas now too.
The 27 are: Alexanders, Barren strawberry, Colt’s-foot, Cow parsley, Cowslip, Creeping buttercup, Daisy, Dandelion, Dog’s mercury, Field speedwell, Forget-me-not, Gorse, Groundsel, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Lesser celandine, Opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage, Petty spurge (with little yellow spots of the rust Melampsora euphorbiae), Primrose, Red dead-nettle, Red valerian, Shepherd’s-purse, Snowdrop, Spurge laurel (a shrub really but I’m including it), Sweet violet, Three-cornered leek, Wavy bitter-cress, and Winter heliotrope.
27 Saturday Feb 2021
Posted in bryophytes, nature, plants
Tags
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.
Mosses grow very easily on next to nothing. They have no roots, and only need moisture and shady conditions to grow.
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.
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.
26 Friday Feb 2021
I was almost home from today’s 7-mile walk when I spotted the subject of this post, lots of pink gall-like bumps on the leaves of a group of plants I quickly realised were Nipplewort (Lapsana communis).
And that clinched the identification of the bumps, especially when I turned a leaf over and spotted the little yellow dots. These are the aecia, cup-shaped structures in which aeciospores are produced. (And, as you can see, this particular leaf was also home to a tiny spider.)
These Nipplewort plants were absolutely covered in rust fungi, Nipplewort Rust (Puccinia lapsanae), a rust I’ve seen before but never in such quantity.
earthstar 
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