Dear Readers, I know that you’re not supposed to have favourites, but this characterful cherry tree on Leicester Road in East Finchley’s County Roads is definitely mine. Clearly it’s been pruned over the years to make sure that it doesn’t collide with any windows or collapse onto the garage (a most unusual feature here) but it manages to look both awkward and elegant, a most unusual mixture.

I would love to know its history, and I’m very pleased that none of the people who’ve owned the house have decided to cut it down – if the weather was a little warmer, I’d be expecting it to be thrumming with bees. Instead, in the past hour we’ve had torrential rain, hailstones, sunshine, wind and a few moments of calm. I saw my first hairy-footed flower bees of the year, which is always a happy sign. And while we wait for things to settle down a bit, here’s some of the blossom – let’s hope it stays on the tree for a little bit longer.

In other news, I recently found that green alkanet (of which I have a superabundance in both the front and back garden, ahem) is the foodplant of the caterpillars of two of my favourite moths, the Jersey Tiger and the Scarlet Tiger. There have been lots of Jersey Tigers about in the past few years, and I wonder if this common London weed is part of the reason? Anyhow, keep your eyes open for these little dudes if you have any of this stuff about. When the flowers emerge, it’s great for pollinators too, though the taproot goes down to the centre of the earth so I understand some gardeners being less than  tolerant of the stuff.

Any caterpillars that you see at this time of year are likely to be the Jersey Tigers – the larvae feed at night from September to May (presumably going into a torpid state when it’s very cold) before pupating on the ground in a silken cocoon and emerging as the adult moth in late spring/early summer. Scarlet Tigers can also be seen in the spring, and there may be a group of caterpillars feeding together. How exciting! I shall certainly be keeping my eyes open, as something has clearly been eating my green alkanet. It’s probably slugs, but you never know!

Green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens)

Jersey Tiger caterpillar (Euplagia quadripunctaria) (Photo by This image is created by user Tom Deroover at Waarnemingen.be, a source of nature observations in Belgium., CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

Jersey Tiger Moth (Photo by AJC1 from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

Scarlet Tiger caterpillar (Callimorpha diminula) Photo by Ilia Ustyantsev from Russia, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Scarlet Tiger Moth (Photo gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)