Dear Readers, it seems to me that if nature has a preferred colour in the South of England, it’s probably yellow – maybe this is because it’s a hue that can be seen by all kinds of pollinators, from bees and butterflies to the hard-working but underappreciated hoverflies. But how good are you at identifying yellow plants? Below are photos of twelve yellow flowers. All you have to do is to match the species to the photo.

You have until 5 p.m. UK time on Friday 25th March to put your answers into the comments, and the results will be published on Saturday 26th March. I will disappear your answers when I see them (if I manage to get myself organised – Covid has left me a bit brain-foggy this week, though I am generally very much on the mend).

So, if you think that the plant in Photo A is a Yellow Corydalis, your answer is 1) A)

Species

1. Yellow Corydalis (Pseudofumaria lutea)
2. Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus)
3. Goldilocks Buttercup (Ranunculus auricomus)
4. Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)
5. Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris)
6. Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsis)
7. Evening Primrose (Oenothera glazioviana)
8. Turnip (Brassica rapa)
9. Touch-me-not Balsam  (Impatiens noli-tangere)
10. Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium verum)
11. Yellow Archangel (Lamiastrum galeobdolon)
12. Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)

Photos

A)

B)

C)

D)

E)

F)

G)

H)

I)

J)

K)

L)

Dear Readers, I hope you’re not all bored to death by the frogs yet – I am still fascinated by the goings-on in the pond. This is clearly the biggest aggregation of frogs that I’ve seen in the pond in over ten years, and I am trying to work out why this year is so special. In the south-east it’s been a remarkably mild winter – I only remember the pond freezing on one day – and so I’m guessing that more of the amphibians have survived. Plus, the pond will have recovered since it was cleaned out a few years ago, so it’s probably at peak production. But even so, it’s like a froggy Serengeti out there. I just sat in the twilight and listened to them singing yesterday, which was a bit of a treat following a few foggy-minded days.

Every time I venture into the garden there’s a mass splashing as all the ‘double-frogs’ disappear under the water, though there’s so much frogspawn that it’s difficult for them to dive to the bottom. Then if I sit quietly they gradually resurface, and after a while some brave soul will start to sing, followed by another frog, and then another. It’s not a particularly musical sound to our ears but it clearly works with the ladies.

The white vocal sacs of the males must be quite an attraction too, especially in the half-light – I noticed how they shone out in the twilight yesterday. Apparently the females are attracted to the males with the longest and loudest calls. I remember one female sitting on a rock last year, surveying a choir of wildly croaking males, before entering the water and getting jumped on by the whole lot of them. Fortunately she was a big girl and managed to kick most of them off.

The males, once they’ve found a female, will hang on for grim death until she releases her eggs, which can take several days. Apparently the egg-laying nearly always happens at night, and that’s been my experience – I’ve never seen a female actually producing the eggs, but in the morning there are the big clumps of spawn. Once the female judges that the time is right to release her eggs, the male releases his sperm and voila, fertilisation. I suspect that the temperature of the water might have something to do with the actual release of the eggs – activity has certainly picked up now that the weather has warmed a little. The male may leave the female to try to find another mate once spawning is complete, but competition is intense in my little pond so I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope.

And in a day or so it will all be over and done with, and in about three weeks the spawn will melt and tiny, comma-shaped tadpoles will emerge. I hope there’s enough food in the pond for them – they like algae but I know they’ll also eat lettuce, so if they seem to be struggling I’ll know what to do. Probably one in a thousand of the eggs will survive to be an adult frog, which looking at the volume of frogspawn is probably just as well. I don’t know if anyone else remembers the 1970s eco-horror film ‘Frogs’, but if all of these eggs turned into an adult frog I think I’d need a bigger house. I rather like the idea of ‘When Nature Strikes Back’ though. ‘A Croak! A Scream!’ indeed. Ray Milland was a good actor, but he was certainly in some stinkers.

Chinese Geese (Photo One)

Dear Readers, it is my fifth day since I tested positive for Covid and I’m feeling a lot better physically, though my brain is all over the place. What a strange disease this is! I read an article stating that it seems to cause brain shrinkage, and as far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised. Hopefully it will spring back like a cushion at some point in the near future. It could also be because of cappuccino withdrawal, our local coffee shop will be missing us, especially as my husband is still testing positive and it’s now day 10. So I am finding myself entertained by little things in New Scientist.

First up, scientists who study the domestication of birds have been dealt a curveball by the discovery of some goose bones in the Chinese Stone Age village of Tianluoshan, which was inhabited between 5500 and 7000 years ago. 232 bones were found, and some belonged to geese who were less than 16 weeks old, so too young to have flown in from elsewhere. No wild geese breed in the area now, and the scientist interviewed, Masaki Eda from Hokkaido University Museum, thinks it very unlikely  that it was ever a suitable habitat for geese. Furthermore, analysis seems to show that the adult geese were bred locally (the chemical analysis  of the bones can show where the water they drank came from), and that they were all roughly the same size, indicating captive breeding. Carbon dating the bones puts them at about 7000 years old, making them the first birds to be domesticated.

I must admit that I thought that chickens were the most likely candidate for oldest domesticated bird – they are a bit more amenable for a start. A 2014 study reported finding domestic chicken bones from as early as 10,000 years ago. However, the bones weren’t directly dated, and many scientists believe that the bones come from pheasants that were hunted. So, for the minute, it looks like geese might have been our earliest avian companions.

And secondly, as an elder sibling myself I can vouch for the pain of suddenly no longer being the apple of my mother’s eye, so it’s no wonder that scientists studying wild bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo have found that their stress levels go through the roof when a new sibling is born, and stay high for up to seven months. Scientists observed the behaviour of the weaned infants when their new brother or sister was born, and also analysed urine samples for the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol levels jumped to five times their normal level, and the youngsters were seen to be much clingier with their mothers than usual, though scientists weren’t sure whether this was because they wanted to see the infant or because they wanted their mother’s reassurance.

Because bonobos are so similar to us – the offspring stay with their mother for a very long period and are totally reliant on her, even after a new sibling is born – it’s somehow not surprising that the youngsters behave in much the same way that I did. My mother solved the problem of sibling jealousy by making me feel that my little brother was ‘ours’ rather than ‘hers’, and so from very early on I was involved in his care. It would be interesting to know what different strategies bonobo mothers have for keeping their offspring happy – I’m sure that they have such strategies. And also, is the effect less marked when yet another sibling comes along? After all, you can only cease to be an only child once.

Bonobo mother and baby – Photo by Kokolopori Bonobo Research Project https://www.bonobo.org/news-and-knowledge/baby-boom

And finally (and this is not from New Scientist, but from The Guardian)  a couple in New Zealand are heartbroken to discover that the world’s biggest potato, weighing in at 7.8 kilograms, is not, in fact, a potato. Nicknamed ‘Dug’, it was found by Colin Craig-Brown in their garden, but DNA analysis by the Guinness Book of Records has revealed that it is, in fact, the tuber of a gourd. Craig-Brown still has ‘Dug’ in the freezer:

“I say ‘gidday’ to him every time I pull out some sausages. He’s a cool character,” Craig-Brown said. “Whenever the grandchildren come round, they say, ‘Can we see Dug?’”

“He is the world’s biggest not-a-potato.”

And I don’t know if it’s just the Covid or the brain shrinkage, but I just love this story.

Dug, the world’s biggest not-potato

Goodness, Readers, it took the frogs a while to get going, but this morning there was more activity in the pond than I’ve ever seen. As soon as I opened the front door I could hear the males croaking, and there is frogspawn everywhere. The frogspawn that you can see is only the tip of the iceberg, as it were. The water starwort, which didn’t take off last year, has flourished and is providing the frogs with a bit more cover than they usually get.

The local cats are showing rather a lot of interest, but the frogs are relatively safe while they stay in the pond. It’s when they leave it that the cats don’t seem to be able to resist them. Fortunately they usually move about at night when all well-behaved cats are tucked up in bed.

It’s funny to think that in a week or so the majority of these frogs will be gone, though goodness knows where. Some do stay in the pond all year, some of the males return to hibernate, but the females I think make the trek to the woodpile beside the shed, where they’re well protected and there are lots of invertebrates to eat.  I am just happy to see that the wheel of life is still turning,  The spawning of the frogs marks a turning point in the year, an indication that spring is actually now in full swing.

On the Covid front, I am feeling slightly better, though my throat is very sore and I have an irritating and persistent cough. I also learned that a dear friend of mine who caught Covid in January this year has come down with it again in March in spite of being triple vaxxed like me. I had been feeling that one of the upsides of catching Covid now would mean that I’d be unlikely to catch it again in the short term, but clearly this is not the case. Still, one challenge at a time is quite enough! So now I’m off for a hot drink and a lie-down. See you all tomorrow!

Ivy (Hedera helix) – ‘helix’ means ‘twisted’ or ‘spiral’

Dear Readers, a lot of people get very hot under the collar on the subject of ‘Latin’ names for plants and animals – there are regularly rows on the many Facebook groups that I’m involved in when someone quotes the scientific name for a plant or insect.

“What’s the common name?” people ask. “And why do you lot need to be so snobby?”

Well, because a lot of creatures don’t have common names, especially insects. And also, if you call an insect a ‘daddy-long-legs’, you might mean a cellar spider (Pholcus phalangoides) or a cranefly (Tipula maxima) or a harvestman (Phalangium opilio) according to where you live in the country or the world. So using the ‘Latin’ (more specifically the binomial name) means that you all know what you’re talking about.

Don’t get me wrong, I love vernacular names for plants and animals – they tell you a lot about the relationship between humans and the natural world, and they are often extremely local, as a glance at Roy Vickery’s Folk Flora or Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica will reveal. There’s room for both precision and imagination in this world, and, at the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, I sometimes wish that we could all just get along.

Anyhow! This brings us to our quiz. And as I have just tested positive for Covid (no surprise after my husband has been coughing and spluttering for a week) I am going to go for a quiz that’s easy for me to prepare this week :-). Below are twelve common scientific names for plants, and an example of each. Can you tell me what the ‘Latin’ name is telling us about the plant? You can choose from the list of possible meanings below.

So, if you think species name 1, Officinalis, means ‘Creeping’, your answer is 1)A)

As usual, answers in the comments by 5 p.m. UK time next Friday please (18th March), and the results will be posted on Saturday 19th March. I will ‘disappear’ your answers as soon as I see them.

Species Name

1. Officinalis (Example – Common Fumitory, Fumaria officinalis)
2. Verna (Example – Lesser Celandine, Ficaria verna)
3. Rupestre (Example – Reflexed Stonecrop, Sedum rupestre)
4. Sativa (Example – Common Vetch, Vicia sativa)
5. Pratense (Example – Red Clover, Trifolium pratense)
6. Sylvestris (Example – Narrow-leaved Everlasting Pea, Lathyrus sylvestris)
7. Repens (Example – Common Restharrow, Onanis repens)
8. Palustre/palustris (Example – Grass of Parnassus, Parnassia palustris)
9. Corniculata (Example – Procumbent Yellow Sorrel, Oxalis corniculata)
10. Lutea (Example – Mountain Pansy, Viola lutea)
11. Maculatum (Example – Cuckoo-pint, Arum maculatum)
12. Hirsutum (Example – Great Willowherb, Epilobium hirsutum)

Meaning

A. Creeping
B. Found in marshes and bogs
C. Horned
D. Hairy
E. Of the spring
F. Found on cultivated land
G. Yellow
H. Found in forests/woods
I. Spotted
J. A traditional healing plant
K. Wall/rock-loving
L. Meadow-loving