Dear Readers, apologies for the preponderance of bracken this week, but reader Danny has reminded me about all the different moths whose larvae feed on the plant, and I think it’s always good to remember that even the most problematic of ‘weeds’ fulfils a role in its native ecosystem. First up is the Garden Tiger moth – the young caterpillars are often found on bracken before they move on to other herbaceous plants. These are the ‘woolly bears’ of my youth, and are still amongst my favourite caterpillars.

Then there’s the Brown Silver-line moth (Petrophora chlorosata), whose caterpillar only feeds on bracken. What an elegant and well-camouflaged moth this is, with its own subtle beauty. The caterpillar has both green and brown forms, with the green form shown below. It seems to be a very energetic little caterpillar, with something of the looper about it. And look at it pictured in situ on a bracken leaf! If I had some bracken nearby I would definitely be keeping an eye open for this chap.

Then there is the Small Angle Shades (Euplexa lucipara). We’re probably all familiar with the Angle Shades moth, but the Small Angle Shades has a rather more out-of-focus/pixellated look about it. You can see them both below so you can make a comparison. The Angle Shades is often found sitting on a wall or fence, minding its own business, so if you’re in the UK you may well have seen one without even being aware of it.

The Small Angle Shades caterpillar is little, fat and green, but it feeds at night so you are unlikely to see it unless you’re rooting about in the bracken with your head torch on. It also feeds on other ferns and a wide variety of herbaceous plants.

And then there are the Swift moths. There is the Orange Swift…

the Common Swift moth…

and the Gold Swift

However, what you’re unlikely to see are the caterpillars of these moths, as they all live underground, munching on those eagle/oak-patterned roots for up to two years before appearing as a moth. Sadly they may also munch on other plants, including your prized paeonies or Michaelmas daisies, and so may be seen as a garden pest. I rather think that the adult moths are worth waiting for, though, especially if the caterpillars are only eating bracken. The adults have non-functioning moth parts, so they are only interested in reproduction rather than eating.

So, bracken may be a bit of a thug in the wrong place, but look at all the wildlife that it supports! I shall certainly be looking at it with more affection next time I fight my way through a thicket of it.

Photo Credits

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

Photo Two by Dean Morley at https://www.flickr.com/photos/33465428@N02/5583264398

Photo Three by Ben Sale from UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four by David G Green from https://www.hantsmoths.org.uk/species/1902.php

Photo Five by 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=1253796

Photo Six by Rob Mitchell, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Seven by Line Sabroe from Denmark, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eight by Ben Sale from UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Nine by Ben Sale from UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Ten by Chris Cant from Cumbria, UK, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eleven by Bernard Ruelle from https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/gold-swift

Photo Twelve from https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/swift-moth-caterpillars

Dear Readers, as I headed back to the bus stop after my visit with Mum and Dad yesterday, I noticed this rather splendid flag fluttering in a cottage garden.

I pass two chaps, one tending to a privet hedge while balanced on a rather precarious stepladder, the other out for his morning constitutional with his small scruffy dog, and ask them about it.

“That,” says the chap with the dog, “Is the County Flag of Dorset. I salute it every evening when I walk past”. And the chap on the stepladder guffaws so loudly that he nearly falls off.

The flag was designed by Stephen Coombs and David White, who pursued a long campaign to persuade the council that a flag for Dorset was a good idea. In the end, the flag was chosen by a public vote back in 2008, which was open to all residents of Dorset. Bournemouth and Poole declined to participate – maybe they thought they’d have a competition for their own flags, or maybe there was some internecine skulduggery at work – local councils everywhere are often hotbeds of rivalry and political machination, However, in a rather nifty manouevre Town Crier Chris Brown managed to convince the town of Wimborne Minster to adopt the ‘Dorset Flag’ regardless of the outcome of the county-wide vote. Four alternative designs were presented, and they’re shown below. The yellow and red flag which was eventually chosen got 2086 votes (54% of the total). I think there is definitely a book to be written about the whole affair.

“Blue is for the sky and sea; yellow for sun and sand; and green for the fields and countryside.108 votes”

“The green background is synonymous with the county of Dorset and maintains our identity as a green and pleasant land. The yellow cross depicts the beautiful beaches we are fortunate to be blessed with. The oak leaf signifies the rural nature of this wonderful county, something most people living here are very proud of. The black border around the yellow cross signifies the black death that came to our shores and nearly wiped out the population but through our resilience as a people we overcame that threat and made us the proud people we are today. 856 votes.”

Design D

“The colours on the flag should show all the good things we have in Dorset. Blue for the sea and beaches; green for the countryside; and gold for the sand and because Dorset is a sunny place to live. 818 votes.”

The red and white  in the winning entry is taken from the arms of Dorset County Council, but the gold is meant to represent the gold of the beaches and wheatfields of Dorset, and places such as Golden Cap on the Jurassic Coast. I guess the gold could also represent the fields of rape, maize and sunflowers that are being grown as biofuels these days too.  I find it interesting that the flag chosen is the most ‘traditional’ of the designs, not surprising in what is a very tradtional county.

The white cross with a red border on the flag has also been linked to St Wite, an Anglo-Saxon holy woman who was (probably) martyred by the Vikings in the 9th Century, and whose relics are held at the church at Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset. Examination of her bones (which were found in a lead casket inside the tomb during renovation work in 1900) has revealed that she was about 40 when she died, and of small stature. St Wite is the unofficial patron saint of Dorset, and her feast day is on June 1st. Her shrine is a very rare survival, as many such sites were destroyed during the Reformation. It’s thought that perhaps the tomb was too modest to attract notice.

The bones of the saint are housed in the tomb at the top, which is covered with a slab of local Purbeck marble. Underneath are holes into which the afflicted could place their limbs, their children or, if the ill person was unable to travel to the church, a handkerchief or some other receptacle to collect the saint’s blessings. Letters of request and thanks could also be posted into the holes. The custom continues to this day, with people making a pilgrimage to the church to ask for intercession.

And just a mile to the south is St Wite’s Well, which dates back to 1630. The waters, especially if lit by the rays of the sun, are said to be a cure for eye complaints. What a pretty and peaceful spot this seems to be! Saintly help or not, I’m sure that being here would be good for whatever ails you.

And so, having noticed the Dorset flag once, I’ve now seen it several times fluttering in people’s gardens as my train heads back east to London and home. When I see the cross of St George I always think of a kind of toxic nationalism, but somehow the Dorset flag just speaks to me of local pride and a sense of belonging. The man who spoke about saluting the flag was displaying the kind of knowing humour that I find so much here, but I am equally sure that if I’d been foolish enough to bad mouth his county I would have been chased back to London by a man wielding hedgetrimmers. Getting the balance right between feeling pride in where you came from, and allowing other people to rejoice in their home towns or countries, feels imperative in these times of division and strife.

 

Dear Readers, every few months I make a pilgrimage to the churchyard of St Andrew’s Church in Milborne St Andrew, to ‘visit’ Mum and Dad. I do a bit of tidying (there’s cherry seedling that’s determined to grow right above the memorial plaque), pop in some new plants, and settle down with my back to the cherry tree and wait for the tears to come, and then for them to ease. It’s been four years since Mum passed away, and two years since Dad died, and things have gotten easier, but I still miss them every single day, and I think I always will. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Grief is the price we pay for love, and although I am sadder these days, I think I also have more perspective on what’s important, and am more aware of what other people might be feeling when they lose someone close to them.

But, there is a special magic about this place: the lambs in the field next door have gone, but an emperor dragonfly sweeps low across the grass, hunting for butterflies. And I notice a spotted flycatcher sitting in the bush opposite. Every so often it dashes from its perch and chases an insect, before returning. After a few minutes, I realise that there are two of them, each of them fluttering and twittering, disappearing for a few minutes and then reappearing. It is hard to stay sad when there is so much life going on all around.

As I watch a big, faded bumblebee pops into one of the penstemon flowers and then buzzes away. Mum always liked bumblebees; they were the acceptable face of insecthood to her, unlike wasps and ants and flies and  anything else with more than four legs. And yet, although she was afraid she would try to catch them and put them outside rather than kill them, and she never allowed her fear to contaminate us when we were children. That takes more bravery than we often appreciate. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the will to contain it.

A huge Scots Pine looms over the churchyard, and a raven flies out of it, sending some jackdaws into a frenzy. It’s only when I see these birds together that I realise how much bigger the raven is. The birds are gone before I can raise my camera but the tree is still there against a wind-blown sky.

The blackberries look so fat and juicy that I can’t resist them. In the distance, a combine harvester is raising a cloud of dust.

The church of St Andrew dates back to the 11th century, and I always pop inside when I’m here. There’s such deep peace in those old walls.

I feel so close to Mum and Dad in Dorset. They loved it here, and I feel their love in every bird and berry, in every flint and every lichen-covered headstone.

And then I gather my things and prepare to head back for the 12.01 bus back to Dorchester, but something makes me detour via the site of the lime tree that I loved, that was blown over in storm Eunice a few months ago – you can see a photo of it in its glory in this blogpost. I was expecting to see the bleak stump that was there a few months ago, but clearly you can’t keep a good tree down. I have rarely seen so much growth in such a short time. It will take it a long time to get back to its previous magnificence, but how it lifted my spirits to see that it wasn’t dead! It reminds me that  everything and everyone live on in some shape or form, and that is very comforting.

 

Dear Readers, I am off to Dorset today for my regular visit to Mum and Dad’s grave, and on the journey west I thought I’d make a note of the ‘weeds’ that I saw along the embankment between Waterloo and Dorchester South. I’m always curious about how things change, and love to speculate about why, though without a proper scientific analysis it is just that – speculation. However, after the banks of buddleia between Waterloo and Walton-on-Thames the side of the railway was completely covered for a while in bracken, and I realised that I didn’t even know what it was.

For sure, bracken is a fern, but specifically it’s Pteridium aquilinum, also known (though not, I think, in the UK) as eagle fern. It is described as a ‘large, coarse fern’, and indeed it has none of the airy beauty of some other members of the fern tribe. Why ‘eagle fern’ though? Some people have thought that the plant resembles the wings of an eagle in flight, but Linnaeus explained that a transverse section of the root reveals an eagle. I have hunted the internets for photo to support Linnaeus’s assertion but no luck yet.

Whatever else it is, it’s clear that bracken is extremely successful. it can be found in temperate and sub-tropical regions on both hemispheres, and the extreme lightness of its spores is surely the reason for its spread along the South Western Railway line – like buddleia and ragwort, the seeds are blown along by passing trains, settling in appropriate soil and setting up home. However, spread by seed is not the plant’s only strategy for reproduction – a single rhizome can penetrate to a depth of 11 feet, and can reach 49 feet in length. The shoots pop up along the length of the rhizome and can reach several feet in height before uncurling as new growth. All in all  this is a rather daunting plant which can be extremely invasive in the wrong place – in Yorkshire it’s displacing heather, bilberry and other upland species in some areas, and it’s quick to take advantage of disturbed soil (it has a preference for acidic soils, but can clearly thrive in a variety of situations).

In autumn the fern starts to turn orange, and very pretty it looks too.

Bracken is also known to be carcinogenic – there is some correlation between stomach cancer and the consumption of bracken (of which more shortly), though a causal link in humans doesn’t seem to have been established. It is thought to be a cause of haemorrhagic disease in cattle and other grazing animals, and milk contaminated with the active chemical, ptaquiloside, is thought to have been responsible for an outbreak of gastric cancer in the Andean regions of Venezuela. It’s thought that ingestion of the spores, the meat from animals that have been feeding on bracken and water sources where the plants grow can all be dangerous, though there’s some evidence that dosing those who’ve come into contact with the carcinogen with selenium can help to offset the effects.

None of this has stopped people from eating the plant, however – it is the fifth most widely distributed weed species in the world, and it has been and is consumed in a variety of ways. The root was eaten during and after the First World War in the UK (though the Royal Horticultural Society now explicitly advises against its consumption). In Korea, the plant is known as gosari, and is an ingredient of bibimbap, a traditional rice dish. In Japan, it’s warabi, and a jelly-like starch made from the root is used in a dessert, while the new shoots are steamed, boiled or salted. In the Canary Islands, flour is made from the roots and then baked into a traditional bread. All these traditional methods will detoxify the carcinogen – boiling denatures it altogether, and the salt, ash and baking soda often used in the preparation of bracken will also greatly reduce the danger. Even without knowing the chemical mechanisms that cause a plant to be dangerous, people often devise workarounds to make something that is nutritious both safe and palatable. I’m always impressed by the adaptability and ingenuity of human beings.

It used to be believed that, because bracken didn’t flower, or appear to have seeds, the seeds must be invisible, and whoever held the spores of the bracken in their hand on St John’s Eve would also become invisible. Witches were said to hate bracken because its cut stem contains an ‘X’, the symbol of Christ. In Ireland, however, cutting the stem at three points was said to reveal the letters ‘G-O-D’. Between the ‘X’s, the GODs and the eagles, the stem of bracken has a lot to live up to, clearly. Rather delightfully, on the Plantlore website someone reports that if you split the stem of bracken you would see an image of Charles II hiding in an oak tree, and wonders what people saw before the reign of Charles II. However, in Scotland the plant is said to hold the image of the devil’s foot, so clearly it’s not all good.

And finally, a poem. Edward Thomas wrote all his poetry during the period 1914-17, and he died in the Battle of Arras in 1917. His poetry conjures the beauty of the English countryside at this period, but there is also a sense of something lurking that will destroy it, not just the war but the creeping industrialisation of agriculture and the sense that things are changing irrevocably. See what you think of this poem, ‘The Lane’.

The Lane
BY EDWARD THOMAS

Some day, I think, there will be people enough
In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries
Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight
Broad lane where now September hides herself
In bracken and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.
Today, where yesterday a hundred sheep
Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway
Of waters that no vessel ever sailed …
It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries
His song. For heat it is like summer too.
This might be winter’s quiet. While the glint
Of hollies dark in the swollen hedges lasts—
One mile—and those bells ring, little I know
Or heed if time be still the same, until
The lane ends and once more all is the same.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Rasbak – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=217090

Photo Two by Ilka Christof, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Three By Sous Chef – https://www.flickr.com/photos/140536182@N03/40636664921/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67604999

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, as we’ve been walking the Capital Ring  on Saturdays for the past few weeks, I’ve been neglecting my beloved St Pancras and Islington Cemetery. But today we popped over to see how things were doing. For some plants, autumn has definitely come early, though the rains of the recent few days are starting to revive the grass. What an astonishing plant this is! No wonder it took over the world.

I make my poor husband stand around for twenty minutes while I try to take a photo of the ivy bees feeding on (guess what?) the ivy. These bees are relatively new arrivals to the UK and are the last solitary bees to put in an appearance, dependent as they are on ivy flowers. Lots of other pollinators are attracted to it too, from bumblebees to this rather handsome hoverfly, but I didn’t manage to catch a shot of the ivy bees. There are some on the linked post above though if you want to have a look.

The poor horse chestnuts, with their leaves frazzled by leaf-miners and drought, are looking even worse than usual. Nice fat conkers though….

Elsewhere, though, there is fruit in abundance. The dog roses and the hawthorn are laden down with hips and haws.

The ash trees are full of keys…

Right next to the North Circular Road there’s an apple tree full of fruit – I wonder if it’s from a seed dispersed by birds, or if someone twenty years ago ate an apple and tossed the core out of the car window?

Then there’s the pyracantha, which I assume was planted as a barrier shrub to shield the path from the passing traffic, and some cherry laurel…

And then there’s the acorns. Lordy, the acorns! I have never seen so many. There is a theory that trees produce more fruit when stressed, as if they suspect that they won’t survive and so are desperate to reproduce. I wonder if the abundance of fruit and nuts so early in the year means that the drought has changed the internal clock of these shrubs and trees  (and I’m not the only one). I regret more than ever not keeping a consistent nature notebook, to map the first occurrences of flowering and fruiting, the first appearance of the frogs and the fledging of the starlings and to see how things have changed even in my lifetime. At least the jays will be happy,

We trundle around the new circular path in what used to be the meadow, and which, judging by the standpipes so that people can water their flowers, will soon be new graves. I am strangely gratified by the way that the ‘weeds’ are already taking over the verges next to the paths, with this Redshank (Persicaria maculosa) popping up impudently through a crack in the tarmac. I love weeds, their persistence and their opportunism, and I suspect they will eventually outlive us all.

About eighteen months ago, someone cleared all of the horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) off of this grave. Alas, it, too, has fought back, and is even flowering.

And this grave is completely covered in the pretty leaves of pink sorrel (Oxalis articulata). It’s funny how this one is so full of the sorrel, and yet there are no other plants nearby. Maybe someone planted a few bulbs and off it went.

And so, some plants are thriving and others are suffering, and for some the jury is out. Cracks have appeared in the turf, but the green leaves of new growth, stimulated by the rainfall, are also there. It will be interesting to see what happens going forward. It was good to reacquaint myself with my local ‘patch’ after my wanderings further afield. After all that wandering, there really is no place like home.

Dear Readers, after we left the Lea River at the new Ice Skating Centre yesterday, we followed the tow path beside the Lee Navigation, the ‘canal’ part of the Lee/Lea. We were both remarking on how different this whole area was since the last time we did the walk back in 2010. Then, the Olympic Park (of which more soon) was a building site, and so were many of the residential buildings along the Lee. There are now lots of attractive-looking apartments, such as this one over looking the canal. My husband is a balcony connoisseur, and he heartily approved of these for year-round use.

There are still plenty of coots and cootlets around, and this parent saw off two Canada geese who came too close to their youngsters. What fierce, feisty birds they are! I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of a coot.

We pass under a low bridge…

…pass this very attractive cottage on the opposite bank….

and come to Curtain Gate Bridge. Before we cross it, I notice a stream of bubbles, presumably from a device to keep the water oxygenated. There are mats of algae and duckweed all along this stretch – presumably it’s slower moving, and so these things have more of a chance to form.

Immediately on the other side of the river is the site of the Middlesex Filter Beds, which were used to treat water – some of the old concrete architecture still stands.

The filter beds were part of Hackney Marshes, a rather wild place when I was growing up- travellers would camp and graze their horses here, my Mum and Dad both did evening shifts at Hackney Stadium which was used for greyhound races, and it was well known as a place that you didn’t want to frequent at night. Latterly, it’s become the home of 82 football, rugby and cricket pitches, and on Sunday the air is thick with the sounds of hungover footballers desperately trying to get the ball in the back of the net. It was also home to the UK’s largest car boot sale for a while.

Along the navigation the path has turned into a narrow path. There is a very smooth attractive cycle path a few metres away, but some cyclists are still steaming along the tow path. I stop to take a photo of the canal and a cyclist passes me at speed (yes I did check the path before I stopped), coming so close that he literally makes my hair stand on end. Still, I’m here to tell the tale, and most cyclists are very decorous, slowing down and tinkling their bells.

I love how some of the house boats have gardens on the top.

And here is another new-to-me apartment block. Trouble is, I bet most of the people who live around here can’t afford to buy a flat here. I think this is Matchmaker’s Wharf, on the sight of the old Lesney works – they used to make ‘Matchbox’ toys, which were highly collectable. My brother had a whole range of the little cars, including a Batmobile that I coveted greatly. It always seemed so sad to me that the toys that are worth the most are the ones that are still in their boxes, rather than the ones that are battered from being crashed into one another by some boisterous little boy.

 

A bit further down the navigation, the duckweed is so thick that you’d  think you could walk on it.

We pass under the bridge that carries the main A102. Underneath there’s the usual smell of urine and the unusual sight of the concrete supports, wildly decorated not just with grafitti but also with all manner of boxes and objects. Someone (or a group of people) have gone to a lot of time and trouble to construct this strange urban mosaic.

And talking of strange urban objects, the Arcelor Mittal Orbit comes into view. This is both a viewing platform and a helter-skelter. I have been quite tempted to pop up for a look, but have no intention of whooshing down, though I admire those of a daredevil tendency who might.

On the left is ‘Here East’, which was the press centre for the Olympic Games in 2012, and is now something of tech hub, with a vegan cafe and a branch of the ever popular ‘Breakfast Club’. This whole area is now an absolute magnet – last time we were here, there was a viewing platform over the building site, and if we had tumbleweeds in East London there would definitely have been some on the road to the station. But now there are people everywhere, strolling, eating, cycling (precariously), drinking, taking their children to the playgrounds and shopping (though you wouldn’t know it from the very well-timed photo below)

We pass a lovely Dutch sailing boat moored up alongside the canal – called the Gebroeders,  she was built in 1879 to ply the canals and inland waterways of the Netherlands, and is now used as a pleasure craft, cruising the east coast of the UK and parts of Northern Europe. And very fine she looks too!

By now we are coming to the end of the walk, and take a last look at the Orbit, and at the rust-coloured tower which is part of the King’s Yard Energy Centre. This was created to provide energy to the various stadiums, swimming pools and residences during the Olympic Games, and has been used subsequently to heat homes and businesses in the local community, using a combination of gas and biofuel.

And finally, here is Hackney Wick station. I couldn’t believe all the crowds outside. This area has certainly become a real draw, which can only be good for business. Let’s hope it benefits everyone who lives in the area.

 

Dear Readers, it’s a sunny Friday here in East Finchley, and so I wanted to share some excellent news with you in the midst of all the current misery. This has been the best year so far for the Large Blue butterfly, a species that was declared extinct in the UK in 1979. It’s a fascinating story, that begins with the life cycle of this enigmatic insect, the details of which were only unravelled by entomologist Jeremy Thomas during the 1970s and 1980s. This account of what happens comes from ‘Butterflies’ by Martin Warren, a fantastic book that I thoroughly recommend.

It all starts normally enough – the Large Blue lays its eggs on wild thyme, and the caterpillar chomps away until it has shed its skin three times. At this point it is only a few millimetres long. The larva is an outrageous cannibal and so only one is likely to survive on each flowerhead. Then the caterpillar falls to the ground and waits until it attracts the attention of a passing ant – it has a special ‘honey gland’ that produces honeydew that is irresistible to them. Once the ant has tasted the honey it will alert other ants, until they are all clustering excitedly around the larva.

After a while, the larva suddenly rears up and inflates its body – this seems to drive the ants into a frenzy, and one of them will pick up the caterpillar by the scruff of its ‘neck’ and and carry it off into the nest. It seems that the caterpillar produces chemicals that persuade the ant that it is, in fact, an ant grub that has escaped from the colony, to the horror of the adult ants. The frenzied activity smears the larva with the scent of the ants, in effect making it ‘smell’ like one of them. These chemicals continue to be produced once the caterpillar is in the colony, and once ensconced its behaviour changes – instead of being a passive producer of honeydew it becomes a rampant predator on the ant grubs. Sometimes it can consume the entire brood, and by the end of the process it will have increased in weight 100-fold. It turns into a chrysalis, and even when it emerges as a butterfly it is covered in droplets of a liquid that the ants seem to relish –  they will surround the interloper even as it inflates its wings, and leaves the nest to start the cycle all over again.

However, not all species of ants will tolerate this underhand behaviour, and if the larva is identified it be killed. The Large Blue caterpillars only survive well with one species of ant, Myrmica sabuleti. This ant thrives only in warm, short-grazed turf, and this knowledge unlocked the key to the reintroduction of the butterfly.

12 new sites across the South West of England were managed at a landscape level to provide suitable habitat for the Large Blue, which requires warm slopes where the plants are short-grazed by animals such as rabbits, cattle and horses. This habitat used to be common across the UK, but has since become vanishingly rare. What is so inspiring about this joint effort (between the National Trust, Somerset and Gloucestershire Wildlife Trusts, the J&F Clark Trust, Natural England and Oxford University, with the restoration being overseen by the Royal Entomological Society’s David Simcox and Sarah Meredith ) is that restoration of the habitat has not only helped the Large Blue, but has also benefitted many other scarce species, including the Shrill Carder Bee (Bombus sylvarum)  (probably the UK’s rarest bumblebee) and the Duke of Burgundy butterfly (Haemaris lucina), whose caterpillars feed only on cowslips and primroses.

Large blue caterpillars were reintroduced to the designated sites from Sweden, and have since set up home very nicely. Since then the insects have thrived, having their best year yet in 2022, with the South West of England now holding the largest aggregation of this species in the world.

There are fears, however, that the drought this year will have reduced the numbers of larvae who have survived – more ant nests will have failed, and stressed ants are apparently more able to spot the trickery of the large blue caterpillars. One way to offset the effects of global warming has been to include damper, cooler microhabitats, which would not be suitable for the ants in ‘normal’ conditions but might be taken up in extra hot years like 2022. It will be interesting to see how things play out over the years to come, but for now I think we can celebrate an initiative which is benefitting a whole plant and insect community. The restoration of whole habitats, with their complex and poorly-understood interactions, must surely be the way forward for conservation.

Photo Credits

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

Photo Two by Marcin Sielezniew from https://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.php?species=arion

Photo Three By Ivar Leidus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50343985

Photo Four By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49619221

Photo Five by By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Pasque Flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40724485

Dear Readers, whenever I hear the word ‘Surrealism’ my mind instantly heads for Europe and Salvador Dali, René Magritte and André Breton. Indeed, for many people Dali ‘is’ Surrealism, and in 1980 my mum and dad queued around the block for several hours to see his exhibition at the then sole Tate Gallery on Millbank. Dali is the people’s surrealist, and so many people have a copy of one of his canvas lurking somewhere in their house. My mum, an artist herself, was mainly taken by the strange realism of his images, I think, and his undoubted technical skill.

The exhibition that I went to yesterday, though, spreads its net much further, and looks at how surrealism morphed and changed as it was picked up by artists across the world. It pays much more attention to people of colour, and to woman, who contributed greatly to the Surrealist movement but who didn’t get the acclamation of the ‘usual suspects’. I’d like to concentrate here on just two artists: Ted Joans, a black American musician, writer and artist, and Remedios Varo, a Spanish-born artist who worked for most of her life in Mexico.

Ted Joans (1928 – 2003) was born in Cairo, Illinois, the son of parents who worked on the river boats of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He was an avid jazz trumpeter – he once said “Jazz is my religion, and Surrealism is my point of view”, but he was also a poet (he is seen as being one of the originators of the spoken-word movement) and a visual artist.

Joans moved to New York and was a friend of Jack Kerouac and, for a while, a room mate of ‘Bird’, Charlie Parker. One of his most famous images is ‘Bird Lives’, painted after Parker died. The image was to be replicated in graffiti all over New York.

What intrigued me most about Joans’s work, though, was a piece called ‘Long Distance’. This was based on the Surrealist idea of the ‘Exquisite Corpse’ (cadavre exquis), a game whereby a painting or poem is passed from person to person, with each person only being able to see the last entry. As Joans was friends with practically anybody who was involved in the art work this made for some very interesting collaborators, including Allan Ginsberg and Dorothea Tanning, who painted this compelling work.

‘Long Distance’ travelled the world until 2 years after Joans’s death, and in its completed form is 30 feet long. It’s fascinating to see how the drawings of the 132 participants feed into one another, and you can watch a Youtube video of the whole thing here. It rather reminds me of ‘Consequences’, a game that we played as children where each person had to enter details of an encounter, then fold over the paper. How we used to laugh, especially if it was smutty. I love the idea of this kind of collaborative working, and it’s something that was a theme amongst the Surrealists, who often formed collectives in response to political or social concerns. Considering the times in which they were working and the horrors that were happening, I suppose this isn’t surprising. Simone  Breton, an early Surrealist working in Paris, described how collaboration could release ‘images unimaginable by one mind alone’.

It also linked people across many countries and regions – Joans travelled widely across the USA and Europe, spent his winters in Timbuktu in Mali, and also spent a lot of time in Morocco. Typically, Joans preserved all the envelopes and wrapping that he used to post ‘Long Distance’ from one participant to another. I love that it carried on travelling for two years after his death. What a rich and varied life he had!

The second artist that I’d like to look at is Remedios Varo (1908-1963).

Varo was born in the village of Anglés in Catalonia, Spain. Her father was a civil engineer, and he encouraged his daughter in her artistic interests, encouraging her to copy his technical drawings, and providing her with the books of Jules Verne and Edgar Allen Poe. Her mother was a devout Catholic, and Varo was sent to a Catholic girl’s school, where she was something of a rebel. You can see the influence of that technical drawing in Varo’s work, and she also reproduces some of the architectural features of the buildings from her home village.

Varos had an event-packed life – she fought in the Spanish Civil War, and was imprisoned in France just before the Nazis arrived. In 1944 she went to Mexico, and never left.

The triptych is both the story of her life, and something more universal. In the first picture, ‘The Tower’, a group of young girls are cycling away with a Mother Superior figure. The sky is dark, and birds fly from the tower. The girl in the centre looks out of the painting directly at us, while her companions appear dull-eyed and hypnotised. I have no idea what the man with the sack is doing, but that’s Surrealism for you.

In the second picture, ‘Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle’, a group of women are at work creating the world, with the cloth pouring out of the windows of the tower. They are watched over by the rather sinister figure with the book, who seems to be providing the thread for the women’s work. Varos had great anxiety over the conflict between her Catholic upbringing and her scientific/humanist inclinations, and although this is an alternative ‘creation story’ it doesn’t look overly joyful to me.

The final picture in the triptych is The Flight (La Huida). It shows a young woman escaping to the mountains with her lover. I love how the light is turning gold to the right of the picture, and the way that the woman’s hair is uncurling, in a rather similar way to the woman with green hair in the Dorothea Tanning picture above. Clearly wild hair is associated with some kind of liberating power. The characters seem to be standing in some kind of boat – it almost looks like a coracle, a Welsh boat made out of oiled skins.

Varo saw surrealism as being ‘a way of communicating the incommunicable’, and there is something about her work that reaches beyond the conscious, a keystone of the Surrealist movement. Like Joans, Varo was in close contact with the key artists of the kind: she has a long-standing friendship with Leonora Carrington who was also a Surrealist, and in Mexico with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She did less collaborative work than Joans, and had a deeply individual vision. After she died of a heart attack in 1963 her partner catalogued her work and she has become more known, with one of her paintings recently selling for $3.1m, and an exhibition of her work in 1971 at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City having the largest attendance in history, with more people coming to see her work than went to see Diego Rivera, the father of Mexican painting.

I loved this exhibition. There is something very satisfying about seeing the art of people who don’t normally come to mind when someone says ‘Surrealist’. There is so much here to ponder, and it has certainly made me think.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29768556

Photo Two from By Kati Horna – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: http://www.femmespeintres.net/peintres/mod/varo.htm, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62799123

Photo Three from https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/collection-of-lorenzo-h-zambrano-n09230/lot.26.html

Photo Four from https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/838523 

Photo Five from https://www.remedios-varo.com/la-huida-1961/