Are native cultivars good for insects?

I had a question from a garden designer that I thought would be useful to share..

Question:

Are non-native plants that have a UK native counterpart (e.g. Sorbus alnifolia, which is from Korea) any good for wildlife? Or does it have to be the UK native for insects to benefit?

Answer:

Sorbus alnifolia doesn't appear on any of the databases that show plant / insect interactions in the UK so I can't find any data.

However, the larvae of many insects, including butterflies and moths which we have the most accessible information on, more often than not, require a specific host plant that they evolved with to feed.

With Sorbus alnifolia having evolved with a completely different insect ecology there is less likelihood of it sharing a similar chemical composition to our native Sorbus and so may not be compatible with specialist feeding insect larvae but would likely act in a similar way as a nectar food source for pollinating insects that are less fussy generalist feeders. The native Sorbus aucuparia (rowan / mountain ash tree) supports 20 butterfly and moth caterpillars, 15 other herbivorous insects (beetles, true bugs and sawflies) and has 35 identified pollinator interactions.

Many insects go through a full metamorphosis in their life cycle, some of which we are familiar with, such as Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths and skippers) involving a larval stage as a caterpillar; but also others, such as, Coleoptera (beetles) with grubs; Diptera (flies) with maggots and Hymenoptera (sawflies, wasps, ants and bees) all of which involve an egg, larval, pupa and adult stage.

The feeding stages of the larva and adult of these insects are quite different. The larva is basically an eating machine, it has no sexual organs and just needs to gather enough resources to survive the pupa stage from which it emerges as the adult insect. While the feeding and raising of larva are different amongst the insect groups (orders) and individual species, 99% of butterfly and moth caterpillars are herbivorous.

The adult is a sex machine that just needs nectar (sugary water) to fuel its job to mate. While the adult can eat any of this nectar, providing the flower shape allows access to it (pollinating insect), the larva is very often limited to a very few plants whose chemicals it can ingest, so is known as a specialist feeder (monophagous insect).

A plant that has evolved with a different set of insects trying to eat it will almost certainly have produced a different chemical make up to deter them. The closer the plant relative the more likely they are as a suitable host to specialist insects.

With this in mind, if the native Sorbus aucuparia doesn’t fit the designers brief, would it be better to look for a cultivar from Sorbus aucuparia before specifying another species, Sorbus alnifolia in this case, from a distant geographic location?

This may well be better, because although the native cultivar has been adapted for alternative qualities such as the colour of the berries, it’s size, leaf shape or colour, it is still closer to the species (wild) specimen than an alternative species. There are just a couple of things to watch out for though, in breeding plant adaptations into the cultivar, these can affect its physical and chemical make up, such as a different shape leaf, a thicker or tougher leaf, leaf colour or a compact habit which may not be recognisable to the adult needing to lay their eggs, deter the larval dependant from recognising it as the food source, or being able to physically cope with the new physiology or chemistry.

So with all that in mind let’s have another look at the Sorbus alnifolia in question as an example, the attributes of this plant that the designer was looking for is that it would be suitable for the design of a very small back garden. It is actually a similar size to the native Sorbus aucuparia at 10 to 15m but does have a different appearance with the leaves being oval and entire rather than pinnate and that may well be another reason why this plant was being considered.

Interestingly, Sorbus aucuparia is also native to Northern China, so will a Chinese variant support the same specialist feeding insects as the British species? Well maybe but as discussed above, there is a strong likelihood that it would have distinct genetic variability based on its geographic origin.

There is a cultivar, just to confuse the issue, that is called Sorbus aucuparia ‘Chinese lace’ that is actually bred from the British / European species, not the Northern Chinese one. This grows to approximately 6m at maturity so would be a good contender for a small garden. It does have deeply lobed leaves that could affect its attractiveness to larvae but on balance is almost certainly more attractive than its Korean counterpart.

I’m just going to throw something else into the mix before I sign off. We might consider a completely different species if it fit the bill without being an alternative species or a species cultivar..

Crataegus monogyna (hawthorne) is native to the UK, is similar to the desired Sorbus, in that it has white clustered flowers in spring, and red berries in autumn / winter but is actually much smaller than the rowan at approx 4 to 8m in its species form.. Another benefit to the hawthorn is that it supports 115 butterfly and moth caterpillars as opposed to the 20 of the rowan.

Or just go with the tree that you want, in this case Sorbus alnifolia but try to make sure it is propagated and grown in the uk to stop the risk of importing harmful pathogens or insects, and is raised without the use of pesticides which will kill the insects that eat it anyway.. Other decisions can always be made around the rest of the plants in the garden that can all have a great beneficial effect.

Summary

Species (wild) type plants that evolved where you garden are best for specialist insects, such as most caterpillars, to feed on. Other plants including native cultivars, if not contaminated with pesticides or imported with harmful insects or pathogens, are mostly fine for generalist feeding insects and pollinating insects.

Have fun and happy gardening!!

Photo by Alicja Trepka

Identifying conifers

What says Christmas more than a Christmas Tree?? 

Presents.. Snow.. Nativity.. Family.. Christmas lights.. Turkey.. ok OK, can I continue..?

So smarty pants, do you know how to tell the different Christmas trees apart? Well not Christmas trees exactly but conifer trees, that is to say, spruce, fir, pine amongst others.

Conifer trees were amongst the first trees to evolve some 350 million years ago, they are gymnosperms, translating as ‘naked seed’ meaning that their seed is not covered by an ovary (otherwise known as the fruit) like the flowering trees known as angiosperms that evolved much later, more like 125 million years ago. 

Sure, sure, but how do I tell my fir, from my spruce or pine tree? They all look the same! Or do they? Look a little closer and there are some ways to tell them apart. 

The first thing to look for is whether they have needles or scales? If they have needles they will be either a pine, fir, spruce, larch, cedars or juniper. 

If they have scales as leaves, they will be a cypress. Some cypress such as the swamp cypress have leaves but are deciduous so drop these in winter.

Pine:

Needles are soft to touch and joined at the base in 2’s (our native Scott’s Pine) 3’s or 5’s and tend to be longer than other conifers.

Cones hang towards the ground.

Branches tend to be upturned and grow from a ring on the trunk 

Tree shape is roughly triangular

Spruce:

Needles are short and stiff and grow individually from the trunk and branches and are attached with a small woody stalk. The needles are squares so roll easily in the fingers.

Cones hang towards the ground.

Branches tend to be upturned.

Tree shape is that of a typical Christmas tree.

Fir:

Needles are soft and flat, grow individually from the trunk and branches but are attached with a small suction cup.

Cones grow upwards from the branch.

Branches grow more downturned and have wide lower branches.

Tree is also the shape of a Christmas tree but with more space between the branches.

Cedar:

Needles are short and cluster around the twigs all year round.

Cones are barrel shaped with a flat top, papery and grow upwards from the branch.

Branches grow in a spiral from a single trunk. Generally Atlas Cedars have upward pointing tips, Deodar's point downwards and those of the Cedar of Lebanon are flat.

Western red cedar are also tall and majestic trees but with red bark and fern like foliage.

Larch have no needles in winter as they are deciduous and grow in dense clusters in summer.

So now we are armed with a little more knowledge than the person next to us and can sound really intelligent! 

Merry Christmas and have fun tree spotting!

Photo by Henry Schneider

Frogs & toads

Some observations, some mysteries to solve and an enquiry from a villager.

First up. A bit of a mystery for me! Why were there so many squashed toads on the in October? Because they’d been run over. . Yes ok, enough with the sarcasm... 

Having been run over they were less easy to identify, I am assuming that they were toads but could of course been frogs. What’s the difference? I hear you cry. Toads are warty right? Right! Toads tend to be a bit bigger than frogs and crawl rather than jump. 

There are two of each species native to the UK but you are only likely to see either the ‘common toad’ with the brilliant Latin name Bufo bufo somehow beautifully onomatopoeic. 

The word bufo’s origins actually comes from an ancient belief that a mythical stone thought to be an antidote to poison, called ‘bufonite’, could be found in a toad's head. Those silly people that believe these things!! What do you mean I can’t dig up these 300 million year old trees, it’s just gooey black stuff, it’ll be fine!! I digress... Or the ‘common frog’ Rana temporaria. Somewhat peculiarly, depending on the origin, the word is often wonderfully poetic, in Arabic it means "eye-catching" or "beautiful" in Sanskrit, "king" or "nobility"; Norse "queenly" and in Latin "frog"!

What’s the word for multiple digressions? Neither toads nor frogs need to live in water but they migrate up to a kilometer back to their ancestral breeding grounds in spring, when they may and do indeed get run over. Both require it to be cool and wet but toads mostly live in grassy habitats and frogs' woody habitats, though both may return to water to hunt. 

Perhaps the answer to my mystery is that a habitat was disturbed? Anyone that can shed some light on this for me please get in touch.

I observed a lovely beetle, just along Pottle Street. It was a ‘woodland dor’ beetle, one of eight species of Earth-boring dung beetle. Other species of ‘dor’ beetle are the ‘common dor’ and hilariously the ‘common dumble dor’. Is that where J.K Rowling got the professor's name from, do you think?

Also of note, are the flowering times of our primroses, some of which have been out since mid October, several months earlier than I’d expect. Another flower that is getting my attention is red campion. This flower by our little apple tree has been out since spring. I heard an interesting fact about red campion from... Oh hold on, what’s that sound, yep, it’s a name dropping… Charlie Dimmock, who tells me it’s called red campion although it’s pink, because it was named before we had a word for pink..?

Lastly, an enquiry from a local gentleman farmer. Flying spiders… do they exist?

He was telling me about a flying spider from the New Forest that attaches itself to horses' tails and then crawls on the buttocks of the horse with claws that irritate horses to distraction. Well, this is mostly correct as it turns out except that the story is happier in some respects and more disturbing in others. Happier because, thank goodness, spiders don’t fly, but well… flies do, and that’s exactly what this is: the ‘New Forest’ fly, Hippobosca equina. And it does exactly as I was told, it is a blood sucking fly that can’t store it’s food so needs to feeds often and attaches itself to horses and cattle of the New Forest, where although bothered by this, the animals of this region are habituated to it, but if by any means an animal is transferred from another location and a horse that has thus far existed without it, that’s another story! The fly does land on the horse and attach itself by means of sharp claws, not to the buttocks but, let’s just say, much MUCH more tender areas, it might be an understatement to say that it comes as a bit of a shock to the horse…

photo: Common toad courtesy of Frog Life.

Mixed bag of mushrooms

We’ve got a bit of a mixed bag this week. Just some things that I’ve come across on my wanderings around the village, which haven’t been too adventurous since the arrival of little Dusty, mainly sticking to the paved areas. That’s not to say there’s nothing interesting to see! Others have been sent to me..

I didn’t need to go any further than my drive to see two weird looking mushrooms. Now I am in no way a mushroom expert and have consulted Roger Phillips ‘Mushrooms’ book on this but I’m pretty sure they are: a wavy dark brown one - bay cup Peziza badia - the Peziza part of the name means that it has no foot and badia describes the colour ‘bay’ reddish brown. They have quite a clever method of propagation, waiting for particles of dry sand or other debris to blow across them in a breeze, some of which will land in the cup, triggering the release of tiny spores that are then widely distributed.

The other ‘shrooms on my drive are, and I’m not at all confident about this identification, I think pear-shaped or stump puffball Apioperdon pyriforme until recently, this mushroom’s latin name was Lycoperdon which literally means 'wolf's flatulence', I guess by the scope of reference required for the role, this is the downside of a taxonomist’s job..

I had to venture as far as the Village Hall sports field to find the slightly more characteristic scarlet waxcap Hygrocybe coccinea - Hygrocybe means ‘watery head’, much like I have had for most of this summer, and coccinea as in the food colouring from the cochineal insect, means ‘bright red’.

I’m pretty sure that I saw a giant puffball in the village driving back from Wesbury station one morning at about 7.30am, by the time I went to check it out at about 9am it was gone! Hot property amongst foragers the puffball!! You know who you are!!

Moving on to some flies, don’t say that I don’t spoil you..

First up, the yellow swarming fly Thaumatomyia notata, a species of grass fly, they feed on nectar, so act as a pollinator; go through a couple of generations in summer, then overwinter as adults, this answers the question I was asked by a neighbour “why are there so many flies swarming at the moment?” Fly numbers build up over the summer, then the overwintering flies tend to swarm or congregate in (or when looking for) suitable spots for hibernating. Often these are warm places like your house. Sorry.. Come spring / summer, their larvae though live in the roots of grasses and are carnivorous, feeding on root aphids.

Next, the short-horned fly Anthomyia procellaris, these flies are mainly found in wooded habitats and hedgerows, their larvae are associated with birds nests and feed on bird droppings.

And the bonus this month is a pair of red-legged shield bugs having sex on our wheelie bin. Who said romance is dead!

In praise of wasps

I write this article unashamedly in praise of wasps, the more I find out about them, the more I appreciate them. I was doing a bit of research the other day on pollinators, bees being far from our only pollinating insect, moths and butterflies, beetles, flies and wasps also doing a fine job of it too, and found out that we in Britain have 9000 species of wasp! Comparable to 270 species of bee, all of which pollinate plants, in fact, some of the world's orchids are only pollinated by wasps. 

Only very few species look like the archetypal yellowjacket Vespula vulgaris that all of us picture when we think of a wasp. They come in all sizes, most of them are black and would be mistaken for flies. In fact, the smallest insect in the world is the fairyfly wasp with the amazing latin name, Tinkerbella nana, which is nearly 400 times smaller than a typical ant. 

Wasps are actually in the same order of insects as bees (Hymenoptera) but seem to have missed the memo from the PR department. Perhaps, I’d say almost certainly, their lack of public approval is due to their intensely annoying behaviour when the sun does finally come out and we head into the garden with sugar-ladened treats. This actually only really happens with any vigour later in the season and this is why..

Wasps predate on invertebrates but rather than eating them they chop them into pieces and feed them to their young, as opposed to bees that feed their larvae royal jelly or pollen. On eating the invertebrates, the wasp larva secrete a sugary liquid that they feed to the adult. In August when the nests stop raising larvae the worker wasps run out of food and go in search of picnics and glasses of wine.

Another reason for writing this article on wasps today is so that I can talk about the invasive Asian hornet. A fellow villager asked me to write on this subject and I gladly accepted. 

I had a European hornet in the house the other day, its buzzing by the window was so loud that I honestly thought someone was using a lawn mower outside. The Asian hornet is similar in size to the reddish tinged with yellow abdomen European hornet but is black with less yellow stripes on the abdomen. It predates on honey bees and can eat up to 50 a day, much like many invasive species, it doesn’t have the usual checks and balances that are to be found in its home environment. It first entered Europe sometime around 2004 when it was spotted in France and is thought, like many invasive species, to have been carried along with cargo transported from afar, in this case Asia of course.

The first UK sighting was in 2016 and for many years it has been largely contained, but it seems that the genie may be escaping the bottle, as last year nests were destroyed in 57 different locations, mainly in Kent, which is more than double the previous seven years combined. 16 sightings were made in 2023, again mainly in Kent, but also in Dorset and as far north as Newcastle upon Tyne. As opposed to 2 sightings in both 2022 and 2021. 

It is imperative that sightings be reported if we are in any way to control this species, either through the free Asian Hornet Watch App or by reporting directly to the Great British Non Native Species Secretariat (NNSS).

Fairyfly Tinkerbella nana photo: Dr John T Huber

No Now May

I’m back in the garden this week because I wanted to make a comment on ‘No Now May’, the initiative first promoted by the charity Plantlife.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, it’s pretty much all in the title. We are encouraged, instead of continuing to mow our lawns to a short sward, to allow them to grow for the month of May in which it is most likely that the wild flowers such as daisy, germander speedwell, selfheal etc will flower. I’m writing about this in June as it’s worth asking what happens after May? 

First I guess we need to ask, why let the wildflowers blossom? Having lost all but a very small percentage of our species rich grasslands since the 1930’s our lawns can help to provide much needed food for pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies of course but also beetles, wasps and flies to mention just a few. Now, my lawn is a step too far for most as it isn’t really what one might recognise as a lawn, not having been mowed for the third year. This is not to say it is neglected, but I like to call it ‘horticulture for herbivores’. It’s managed for a set of species, such as many butterflies and moths, that require longer grass to lay eggs and go through the growing stages of larvae (caterpillar) and pupae (chrysalis) before hatching again into the adult winged butterfly or moth. I’m basically tending a caterpillar farm. 

So I’ve  popped over to my neighbour’s beautiful garden, as I spotted the other day that not only is it splendid in its ornament but also managed really well for nature. The key to this is having a selection of different mowing regimes with the front lawn kept short and neat, other areas have been left for the grasses and forbs (non grasses) to flower, with paths mowed shorter between. Different areas of the garden depending on the conditions offered, host a much varied range of wildflowers and grasses. As I write this towards the end of May, the unmowed areas grow a host of wildflowers including bugle, sorrel, plantain, cowslip, hawkbit and speedwell, meadow foxtail are the first of the grass flowers to appear. I know though that after this, birdsfoot trefoil, mouse-eared hawkweed, common yarrow and many more will follow on.

All of these flowers will offer food and sustenance to a variety of insects. The flying insects of which we’ve seen a mid-summer decline of 82% since 1990.

Basically insects need all the help that they can get and so do the birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals that eat them. 

So, many flying insects require pollinating plants to feed from their nectar. But, the larval young of many of these insects require these plants for food to fulfil their very specialised diets of only one to a handful of species of plant #larvalfoodplant 🤟

The charity Butterfly Conservation recently revealed that restoring the natural habitat of long grass for butterflies can increase their numbers by up to 93% and attract a wider range of species.

If that’s not a good enough reason to let our grass grow where we can, I don’t know what is, and don’t stop in June.. .Let it grow on and insects will thank us.

I love my neighbours’ garden as it shows how we can marry the aesthetic of a well kept traditional garden, but also allow it to be a much needed support to nature.

In other news, I found some hedgehog poop in the garden which I’m pleased about!

Solomon's seal

Since having my daughter, little Dusty, my wanderings around the village have become confined to a much smaller area, much to Stevie, the dogs’ chagrin. Perhaps though this is a blessing in disguise as either I’ve become more observant or I’m lucky enough that a few things have caught my attention which are interesting for me to talk about, whether they’re interesting to hear about will remain to be seen! 

If you’re a gardener you’ll know that feeling when a plant that you thought had been lost, pops up somewhere else in the garden, or some seeds that were scattered, seemingly fruitlessly, burst into life when you’d almost forgotten about them. In opening up my metaphorical garden boundary to include the plants beyond, I have the same excitement in experiencing little wonders in the community of wild plants. The only difference is that you lack much of the power to protect nature that is vulnerable to so many pressures. 

My latest treat is Solomon's seal Polygonatum multiflorum, one of my favourite plants, wild or in the garden. For such a beautiful and unique plant it's a surprise that the first part of its Latin name (the genus) describes its roots poly meaning ‘many’ and gonu meaning ‘knee joints’. Its common name also describes its roots, which as far as I can gather refers to the two interlocked triangles that occur where the stem emerges from the root, representing the seal of King Solomon, Though I cannot verify this without digging up some roots. Which is exactly what you would do if you were to use this plant as a medicinal remedy to mitigate against severe bruising and to reduce swelling.

Solomons seal has other such poetic common names as; Davis’s harp and ladder to heaven which do recognise the beauty of the above ground parts of the plant, my favourite though, brought to my attention by Richard Maybe in his Flora Botanica, has to be the Dorset name of sow’s tits, hey, I don’t come up with these things, I’m just the messenger! They’re like that in Dorset!

Solomon’s seal can be found the world over from North America thru Russia to Japan. We here have three native species of Solomon's seal: The one above, and also angular Solomon’s seal Polygonatum odoratum and whorled Solomon’s seal Polygonatum verticillatum. Just to add a bit of spice there is also a hybrid made up of two of the native species - Polygonatum multiflorum x odoratum = P. x hybridum known as garden Solomon’s seal which has become widely naturalised into the countryside.

The wonderfully named Charlotte de la Bédoyère in her book Starting out with Native Plants tells of its attractiveness to bumblebees, but again, I am yet to observe this.

Where I found this plant growing, it was amongst bluebell and wood anemone that are both indicators of ancient woodland (read more about this in my April 2023 piece), so I looked up solomon’s seal in the National Vegetation Classifications (NVC’s) to see if solomon’s seal was also an indicator plant and found it to exist in the W8 classification along with the two above, informing me that very close to my home are little reminders left behind from a lowland ancient woodland of mixed oak and ash, and from there I can search all the related plants to its native plant community. Well it was exciting to me!

Scarlet elfcup

I wouldn’t ordinarily write about fungi, not being confident in their identification and certainly wouldn’t comment on foraging them for food until I’ve tried them and lived to tell the tale! But the fungi that I found on my walk looked so interesting that I wanted to talk about them.

The scarlet elfcup, Sarcoscypha austriaca, that I did know the name of (its common name that is, I had no idea about it’s Latin name) it’s such a delight when you stumble across these, as once spotted, they appear so obviously there, but at the same time they are so easily missed. I usually find that they are inaccessible, on the bank the other side of a stream or on a steep slope. My find was on one of our villages' quiet roadside verges at the base of a hedge. 

We’re lucky that the scarlet elfcup is fairly common in the UK and also has good distribution. I hope that this continues as it grows on deciduous wood such as hazel, willow and elm but its favoured host is well rotted ash wood. With the loss of ash that we will experience with ash dieback Hymenoscyphus fraxineus we are likely to see a short term increase of the elfcup and then a steady decline, unless that is, new dieback resistant strains replace the old ash that have been lost, but it’s bound to be a bit of a tumultuous time for this fungus and a good example of the knock on effects of an imported harmful plant pathogen. Ash dieback was imported in 2012 from Europe on ash saplings that were infected from Asia where the virus is not lethal and is predicted to kill 80% of native ash trees. But I digress..

The next fungus that was pretty easy to spot, in fact it was hard to miss but has not been so easy to identify. 

From what I can find, but stand to be corrected, I think it is something called Stump Flux (who I think may have been the drummer in Scarlet Elfcup’s latest band) that is a mixture of micro fungus, bacteria and yeast in the genus Cryptococcus that accumulates carotene, unsurprisingly, the same pigment found in carrots. Stump flux grows and feeds on the sap of damaged trees and this makes sense as I found it growing on the freshly flayed branch of a sycamore that produces large quantities of sap when cut.

No dig..

As I walk around my village, I see that some of our more industrious citizens are preparing their vegetable beds for the seeding and planting out of what will hopefully become a bountiful yield of scrumptious fruit and veg this year.

‘No dig’ vegetable growing has become the buzzword around allotments and veg patches across the country over the past few years, largely led by Charles Dowding’s YouTube tutorials and well documented experiments on his own plots not too far from here in Shepton Montague, Somerset. 

Indeed, I practised this method, in my own ramshackle kind of way, on my allotment in Bath when I had it, mainly because I was busy in my gardening business and needed to manage my allotment in such a way that it wasn’t knee high in weeds if I couldn’t make it there for the month of May. I had mowed paths, meadow, ornamental flowers and veg growing and I mulched it with pretty much anything that I could find, but the majority of this mulch was grass clippings from the mown paths and those of the grass areas surrounding other allotments, I kept the edge of neighbouring plots neat and collected much material for myself, win win.

It wasn’t until I listened to a podcast by Dr Elaine Ingham from the Soil Food Web though, that I understood to some degree the science of no dig gardening and farming for that matter.

It all has to do with vegetational succession. Primary succession occurs when the land has been laid bare to rock after an event such as scouring by glaciers or volcanic lava flow. There is no organic matter (soil) for plants to grow in, in order for soil to be made up again, a long process of colonisation by lichen, mosses and fungi begins. These break down and make way for other plants such as grasses, annual plants, perennial plants, and later on shrubs, early succession trees, through to old growth forest. This can take many hundreds or thousands of years. 

Another form of vegetational succession is, you won’t be surprised to hear, secondary succession. This occurs when a catastrophic event disturbs the existing ecosystem, stripping the land of all or most of its vegetation, but the soil containing a seed bank and microorganisms, to some degree remains. A typical example of this might be a forest fire or flood but could also be a ploughed field or dug vegetable plot. Obviously with the soil already present, secondary succession is a much faster process than primary succession, but it still requires the rebuilding of the above and below ground ecosystems. 

Good soil for growing vegetables has a high content of beneficial microorganisms such as protozoa, nematodes, bacteria and fungi. These have a mutualistic relationship with plants, the plants releasing sugars called exudates, each one a different flavour that the relevant microorganism wants and in return the plant asks for a different mineral needed for itself. These minerals such as the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) that gardeners often use help the plant to grow and flower in various ways.

There are many more minerals though, such as, iron, zinc, boron, manganese and selenium that help the plant adapt to its growing conditions, fight diseases or insect attack etc. In order for the plant to access these, the plant roots need to extend down into the silt, sand, clay or rock (that make up soil) where the minerals are held. A strawberry root can extend 2m into the ground and many plants reach much further than this, plants in the grass family may extend 8 or 10 metres down. As soil builds over time with the successional breakdown of plants, it develops from very high in bacteria through to, in an old growth forest, being very high in fungus. 

A young soil high in bacteria will grow weeds in profusion, and this is what we tend to create when we dig the soil over. Some vegetables prefer more bacteria and others more fungi but it is the relatively undisturbed building of this soil in the no dig system with both bacteria and fungi, lots of healthy microorganisms and creatures such as arthropods and earthworms that vegetables will grow best in and they will be able to extend their roots further down to access a greater degree of minerals. In terms of our own health, the theory goes: If the plant has all of the nutrition it requires, we will also be getting all the nutrition we require. 

This piece was going to be about the potential health benefits of eating foraged foods and growing perennial veg that has had the time to grow deep roots, but I’ve gone on too long already, so we’ll have to draw our own conclusions on that. 

Anyway, whatever we’re doing in the garden, I hope that it keeps us fit, breathing fresh air and feeling the sun, on the occasions it deigns to make an appearance, on our faces! Happy gardening.

Photo by Steven Weeks

Feeding the birds..

I just this week went out and bought a supply of bird seed having run out some time ago. The garden is now awash with blue, great and coal tits, nuthatches, house sparrows, a spotted woodpecker if it’s cold and one jackdaw, oh and the pheasants and partridge cleaning up after everyone. Every time I top up on bird feed I wonder if I'm really doing the right thing. If I’m being really honest with myself, I know that I’m feeding the birds for my own enjoyment of seeing them and the life they fill the garden with, and although I hope that in feeding the birds that visit the feeders I am making their lives a little easier, this is contrasted by the knowledge that I am probably upsetting the natural order of things. 

Wild birds eat different things according to their species and the food that we supply in our garden bird feeders favours only some of our wild birds. I can’t help noticing also that almost all of the seeds and nuts supplied in bought bird food are non-native, which acts as another clue for me that we are disturbing the natural balance as the nutrient values of these foods are different from wild food. Studies on blue tits by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) show there is evidence to suggest that the higher fat content of garden bird food from feeders creates weaker offspring with a lower fledgling success rate. 

Another perhaps more important reason that supplementary feeding of wild birds could be problematic is that it creates an imbalance in competition. Blue tits and great tits for example, are dominant species, often winning fights for the available food on feeders that they are adept at using, this advantage will impact on subordinate species whose numbers are in decline such as willow and marsh tits, that a 2021 study in Biology Conservation, has shown lose nearly half of their nesting sites to blue tits. Also our many migrating birds that come back in spring suffer this same disadvantage. To add to this the spread of many disease epidemics among birds that visit our gardens are attributed to garden feeders. 

If I look around my local area there is a good chance that in this rural Wiltshire location, the birds have a lot of ‘natural’ food in ready supply. 

In my garden, taking my cue from the natural surroundings, I am trying to grow more of the natural food of wild birds, leaving the seed heads or buds for the birds to enjoy. I notice that goldfinches are particularly attracted to the seed heads of marsh thistle and that blue tits happily munch on hazel buds. I leave ivy unclipped to supply nutritious berries with a good supply of fat. The author in the above report suggests ‘wildlife gardening as an alternative to feeders - that is, leaving part of our gardens wild or planting native trees and seasonal fruits, seeds and berries’. These, he said, ‘would be more likely to encourage natural feeding and with a wider variety of foods for different species’. Leaving the seedheads of plants such as lesser knapweed, teasels, purple loosestrife, yarrow and meadowsweet, to mention just a few, that look great in the garden would be an easy win in helping to supply wild birds with some supplementary natural food at the times they most need it whilst also fulfilling our desire to see birds in our gardens.

We may well consider supplementary feeding during the coldest periods of winter, when calories are much needed, and at the height of the nesting season when birds are expending a lot of energy gathering insects to feed their young. 

My gut feeling though, about anything where we are ‘helping’ nature, is to stay as close to the root, if you forgive the pun, of the original natural system as we can.

Photo by Lidia Stawinska

Wild Seed for native plant sanctuary

One of the ways to grow wildflowers in your garden is to collect local seed. I’ve already started in August as plants set seed but this will carry on through to winter. 

Not only are fairly common wildflowers put under stress by our use of the land in Britain for farming, housing, roads and industry, but also, are many of the more unusual plants, some of which that I’m trying to propagate for my garden, such as: greater celandine; woolly thistle; bird vetch; gromwell, woody nightshade, kidney vetch and vipers bugloss. All found either in the village where I live in Wiltshire or within a few miles.

Why would I want to grow these plants in my garden though? Aren’t they best left in the countryside? That depends on who is managing the countryside. I see time after time that rare and unusual wildflowers are not being given a chance to proliferate due to those responsible for the management of land following maintenance schedules that are in discord with the needs of the wild plant and the wildlife that it supports. This matters because these plants all play their own special part in holding the balance of the natural world. 

This works by way of a fascinating tussle between plants protecting themselves against attack from insects by means of unpalatable chemicals or physical deterrents / barriers. It takes thousands of years for these relationships to develop, leaving most herbivorous insects with only one or very few plants, usually in the same family or even genus, that they can eat. It’s a very delicate situation, and an ill thought out mow or strim, not only removes the wild host plant for that year and lessens its chances of growing another, but more often than not causes fatal harm to an extraordinary and vulnerable insect. This also ripples up the food chain. For the 97% of terrestrial birds that feed their young on insects every year during nesting, this is a very big deal. Not to mention the small mammals, reptiles and amphibians that eat them also. The irony here being, if the countryside isn’t a safe place for nature then perhaps our gardens are.

If though, you are thinking of doing a similar thing, please recognise that there is a great responsibility in gathering seeds from the wild and it is to be kept to the absolute minimum. There is a very fine balance to be made between gathering a small amount of seed to build up a ‘support bank’ of wild plants in our gardens and reducing wild plants' stock’s ability to reproduce. I would urge anybody to seek out specimens in local gardens to share seeds or cuttings before seed collecting from plants in the wild.

As far as the law is concerned don’t dig up a plant in the wild at all, only take part of the plant (pick flowers, collect seed or take cuttings) if you know that they are not in a SSSI; another protected site, on the Schedule 8 list of the Countryside Act 1981 or on the Red Data List. So express caution and restraint if in doubt.

Wild plants - best practice

Beyond the law there are some really sensible guidelines that in forager lore are taken as good rules of thumb to abide by. 

• Never harvest endangered, rare or threatened species

• Never take plant material from a SSSI, nature reserve or other protected site

• Take no more than 5% or one twentieth of the plant / seed, and or only from a plant in amongst a minimum of 20 plants / large patches of plants 

• For identification purposes take photographs rather than samples

• Be careful not to damage other vegetation when gathering material

• Take only the minimum amount required and must not be used for commercial gain

• Always know the name and understand the characteristics of the plant that you are harvesting from.

See the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI) Code of Conduct for good guidance.

Brimstone & Buckthorn

A couple of months ago I spotted a brimstone butterfly (gonepteryx rhamni). With its light yellow open wings, it is rumoured to be the origin of the word butterfly ‘butter coloured fly’. The one that visited us is likely to be the female being pale green.

On reading about it I found out that its larvae (caterpillars) eat only common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus) so where are they? Of course the butterfly could have just been passing through. I’ve not seen these plants locally but would love to know if anyone knows of any in the area?

Both of these plants look pretty similar to dogwood (Cornus alba). Common buckthorn are not a particularly showy shrub / small tree that has black berries on about now. Alder buckthorn grow slightly larger to about 6m and have smaller berries that start off white / green, then red and mature to dark purple / black.

The adult brimstone butterfly is attracted to purple nectar food sources and after building up its resources on plants such as thistle, selfheal, knapweed, scabious and wild marjoram will prepare for winter hibernation amongst thickets of ivy and bramble, so I’ll be mindful of this when gardening over winter. 

Ivy’s a good one to mention actually, it has two distinct phases of growth. Its first phase is known as juvenile and this is when the characteristic lobed leaves and climbing habit occur. Left a little longer, however, and the plant matures into its adult form that takes on a shruby nature, is non-climbing and has oval leaves. Only when adult does ivy flower and fruit. The small yellow / green flowers are pretty insignificant looking and appear in dome shaped clusters, but don’t underestimate the value of these as a great late food source for pollinating insects from September to November with bees, hoverflies, wasps and late flying butterflies buzzing and fluttering all over it. 

In November as it transitions from flower to berry and on into December and January it supplies valuable fat rich food for birds such as thrushes and blackbirds, the more mature the ivy the more flowers and berries it will supply! Not to mention the habitat that it provides for bats, overwintering insects, birds and small mammals.

We have two native ivy’s, common ivy (Hedera helix) which is widespread across the UK and Atlantic ivy (Hedera hibernica) that is found more on the west coast of Britain and in Ireland. They’re pretty hard to tell apart especially as there is a lot of hybridisation between ivy’s but common ivy generally has 3 to 5 lobed leaves and Atlantic ivy 5 to 7.

So if you have a nice mature flowering and fruiting ivy that needs a trim, it might be a good idea for this butterfly and other wildlife to wait until spring and watch out for a brimstone in February / March as they are often one of the earliest to take flight after hibernation.

Photo by David Duarte Crespo

Bramble - Rubus fruticosus agg

Ouch!! I hear myself say as once again a bramble attacks me or defends itself, the same thing I guess. I literally keep a needle on my bedside table to pick out those little tips of bramble thorn that impale themselves into my hand, persisting in reddening and irritating more until I dig them out. How can something so small hurt so much?

The bramble is, in my mind, one of the few wild plants that is untameable, truly wild. Its nature unboundable in any horticultural sense. 

For so much of the year it is a weed in the garden or a hindrance to country walks, taking as its own, field gates and styles, an absolute pain in the...ars…neck. Until, that is, the latter end of summer and in autumn, then it takes on a whole new persona, the sweet, delicious, finger staining delight of the blackberry.

Its wild nature doesn’t stop there though. We all know what a blackberry is right! But ask a botanist and watch them go pale as they hope they are not going to have to describe what taxonomic classification it fits into. For what is just a bramble to you or me, is one of an untold number of subspecies of its overarching latin name Rubus fruticosus, or Rubus fruticosus agg (aggregate) to be more correct and to allow for a large amount of speculation on the subject. In John Wright’s The Forager’s Calendar, 350 or so ‘micro-species’ is the number aired and Richard Maybe in his Flora Britannica mentions 400 but these numbers are something of a finger held to the wind. Such is the ambiguity of this plant that if you were an expert in their study you would have your own ‘ology’ as a batologist. Worth remembering that one for a pub quiz question!

These different plants lead to many and varied fruits, some small and hard, others sour, still more large and succulent. If you find a good one remember it and keep it to yourself because all blackberries are not alike and you may not find another as good!

I shouldn’t really be writing about blackberries for the October edition of the News, however, as folk law has it that if you eat them after Michaelmas, the 29th September, the Devil is supposed to have spat on them. This event, we would be led to believe, occurred when Lucifer, after fighting with Archangel Michael, was somewhat peeved after landing on a blackberry bush. Another reason might be because Michaelmas was, in medieval times, a useful date to delineate the seasons, ending the harvest and preparing for the coming winter. But it is most likely because of the grey mold or bacteria that are more prevalent in this season and can turn the fruit sour.

If you find a nice juicy blackberry in October go ahead and eat it I say but watch out for those thorns!

Image by Eric Michelat from Pixabay

Where do all the insects go in winter?

Where do all the insects go in winter? I hear you never ask.

Which is just as well because I don’t have the answer! This is something that I’ve been thinking about more and more though, and as I watch the countryside, I hope that some of the secrets begin to unveil themselves so that I can manage my own garden in a way that’s as nature friendly as possible.

To answer this we need to know a little about insect life cycles. I don’t suppose that we’ve got time here to look at all 20,000 of our British insect species and the answer of course is, it depends on which insect. 

Insects, being cold blooded, can't usually survive a British winter being exposed to the elements so employ various strategies to overwinter. If we were to look only at butterflies we’d start to get an idea of the picture.

There are only 59 resident or regular migrant butterflies to Britain and they go through 4 stages of life cycle - ovum (egg), larvae (caterpillar), pupa (christalis) and imago (butterfly).

The vast majority of plant eating insects are what’s called specialist feeders, this means that they have evolved alongside either one or very few specific plants and built up resistance to their defensive chemicals designed to be unpalatable to other insects. Adults are more often generalist feeders able to use the nectar of various plants which is basically sugary water. Butterflies are no different and eggs will be laid on or nearby the food plant of the caterpillar with the larvae going through several stages called instars, moulting its skin and emerging as a slightly, or towards the later instars, quite radically different looking caterpillar.

To make the original question slightly more tricky, Butterfly Conservation tell us that British butterflies, depending on the species, can overwinter as any one of their life cycle stages with 9 overwintering as eggs, 31 spending it as caterpillars, 11 as a chrysalis and the remaining as adults.

Caterpillars can wrap themselves with silk in grass sheaths, or leaves, bury themselves underground, or slow down their munching at the base of grass tussocks. A chrysalis might hang from a low branch or be buried in leaves and adults find shelter or leave the country.

Probably the four butterflies that I notice most are the meadow brown (Maniola jurtina) peacock (Aglais io), red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) and comma (Polygonia c-album). 

Two of these species, the peacock and comma butterflies go into a state similar to hibernation as adults in sites such as on sheltered tree trunks, in hollow trees, woodpiles or the crevices of buildings. Probably our most common butterfly, the meadow brown overwinters as a caterpillar at the base of grasses and the red admiral generally and sensibly in my opinion, overwinters in the warmer climes of southern Europe and North Africa.

The peacock, red admiral and comma butterflies, by the way, all share hop (Humulus lupulus) or common nettle (Urtica dioica) as their sole food source. With the larvae food plant of the meadow brown as mentioned above being native grasses.

So how does this help me manage my garden? I guess it’s a balance, as least disturbance as possible protects overwintering insects, but a meadow for example, to invigorate the growth of plants pollinated by insects (nectar providing plants), disturbance, light and reduction of competition by the cutting of grasses is required. My personal preference is to leave mostly alone and seed native wild flowers outside of the majority of the grassland. Tidy to a level that is minimal but tolerable, and allow areas of untouched scrub, but each of us have our limits and if anyone comes to my garden they’ll know my limits are loose bordering on feral, much like myself.

Image by Couleur from Pixabay

Orchid spotting

Now is the time to go looking for wild orchids. In fact any time from May to September you may find an orchid flowering.

There are 57 species of orchid in the UK, most of which are pollinated by insects, but to confuse the issue of identification orchids can have immense variability even within species as they hybridise readily, with the resulting plant displaying different characteristics from the parent plants. 

Considering some of their rarity, as a plant family orchids are incredibly successful, with somewhere in the region of 28,000 species, they make up nearly 10% of all plant species worldwide. 

The seeds of orchids are tiny and do not store enough food to grow on their own, so they have symbiotic relationships with specific mycorrhizal fungi in the soil upon which the early stages of their growth are entirely dependent for all of their nutrients until they are able to grow leaves and photosynthesise, in turn supplying specific sugars called exudates to the fungi. Some orchids like the bird’s nest orchid (Neottia nidus-avis) with its caramel coloured flowers and no leaves or green chlorophyll are entirely dependent on soil fungi for their nutrition throughout their lifetime. These grow in shady beech woods and can be found on hazel coppice. Not that I’ve seen one yet, though I'm keeping my eyes peeled!

For this reason, buying a packet of orchid seeds and scattering them in your garden is unlikely to yield results, but by changing the cultivation of parts of the garden and leaving areas unmown for a while in the spring / summer you may be really lucky and have one or some pop up.

Grass verges, meadows and wood pastures are probably your best bet for spotting orchids, with the giveaway name of the common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) being one of the most likely that you will see. The scented flowers of this orchid are pale pink with darker spots and stripes on their three lobed lips (lower decorative landing pad petal) and are highly attractive to day-flying moths. 

That’s the tongue twister of the month sorted! - Three lobed lipped lower landing pad petals.

Another that you might see is the pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis), this is a slightly smaller, more densely packed flower, or inflorescence I should say as it contains about 100 individual deep pink / purple flowers. 

I’ve been lucky enough to see both of these on my walks with Stevie and am keeping an eye out for other species too.

Do let me know if you’ve seen any or anything unusual in your garden or out and about!

It goes without saying that digging up any plant in the wild is illegal (without the landowners permission), this whole area of legislation is pretty complicated so you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law for picking flowers also, with the orchids its best to admire them and leave them be.

Image by Denise Wolters from Pixabay

Violet oil beetle

Having had reported to me a couple of sightings of the violet oil beetle (Meloe violaceus) in April and May respectively (which I am very jealous about!), one in a garden and one in a pasture field, I thought I’d share a bit on this little beauty as they’re interesting guys - and not so little actually as far as beetles are concerned with the larger female growing up to 3 cm in length.

In his book Bringing Nature Home, Doug Tallamy has some amazing facts about beetles, he tells us that if diversity is a measure, beetles are far and away the most successful multicellular organisms alive today. There are over 300,000 named species of beetle, with likely many more to be named yet. That's only a little less than the estimated 320,000 world's plant species. There are six times as many described beetles as there are all vertebrates combined, 34 times more than birds. Astonishingly 30% of all animals are beetles!

The violet oil beetle is one of only four left of the eight oil beetles native to Britain. The other four have gone extinct, probably due to the lack of wildflower rich, semi-natural grasslands which have been in serious decline since the 1950’s mostly because of the change in agricultural methods. Their diet being lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) and soft grasses.

The rugged oil beetle is rare and the short-necked oil beetle is very rare, the violet and black oil beetle are the most locally common, that’s not to say nationally common, of which none of them are. In fact, according to Buglife, only three sightings of the violet oil beetle have been made in the east side of Britain since the 1960’s. They are only really to be found in the South West, and the Peak and Lake districts.

In spring, the larvae climb out of the hole that the female beetle burrowed in may/June the previous year to lay her eggs, these ‘triungulins’ hitch a ride on a solitary bee’s back to the bees nest in which they proceed to eat the eggs of the host bee, the larvae grow and then go through another stage eating the pollen meant for the bees young before pupating and emerging as an adult the next spring, she then mates digs a burrow to lay her eggs and the whole process starts again. 

Because of this, the violet oil beetle is an indicator of a good local solitary bee population and of high quality wildflower rich grasslands.

The oil part of the name refers to a noxious substance released from their knees if disturbed, allowing them to travel above ground in view of insect eating birds and without fear of being eaten.  

If you have been lucky enough to have made a sighting of an oil beetle or in fact any unusual insect or plant, you can do your part as a citizen scientist by submitting a record of it on iRecord.

And/or send me pics of anything unusual in your garden as I’d love to know!

Image by Rezső Terbe from Pixabay

White and yellow flowers

Spring is in full swing now, thank goodness. It felt like a long time coming this year.

Over the last couple of months around the village, looking at the hedgerows, field margins, road verges and wilder parts of our gardens you’ll probably have noticed some of the spring flowers brightening up our days. 

Early on, we saw primrose Primula vulgaris and daffodil Narcissus pseudonarcissus, then lesser celandine Ficaria verna, wood anemone Anemone nemorosa and goat willow Salix caprea; a little later came greater stitchwort Stellaria holostea, dandelion Taraxacum officinale, gorse Ulex europaeus and broom Cytisus scoparius and into May, ramsons Allium ursinum and creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens to name a few.

The thing that these plants have in common, whether herbaceous, shrub or tree is that they all have yellow or white and yellow flowers. Most of these plants are woodland or woodland edge species and in order to reproduce through seed, need to flower and attract pollinators before the woodland canopy comes into leaf and shades them out. 

Most of these plant species will have markings on their petals that cannot be seen with the human eye but can be detected by the highly specialised eyesight of pollinating insects. These markings direct insects to the nectar within the flower and ensure that pollen is collected in the process of feeding. Flowers will have different markings particular to their species to try to encourage the pollinating insect to visit many flowers of the same species and subsequently deposit the (male) pollen from the stamen onto the stigma (female part) of flowers in the process. 

Reproduction is pretty complex with flowering plants, most plants are hermaphroditic having male and female parts in the same flower, and can reproduce with the male and female parts of the same flower; some, reproduce using separate male and female flowers on the same plant (monoecious - meaning ‘one house’) and other still, such as the goat willow above, reproduce by having one plant of the species with only male flowers, and another with only female flowers (dioecious), the pollinating insect must visit different sexed plants of the same species in order to reproduce. Holly Ilex aquifolium, is also dioecious and famously, will only have the berries on the female plants, so if you have a holly that doesn’t have berries in autumn / winter, this may be why.

The shape and structure of a flower also guides the appropriate insect towards it and this plays another part in attracting insects to the plant's flower, efficiency of reproduction is key and all of this needs communicating to the pollinating insect. For the spring flowers, their biggest issues are that the number of pollinating insects can be very low, as can the light levels compared with summer. Yellow has been shown to be a highly effective colour to stand out in these conditions and subsequently is a good strategy to attract insects towards them. 

The process by which flowers grow, and know when to open their flowers is known as photoperiodism and as we get into May and light levels rise and lengthen many more plants are opening up their flowers and putting out their advertisements. Many of these will also have colours through the red and blue spectrum and may be showier to be attractive amongst increased competition. Most pollinating insects are known as generalists, which means that they don’t have a specialist relationship with one plant in particular and can feed from a variety of different plant flowers, though different pollinators are attracted to different colours and scent and adapted to flower shape. This month we will of course see the iconic bluebell in the woodland around, we’ll also see columbine Aquilegia vulgaris and comfrey Symphytum officinale to name a few. How hard they have to work for a living..

Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

National Vegetation Classifications

I bent down to take a closer look at an insignificant looking little plant in a ditch the other day and noticed that, as with many of these plants, it was more impressive up close but also that on looking it up that it had a story to tell.

Recently, in wondering what to do about an alternative to the conundrum of species poor garden lawns, I’ve been reading a lot into grassland habitats and have stumbled across an Aladdin's cave of literature on our natural and semi-natural meadows and pastures. All have National Vegetation Classifications (NVC’s) and keys to their identification. 

You’ll not be surprised to hear that it doesn’t stop there...

I understand that we can, by looking at the plants in our garden or the wider landscape, determine roughly what aspect it faces, whether it is wet or dry, or more acidic or alkaline on the pH scale. I also understand that, as mentioned in May 2022’s issue, certain plants such as wood anemone Anemone nemorosa can be indicators of, for example, ancient woodland.

On this theme I was looking up primrose Primula vulgaris as I hadn’t noticed it mentioned in the NVC grassland keys, it turns out on looking it up that the Dog’s mercury Mercurialis perennis (what a great name) that I’d bent down to inspect can be a key indicator plant of ancient woodlands, those being woodlands that have grown into a rich ecosystem and been present since at least 1600 CE, and along with this, every wild plant you can think of, each of them is an indicator of one or another ancient habitat and these become more specific as you add other plants into the mix. 

According to the NVC field guide to woodlands, dog’s mercury might well lead one to investigate the surrounding area for ash Fraxinus excelsior and field maple Acer campestre as it is the distinctive field layer species, and if this were to have primrose and ground ivy Glechoma hederacea growing within it, for example, would fall into a subcategory of the above. 

My little investigation was less of an in depth study than a curiosity, but it goes to show that the plant, the community of plants that it grows within and the region will all point towards a specific habitat. What’s more it also highlights the fragility of the landscape once conditions change due to occurrences such as a warming or cooling climate or something more direct such as an altering of the landscape mechanically or by way of additions such as fertilisers.

This one plant in a ditch next to a road on the edge of a field, may well be telling a story of once being part of the makeup of an ancient woodland and is along with many of its plant community a clue to a past landscape. But it also gives us the clue that if the land here were left to its own devices and given long enough, this is likely what it would become again.

Photo by Jack Blueberry on Unsplash

Deadwood

We are becoming quite used to terms to describe various habitats that benefit nature, often in relation to their decline, such as, woodland (especially ancient), woodland pasture, scrub, wetland etc. Less often talked about are the micro-habitats such as deadwood.

Often found as standing deadwood or fallen limbs, deadwood is not just a host to invertebrates such as the charismatic stag beetle Lucanus cervus, many fungi and lichen and also bryophytes such as mosses and liverworts; but also birds, bats and other mammals, reptiles, amphibians and, when in water, fish.

In a 2011 report by Buglife it was estimated that 13% of all species of plants and animals known in the UK are directly dependant on deadwood habitats while many more are dependant on saproxylic organisms themselves. A saproxylic species such as certain beetles (approximately 2000 in the uk) and fungi depend on dead or dying wood for at least part of their lifecycle. However, a report in 1989 (Speight) estimated that 40% of all saproxylic species were on the verge of extinction over much of their range, while the others were in decline. 

Fungi are getting so much well deserved good press now as we learn more about mycorrhizae growing in association with plant roots and the mutualistic relationship that this fosters. They are also the primary agents of wood decay and, along with saproxylic insects, play a key role in nutrient cycling and  ecosystem functioning, which is a fancy way to say that they make the natural world work a whole lot better: as wood decomposes, it returns important nutrients to the soil that in turn support new growth. It also supports as much as a fifth of all woodland species, many of which are considered rare or threatened such as the stag beetle mentioned above.

Where we have agency in our gardens or any other land that we may own or manage, and if it’s safe, we can leave deadwood where it stands.  Maybe use it as a plant support or, when fallen, let it decompose naturally. Or if that’s a step too far down the eco warrior / tree hugger path, tidy it away into a corner somewhere but then leave it be. While all the good stuff that we can’t see is going on as it decomposes we might home a hedgehog, toad, frog or newt.

Standing and fallen deadwood, along with veteran trees, present by far the best insect hotel, bird feeder, bird box, bat box and bee box available and much more besides - and any that are safely left in the garden or countryside are offering untold benefits to our ecology.

I might start a new campaign, ‘keep Britain untidy’ but not litter. Don’t get me started…

Photo by Nick Smith https://nicksmithphotography.com

Tree shapes and oddities

Walking around the village in winter and seeing the deciduous trees bare of leaves and silhouetted against the sky, highlights some of the interesting tree shapes and oddities, making them appear more prominent.

There are several lime trees Tilia x europaea with excess growth, which looks like there’s a bush growing in the middle of the tree, with a flat bottom at just about maximum nibble height for deer and cows.

When you start looking, you see this a lot, mostly on limes but also on ash Fraxinus excelsior, especially since ash dieback disease (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus formerly known as Chalara fraxinea) entered the country in 2012 and subsequently found its feet.

This epicormic growth happens when trees of certain species put out extra growth from formerly dormant adventitious buds on their trunk or branches when under stress. Often because they have been pollarded (pruning to the top of the tree which promotes growth), but also because of other environmental damage such as drought or through having their bark chewed. This growth is often called water shoots and gardeners often know these from pruning their apple and pear trees.

Another feature that becomes more obvious when the landscape is less lush, are the lumps and bumps on the trunks of trees. These burrs, often found on oak Quercus robur trees, but also on other trees such as ash, beech Fagus sylvatica and walnut Juglans regia, are similar to the above stress shoots but the lumpy outgrowth is caused by the trees inner grain having developed in a deformed manner and enveloped small knots formed from dormant buds. 

These burrs are highly valued in furniture making and for use in turning.

Lastly, from me anyway, are the ‘witches brooms’ that can be seen occasionally in a birch Betula pendula tree. From a distance they look like birds nests, but they are actually an infection of the tree’s buds or shoots associated with the parasitic fungus Taphrina betulina and causing localised growth, but they are not fully understood, much like witches, and could also be caused by other fungi, insects or viruses.

On that cheery note I’ll leave you!