White ermine moth ( Spilosoma lubricipeda)

Dear Readers, there are some splendid results from this week’s quiz, with Fran and Bobby Freelove, Leo Smith and OKthislooksbad all getting a handsome 15 out of 15, and with Alittlebitoutoffocus getting a respectable 11 out of 15. Welcome to our first-time posters, and thank you for taking part.

Dear Readers, let’s see how we got on with this little challenge. The answers are below. I hope you had fun! Deciding which moths to include certainly had me thinking about the variety of forms and habits of this fascinating group of insects. I could easily have found another fifteen to include, so sorry if I missed your favourites this time. And I managed to resist the urge to include a clothes moth.

1)h) White plume moth (Pterophorus pentadactyla)

2)a) Jersey tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria)

3)k) Angle shades (Phlogophora meticulosa)

4)j) Box tree moth (Cydalima perspectalis)

5)f) Hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum)

6)d) Buff tip (Phalera bucephala)

7)g) Cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae)

8)c) Mint moth (Pyrausta aurata)

9)o) Six-spot burnet (Zygaena filipendulae)

10)i) Blood vein (Timandra comae)

11)e) Red underwing ( Catocala nupta)

12)n) Magpie moth (Abraxas grossulariata)

13)b) Brimstone (Opisthograptis luteolata)

14)m) Elephant hawk moth (Deilephila elpenor)

15)l) Large emerald (Geometra papilionaria)

Photo Credits

Photo One by user B. Schoenmakers at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands. / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

Photo Two by AJC1 from UK / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Photo Three by Rob Mitchell / CC0

Photo Four by Rob Mitchell / CC0

Photo Five by Yusuf Akgul / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Photo Six by nick goodrum from Catfield in Norfolk, United Kingdom / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Seven by Nzhymenoptera / CC0

Photo Eight by Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Nine by By Lairich Rig, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13619082

Photo Ten by nick goodrum from Catfield in Norfolk, United Kingdom / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Eleven by Rob Mitchell / CC0

Photo Twelve by Rob Mitchell / CC0

Photo Thirteen by Patrick Clement from West Midlands, England / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Fourteen by nick goodrum from Catfield in Norfolk, United Kingdom / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Fifteen by nick goodrum from Catfield in Norfolk, United Kingdom / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Greater knapweed (Centaura scabiosa)

Dear Readers, I realise that I forgot to mention the ‘closing date’ for the Moths Quiz yesterday – I will be posting the answers tomorrow morning, and if you want to be ‘marked’, please pop your answers into the comments by 5 p.m. UK time today. As you were!

Dear Readers, Sunday has become the day for visiting my favourite spot for wildflowers along the edge of Muswell Hill Playing Fields. One gift of the current lockdown has been the chance to experience a single place repeatedly over the progress of the seasons, and I am becoming attuned to the way that plants and insects have a natural succession, with one fading as others come into flower. And so it is that the greater knapweed are just starting to go over, although their seeds may attract finches later in the summer.

White Comfrey (Symphytum orientale)

The white comfrey is almost finished too, but there are still common carder bees visiting the flowers.

Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense)

The creeping thistle has taken over from the greater knapweed as the plant of choice for all the bees at the moment, but even here we can see it going to seed.  The seedheads always remind me of tiny shaving brushes.

I always check the ragwort for cinnabar moth caterpillars, but actually there isn’t much of this plant about – I think it’s out-competed by some of the other plants.

The white deadnettle is in full flower now, and there are little patches along the edge of the ‘border’, as I’ve come to think of it. If you planted up a garden bed for pollinators and other wildlife, you couldn’t do much better than this.

White deadnettle (Lamium album)

There are a few open spots where the birdsfoot trefoil is growing. I love the raindrops on the leaves, and the different colours on the flowers and buds.

Common birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)

The fennel is in flower, and when you look at the shape of the ribs that support the flowerheads, they look just like upside-down umbrellas, hence the old name of the group – umbellifers (from ‘umbel’, a parasol or umbrella). It’s little things like this that help me remember what group a plant belongs to.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

And now we have some white campion, to succeed the ragged robin and bladder campion that I noticed earlier in the year.

White campion (Silene latifolia)

And here is something really interesting (to me at least). You might remember that when I first discovered this area, I was speculating that it might have been the remains of a cottage garden, and it’s certainly the case that this area was a farm up until the mid 1850’s. Why else, I wonder, would there be a beet plant collapsed in the middle of all the thistles and knapweed? Whether this is a sugar beet or a beetroot I have no idea, but if you have any notion, do let me know. I am still holding onto the idea that this was once the farmhouse garden, but they are unlikely to have been growing sugar beet.

Beetroot or sugar beet?

Beet flowers, but which kind?

Another passing pleasure is the development of the greater burdock flowers. I love the way that, if you look closely, you can see that the buds are covered in tiny hooks. This plant was, after all, the inspiration for Velcro.

Greater burdock (Arctium lappa)

The mugwort is just coming into flower too. This is such an inconspicuous plant that it took me nearly four years of the ‘Wednesday Weed’ to notice it. But it was one of the most powerful of all ‘weeds’ according to Anglo-Saxon lore, and it seems to me that we need those powers now. She was known as the Mother of Weeds, and this is what the Nine Herbs charm has to say about her:

‘Remember, Mugwort, what you made known,
What you arranged at the Great proclamation.
You were called Una, the oldest of herbs,
you have power against three and against thirty,
you have power against poison and against infection,
you have power against the loathsome foe roving through the land.’

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)

And finally, there is the enduring mystery of what on earth some lambs-ear (Stachys byzantina) is doing here. This is a garden plant, much loved by wool carder bees who take the hairs from the silvery leaves for their nests. It looks so out of place here, amidst all the ‘weeds’, but then there’s that beet. This is a most puzzling piece of wild edge, neither one thing nor another, incapable of categorisation. Maybe that’s why I love it so much.

Lambs-ear (Stachy byzantina)

White ermine moth ( Spilosoma lubricipeda)

Dear Readers, there are moths everywhere, but they are amongst our most underappreciated insects. This week, I am aiming to put things right! True, some of them are pests, but all of them have their place in our complex ecosystems. Where would our bats be without a mothy mouthful? Here are fifteen species for you to identify. Have fun!

Choose which moth is which from the list below. So, if you think moth 1) is a Jersey tiger, your answer will be 1) a)

a) Jersey tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria)

b) Brimstone (Opisthograptis luteolata)

c) Mint moth (Pyrausta aurata)

d) Buff tip (Phalera bucephala)

e) Red underwing ( Catocala nupta)

f) Hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum)

g) Cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae)

h) White plume moth (Pterophorus pentadactyla)

i) Blood vein (Timandra comae)

j) Box tree moth (Cydalima perspectalis)

k) Angle shades (Phlogophora meticulosa)

l) Large emerald (Geometra papilionaria)

m) Elephant hawk moth (Deilephila elpenor)

n) Magpie moth (Abraxas grossulariata)

o) Six-spot burnet (Zygaena filipendulae)

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)

11)

12)

13)

14)

15)

Dear Readers, as you might remember it was part one of my team’s online Away Day today. It started with a ‘fun activity’. I am usually allergic to ‘fun activities’, because one thing I learned very early in life is that what is ‘fun’ for one person can cause acute embarrassment in somebody else. But, as it happened, this was fine, and the rest of the afternoon was stimulating enough to keep me going. Nonetheless, it was a relief to go and sit out in the sun for twenty minutes midway through. I had been sitting for a bit when I noticed the male blackbird looking quite agitated: he was making a series of soft contact calls. Furthermore, he stuffed his beak full of mealworms. Now, he had my attention.

And then I noticed a small movement in the lilac bush.

The blackbird flew into the hawthorn bush and continued to call.

And then, look who popped out!

Fledgling blackbird

As you might remember, the male blackbird has been hard at work for the past month, gathering mealworms and suet and taking it off to his nest, and here is the result of all his labours – a healthy, almost adult blackbird, who still obviously expects to be fed at the moment, but will hopefully pick up the knack of survival from their hard-working parent.

And, to add to the joy, here is another baby.

Fledgling robin

A new robin – looks like the robins must have successfully reared at least one from their second brood. It really has been a spectacular spring for lots of birds. With all the misery that this year has brought, I find myself taking such solace from new life.

Fledgling goldfinch

Dear Readers, today we were visited by a single fledgling goldfinch, who sat stuffing their face with sunflower seeds in a most indecorous way. They spent a while trying to work out how to get the seeds out, before realising that they could put their whole heads into the hole and extract a selection of seeds. Then, they munched on them in a most reflective way, with bits of feed dropping to the ground and getting stuck in their feathers. Let’s hope they find a more efficient way of eating before the winter comes.

I’ve spoken before about the naivety of young birds, the way that they just sit there when all the other birds are making alarm calls and generally freaking out. This one just sat there when I went outside with the camera, although the pigeons were exploding from the other feeder with wing claps and general brouhaha. I wondered if this one was unwell, but suddenly it seemed to wake up and flitted off into the lilac.

If Francis Bacon painted a goldfinch it would look a bit like this…

And then it’s back upstairs to get stuck into doing a few more project reports for the climate change organisation that I work for these days. Tomorrow, we are having an online Away Day, and we have to find ourselves a ‘fun accessory’. I think that my leech socks would be ‘fun’, but I don’t want to have to wave my legs about in front of a bunch of folk, so it might have to be my Tilley hat. Let’s see how much ‘fun’ 3 hours on a Zoom call actually turns out to be.

Dear Readers, the hubbub in the garden has stilled, the suet feeders swing empty, the mornings are bereft of birdsong and the most excitement that we have at the moment are a couple of woodpigeons beating one another up on the seed feeder. The change is so sudden, so extraordinary, that it’s easy to forget that this happens every single year, and in a way it’s good news – it’s proof that birds aren’t completely dependent on us, and that they can still find their own food when they want to.

But why does it happen?

Firstly, for most birds, the breeding season is pretty much over, the youngsters have literally ‘left the nest’ and the parents no longer have to worry about provisioning them. Even my live mealworms are left wriggling on the bird table, and I suspect that a fair few escape to freedom which is only fair. I think it’s no coincidence that the only birds who stick around in my garden are the ones who breed all year, such as the collared doves and the aforementioned woodpigeons. These birds can feed their offspring on ‘milk’ that they generate themselves in their crop, so are not so reliant on seasonal food and so can reproduce whenever the fancy takes them (which is frequently judging by ‘my’ birds, who spend most of their time chasing one another around with a lustful glint in their eyes).

Woodpigeons beating one another up.

Secondly, there is a lot of ‘natural’ food around for the next few months. Many insects are out and about, the hedges are already full of brambles, and there will be a positive feast available for younger birds to learn about. Fledglings need to learn where the other food sources are locally (and sometimes not so locally – blackbirds, for example, often have a place where they breed and a place where they overwinter). Plus, many young birds will be off finding territories of their own, which will push them further afield. All in all, it’s holiday-season for many creatures, and unlike us, they don’t have to worry about the impact of Covid-19 on their planned destinations.

But finally, many birds will be in moult at this time of year. Feathers don’t last forever, and they are of such vital importance to everything from insulation to flight that they have to be looked after and eventually replaced. For many birds this is a slow process, as the bird needs to retain enough feathers at any one time to make sure it can keep warm and make an escape if necessary. The birds tend to stick to a well-protected area with plenty of food available, and something like a bramble hedge is perfect. No bird wants to risk fluttering to a feeder if there is insufficient cover to pop back into. Plus, creating new feathers takes a lot of energy, so birds tend to do this after breeding and before the need to migrate or to put on fat for the winter.

If you are lucky enough to see a baby starling at this time of the year, you might notice that it has some juvenile, dull-brown plumage, and some of the darker, more iridescent adult plumage.

Starling with full adult plumage

One type of bird that has a particularly tough time of it during the moult is the duck. Ducks, geese and swans lose all their feathers at the same time, which means that they can’t fly but have to stick to the safety of the water. To reduce the vulnerability of the more brightly-coloured drakes, they lose their brightest feathers first, which can lead to a variation on our main question: where have all the male ducks gone? The rather dowdier- looking drakes are said to be in their ‘eclipse plumage’ and this, my friends, is why identifying duck species at a wildfowl reserve is something of a challenge in the summer months. Female ducks, who may still have ducklings to care for, often lose their feathers later. One species, the shelduck, actually makes a ‘moult migration’, leaving their breeding grounds all over Europe to descend in vast numbers on the German Waddensea coast. Hundreds of thousands of shelduck arrive in July, and will leave to migrate to their wintering grounds once the process is complete. Although most European shelducks head to Germany, some spend the moulting period much closer to home, in Bridgewater Bay, Somerset.

Shelduck in January looking very pristine!

And so, although our gardens might be empty of birds, it’s a relief to know that they haven’t deserted us because they’re fed up with the quality of the food that we provide, or the way that we always seem to be at home these days. They are going through a perfectly natural process and, believe me, when the weather takes a turn for the worse they’ll be back, en masse, looking for mealworms. We just need to turn our attention to the other, smaller, less obvious critters in our gardens: keep an eye open now for queen bumblebees of many species, fattening themselves up prior to hibernation. And of course, the slow reddening of the berries, and the ripening of the blackberries. It looks as if it might be a bumper year!

Two siskins and a chaffinch in the garden in December 2017

Scene in May

Greater knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa)

Dear Readers, what very fine plants knapweeds are! Greater knapweed is the rarer of the two but it grows in abundance in my newly-discovered ‘meadow’ next to Muswell Hill Playing Fields. It looks almost too exotic to be a native plant, but here it is. A member of the Asteraceae or daisy family, it is closely related to the cornflower, as its flowers suggest, and it is most often seen on chalk grassland, where it is a favourite with bees and butterflies.

Peacock (Aglais io)

Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra) is a much more frequent sight, and there were banks of it growing on Hampstead Heath last week. It has smaller, more thistle-like flowers, and a wide variety of popular names: Roy Vickery’s folk flora mentions chimney sweep in Somerset, drumsticks in Somerset and Nottinghamshire, hurt-sickle in Worcestershire and black soap in Devon and Gloucestershire, among a host of others. Some of the names refer to the strange, medieval-mace shaped buds – I can just imagine a mouse in armour walloping someone with a seed head too. I’m sure there must be a children’s book in there somewhere.

Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra)

Common knapweed is also known as ‘bachelor’s buttons’, as, it seems, are about fifty percent of our native flowers. However, this plant was actually used for a kind of love-divination. Young women would pull out the existing petals, and then put the flower into their bodice. When the as-yet unopened florets began to appear, this would mean that the lover was near. John Clare had a poem about the practice:

They pull the little blossom threads

From out the knapweeds button heads

And put the husk wi many a smile

In their white bosoms for awhile

Who if they guess aright the swain

That loves sweet fancys trys to gain

Tis said that ere its lain an hour

Twill blossom wi a second flower

And from her white breasts handkerchief

Bloom as they had ne’er lost a leaf.

In Guernsey, common knapweed is known as herbe de flon. Vickery points out that flon has two different meanings: it can mean a boil on a human, or a disease of cows that affects the udder after calving. A handful of knapweed is boiled for half an hour, and then used to bathe the affected part. However, knapweed seems to have been used for a variety of human ailments, from sore throats and bruises to ruptures and wounds. In Wales, a combination of knapweed, field scabious and birthwort was used as a cure for the bite of the UK”s only poisonous snake, the adder. Like all the plants in the Centaurea genus (including cornflower), it was named for the half-man half-horse centaur Chiron, who is said to have healed a wound on his hoof with knapweed. The flowers were also eaten with pepper to stimulate appetite.

Knapweed doesn’t lose its value for wildlife once the flowers are gone – the seeds, like those of most thistles, are eaten by finches. Furthermore, the plant is the favoured food of the lime speck pug moth (Eupithecia centaureata), a splendid creature.

Lime speck pug moth (Photo One)

The caterpillars are rather intriguing as well.

Lime speck pug moth caterpillar (Photo Two)

I can find little information about the eating of knapweed by humans (except as the aforementioned appetite stimulant) but several people mention using the flowers to brighten up a salad, and I was wondering how else you could use the flowers to prettify the dining table.  I seem to remember making an ice bowl when I was younger as a vessel for some ice cream – you put water in a bowl, put a slightly smaller bowl inside, poke some flowers into the gap, and stick the whole lot in the freezer. The result is very pretty, if messy and ephemeral. Sigh. I sometimes wonder what used to possess me. I once made a five-flavoured jelly with diagonal stripes by setting each layer in a huge glass dish propped up at an angle.

The 1980s have got a lot to answer for.

An ice bowl. You’re welcome (Photo Three)

Both common and greater knapweed have caused problems when they’ve been taken elsewhere – they are closely related to thistles, with all the free-seeding, deep-rooted habits of their pricklier kin. I note that in the US it’s considered a Noxious Weed in several states, with spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe) being the June 2017 Weed of the Month for King County in Washington State. This plant is not either of ‘our’ knapweeds, but it is certainly a vigorous little chap, as the photos on the website show. I rather like the idea of a ‘weed of the month’, though the website does rather concentrate on digging up, blitzing with herbicides and if all else fails, taking a flamethrower to the ‘enemy’, rather than the somewhat gentler appreciation of the Wednesday Weed. Still, it takes all sorts. I just think of all the creatures enjoying the knapweed, and wonder where they will go if we keep destroying things.

And finally, a poem ( a second poem if you count the John Clare earlier). This begs to be read out loud, I think. There is such poetry in the names of plants (and I’m sure a whole epic could be made from the names of moths). If you’d like to hear this read, there is a link here.

Love’s Nosegay – A Poem by Michael Shepherd

Celandine, saxifrage,
buttercup, needle whin,
tormentil, vetchling,
agrimony, cinquefoil,
nipplewort, hawkbit,
ragwort, groundsel,
biting stonecrop, yellow bedstraw,
crosswort, comfrey,
bog asphodel,
tansy, sneezewort,
crowfoot, scurvy grass,
mouse-eared chickweed,
stitchwort, goutweed,
water dropwort, cuckoopint,
bryony, goosegrass,
ramsons, mayweed,
pennywort, wintergreen,
grass of parnassus, burdock,
figwort, lady’s mantle,
heartsease, cinquefoil,
scabious, loosestrife,
plume thistle, knapweed,
bugle, fumitory,
ragged robin, saintfoil,
dove’s- foot crane’s-bill,
lousewort, rattle,
corn cockle, willow herb,
cross-leaved pink heath,
blue bottle, vetch,
milkwort, harebell,
wild succory, speedwell,
viper’s bugloss, alkanet…

there’s poetry in wildflowers
and rightly so.

Photo Credits

Photo One By ©entomartIn case of publication or commercial use, Entomart wishes then to be warned (http://www.entomart.be/contact.html), but this without obligation. Thank you., Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=290556

Photo By by user jacques boon at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands. – This image is uploaded as image number 3923249 at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21350936

Photo Three from https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/314618723938721729/

Thick-legged flower beetle on common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea)

Dear Readers, I have a feeling that I might have pitched this quiz just about right – what do you think? The winners this week were Fran and Bobby Freelove, with a perfect score of 15/15, closely followed by Anne with 13/15, Mike with 11/15 and Andrea with 9/15. Many thanks to everybody who had a go, and do let me know how you got on if you didn’t comment. Now, I need to get my thinking cap on for next week 🙂

Daisies

1)c) Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium)

2).g) Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

3).o) Canadian fleabane (Conyza canadensis)

4).m) Daisy (Bellis perennis)

5).h) Lesser burdock (Arctium minus)

6).l) Chicory (Cichorium intybus)

7).i) Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense)

8)k) Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra)

9)e) Fox-and-cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca)

10)j) Spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare)

11)f) Pineappleweed (Matricaria discoidea)

12).n) Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus)

13).b) Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)

14).a) Michaelmas daisy (Aster x salignus)

15).d) Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Dear Readers, Sunday is the hardest day of the week for me. For years, it was the day when I would give Mum and Dad a call to see how they were doing and to get all the gossip. After Mum had died, it was the day when I would ring the nursing home, to see how Dad was getting on and to have a little chat if he was up for it. He often was: one of the staff nurses told me that Dad was her Personal Assistant, and would often answer the phone if they couldn’t get to it quickly enough.

‘She’s not here!’ he’d say, and put the phone down. Just as well they had a way of retrieving phone numbers so that they could return the call.

But now, of course, Sundays are all my own. No one to check up on, no one to call. Admittedly I don’t have the worry, but I think the emptiness is much worse. And so, I turn to nature as usual, to see what’s going on outside.

The hemp agrimony around the pond is just coming into bloom. The bumblebees could care less, but the honeybees love it, and so do the hoverflies.

Honeybee on hemp agrimony, with hoverfly waiting to land above it.

The hemp agrimony is a deeply scruffy plant. While in tight, pink bud it looks almost respectable, but once the flowers open it looks distinctly blousey and uncoordinated. Still, for a few weeks every year it attracts every hopeful little pollinator, and that’s good enough for me.

Rather neater looking is the meadowsweet, with its creamy-white, sweet-smelling flowers. The hoverflies love this, too.

But my mood still hasn’t shifted enough, and off we go to the cemetery for a walk. St Pancras and Islington Cemetery is only open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the weekend, though mourners and those tending a grave can also visit during the week. It isn’t until I see these lovely fox-and-cubs orange daisies alongside the yellow nipplewort that I start to cheer up.

Then, a comma butterfly positively poses, and kindly waits for me to take a photo.

I munch on the first ripe blackberry that I’ve seen this year – it’s sour as anything, and obviously needs a bit more time baking in the sun, but it does the job.

The spear thistle flowers are starting to erupt into fluffy seedheads.

Down by the stream, there are some beautiful but unwanted guests – a clump of Himalayan Balsam, a most invasive plant which can clog entire waterways. I think I shall have to mention it to the cemetery authorities, but then they haven’t been too bothered about the Japanese Knotweed which they also have. It is so pretty, and so beloved by pollinators, that it seems something of a shame.

There is a lot of goat’s rue around this year, in both white and lilac. It’s funny how ‘weeds’ go from being unusual to everywhere in the space of a few years. I was delighted when I first saw this plant on Muswell Hill Playing Fields in 2015, and now I’m tripping over the stuff.

Goats rue and spear thistle

There are fine stands of teasel and rosebay willowherb too.

We wander up the hill so that I can have a look at the Egyptian cat, one of the most distinctive grave markers in the cemetery.

And then we pass the statue of this fine Scotsman, with a bunch of fresh flowers in his hand.

And a speckled wood butterfly is waiting as we head back out into the sunshine.

But as I get home, the things that I’m trying to run away from are still there. I go upstairs to start writing this blog, and as I gaze out of the window trying to think how to begin, my eye is caught by the sheer volume of activity outside on the buddleia.

Some of those little specks of life are bees, but a lot of them are flying ants, taking advantage of this still, warm day to leave their nests and found new colonies. The females with their swollen abdomens and the smaller males have wings, and fly off together.

Male

Queen with wings

Once the queen has been mated, she bites off her own wings and tries to find a space underground to start laying her eggs. If she is successful, she will never see the light again, but will have thousands of children. However, many birds, including sparrows, love eating the ants, and only a tiny proportion of those who emerge will found new colonies.

Queen without wings

And the sight of all these insects reminds me, again, of my childhood. When we lived in our house in Stratford, East London, the flying ants would take on the quality of a Biblical plague, invading the houses in their hundreds. I remember becoming almost hysterical on one occasion, but Mum smartly calmed me down.

‘They’re only ants’, she said. ‘They’ll be gone tomorrow’.

And so they were, and all that was left were their wings, like tiny shards of broken glass.

Thick-legged flower beetle on ????

Dear Readers, the Asteraceae or daisy family is surprisingly diverse, and is one of the most important flower families for all those little unsung pollinator heroes, such as hoverflies and beetles. So, for this week’s quiz I wanted to see how easy they were to identify when we gathered a bunch of them together. I have avoided some of the most difficult flowers – when I was doing my biology degree at Birkbeck, we didn’t have to identify ‘yellow compositae’ (all those hawksbeards and hawkbits and hawkweeds) because they were too confusing, and because they often hybridised. Maybe when I retire I’ll make them a priority.

Personally, I have always been fond of daisies of all kinds – there is a daisy in flower pretty much every day of the year, and the early dandelions are a vital source of pollen for many insects that are emerging in the spring. Plus, I have a lovely friend called Daisy, and the song ‘Daisy, Daisy’ was a family favourite – Mum always sung it to me when I was sick as a child with a ‘bilious attack’. Who has ‘bilious attacks’ these days? Like ‘nerves’ and ‘hardening of the arteries’ such diseases seem to have been re-badged.

Oops, this was going to be a cheerful post, but I seem to have gotten waylaid. The song ‘Daisy, Daisy’ was about riding on a tandem bicycle, something that Mum and Dad did when they were young. They explored all over Essex on their ‘bicycle made for two’. I wonder whether the tandem will make a comeback?

So, here are fifteen ‘daisies’ for you to identify. Normal rules apply, i.e. please get your answers in by 5 p.m. UK time on Monday if you want to be marked, and if you don’t want to be influenced by speedy responders, write your answers down before you pop them in the comments. Have fun!

Daisies

Which members of the daisy family are these? Choose from the list below. So, if you think plant 1 is Michaelmas daisy, your answer is 1)a)

a) Michaelmas daisy (Aster x salignus)

b) Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)

c) Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium)

d) Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

e) Fox-and-cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca)

f) Pineappleweed (Matricaria discoidea)

g) Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

h) Lesser burdock (Arctium minus)

i) Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense)

j) Spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare)

k) Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra)

l) Chicory (Cichorium intybus)

m) Daisy (Bellis perennis)

n) Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus)

o) Canadian fleabane (Conyza canadensis)

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15).