Herb Robert seed pods

Dear Readers, I was very impressed by the speed with which my Covid -19 test results came back – the kit was sent off on Sunday and it was announced that I was negative on Monday. However, I have spent most of today in bed, shivering and with my teeth chattering, so clearly all is not well yet. I find it astonishing how even the roots of my hair feel sore, and how in the middle of a heatwave I wanted nothing so much as a hot water bottle. Still, with any luck I’ll be feeling a bit better tomorrow, especially as it’s my six-monthly performance review and I’ll need to be on the ball!

I just thought that you might want to see exactly why hardy geraniums are called cranesbills. Don’t these seedpods look just like the heads of an elegant bird?

Sandhill Cranes (Photo One)

Photo Credits

Photo One by TJflex at https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjflex/49264893542

Dear Readers, there are definitely worse fates than being stuck at home with a fridge full of food and a job that doesn’t involve any commuting. Today I am a bit brain-fogged and tired, but definitely improving.  I decided to spend half an hour in the garden to see what was going on before I headed back for a sleep (luxury!) and of course the bumblebees visiting the teasel caught my eye. I love the way that they dig right into the flowers to get at the nectar – I’m guessing that only the longer-tongued species can get at it, and certainly the hoverflies who land sometimes look a bit confused before flying off to something friendlier.

I was delighted to hear the children on their way to school this morning remarking on the bumblebees on the lavender and buddleia in the front garden. I must be doing something right. I sometimes think of bumblebees as a kind of gateway to the insect world for children – they’re big, furry, unlikely to sting unless really harassed, and have a kind of ramshackle charm that belies their superb adaptation to their environment and intelligence.

Honestly, who wouldn’t love them and want to look after them? On a sadder note, I found two bumblebees trussed up in a spider’s web on the fence. I might pop out later to see who the culprit is, but the web is very impressive. I did check to see if the bees were already dead, and they were, otherwise I might have had a tricky moral dilemma for all of ten seconds before I rescued them. I will spare you the photos, but here’s the web, and rather beautiful it is too.

Close to it a much smaller, less bee-murdering spider has slung a web. This is your typical diadem orb-web spider (Araneus diadematus), a very variable and common species but welcome for all that. Spiders eat so many garden ‘pests’ that I suspect we’d be chin deep in mosquitoes and greenfly if they didn’t exist.

For those of you on the edge of your seats about my small white butterfly egg, it’s turned yellow, which I think is a good sign…

And in other very exciting news, I noticed this while trying to follow a mystery moth. I discovered both that I suddenly have enchanter’s nightshade in the garden and leafcutter bees! Until I moved to East Finchley I had no idea that there were leafcutter bees in the UK, but then I saw that my rose leaves had these perfect half-circles taken out of them, and tied this in to the little bees that I saw feeding on what I thought was elecampane. How exciting! I shall keep an eye on it and see if I can catch them in the act, though I sense that it’s a little bit late in the year.

And now I’m off for a lie down. See you tomorrow, readers!

Goodness Readers, how this having a job business impacts on one’s social activities. I am not for one second complaining (and I am only part-time) but even so, some weeks it’s hard to stuff everything in. Nonetheless, I did find time for a quick ten minutes in the garden today, and as usual there was some interesting stuff going on. I love the way the teasel flower flowers, for one thing. Someone described it recently as ‘a sparkler that’s been lit in the middle’, and that’s not a bad description. What a stunning plant it is, even though it’s at the most peculiar angle. The flowerheads remind me a bit of cartoon snakes trying to look around a corner.

And the bees love them, clearly.

My ‘dwarf’ buddleia is now 8 feet tall, but the colour is spectacular. What would you call this colour? I’m dithering between magenta and cerise, but I’m open to suggestions.

There are cellar spiders in the shed again, and I can’t walk out there without demolishing a web that has been slung across my route. I managed to avoid this garden orb-web spider though – she’s made her web between the buddleia and the bay window in the front garden, and is getting stuck into all the aphids that fly into her trap. These spiders are around for most of the year, but they’ve just about gotten big enough for us to actually notice.

Although there have been a lot of aphids about this year, I’ve also noticed a huge increase in ladybirds and ladybird larvae. Today, there was this two-spot (though as you can’t see the spots I’ll need you to trust me on this one…)

And some harlequin ladybird larvae, who really do remind me of aphid-hoovers as they work their way through a herd of the poor things…

And here is a harlequin ladybird pupa just waiting for another ‘hoover’ to emerge…

Out in the back garden again, I notice that the slugs and snails have eaten all the sunflowers except two, one valiant entire specimen, and one where the stem has been eaten through so that the top leaves have fallen off. I wonder why they so prefer some plants over others? I need to grow most things until they’re the size of a tea pot before I can be sure that they’ll survive, and even so some still end up like lace. Where’s a hedgehog when I need one? And aren’t those frogs supposed to be earning their keep? Harrumph.

My last remaining sunflowers

And finally, it’s so nice to have the sparrow family still visiting the garden, along with the young starlings, the goldfinches and a couple more chaffinches yesterday. I might only have had ten minutes, but it definitely cheers me up.

Azure damselfly

What a strange summer it’s been so far! Yesterday, without any warning, a thunderstorm bubbled up, just as my husband was heading out for a haircut. It poured down for best part of an hour – the kitchen had rainwater coming in under the door, but further up the road basements were flooded, roads were impassable and torrents of water ran down the streets. And then, today, it’s hot, and in the garden there are dozens of damselflies, red and blue. Some are fighting, some are mating, some are just hanging out. A spider has built its web right across the pond and is dashing out every five minutes to truss up an aphid or some other tiny insect.

The meadowsweet and the hemp agrimony and the teasels had all been knocked horizontal when the angelica fell over a few days ago, and they were just starting to right themselves when yesterday’s storm hit. Ah well, they are still flowering even if some of the angles are a little strange. The teasel flower is a peculiar thing anyway – it flowers in the middle, and then the two bands of flowers move away from one another to opposite ends. It is beloved by all manner of little pollinating creature.

Teasel with tiny bees

I have never seen a bee so drenched in pollen. Unlike those sophisticates the bumblebees with their pollen baskets, a lot of little bees just basically roll about in it so that it adheres to their legs and tummies. This one has been identified as a base-banded furrow bee (Lasioglossum sp.). There are over 1700 species, with the ones in the UK being tricky to tell apart, though most of them are solitary bees building their nest tunnels in light soils. In the tropics some Lasioglossum species are sweat bees, which can be a bit irritating if you aren’t used to them, though as the poor things only want to feed it seems a bit harsh to hate them.

Apologies to anyone who gets seasick watching this, it’s the teasel moving, not me 🙂

And here is a bumblebee, doing that pollen-collection thang properly. This one is buzz-pollinating the bittersweet, vibrating at a high frequency so that the plant will release its pollen. Not that you can hear the sound above the wind…

And watching benignly from the pond is this frog. All the fuss and bother of the year is already over, and s/he can just sit and watch the world go by (though if s/he could see their way clear to munching on some of the slugs and snails that have appeared after the rain that would be very helpful). As I haven’t even seen them paying much attention to the water snails, though, I suspect this might not be on the cards.

A pepperwort, but which one?

Dear Readers, following my trip to the cemetery on Saturday I decided to find out a bit more about this rather strange plant. It looks rather like a giant shepherd’s purse although the seedheads are different. I was fairly sure that it was a member of the cabbage family, but one that I hadn’t seen before. Fortunately the knowledgeable people over at the Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland Facebook group were able to give a tentative identification – this is most probably Narrow-leaved Pepperwort (Lepidium ruderale). To identify it properly, I need to give the leaves a rub next time I’m in the cemetery – they are said to smell like a combination of horse dung and horseradish. I can’t wait!

The genus of the plant, Lepidium, means ‘small-scale’ in Latin – some authors think that this refers to the use of some species to treat leprosy, which causes scaly skin in its early stages. It might also refer to those tiny round seeds, which definitely have a resemblance to fish scales. However, the leprosy interpretation is supported by the fact that a close relative, dittander (Lepidium latifolium) was used as a treatment for leprous sores, and that stands of this unusual, normally coastal plant, have been found growing in the grounds of 3 hospitals in Kent and nowhere else in the county(Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey, page 153).

Dittander (Lepidium latifolium) growing in its normal seaside habitat (Photo One)

The plant has also been used in a tincture to treat impetigo, another skin disease, and it’s said that it can also reduce blood pressure and decrease respiration (though why you’d want people to breathe less I am unsure). Furthermore a close relative of ‘our’ plant, field pepperwort (Lepidium campestre) was said to be an antidote to poison, and was sold under the name of ‘mithridate pepperwort’. And for those of us who are ladies of ‘a certain age’, yet another relative, maca (Lepidium meyenii) develops a huge, bulbous taproot which is said to taste like vegetable caramel, and which is said to be a great treatment for hot flushes. In its native Peru, maca is also used as an aphrodisiac, and there is some evidence that it has a direct influence on the action of hormones such as oestrogen, so maybe this isn’t so unlikely.

Maca roots (Lepidium meyenii). Not to be confused with parsnips! (Photo Two)

As you might expect from the name, pepperworts of all kinds are said to have intensely mustardy, pepper-flavoured leaves, which can be used in salads when picked young. Having read the description of the smell, however, I might leave this one for the hardier folk among us. In fact, the plant is so strongly-flavoured that it can taint the milk of the animals that graze upon it, and furthermore it appears to be herbicide-resistant. Bees love it, however, and there was a tiny hoverfly feeding on this specimen, which you can probably see if you squint.

A pepperwort, probably narrow-leaved pepperwort

It seems to me that we owe so much to these nondescript little brassicas, not just because many of them are the ancestors of the cabbages, turnips and radishes that we enjoy today but in their own right. With their peppery flavour they added some much-needed flavour to our ancestor’s diet, and they can be surprisingly attractive to the human eye too: I rather liked the long spikes of flowers and seeds on the pepperwort. As already noted, they can be popular with pollinators, and caterpillars that can get past the mustardy flavour that is meant to deter them can find something tasty to eat.

And so to a poem all about cabbages. I love this! Words actually fail me. See what you think. My mother, too, used to overcook it, and put a spoonful of bicarb into the water, in theory to keep it green.

Brassicas by Eileen Sheehan

There was no sex in our village there was only
cabbage. Row upon row of it filling the haggards
on high, straight ridges. This is where babies came from
we were told, in all seriousness. My sister still remembers
being shown the exact head that she was discovered under.
We knew everything about growing the small, limp
plants that needed constant watering. Learned how to protect them
from root fly and caterpillar infestations. Recognized the different varieties,
from January King to Curly Kale, sewn in sequence for year-round cropping.
Instructed that it was never harvested until the hearts were firm and babies
were something only grown-up women found. Of sex
we knew nothing. We all hated it; the dank smell of it cooking
that permeated through the whole house for hours
after it was eaten, the sloppy look of it on the plates,
the run-off staining the spuds and bacon. But it was
good for us so we were made to finish it. Remember
how mother would add a teaspoon of soda to the water
to soften the fibers? Years later, I learnt that this destroys
the flavour, disarms the vitamins. The myth was easy
to believe in a farming community until our hormones and
neighbours’ sons, well educated in animal husbandry,
illuminated the shortcomings in our education.

Oh my sisters,
we are the daughters of cabbages and should celebrate our
cruciferae lineage; tough and sinewy of a strong variety,
adaptable to any climate, winter hardy;
never ones to take
ourselves too seriously: when I think on it,
my sisters, all that green we swallowed.

Photo Credits

Photo One by Sten, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two By Vahe Martirosyan  https://www.flickr.com/photos/vahemart/29354035645/in/photolist-Lq4Xq7-KUBFMH-KUBDQM-KUqMKC-KUBBVV-LJv7uH-LyoM5o-KLS6Bs-LHV7yn-LHV77R-LAYZik-LHV6gc-LHV5tk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54408048

Dear Readers, when I was in my twenties and thirties, our garden was positively awash with hedgehogs, from big lone males to whole families of hoglets. But the numbers declined, and I have never seen a hedgehog here in East Finchley. Recently, however, things have been looking up – I am hearing reports from the County Roads themselves of these spikey mammals being spotted, and only last week my friend A, who lives two roads away from me, rescued a poorly hedgehog in her garden and got him to a wildlife hospital. Could things be looking up for urban hedgehogs? I was looking forward to this talk to find out.

London Hogwatch is a case-study of urban mammals using camera traps run in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), and Chris Carbone has been involved with the project since 2016. The project overlaps with hedgehog studies in Regents Park, one of the last redoubts of the mammal in Central London. And, as the population of hedgehogs as fallen by over two-thirds in the past two decades, it’s a vital piece of research. The aim is to find out where the hedgehogs currently are, and to target these areas with campaigns and information to try to preserve them.

The project started in 2016 by concentrating on Camden, where the Zoo and Regent’s Park are situated. In 2017 it expanded to Haringey (not, I notice, to Coldfall Wood) and Richmond Park, and then on to Lambeth, Southwark and Sutton. Carbone explained that they are starting to do their first surveys in private gardens, and there’s a major programme of expansion planned for 2021, looking at Redbridge in East London for the first time (where I used to live and where hedgehogs used to be plentiful), and to other areas such as Hounslow and Enfield.

The projects have been run on something of a shoestring, relying on Masters and PhD students to do a lot of the analysis from the camera traps. I remember when I was running my camera trap that for every ‘valid’ photo of an actual fox there were dozens of cats, waving foliage and my legs going backwards and forwards to the shed, so I can only imagine the patience involved.

Carbone explained that camera-trap surveys had only really been possible during the past ten years – previous cameras were too big and expensive for widespread surveys. During the lockdown, cameras had been packaged up and shipped out for people to use in their own gardens, before collecting them back again, quarantining them and analysing the data.

There have also been a number of large-scale surveys. One, in Hampstead Heath in 2018, showed that there were at least 100 hedgehogs present. This was followed up in 2020 with some private garden surveys, which showed that gardens that were close to the area of the Heath where hedgehogs were present were also being visited by the animals, but that good habitat in places like Highgate Cemetery and Waterlow Park were completely devoid of hedgehogs, probably due to barriers such as the major roads that bisect the area, and walls and impenetrable fences between individual houses.

Studies also showed that there was a robust population of hedgehogs in the Barnes/Richmond/Roehampton area – an avid hedgehog fan in Barnes had been encouraging people to drill holes in their fences to enable the animals to travel between gardens. Camera trapping showed that there were lots of hedgehogs on Barnes Common and in the Wetland Centre, and that these were spreading out from this area, so this is an area of major importance for South London hedgehogs.

Interestingly though, to the south and west (i.e. in Richmond Park itself and the grounds of Roehampton University) there’s a population of badgers, who not only compete with the hedgehogs but will actually eat them. When Carbone showed his slide, there was a very clear demarcation between the areas where badgers were present, and those where hedgehogs were present. Although hedgehogs can co-exist quite happily with foxes and cats, it seems as it badgers are a step too far. However, badgers are much less likely to come into private gardens, and so Carbone feels that hedgehog highways and support from private garden owners can provide an important refuge for hedgehogs, where they are much less likely to come into contact with badgers.

Other surveys, such as one at Home Park which surrounds Hampton Court Palace, didn’t reveal any hedgehogs at all, but they did expose some interesting patterns of animal behaviour. Deer activity, for example, peaks very early in the morning before humans and dog walkers appear, and tails off to a much lower level when the park is being highly used. On Hampstead Heath, birds also try to avoid busy human times. With the usage of public greenspace having become so much more intense during the lockdown, it might be a while before some new balance between human and animal activity is achieved in our busiest parks and reserves.

So, what areas are good for hedgehogs, and what do they avoid? A predictive map of areas that should be good for the mammals has been built up from historic data gathered by other organisations and London Hogwatch, and the results show that:

• Areas with badgers are really no-go areas for hedgehogs, as mentioned above
• Allotments and gardens are good for hedgehogs, particularly if they have lots of invertebrates living in them
• But! a lot more data analysis needs to take place to determine exactly what they need.

One big problem is genetic isolation between populations. There are a hundred hedgehogs in Hampstead Heath, and about thirty in Regent’s Park. There’s only about a mile and a half of distance between these two populations, but between the roads, the walls, the fences and the swathes of concrete it would be a very lucky hedgehog indeed who managed to make the trip unscathed.

Another is the dangers posed by our roads. Carbone shared a photo of a sadly-squashed hedgehog on a zebra-crossing in a 20 m.p.h. zone, taken during lockdown. If a hedgehog can’t avoid getting run down under these circumstances, what chance does it stand of crossing a busy road during normal times?

So, what’s the future for hedgehogs, and for London Hogwatch? Carbone outlined a few key points. Firstly, the organisation wants to identify current hedgehog ‘hotspots’ and concentrate efforts on those areas. Secondly, there is a whole debate to be had about use of public greenspace, and how to balance the needs of humans and of urban wildlife. Thirdly, we need a better understanding of the relationships between different urban species. Finally, Carbone thinks that there needs to be better partnerships between different sectors and stakeholders – there’s a tendency for people not to think ‘outside the box’ of their own particular interest area, and this can make things very challenging.

Carbone was asked about how people could help hedgehogs, and he had a number of ideas.

• The hedgehog highway idea is very important – this works best where a small community agrees to, for example, make routes through their garden fences so that the hedgehogs can access food from a range of gardens.
• Feeding can work, but it’s important to make sure that you do it in such a way that you aren’t also feeding all the other urban wildlife
• You can buy hedgehog ‘houses’ and nests which can be useful in some circumstances
• Carbone is not in favour of translocating hedgehogs, but thinks we should foster hedgehogs where they occur naturally – if hedgehogs are not already in an area there might be a good reason for why they aren’t there.

In short, this was an interesting talk that gave a good picture of what is currently going on in the field of London hedgehog research. Personally, I would have loved to know a bit more about possible reasons for the decline (I blame slug pellets and increased traffic, but who knows?) but I learned a lot, and I certainly wish London Hogwatch all the best as they expand into new areas of London. It will be good to hear about what they discover.

You can watch the whole talk here.

London Hogwatch doesn’t have a website yet (though they do have Twitter at https://twitter.com/londonhogwatch?lang=en, but I found this map from Hedgehog Street to be very useful.