Botanising, with insects

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by sconzani in animals, birds, insects, molluscs, nature, slugs

Tags

Bloody-nosed beetle, Brynna, Click beetle, Glamorgan Botany Group, grasshopper, moths, Nettle weevil, rooster, sheep, slugs

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I returned from my last Botany Group walk with more photos of insects – and other living creatures – than plants. The Gorse weevil got a blog of its own yesterday; now here are some of our other finds.

Firstly, a couple more weevils, both on nettle and the second one is definitely a Neetle weevil (Phyllobius pomacues) but I’m not sure about the first. The Click beetle was also found on nettle.

These two were at a farm we passed through; the sheep was lording it over the home paddock and the rooster was king of the farmyard. Both handsome dudes!

A nice little grouping of slug species, with their small friend, the Granny Grey, and a grasshopper. There were lots of these hopping round on grass and rushes in a boggy field. It may be a juvenile Meadow grasshopper but I’m not 100% sure.

A little flock of Micropterix cathella moths were feasting on this grass flower, and there were lots of other small moths, probably one of the Bactra species, plus an unidentified spider with a distinctive striped body.

And last, but certainly not least, these Bloody-nosed beetles (Timarcha tenebricosa). The photo on the left shows the chubby larva and on the right is the adult beetle munching on a grass stalk.

Botanising: A walk above Brynna

28 Sunday May 2017

Posted by sconzani in nature, plants, wildflowers

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

botany mentee, British flora, Bush vetch, Common vetch, Field horsetail, Glamorgan Botany Group, Mouse-ear hawkweed, Welsh poppy, Zigzag clover

Last weekend I enjoyed another full day’s walk with the Glamorgan Botany Group in the hills and vales above Brynna, in south Wales, and, though I am the first to admit that I came home with more photos of insects than plants, I am learning. It’s just that, for someone who wasn’t brought up in Britain and so didn’t learn from an early age the names of even the most common wildflowers, there’s a huge amount to take in.

170528 Brynna

So, what have I learnt? I can now tell the difference between Common vetch (Vicia sativa), on the left, and Bush vetch (Vicia sepium), on the right below.

I know this is Field horsetail (Equisetum arvense) because the first joints of the leaves (which form a skirt around the stem when you break them off) are longer than the stem section (the little dark v-shaped marks on the stem in this photo).

170528 1 Field horsetail

Though the two species are very similar, I know this is not Red clover (Trifolium pratense) but rather Zigzag clover (Trifolium medium) partly because the white marks on its leaves are not as obvious but, most definitively, because at the widest part of the leaf the veins meet the edge at a 90 degree angle.

I know that the plant on the left is Mouse-ear hawkweed (Hieracium pilosella) and that beautiful flower on the right is my very first Welsh poppy (Meconopsis cambrica) growing in the wild!

Random creatures of Barry

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Barry, Crab spider, Dock bug, Garden snails, Glamorgan Botany Group, Grene shieldbug, hoverflies, insects, ladybirds, Orange-tip butterfly, slow-worm

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I spent a wonderful day on Saturday exploring and examining some of the town of Barry’s wilder green spaces with members of the Glamorgan Botany Group. But, of course, you can’t spend a whole day looking at plants without also seeing an awful lot of the critters that live on those plants and I admit to being a trifle distracted at times … by a sunshine-yellow Crab spider, by fluttering butterflies and buzzing hoverflies, by plentiful dock and shield bugs, by the sad sight of a dead Slow-worm. Some of the lovely old stone houses and churches we passed were pretty cool too!

I’m a mentee!

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by sconzani in nature, plants, walks, wildflowers

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

amatuer botanist, Barry, British plants, Glamorgan Botany Group, Mary Gillham Archive Project, Mary Gillham Botany Mentorship Scheme, SEWBReC

Actually, I became a mentee a few weeks ago but yesterday was my first outing with my mentor and other members of the Glamorgan Botany Group. My plant knowledge is abysmal and I felt I needed to remedy that so when SEWBReC (the South East Wales Biodiversity Records Centre) announced that, as part of the Heritage Lottery-funded Mary Gillham Archive Project, they would be running a Botany Mentorship Scheme ‘to encourage the sharing of knowledge from experienced botanists to enthusiastic beginners’, I put my hand up.

170423 Botany walk in Barry (1)

As SEWBReC’s announcement said, ‘Mary spent her lifetime sharing her ecological knowledge including many years as an Extra Mural Lecturer at Cardiff University, so the inclusion of a Botany Mentorship Scheme in the project will carry on her passion for teaching others about the wildlife of south east Wales’. Lady Luck was smiling on me the day the mentees were selected and I am now one of a handful of keen amateurs with a steep (or so it seems to me) learning curve in front of me.

Yesterday, with my mentor and eight other enthusiastic plant people, I stomped around some of the less-well-explored and under-recorded green spaces of Barry, a town on the south Wales coast, examining and recording plant species. My mentor and walk-mates were welcoming, friendly, and generous in sharing their extensive knowledge, and it was a splendid, if somewhat overwhelming day. I have a great deal to learn but I’m looking forward to the challenge immensely.