Fig-leaved Goosefoot (Chenopodium ficifolium) Photo  By Dalgial – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15995459

Dear Readers, naturalists (including myself) are often nervous about using new technology to identify plants or insects or, indeed, anything else. “What’s wrong with a field guide!” we cry, “and get a hand lens! Or some binoculars!” But gradually, many of us have realised the potential of phone apps like Merlin or Plant Net, or some of the extremely useful expertise-based websites, such as iNaturalist or Facebook groups. I, for one, have been astonished at the wealth of expertise on some of the groups dedicated to wild plants, spiders and bees and wasps on Facebook.

However, AI is a whole new ballgame, so in my Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) magazine this month I was very interested to read an article by botanist David Steere. He decided to try out Google Gemini AI to see how it would perform, and how it compared to his own observations.

First thing was, don’t upload your photos already named with the species, or the AI will ‘cheat’.

Secondly, Steere found that you needed to upload as much information as possible with the photo – size, habitat, plant height etc. He then told AI what he thought it was, and asked it to verify. Its  great strength is looking in detail at the photo, going down to pixel level to look at hairs on the stem etc (though it occurs to me that the quality of the photo will have an impact on this).

If you don’t include additional information, AI does get things wrong – Steere describes how it  decided that the Fig-leaved Goosefoot in the photo above was a young Tree Mallow (Malva arborea). When he gave it the size of the plant  and the location, AI got it right. The key thing here is, of  course, that Steere knew what he was looking at, and could correct the AI. A lot of us won’t have that depth of knowledge.

Steere found that the sources that the AI was using for identification were sound – including Clive Stace’s recently updated Flora of the British Isles, and the BSBI’s own website. It was also very good at comparing closely related plants, and compiling a useful table of the differences between them. But he came to the conclusion that, at present, Gemini AI at least is only really useful for botanists with a bit of experience, who have a rough idea of what they’re looking at. I would add that it makes sense always to go back to the field guide and see if what you’ve been ‘told’ makes sense.

I suspect that AI will have a role to play in identification, but it’s far from the last word. Personally, I’d rather trust a human being with experience and knowledge, who can explain why what I’m looking at is what it is. Plus, it’s the enthusiasm of humans for their subject which is so contagious and brings such joy. I’ve not yet met an AI engine  that does the same.

I am very curious to hear about how you are all getting on with the AI revolution (if indeed you are :-)). Pop something in the comments if you’re using it! Like all technologies, it’s neither good nor bad, it’s just how humans choose to use it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nihgov/38876617041

Dear Readers, over the past decade there have been real advances in understanding the role of our microbiome – the community of  bacteria (and other organisms) that live on and inside us – in our health. Alongside this, we’ve realised that although antibiotics have had a tremendously beneficial effect on keeping us alive, they can be devastating for this community, wiping out all but a handful of bacteria in our gut. Farmers realised that giving antibiotics to farm animals, even when they weren’t sick, meant that they put on weight more quickly, largely because the drugs killed off many bacteria with a role in healthily processing food, and left only those who turned into fat (gross simplification, but you get the idea).

This has been a concern for hospitals too. One particular bacteria, Enterococcus faecium, increases  after antibiotic treatment, and can cause hospital-acquired infection. However, a study at Memorial Sloan Kettering  Cancer Centre in New York showed that the drop in microbiome diversity, and the increase in E. facium, was increased by up to 24 percent if the person taking the drugs also had a sugary diet.

The antibiotics kill off most of the beneficial bacteria, and then the sugar seems to act as ‘rocket fuel’ for the remaining ones. Other experiments on mice showed that it was the combination of antibiotics and a sugary diet (even one that included fructose from fruit rather than refined sugar) could cause an increase in ‘bad’ bacteria by up to 33 percent by day six.

Doctors often recommend smoothies and milkshakes to cancer patients, as this is something that they can often tolerate. However, if they are being treated with antibiotics it may be wise  to limit them, depending on the situation. It’s certainly something that I’ll be bearing in mind if I need antibiotics at any point – it’s tough enough for the helpful bacteria after being blasted without encouraging the ones that remain.

The advice for rebalancing your microbiome  after antibiotics is to eat as wide a range as possible of plants. Our ‘good’ bacteria  largely thrive on fibre, which the ‘bad’ ones can’t break down fibre (one reason for the upset tummy that we often get when on the drugs). Though to be honest, cutting down on sugar and eating more  fibre is the general advice anyway.

The New Scientist  article is here

The research paper is here.

The Golden Apples of the Sun (Photo by Liam Moloney from https://www.flickr.com/photos/tir_na_nog/3931125486

Dear Readers, as you might expect I am still thinking about my friend Ann, and her love of poetry. She adored W.B. Yeats, and this was one of her favourites. Like so many of his poems, it feels perfectly realised, with not a word out of place. See what you think.

The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Beetroot found next to Muswell Hill Playing Fields (see this post)

Dear Readers, we are having a trout, orange and beetroot salad for dinner today, and so I was wondering if I’d ever done a Wednesday Weed about this somewhat divisive root vegetable. Ta Dah! Seems that at some point over the past twelve years, I’ve written about more or less everything. Maybe I should start taking requests? Feel free to offer some suggestions….

And in the meantime, here’s a beetroot primer from 2020…

Dear Readers, as a child I had a horror of the beetroot cubes that were served as part of our school dinners. There was something about the texture of the vegetable, the sharpness of the vinegar, the lurid-pink ‘juice’ that contaminated everything else that made me feel slightly nauseous. We were meant to eat everything on the plate (which contributed to my brother’s life-long hatred of steak and kidney pudding)  but one day I just couldn’t, so I told the dinnerladies that, with some regret, I would have to decline the beetroot because I was allergic to it.

I remember seeing them look at one another with some puzzlement, because allergies were not much discussed in 1968. Furthermore, ‘allergy’ was not a word that an eight year-old was supposed to know.

I got off on that occasion, and I seem to remember that the point wasn’t pushed subsequently. The sensible thing to do would have been to ask Mum if I was actually allergic, but I don’t think the school ever did.

These days I am much more inclined towards beetroot, not least because it comes in so many forms, and because, roasted or raw, it is actually quite delicious.

Chioggia beetroot. Look at the candy stripes! (Photo one)

Yellow beetroot (Photo Two)

All beetroots descend originally from sea beet (Beta vulgaris ssp maritima) which is found all over the coastal areas of the UK and Ireland (though it is notably absent from the more northern parts of Ireland). All of the cultivated beet varieties descend from this one humble salt-marsh plant: not just our salad beetroot, but sugar beet (which produces the vast majority of the sugar that we eat) and also, to my surprise, chard (where we ignore the root and eat the leaves and stem instead). As you might expect from a plant that grows in a marine environment, most varieties of beet are tolerant of salty soils. They prefer cooler temperatures, though chard is said to be happier at a higher temperature than the root vegetable varieties.

Sea Beet (Beta vulgaris ssp maritima) (Photo Three)

Beetroot is really one of ‘the’ cold climate crops – it has helped us to get through many winters, and it’s no surprise that eastern Europe has produced some of the most interesting recipes. Bortscht is a case in point – this beetroot soup has many variations (not all of which contain beetroot incidentally). Apparently, it would originally have been made with hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), and it’s the Russian word for this plant (borsch) which gives it its name (although the more usual English spelling, borscht, comes straight from Yiddish). It can be served hot or cold, with potatoes or smetana (a type of sour cream), with meat or fish or as a purely vegetarian soup. It forms part of the ritual traditions of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Jewish faiths, and the original ‘borscht’ recipe is claimed by several cultures.

Russian borscht (Photo Four)

Ukrainian borscht (Photo Five)

Polish Christmas Eve borscht with mushroom dumplings (Photo Six)

However, these soups all still seem to have rather too much obvious beetroot in them for my taste, and so my preferred method of getting some of the red stuff into my diet is by making a beetroot and chocolate cake, for which there are multiple recipes on the web (though I have a great fondness for the Nigel Slater recipe here). I have found that many vegetables disappear into cake, providing moistness and a streak of colour but nothing more assertive – carrots are an obvious choice, but courgette and squash have also worked very nicely for me. Do not, under any circumstances, try it with swede though. The results are like something that Satan might serve up at afternoon tea.

Chocolate beetroot cake (Photo Seven)

Beetroot also has a long history of medicinal use (though its habit of turning urine red can cause considerable alarm to the unprepared – there is actually a word for this, beeturia). It has been used as a treatment for constipation since Roman times, and Apicius gave no less than five recipes for beetroot soups to be used as a laxative. Tests on beetroot have shown that it can have an positive effect on the reduction of  hypertension.

In the UK, according to the site Plant Lore, beetroot wine was used as a cure for asthma, chilblains, earache and, apparently, snake bites.

The intense red colour of beetroot was used historically to colour wine, and it is still used as a food-colouring for things like tomato paste and breakfast cereal.

Flowers on ‘my’ beet plant

Beetroot is one of those vegetables (like brussel sprouts) that polarises people – you are either a fan or a hater, it seems. But would our attitudes change if we remembered that beetroot has a reputation as an aphrodisiac? The ancient Greeks believed that Aphrodite, goddess of love, ate beetroots to make herself more beautiful. The Romans believed that eating beets and drinking beetroot juice could enhance sexual performance,  and there were frescoes of beets in the Lupernar brothel in Pompeii (though all the images of the frescoes that I can find are much too X-rated for these august pages). English folklore has it that if a man and a woman eat from the same beetroot, they will fall in love. Beetroot juice has also been used as a hair dye and as a cosmetic to brighten up pale cheeks and provide a substitute for lipstick.

The actual harvesting of beetroot has long been a heavy, back-breaking job, however, and I like this painting by Leon Wyczółkowski , one of the leading Realist painters of the interwar period in Poland. You can almost smell the soil and the wood smoke, and feel the cold in your chapped hands.

Beet Harvest II by Leon Wyczółkowski (Public domain)

And finally, a poem. I love this vignette by Pauline Prior-Pitt, who moved from Hull to North Uist in 1997 and who started writing poems in her thirties. I feel that it sums up the way that we can’t judge people by appearances, and how exchanges are often more complex than they appear.

Meeting at the Mobile Library Van by Pauline Pitt-Prior

In your muddy coat, you stroll up from your croft;
choose two biographies.

And I’m not sure you’ll want
to look at poetry; am surprised

when the pirate behind your fiery eyes
lets me help you choose a Douglas Dunn
to add to your collection.

Quick as a dog you’re down at the loch side,
showing me your veg patch,
hidden from storms inside peat stacked walls.

“Bloody deer have eaten all my greens.”

You ask if I like beetroot, tug up
two huge globes covered in mud.
Each one must weigh at least a pound.

And I’ve been waiting for this windy day
to open windows wide,

chopping the beets with onions and Bramleys
adding sugar, spice, and vinegar
and slowly simmering them together.

And I’m thinking, six jars of chutney
are more than a fair exchange

for the poetry I chose for you to relish.

Beetroot pickles (Photo Eight)

Photo Credits

Photo One by By © Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57857779

Photo Two by By © Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57857829

Photo Three by Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Photo Four by By Brücke-Osteuropa – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7284301

Photo Five by By uk:Користувач:Kagor – uk:Файл:Borsch- 020.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19218448

Photo Six by By Michał Lech – https://pixabay.com/pl/jedzenie-potrwawa-catering-78222/ archive copy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45817399

Photo Seven from https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/beetroot_chocolate_cake_82388

Photo Eight by Meal Makeover Moms at https://www.flickr.com/photos/34168666@N07/14438107217/

Dear Readers, today I went  to Epping Forest in Essex with my friend L. What an extraordinary place this is! I’m much more familiar with the hornbeam  and oak forest in North London, whereas Epping features some truly impressive beech trees, such as those in the photo above. There are places in  the forest that feel almost uncanny, and if you look closely there are a lot of faces in some of the trees. Maybe Ents (from Lord of the Rings) are real after all…

We used to go to Epping Forest as children – it was a quick-ish trip from our house in Stratford, and although our Ford Popular car used to overheat in traffic and struggled with hills (in spite of being called ‘Thunderball’) it was always an adventure.

We arrived at Broadstrood, and almost immediately found this fallen tree.

It looks as if one tree fell, bringing the other one down with it.

Bracket fungi always orientate themselves horizontally to the ground (so that their spores can fall downwards) – if you look at the one below, you can see how the growth on the right occurred when the tree was vertical, but the fungus has continued to grow since the tree fell, realigning itself to the ground on the left.

The little brown spots on the tree are holes where beetles, possibly ambrosia beetles, have been hard at work.

As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s always interesting to look at a tree and try to work out what’s going on with it. Sometimes, as here, you have a live tree (an oak) growing in the remains of an old, dead tree.

Some of these trees were pollarded in the past (cut back every thirteen years or so, to a height above the head of grazing animals) but this stopped after the Epping Forest Act of 1878, so some of the trees have a most unusual appearance.

In one or two places they seem to have grown  in a line, as below – were they originally planted as hedging, but then allowed to grow unhindered?

Epping Forest is a truly magnificent wood, the largest forest in London, and still home to fallow deer, adders and a fine array of birds, including a treecreeper that I spotted half way up a beech tree. It’s a great spot for a walk amongst some of the most magnificent trees in London.

Black-veined White (Aporia craetagi) Photo By Sven Damerow – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90638361

Dear Readers, whilst some butterflies that were previously extinct in the UK are now, as the climate warms, crossing the Channel and re-establishing themselves, this was never going to happen with the beautiful Black-veined White (Aporia craetagi). The males are occasionally seen in coastal areas of the UK, but the females only venture about 1 km from the spot where they emerged as adults. So, a combination of the good folks at Knepp (famous for spearheading  rewilding), Dartmoor Zoo, Butterfly Conservation, Royal Holloway University and the veterinarians at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have been working to reintroduce the species.

Black-veined whites went extinct in the UK about 120 years  ago,  due to the loss of habitat, the intensification of agriculture and a series of bitterly cold winters. The caterpillars feed on hawthorn and blackthorn, but the grubbing up of so many hedgerows was probably another blow. So, female butterflies have been carefully collected in Spain, and have been brought back to the UK, where they’ve laid their eggs on suitable foodplants, and where the tiny new caterpillars will overwinter on communal webs. The folk at Knepp will have an anxious time waiting to see if the caterpillars  thrive, and protecting them from predators. You can listen to a podcast on the subject here.

Black-veined White caterpillar (Photo By James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1680592)

The role of ZSL was to assess the disease risk from re-introducing the butterfly – would its presence impact on other insects or plants? The risk was found to be very low. However, there is a risk to the butterflies themselves from flies and parasitoid wasps. These risks are most intense during the early stages of the project – the new caterpillars will be protected by mesh which should be fine enough to keep even tiny flying insects out, and those looking after them will use disinfection and protective clothing. The plants that the caterpillars feed on have been carefully checked for wasps and flies, and cultivars that seem to attract these parasites will be avoided.

Mating Black-veined Whites (Photo By Hectonichus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56238615)

I look forward to seeing how this project goes. How wonderful it would be to see these beauties in the wild again! Apparently the adults love purple/red flowers, particularly red clover, so let’s get planting….

Dear Readers, Hampstead Heath is a remarkable place, with a whole range of habitats, from woodland and grassland to lakes and even bogs. But today was Mr Bug  Woman’s birthday (39 yet again) and so we went for a walk to the caff at Kenwood for a coffee and a cake, rather than  embarking on an expedition. Nonetheless, there were lots of lovely things to see and wonder at. The trees are losing their leaves, but that means that the shape of their branches can be seen more clearly. I love how these trees are reaching towards the light above the path.

Alongside the path is a fence that surrounds a very extensive house (which, if memory serves me correctly, has a number of slides into their swimming pool). They seem to have planted a lot of Pyracantha (firethorn) against the fence, maybe as a deterrent to the curious and the criminally-inclined. Well, it will certainly work eventually, the thorns on the plant are as sharp as razor wire.

Elsewhere, the ash tree leaves have fallen…

and it looks as if the acorn crop has been extensive…

Not sure about these leaves but thinking pear, what do you think, Readers?

My favourite Sweet Chestnut tree is looking pretty impressive, as always…

And then we reach Kenwood, where the queues for the coffee are long, and so I have a chance to observe the cheeky crows as, first, they observe us…

and then they hurtle down to clear the crumbs from the table of the people who left about two seconds ago.

A pair of loved-up pigeons watch from the roof. They’re too sensible to quarrel with the crows.

And then it’s a final loop past the fishing pond…

with a brief pause to admire the reed bed…

I love how London has so many green spaces, varying from manicured parks to wild spots. Hampstead Heath is always a bit too crowded, especially on the main paths, but there is still a lot of biodiversity. Today, a flock of at least 20 Long-tailed tits flew around us, foraging in the trees and shrubs and piping away to one another – such a joy. As the nights draw in and the weather gets colder, it’s even more important to stick my nose out of the front door, preferably daily. I always feel so much better for it….

Hedgehog (Photo By Gibe, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2 9948)

Dear Readers, my Zoological Society of London magazine this month had a rather troubling article about hedgehogs. Vets who were looking at dead hedgehogs sent in by members of the public for the Garden Wildlife Health project, collected between 2012 and 2020,  found that 62 percent of hedgehogs from across England had been exposed to rodenticides, such as warfarin. A quarter had pesticide residues in their livers at such high levels that it would have killed a bird of prey.

Normally, rodenticides cause internal bleeding – most of the poisons act as anticoagulants, which means that the mice and rats haemorrhage internally. However, the hedgehogs, most of whom had been killed in road accidents, didn’t show such symptoms. Scientists are scratching their heads as to what effect, if any, the rodenticides have on the hedgehogs, especially as rodent poisons are becoming more toxic  because many mice and rats now have immunity to traditional doses. The assumption is that ingesting the toxins at levels that would kill other animals can’t be good for the hedgehogs.

How are the hedgehogs picking up the rodenticides in the first place? They are more omnivorous than most people (including me) used to think, so they might be eating the dead rodents directly. They could also be eating the various invertebrates who feed on carrion, and the poisons could also leach into the soil during decay and be picked up by earthworms etc. All in all, rodenticides are causing a fair amount of havoc, not just in birds of prey and owls, but also in foxes and other predatory mammals, including domestic dogs and cats. It feels way past time that we found other ways of controlling rodent infestations, and only used these chemicals as a last resort.

I’d like to also give a shout out to the Garden Wildlife Health Project, which collates information from all over Britain in an attempt to get a picture of disease threats to our wildlife. If a creature dies in your garden, you can report it online, and will sometimes be asked if you’re happy to send off the dead animal for a post mortem. The website also has lots of very interesting advice on animal diseases, how to identify them  and what to do if a sick animal is spotted in  your garden. Well worth a look!

Photo by By Matthias Bethke – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149793854

Dear Readers, my lovely friend was buried yesterday, and one of her many great passions was Shakespeare. I read this to her a few days before she died, and at the end she smiled, and whispered ‘marvellous’. If all has gone well, I will also have read this at her funeral. I love how the mood changes at line 10, from despair to exultation.

Farewell, my very special friend.

Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

By William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

If you want to hear a very special reading of it, have a listen to Judi Dench on the Graham Norton show here.