Plane Trees on Islington Green

Dear Readers, I left Islington almost fifteen years ago, to start a new chapter in East Finchley, but there are certain places that I still re-visit. My lovely hairdresser is here (and any ladies of a certain age will know how important it is to have someone who understands their crowning glory). I go to pilates here every week, because I know Pete, the guy who runs the sessions, and he’s helped me through my broken leg, my sciatica, the loss of both parents, Covid etc etc. And I must confess to visiting Waterstones pretty much every week – the staff are really, really into books, and we have a weekly discussion about what we’ve been reading. At the moment, I’m ploughing through the Booker longlist. Anyone else? I have a couple of favourites at the moment, but with the shortlist out very soon I need to get a move on. 

Anyhow, another favourite spot is Islington Green. I’m not exactly sure when the London Plane trees were planted, but my guess would be at least 150 years ago. Nowadays they’re full of parakeets, which I’m sure would have surprised them somewhat when they were young….

The Green is home to a very modern war monument for the dead of both World Wars.

Since 2015 Islington Green has been protected as a Centenary Field by Fields in Trust who work to protect parks and green spaces in perpetuity. This little spot of green is highly valued – after the City of London, the London Borough of Islington has less green space than any other London borough. So many people use it to have their lunch, walk their dogs or even just sit and reflect on life and its meaning, all the more since the installation of the memorial to the famous Bob the Street Cat. I often used to see Bob and his person, James Bowen, when I lived in Islington. Bowen credits Bob with saving his life, and you can read all about it here.

While the planting around the war memorial is pretty formal for most of the year, there is now a rather wilder bed, with some prairie planting, much appreciated by the bees. And there’s also a large resident flock of pigeons, who keep their eyes on the comings and goings around the coffee stand, which is also home to Diego, who I think is a St Bernard, and his person. Next time I visit, I’ll get a photo of him (the dog!) but for now, here’s the sunlight through the ornamental grass (and some pigeons)…..

…and the trees reflected in the window of Tesco Express on Essex Road. What a beautiful time of year this is, and today, with the temperature at 23 Celsius and the trees just starting to turn, it feels like a real blessing.

Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) Photo by By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117996012

Dear Readers, if you happen to be in the vicinity of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Barnes in London over the next few days, it’s well worth popping down to see if you can catch a glimpse of the Glossy Ibis. Once upon a time, this was an extremely rare visitor to the UK, but over the past few years the numbers have increased to triple figures, with some birds even attempting to  breedi in Cambridgeshire. This is probably to do with warmer winters in the UK, and the likelihood is that this will become a breeding bird here over the next few years.

Photo by Laurie Boyle athttps://www.flickr.com/photos/92384235@N02/10420836454/

Glossy ibises are surprisingly small birds, only about the size of a curlew, but what they lack in stature, they make up for in glorious iridescent plumage. Interestingly, a bird called a ‘black curlew’ is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon accounts – could it be that Glossy Ibis used to live in the UK, and are simply coming home? The species is the most widespread of the ibis family, living in Australia, Asia, Europe, southern North America and the Caribbean, and most populations migrate from one place to another, so it’s easy to see how a group of birds could end up almost anywhere.

Photo by By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117996008

Another feature of the ibis which helps it to settle in in so many places is its wide range of diet. It can and will eat everything from dragonfly larvae and beetles to fish, baby birds, crabs and molluscs. It loves shallow wetlands, and nests in large trees – if human beings don’t persecute the birds, they will even nest in city parks. It’s this adaptability that gives me hope that it might establish in the UK, just as egrets have done. The establishment of wetland sites at Walthamstow and Woodberry may also encourage them.

Glossy Ibis feeding in the Camargue (Photo By © Giles Laurent, gileslaurent.com, License CC BY-SA, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155084451)

But what does this elegant bird sound like? Rather like how I imagine a dinosaur sounded, I think…

So, I wonder what will arrive in the UK next? Any bets, birdwatching friends?

Dear Readers, as I sit here in the living room, tapping away on my laptop and trying to dissuade the kittens from ‘helping’ I am listening to the rain pounding down. There have been a lot of poems about rain, but I like this take on cinematic rain by Don Paterson. See what you think.

Rain by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from a play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/ugacommunications/21959436983

Dear Readers, I am a great fan of botanist James Wong, who writes a regular column in New Scientist. He is a great one for debunking garden myths, and this week he was taking on the idea of having different plant fertilisers for different kinds of plants. If you’ve been to a garden centre lately you’re bound to have noticed that there are liquid feeds for almost every kind of plant, from chrysanthemums to fuchsias, not to mention for different fruit and vegetable crops. But do we really need to buy all of them?

Wong explains that although plants need 16 micronutrients in order to thrive (and there’s a very useful article explaining this here), most fertilisers are based on three macronutrients: nitrogen (N) for leaf growth, phosphorous (P) for root development, and potassium(K) for fruit and flower formation.  Fertilisers often display an NPK ratio, showing the make-up of the formula. So, lawn fertilisers often feature nitrogen, while tomato feeds might be heavier on potassium. However, as Wong points out, it’s not so simple – he looked at three ‘individual’ fertilisers, for roses, tomatoes and strawberries, and all three had an identical NPK ratio. So, if you were growing all three ‘crops’ you wouldn’t need three bottles of fertiliser – just one would do.

Furthermore, as Wong points out, plants only take what they need from the soil, in the proportions that they need it. The way to check out what’s going on is to buy a cheap, simple soil test, to make sure that your soil has what plants need. There will always be some exceptions, such as ericaceous plants, which need more acidic soil conditions, but even here, the plants will sometimes surprise you: I’ve seen camellias growing to 20 feet tall in a London front garden, on clay soil. And anything in a container will probably need top dressing occasionally, to make sure that all the nutrients aren’t used up. But we don’t need a whole shelf full of different bottles of fertiliser, pretty as it might look.

And also, let’s not forget that over-fertilised soils produce run-off, which pollutes our rivers and streams. Sometimes, less is definitely more.

Dear Readers, I picked up Interrupted Journeys by Adrian Potter purely out of curiosity – for once, I hadn’t read reviews or heard any fanfare about its publication. But what a fascinating read it is! Adrian Potter retires from his job as a teacher in West Yorkshire, and soon finds himself part of a team who look after the ‘Badger Phone’. He travels out to road casualties and trapped badgers, but also gradually becomes the ‘Badger Man’, travelling the North of England with his two colleagues, Pam and Derek (and later, Adam).

“Derek is an ex-miner. It was his custom, like so many of his workmates, to chew tobacco underground to stave off thirst. The long-term result was that his teeth were ruined and the bulk of them fell out, and he can no longer bite into an apple. And the habit of doing without fluid all day stuck – while out badgering, which is what he does all the hours of daylight, almost every day – although he quit the tobacco. ‘Do you want a swig, Derek?’ I say, offering him a drink. ‘I’m alright’ is the inevitable negative response’. 

The badgering habit sticks, and Potter becomes fascinated with the live animals – he buys some land with a resident badger sett, He is also intrigued by the process of decay that sets in when the animals  are dead, so probably not a book to read during breakfast.

And then he becomes involved with foxes – injured foxes, dead foxes, foxes in the wrong place, orphaned foxes.

‘ The owners of a private wood were concerned when they discovered what they took to be small badger cubs above ground one freezing cold April morning. There were four tiny, dark creatures on the scant woodland floor outside a hole, and they were behaving rather strangely. ‘Those aren’t badger cubs’, I said ‘they’re fox cubs’. Very young cubs are not especially foxy. Their coats are woolly and chocolate brown rather than russet; they have short faces, blue eyes and puppy-dog tails. At this stage a fox cub might be compared to a larva, dissimilar to the imago form, while an equivalent badger cub is comparable to a nymph or, in the parlance of popular culture, a ‘mini-me’. These fox ‘larvae’ were squabbling with pathetic ferocity over the meagre remains of a dead crow, which they were probably incapable of assimilating, and were quite oblivious of their surroundings…..The only conclusion to be drawn was that the vixen – perhaps both parents – had come to grief and that these cubs were orphans. On such a bitter day they were sure to die. ‘

Fortunately, Potter and his colleagues are able to find a fox rescue organisation who can look after the fox kits, and they are reared to adulthood and released in a safe place. A happy ending in a story with a lot of unhappy endings – most road traffic victims are euthanised, or already dead when Potter arrives. But still he continues, because there is a gap here – there is no one organisation that looks after injured or displaced large mammals, and Potter is often the link between the police, animal rescue centres and vets. He constantly goes the extra mile – clambering up steep banks in search of wounded animals, lifting corpses out of the road, organising people so that animals can make a dignified escape when trapped.

Towards the end of the book, after a year in which he deals with over two hundred mammal casualties, and after five years of concentrating on badgers, Potter finds himself becoming ‘the deer man’ – roe deer are often victims of road traffic accidents, and sometimes deer calves are left orphaned and alone.

‘I gravitated towards deer for a number of reasons. There wasn’t a deer group, no one had a duty towards these animals. I could make the responsibility my own. Deer – specifically roe deer – seem to me to be the most mysterious and wildest of our larger beasts. The least known and the least considered. I wanted to get as close to them as I could in order to feel alive. And I needed to be defined by something different and exciting. To say I was a retired teacher, to myself or to anyone else, was never going to be enough. I was a self-styled ‘conservation and animal rescue voluteer’, but that was still a bit vague.’

And this one reason that this book is so interesting to me – it isn’t just about the animals, intriguing though that is. Potter is very honest about his motivations for being the ‘badger/deer/fox man’ – he is searching for meaning, and for a way to feel truly alive. Aren’t we all, in a way? I really loved this book – not only did I learn a lot about our wild mammals, but it also made me  think about our motivations as human beings. And Potter writes like a dream. Highly recommended!

Chicken of the Woods on an oak tree in Darlands Nature Reserve

Dear Readers, it has been an interesting year for fungi, and after yesterday’s look at Death Cap, here’s a fungus that you actually can eat (although in the case of those in the photo, you’d have to have crampons and be prepared to climb up about 10 metres of straight tree trunk).

Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) is most often seen on oak trees, but can also grow on yew, eucalyptus, sweet chestnut and cherry. It is said to have the texture of chicken, though those who’ve eaten it, such as Peter Marren in his book ‘Mushrooms’ (a brilliant read if you haven’t come across it) says that he was unsure what all the fuss was about. However, Marren suggests that some caution is required – some people, upon eating the fungus, have had mild allergic reactions, such as swelling lips and giddiness. Marren hypothesises that the fungus may sometimes pick up the toxins from the tree that it grows on, particularly yew, though maybe, as with all things, some individuals just react badly to some foods.

Chicken of the Woods in Coldfall Wood (Photo by Neville Young)

This really is a spectacular fungus, but does it do any harm? The tree that it was on in Darlands had a scar running down its trunk, probably from a lightning strike, but was otherwise in good health. The fungus causes a brown cubical rot – the cellulose in the cell walls of the heartwood of the tree breaks down, which you might think would be a bad thing. However, scientists at Kew suggest that it might actually be helpful in a variety of ways.

Firstly, the breakdown of the heartwood, which is no longer ‘alive’, releases nutrients for the tree. Secondly, this new supply of nutrients can cause the tree to develop new roots around the hollow area, to take advantage of the new food. And finally, as the tree hollows out it may produce buttress roots, to stabilise it against high winds.

Brown cubical rot (Photo By Beentree – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1098816)

The Kew scientists also point out that dark crevices created by the hollowing-out process are extremely biodiverse, creating homes for bats, birds and small mammals, along with a myriad of invertebrates, lichens, mosses and microorganisms. The scientists point out that a misunderstanding of what fungi such as Chicken of the Woods and Beefsteak fungus are doing may cause trees to be felled unnecessarily. And while it’s true that even a fallen oak is an amazing thing as far as other living organisms are concerned, it’s always a shame when one is cut down before its time.

Let’s hope that the Darlands oak continues to thrive. It certainly looks well at the moment, in spite of the lightning scar that runs down the trunk. Who amongst us has lived without any scars?

The Darlands Oak Tree

The fungus itself is also a source of food for non-humans –  some insects feed only on bracket fungi such as Chicken of the Woods, including the delightfully named Hairy Fungus Beetle (Pseudotriphyllus suturalis). And deer are also fond of the fungus, if they can reach it. There can sometimes be a lot to eat – the record size for a Chicken of the Woods mushroom was apparently over 100 lbs.

Finally, the genome of Chicken of the Woods has now been sequenced at Kew – this should help to unlock some of the secrets of its role in the forest ecosystem, and might also pave the way for understanding some of its potential medical characteristics: it’s been found to inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, for example. The bacteria is found on all of our skins, but can also cause food poisoning, abscesses, cellulitis, sepsis and toxic shock syndrome. With growing antibiotic resistance in bacteria, anything that might provide an alternative solution to infection is to be heartily welcomed.

Death Cap (Amanita phalloide) Photo by By Archenzo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=329999

Dear Readers, I have been following the Australian Death Cap Poisoning case (where three people died after being fed Beef Wellington with a Death Cap duxelle) with some interest. For a start, I always thought of Death Cap as being a European fungus rather than an international one. Plus, why is this fungus so deadly? Well, an interesting article in New Scientist last week describes both how its poison works, why it evolved, and how the toxin changes from place to place.

For a start, Death Cap looks like a number of other mushrooms which are very edible, so it’s easy to make a mistake – over 90 percent of mushroom-related deaths are caused by Death Cap. But why? The active ingredient is alpha-amantin, which inhibits the action of the enzyme RNA Polymerase II. Anyone who is just recovering from their biology studies will remember that this enzyme is absolutely crucial to the manufacture of proteins, and hence to the survival of practically all the cells in the body. When ingested (as a mushroom risotto for example) the poison enters the bloodstream, migrates to the liver and then hides out in the gall bladder. Once this has happened, the person poisoned might start to feel better, but as soon as they eat, the poison is secreted along with the bile used to digest the food, and the cycle starts again. Eventually, if not treated, the person dies from liver and kidney damage.

Interestingly, the fatality rate from Death Cap is ‘only’ about 10 to 30 percent. If diagnosed correctly, the patient can be treated with fluids, activated charcoal to soak up the toxins and benzyl penicillin to prevent the toxin being taken into the liver. However there is no antidote to the poison, and those affected may require a liver transplant.

But why did the poison evolve in the first place?

Clearly, it wasn’t to poison humans – as it takes 6-12 hours for the toxin to affect us, it wouldn’t prevent the fungus from being eaten. The consensus seems to be that Death Cap developed alpha-amantin to deter insects, which are presumably more susceptible to instant death from ingesting it. Death Cap is also an ectomycorrhizal fungus, which means that it forms a symbiotic relationship with tree roots, swapping nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous for carbohydrates – another theory is that the toxins help the fungus to out-compete other fungi. One problem for scientists is that Death Cap can’t be grown ‘in captivity’, and so it can only be studied in situ. However, we are discovering some fascinating things about how Death Cap is changing as it spreads around the world.

Death Cap originated in Europe, but was originally taken to North America on the roots of imported trees, and has subsequently spread to every continent except Antarctica. What is fascinating is that the fungus is associating with different trees in each place, and that the chemical structure of the toxins that it contains are changing, depending on the micro-organisms and other life forms that it encounters.

Even more interestingly, Death Cap has changed how it reproduces. Reproduction in fungi is complex, but normally two individuals are involved. However, Death Cap has taken to reproducing unisexually, which means that a single individual fungus can produce masses of viable spores on its own, all of which can grow up to found a new colony. No wonder the fungus is doing so well, and spreading so widely.

This does, of course, represent a problem for the unwary. In particular, it appears that the fungus strongly resembles Paddy Straw Mushroom (popular in Chinese cuisine) and the White Caesar Mushroom, beloved by the Hmong and people of Laotian origin. When Death Cap is found in places like Australia and North America, by people with a culture that includes foraging for food, mistakes may happen, with terrible consequences. All the more reason to be extremely careful when skipping through the woods looking for mushrooms.

Horse Chestnut leaves damanged by leaf miners

Dear Readers, I’ve written before about the leaf mining insects and cankers that affect horse chestnut trees every year, and about my hope that at some point, creatures will recognise the brown patches in the leaves as a possible food source. The patches are caused by tiny caterpillars that are eating the juicy parts of the leaf between the protective layers of the epidermis.

So imagine my joy during a trip to Darlands Nature Reserve in Totteridge earlier this week, to see a flock of tits working their way through the leaves of just such a horse chestnut. At this time of year, young tits of various species join up to forage for food – it’s always worth checking these out as you might spot a goldcrest or even a firecrest amongst them. The leaves are in a really bad state….

but look!

I’m pretty sure that this blue tit, at least, is getting stuck in. Let’s hope that they teach all their little friends. The most valuable thing would be if they targeted the spots in the spring, before they really take hold, but presumably that will take a few more generations.

Blue tits and great tits are really opportunistic, adaptable little birds – the more mature amongst us (ahem) might remember the birds pecking through the foil and drinking the cream from the top of the milk, back in the days when it was delivered by milkmen. The habit spread so quickly that by the 1950s blue tits all over the country were robbing cream from milk bottles. Interestingly, robins also learned to do this, but the habit didn’t spread throughout the population in the same way, maybe because robins are more solitary birds for most of the year, and the youngsters don’t gather in mixed flocks like the tit species do.

Blue tits have also been spotted drinking nectar from crown imperial flowers, pollinating them in the attempt (as far as I know, the only example of bird pollination in the UK, but let me know if you know of others).

Photo by Mark Williams at https://kensingtongardensandhydeparkbirds.blogspot.com/2020/08/it-was-another-hot-day-but-spell-is.html

Given time, I’m sure that the natural world will always find a balancing point. The problem is the speed of change. Let’s hope that, in. this case at least, the predators are starting to discover a new food source.

Dear Readers, after our walk through Darlands Nature Reserve a few days ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about trees, and about the experience of being in the forest. I love this poem by Carol Ann Duffy. See what you think….

FOREST

In fact, the trees are murmuring under your feet,
a buried empathy; you tread it.
High over your head,
the canopy sieves light; a conversation
you lip-read. The forest
keeps different time;
slow hours as long as your life,
so you feel human.

So you feel more human; persuaded what you are
by wordless breath of wood, reason in resin.
You might name them-
oak, ash, holly, beech, elm-
but the giants are silence alive, superior,
and now you are all instinct;
swinging the small lamp of your heart
as you venture their world:

the green, shadowy, garlic air
your ancestors breathed.
Ah, you thought love human
till you lost yourself in the forest,
but it is more strange.
These grave and patient saints
who pray and pray
and suffer your little embrace.

Carol Ann Duffy