Tag Archives: Bute Park

I’m following a tree: month 5

13 Monday Jun 2016

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Summer has come to Cardiff so, although she loves our Welsh rain, Dawn Redwood is also a lover of a sunny location and has been basking in the long sunny days. Her leaves are now fully developed, a rich vibrant green in colour, with leaves arranged opposite each other on the branches, flattened in shape, and around 12mm long and 1.5mm wide.

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Although she doesn’t provide the dense shade of a horse chestnut, an oak or a beech, Dawn is much favoured by Cardiffians as a shady spot for a lunchtime picnic – on the two recent occasions I’ve passed by, there have been groups sitting on the grass below her, which is lovely to see but also means I haven’t been able to get too close for more intimate photos (I was intending to check her bark more thoroughly this month).

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It surprises me a little that I’ve never seen any birds perched in Dawn’s branches, as I’d have thought she provided the perfect cover for the smaller birds as well as a well-elevated viewpoint for the larger birds like magpies and crows. However, Dawn is surrounded by trees – several varieties of prunus and some lovely magnolias, as well as other species I’m not sure of – so the birds have plenty of other spots to choose from.

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The real peel

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by in fungi, nature

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I owe the nifty title for this blog to my friend and colleague in fungi and biological recording, Amy, who works at SEWBReC, the South East Wales Biological Records Centre, and who can not only spin a good line but is extremely handy with a microscope. She checked the tiny aspects of my peel to confirm it really was Orange Peel fungus, despite this being entirely the wrong time of year.

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Orange peel fungus (Aleuria aurantia) usually appears in the autumn, fruiting between August and November, though anyone who observes the natural world on a regular basis will know that many things have been well out of sequence this year. The fungus starts out as a cup shape but often splits and contorts as it grows, making it appear even more like the discarded skin of an orange. Its bright orange colour makes it easy to spot in its preferred location, the disturbed soil alongside woodland paths, which is exactly where I found these specimens, in Cardiff’s Bute Park.

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I’m following a tree: month 4

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in nature, spring, trees

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Dawn is no longer a naked lady. As April progressed, she gradually acquired her vibrant new covering of leaves, though it has been a slow process, perhaps because we haven’t had much rain to help stimulate leaf production.

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Considering her stature resembles that of a giantess, Dawn’s leaves are surprisingly fine, feathery and delicate, so her new attire is still coquettishly flimsy, seductively see-through.

It was lovely to see Dawn being enjoyed by the locals when I popped by on an unseasonably warm day late last week. Her leaf covering may not yet be lush but she was providing ample shade for a picnic lunch.

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Why not join the tree following community. You can find out more here.

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Hello, Blossom

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in nature, spring, trees

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‘Tis that time of year when everywhere you look there are trees in blossom. The whites and pinks of the various prunus species grace the lawns in Bute and the various other public parks, and line the pathways at Cathays Cemetery. In wilder places, blackthorns are covered in their snow-like blooms, providing a feast for the bees and hoverflies now emerging in huge numbers from their winter hibernation. And, here in Cardiff, magnolias are often used as street trees – I take my hat off to the urban planner who made that decision! – and are currently making a gorgeous spectacle of themselves.

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On my daily walks I seem constantly to be smiling at the beauty of the blossom all around me, and I ignore the strange looks of those who appear to think that stopping to admire a tree means I’m a crazy woman. I often think the world would be a better place if more people took the time to drink in the beauty all around them – so, please, if it’s spring where you are, stop, look and love the blossom!

Bute Park wildflowers

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in nature, spring, wildflowers

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This weekend I could have paid £12 to see what I’m sure would have been gorgeous flowers and inspirational displays at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Flower Show being held here in Cardiff’s Bute Park but, as I don’t have that kind of cash to splash at the moment, I decided to see what flowers I could find in Bute Park for nothing. With 18 different types of wildflowers currently in bloom I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Enjoy!

There were: Bluebell (mostly Spanish but I found a few natives) (Hyacinthoides non-scripta); Daisy (Bellis perennis); Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale); White deadnettle (Lamium album); Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum); Germander speedwell (Veronica Chamaedrys); Gorse (Ulex europaeus); Greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea); Green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens); Lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria); Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage (Chrysosplenium oppositifolium); Primrose (Primula vulgaris); Red campion (Silene dioica); Common dog-violet (Viola riviniana) and Sweet violet (Viola odorata); Wild garlic (Allium ursinum); Wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca); and Wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa).

I’m following a tree: month 2

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in nature, spring, trees

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Though I have strolled past Dawn Redwood a couple of times this month, I hadn’t really noticed any change in her, until today – and then it was only when I was reviewing this afternoon’s photos and zoomed in on one or two. Note to self: next time, choose a shorter tree to follow, the better to see what’s happening up top – because it’s at the top of the tree that all the action is happening.

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Not only is Dawn still carrying last season’s cones up there, she also still has more of a flush of this spring’s flowers higher up and, at the very top, the green of this year’s foliage is just beginning to burst out. I find each of these things surprising – the cones and the flowers because the top of the tree must be the most windblown so I’d have expected both to have been blown off more at the top than lower down the tree, and the budding foliage because I thought the tree would green from the bottom as the sap rose upwards with the warmer weather.

This is exactly why following a tree is so very interesting. The more closely you look, the more you see and learn.

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small cones for such a large tree, and very tiny seeds (bottom of photo, left of centre)

Why not join the tree following community. You can find out more here.

‘Camellias shining bright’

20 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in flowers, nature, nature photography

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‘The Camellia’ by Honoré de Balzac
~ from an English translation of his novel Eugénie Grandet

In Nature’s poem flowers have each their word
The rose of love and beauty sings alone;
The violet’s soul exhales in tenderest tone;
The lily’s one pure simple note is heard.
The cold Camellia only, stiff and white,
Rose without perfume, lily without grace,
When chilling winter shows his icy face,
Blooms for a world that vainly seeks delight.
Yet, in a theatre, or ball-room light,
With alabaster petals opening fair,
I gladly see Camellias shining bright
Above some stately woman’s raven hair,
Whose noble form fulfils the heart’s desire,
Like Grecian marbles warmed by Phidian fire.

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These are just a small selection of the many lovely varieties of camellia blooming in Bute Park here in Cardiff. Unlike the ‘stiff and white’ camellia of de Balzac’s poem, their wonderfully delicate hues range from the purest white through to a deep blushing pink. They have such beautiful flowers that it’s easy to see why the camellia is considered a symbol of good luck and used as an offering to the gods during Chinese New Year celebrations.

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I’m following a tree: month 1

12 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by in nature, nature photography, trees

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dawn feb 2

She is a statuesque beauty, tall for her 67 years, but with a very slight lean to one side – I blame the strong winds blasting inshore from the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Her name is Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides, to be precise) and her kind was thought to be extinct, having only been identified in fossils until some time between 1941 and 1944 when she was rediscovered, growing in the town of Moudao, in Hubei, in south-western China. Long ago, her family and her cousins, the sequoias, could be found right across Europe, in Asia and in the Americas but all were killed off during the last ice age.

dawn feb 1

My Dawn came from the first shipment of international seeds to arrive in Britain in 1949. She grows in Bute Park, in the Welsh capital of Cardiff. She was a champion tree, the tallest of her kind in Britain, in 2005, but she has since been surpassed. Still, she has a regal air and a wonderful pyramidal shape.

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Flowers blown off during recent stormy weather

Dawn is deciduous, which is unusual for a conifer, but at the moment she is flowering, which has given her a rusty tinge – perhaps she’s blushing! In fact, she is monoecious, which means she has separate male and female flowers on the same tree. The male flowers hang in clusters at the end of her branches, while the female flowers are solitary. Over the next 12 months, I will be visiting Dawn often and will blog about her monthly.

Why not join the tree following community. You can find out more here.

dawn feb 3

Male flowers