Dear Readers, if there was a prize for the most splendid wisteria on the County Roads in East Finchley, I would give it to this splendid  example on Huntingdon Road. The racemes (sprays of flowers) must be a good fourteen inches long, and it is at a peak of perfection. I have written about wisteria before, but I have been so busy during this past few weeks that I haven’t had a chance to go hunting. I’m sure that this plant cheers up everyone who passes it.

On Twyford Avenue I found these two wisteria shrubs, with pink flowers. When I look closely at the flowers, it’s evident that they’re a member of the pea family (Fabaceae). What a boon this family has been, not only providing us with everything from broad beans to runner beans to garden peas, but cheerfully fixing nitrogen from the air (with the assistance of some handy bacteria) and converting it into a form that other plants can use.

And finally, also on Twyford Road there was this one, also splendid, and I love it with the deep blue Ceanothus and that pale blue garage door.

It’s not just the wisteria that’s out at the moment though, and there are other pleasures of a more subtle kind. This Japanese maple with its red leaves looked lovely against the sky.

I was rather fond of the modest pleasures of wild plants too, like this little patch of Herb Robert close to All Saints Church.

Herb Robert

And then there was this Ivy-leaved Toadflax growing in the crevices in a wall.

At first glance, I thought that the small shrub in the photo below was a Euphorbia, but now I’m wondering if it’s something else. Opinions, please! I’m still leaning towards Euphorbia but am happy to be persuaded otherwise. It was a quite striking mixture of yellow and green.

The Photinia is in flower….

And this tree is a slight puzzle – I think it’s an Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) but it could possibly be a Judas Tree (Cercis silaquastrum) – I shall have to wait until the leaves come to make up my mind. Whichever it is, it’s absolutely splendid. I love the way that the flowers come right out of the bark on these trees. And looking at them, wouldn’t you know that this is yet another member of the pea family? It’s something else to be grateful for.

Dear Readers, over the years I have come to have an increased respect for the sheer curmudgeonliness of woodpigeons, who have an ability to be offended that surpasses even that of my local blue tits. It doesn’t take much for them to start standing on their tippy toes and flicking their wings at one another with a resounding crack which always sounds as if it would hurt. Imagine my delight, then, at reading my British Birds magazine and discovering that woodpigeons can also put that defensiveness to excellent use in trying to protect their nest from a perceived threat.

Paul Slater has been studying woodpigeons for many years, but in August 2020 he got a bit of a shock. He climbed up a tree to investigate a nest but instead of leaving, the adult bird flicked his or her wings at Slater and remained determinedly in situ. This surprised Slater as he had made over 2500 visits to woodpigeon nests in the Liverpool area, counting the eggs and ringing any young birds, and this was the first time that an adult had not only stayed put, but had attacked him. Slater remarks that usually the adult woodpigeon, on seeing a huge human climbing the tree, will drop to the ground and pretend to be injured (a behaviour that I didn’t know was in their repertoire).

When Slater visited again in September 2020, the chicks were large enough for ringing and so up he went, only to be met by a barrage of blows (which he comments were ‘surprisingly hard’). By this point in the story I am full of admiration for this feisty bird who was clearly taking no prisoners. Slater reports that on a subsequent visit he observed at least one large chick, but he had no need for any more tree climbing, and so the birds were left to get on with their lives.

It makes me wonder if urban woodpigeons are actually getting tougher – there’s a marked difference between city and country woodpigeons in terms of their shyness, and I remember the tale of a West Country farmer many years ago who, when asked what had impressed him most about a visit to London remarked that it was the tameness of the woodpigeons. Adaptation is a wonderful thing, and I’m sure that woodpigeons will continue to develop in whichever way helps them to survive the best.

Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris)

Dear Readers, I have always had a soft spot for elephant seals – they look like characters from a children’s book, they don’t put up with any old nonsense and the pups could not be cuter if they tried. I met them ‘in the flesh’ on an island off Baja California which used to be an old canning station, and the elephant seals were hauled out on the jetty and beach. They watched us as we wandered around (keeping a respectful distance) and would occasionally sigh deeply, as if it was all too much effort.

Elephant seals dive very deep to capture their prey (skate, sharks, octopuses and other deepwater denizens) – the record for a Northern Elephant Seal is over 1700 metres. However, I had no idea that the slept underwater, or how that worked. Well, Californian scientist Jessica Kendall-Barr and her team decided to find out.First, they found some relatively amenable  female elephant seals who could be somehow persuaded to wear a cap for a few days that measured their brain activity and heart rate – the caps were attached with a glue which would wear off in less than a week. I notice that they decided not to wrestle with the males who, though looking like enormous docile blobs when unmolested can rear up to almost six feet high when cross, which they often are.

Five of the seals spent all their time on the beach or in shallow water, but three of them headed off to the deep ocean, which is where elephant seals spend most of their time when not breeding. Unsurprisingly, the seals don’t sleep much when they’re at sea – they usually nap for ten minutes at a time, and sleep for less than two hours a day (compared to ten hours when they’re on land). But what is astonishing is what happens when they do nap. At about 100 metres down, the seals go into slow-wave sleep and start to drift downwards. But when they go into REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep (in humans thought to be associated with dreaming, so this is likely to be what’s happening to the seals too) they turn upside down and start to spiral towards the bottom of the ocean – one seal drifted down to 377 metres below the surface before waking up and heading towards the surface. Elephant seals can remain underwater for up to two hours without needing to take a breath, so this is probably quite relaxing for them. I wonder if they have that ‘where the hell am I’ feeling that I’ve been having when I wake up as I recover from jet lag?

In waters that are ‘only’ 250 metres deep, the seals will often take a nap on the ocean floor. This is something that other seals, including the endangered Monk seal, are known to do, and there’s a short video of sleeping seals here for your delectation.

And finally, and completely gratuitously, here are some Northern Elephant Seal pups. Instead of the impressive hooters of the adult males they have little snub noses. They are utterly trusting and relatively vulnerable, though I suspect they could still give you a nasty bite. Better to just admire them from afar, and be awestruck at how extraordinary this planet is.

White form of Flower Crab Spider

Dear Readers, my friend A alerted me to this poem by Robert Frost. I hadn’t come across it before, and found it rather intriguing.

Design
Robert Frost – 1874-1963

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.

Now, ‘heal-all’ is I think Prunella vulgaris (known as self-heal in the UK) and it’s usually blue, so a white flower would be most unusual.

I love the description of the ‘fat, dimpled spider’ and the moth with ‘dead wings carried like a paper kite’. I’m not sure about the whole design aspect though (says she with her scientist’s white coat on) – as we now know, even if the colour of the spider matches the flower that she’s on, it doesn’t seem to improve her hunting efficiency. And I suppose that the whole question of design implies that there’s someone ‘up there’ pulling the strings, bringing together the white flower, the moth and the spider (although his last sentence seems to imply that he doubts if even an all-seeing all-knowing deity could be bothered with a couple of invertebrates and a plant). I can see why my friend called it ‘intriguing’ because it opens up all kinds of questions about belief, causality and how the world works.

And clearly there’s something about spiders that makes humans philosophical. How about this, from Walt Whitman: it rather reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who lived at about the same time (1844 – 1889). Did one of them influence the other, I wonder?

A Noiseless Patient Spider
BY WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

And how about this one, by E.B White, who wrote ‘Charlotte’s Web’, and who seems to have a special affinity with spiders? I love that this poem gives the spider agency. The last stanza is a jaw-dropper.

The Spider’s Web

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

And finally, just to remind us of something fundamental, here’s a poem by Nikki Giovanni. The last lines open this up into a much greater question. How much better the world would be if we acted out of curiosity rather than fear!

Allowables
By: Nikki Giovanni

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened

Male Ring ouzel (Turdus torquatus)

Dear Readers, this is an upland bird, and one that I’ve never seen in the UK, though some of you Northern folk might have had more luck. I did see one in Austria once, and was surprised by how much it looks like a blackbird with a white cravat – in fact the name ‘ouzel’ means ‘blackbird’, so the name makes perfect sense. The ones in the UK have spent the winter in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco – some will return to their territories here, but others will continue on into Scandinavia. What bright, elegant birds they are! I always feel delighted when I see one, even more so when I hear their song – the recording below, by Stanislas Wroza, is described as ‘song with outbursts’, and I can see what he means.

The female ring ouzel also has a white ‘necklace’ – in ‘Into The Red’, Stephen Lovatt describes it as ‘a rime of limescale’ and I can see what he means.

The ring ouzel is red-listed because of a decline in the breeding population in Scotland and Ireland, and it’s been difficult to pin down exactly why. One reason might be that migrating birds are hunted as they pass over south western France – birds flying along other routes don’t seem to suffer as much. But then there’s also degradation of habitat, and climate change – these are birds of the mountains, breeding up to 3750 feet, but as things get warmer they will be driven further and further up. Whatever the reason, their breeding range has reduced by almost 43% since the 1960s. However, Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey suggest another possible reason in ‘Birds Britannica’ :

‘Ring ouzels are unapproachable and unpredictable. A distressed bird can fly away for miles. Their susceptibility to modern disturbance, from hill walkers and even hang-gliders, may be instrumental in their disappearance from old strongholds across the entire Celtic fringe and northern England’.

And here is another conundrum for us to consider. What happens when ‘the right to roam’ comes into conflict with some of our most sensitive habitats and shyest creatures, on this nature-depleted island? We recently fenced off some areas in our local ancient woodland to give it a chance to recover after the trampling of the pandemic, and to talk to some people you would have thought that their basic human rights were being infringed upon (to be fair, most people did understand the reason for the fencing, but a sizeable minority could only think about themselves). What do you think? Clearly getting out into nature is vital for our mental and physical health, but where do we draw the line? Answers on a postcard please 🙂

Foxglove tree (Paulownia tomentosa)

Dear Readers, this exotic tree is really not the kind of thing that you expect to see in suburban East Finchley, so when I saw one on Sunday I was stopped in my tracks. The flowers are all the more special because they are not reliable – the buds set in late summer and then have to survive the winter, and as the tree is native to central and western China this is cannot be taken for granted. And then, sometimes the tree takes a break instead of flowering, and who can blame it? Paul Wood, in his book ‘Street Trees of London’, describes it as one of the few blue-flowered trees that will grow in London, and for that alone it’s very special.

The foxglove tree is, in spite of its eerie exotic beauty, something of a pioneer plant, in the same way as a willow or a birch tree can be – it has huge leaves (up to two feet across) that capture light efficiently and which also absorb pollutants, making it a good choice as a street tree. It grows so quickly (up to seven feet in a year) because it is racing for the light – once overshadowed, it will wane and die. This is a relatively short-lived tree for this reason (Paul Wood estimates up to thirty years).

Foxglove tree leaves (Photo by By Marija Gajić – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45091074)

It’s clear that the name ‘Foxglove tree’ relates to the shape of the tree’s flowers, but it’s also known as the Empress tree, because in China only an empress was allowed to have one on her grave. It’s also called the Princess tree – it was the custom in Japan to plant the tree on the birth of a daughter, and the tree would be cut down when she married. The wood was turned into a tansu dresser, which is used to store clothes such as kimono.

A traditional tansu chest, used to store and transport clothes (Photo by By Heineken, Ty & Kiyoko – Tansu: Traditional Japanese Cabinetry, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31536843)Foxglove tree wood is very light and strong, and is  used in the construction of the Japanese stringed musical instrument the koto. This is the national instrument of the country, and was traditionally played only by blind men, although subsequently different forms evolved that could be played by everyone. Every part of the instrument is full of traditional and cultural significance. It’s a very beautiful object, and if you want to hear how it sounds, have a listen here.

Japanese 13-stringed Koto (Photo by By Smgregory, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2539413)

And while we’re on the subject of beautiful things made of Paulownia wood, how about this tiered writing box, apparently used in poetry competitions? Each compartment holds an ink stone and ink stick, so I imagine that these were given out to the participants. It sold for £687.50 at auction at Bonhams, and dates back to the mid 19th century. I have a great fondness for these intricate objects.

Jusuzuribako (tiered writing box) from https://www.bonhams.com/auction/22814/lot/315/a-lacquered-kiri-paulownia-wood-jusuzuribako-tiered-writing-boxes-used-for-poetry-contests-by-mori-kansai-1814-1894-midlate-19th-century-52/

Inside the writing box

In North America the tree is not quite so welcome – it reproduces happily from seed, is extremely fast-growing, and, beautiful as it is, has become something of a pest in the eastern states of the US. The reason for this is partly because it was planted as an ornamental, but also for a more interesting reason. The seeds of the foxglove tree were used as a lightweight packing material for porcelain during the 19th century, before the advent of those irritating little polystyrene noodles that are used these days. As porcelain was exported all over the world, and was often transported by train, some of the seeds found their way out of the packing crates and onto the railway sidings and, being hardy little things, they rapidly germinated and started their march across the country, much as buddleia and Oxford ragwort have done in the UK.

Each seedcase contains hundreds of tiny winged seeds

And finally, a tiny but evocative poem. It was written in 1992 by the Empress of Japan, as part of an annual year-end presentation of poetry.

Paulownia Flowers
Unaware that the nation
Would soon face defeat,
I, a child evacuee,
Was absorbed, gathering
Bell-shaped paulownia flowers.

In view of the Japanese tradition, maybe King Charles should be encouraged to write something every year for the edification of the populace.  Let’s just hope that his fountain pen works properly when he tries to knock one up. I think maybe an annual limerick would be more in keeping with the British tradition of knockabout humour, but I’m not holding my breath.

Flower crab spider (Misumena vatia)

Dear Readers, I was so intrigued by this bright yellow spider yesterday that I thought I’d do some research. It’s known that the females of this species can change their colour from white to yellow (and indeed in North America this species is known as the goldenrod spider, as that’s the plant that it’s most frequently found upon). However, the change takes a full 25 days to occur, which doesn’t sound especially helpful if you’re doing it for camouflage. Furthermore, it appears that the spider’s ability to catch prey doesn’t decrease if it’s not on a ‘matching’ flower – let’s not forget that insects see colour differently from mammals, with UV light playing a big part in perception, and so a colour difference that is very apparent to us may not be so clear to an incoming hoverfly. 

White form of Flower Crab Spider (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=81672235)

I am indebted to Tone Killick, one of the administrators of the UK Spider Identification Facebook page, who produced a very interesting paper on this fascinating spider. He is unconvinced about the possibility that the change in colour is to evade predators – this is a very speedy spider, and furthermore birds are able to spot the arachnid even if it’s perfectly matched to its flower. And we already know that it doesn’t apparently help the spider to catch prey. The spider has a very low rate of success (apparently it only catches 3.5% of the prey that it attempts to grab in its spikey front legs), which means that it has to wait around on a flower for a very, very long time before it gets a meal. And here’s where Killick makes an interesting lateral link. The yellow pigmentation is caused by a chemical called ommochrome, which has been shown to provide protection against UV damage in spider’s eyes. Could it be that, if a spider spends a long time in sunshine, she develops the yellow colouration as a sun screen (we could hypothesise that spiders that stay white live in shadier places). Clearly more research is needed, but for now let’s move on to the other interesting facet of the spider’s life, reproduction.

All of these biggish yellow and white spiders are female. The males are only 3-4 mm long, while the females are 9-11mm. Furthermore, the males look completely different.

Male Flower Crab Spider (Photo by By James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1669767)

In the spring, the tiny males run through the flowers following the silken threads that the females leave as they move from one bloom to another. Upon finding a female, they scramble onto her abdomen while the female continues to go about her business, seemingly oblivious.

Female eating fly with male on her abdomen (Photo by S Drozd Lund from Misumena vatia photo – image 105272 (biopix.com))

The male then taps on the female to see if she’s receptive to some sperm transfer (like you do) and if all goes well, they mate. The male then makes an extremely speedy retreat, before he ends up as dinner. He must keep all eight legs crossed that the female hasn’t already copulated, as if so she can be extremely (life-threateningly) grumpy.

The female lays 150-400 eggs on a suitable leaf and covers it with lots of silk. Then she starts her guard duties – during this time, the only way she will eat is if a particularly silly fly blunders into her space and she can grab it. After 25 days the spiderlings hatch, and many will fly away by standing on some vegetation and holding a strand of silk which will act as a parachute. Alas, many dangers await these tiny spiders, though they can survive the freezing temperatures at 5 km above the earth’s surface. Many will be eaten by predators, and others will end up in an unsuitable environment. Some, however, will survive to adulthood, to delight amateur arachnologists and lovers of the unexpected everywhere.

Dear Readers, I always find that the jet lag when I’m travelling east is much worse than when I’m going west – I couldn’t keep my eyes open during the Coronation, but then come bedtime I’m pinging around the room like a pinball. One trick is to get out early (ish) in the morning so that the sunlight and other people’s pheromones can help the body to resynchronise its rhythms and so, bleary-eyed and in need of caffeine I headed out onto East Finchley High Road. But what is this?

A pollarded tree

Yes, a whole lot of pollarding has gone on in spite of it being spring and the trees no longer being dormant but starting to leaf up.

An unpollarded tree

I’ve rattled on about this kind of thing before (very recently in fact) and I have no problem with management of street trees – better that they’re trimmed than that they get blamed for subsidence and cut down (don’t get me started). But I am keeping an eye on this tree, further down towards to the station. See what’s at the top?

Yes, a nest, probably magpie or crow by the size of it. It’s against the law to disturb a bird’s nest, even one that belongs to such a common species. I will be interested to see if it’s left alone.

I couldn’t resist a snap of The Archer at East Finchley Station – he’s looking particularly fine in the spring sunshine. Look at those muscles! Clearly all those gym sessions have been working. He is firing his arrow along the Northern Line, and there is a legend that the arrow itself can be found at the end of the line, in Morden. The statue is by Eric Aumonier, and was unveiled in 1940

In general, things are looking really lovely at the moment – all the rain has brought a lot of plants and animals along. At the entrance to Cherry Tree Wood, this young magpie was trying to work out what was edible – s/he was very relaxed, which is unusual. I think that piece of rubbish to the right had attracted his/her attention. Put it in the bin, people!

The flowers at the entrance to the Wood are looking very fine – it’s part of the Paths for Pollinators project, and there were several honey, bumble and solitary bees buzzing around, so it’s clearly working.

There are lots of hybrid bluebells inside the wood – these tend to survive better in the drier sections of the wood, and clearly the pollinators, such as this hairy-footed flower bee, don’t care about its provenance.

The Hawthorn is in flower..

and so is the Herb Robert…

and so is the Bird Cherry – it always reminds me of fireworks zigzagging off in different directions. In previous years there have been ermine moth caterpillars here, but they’ve given it a miss this year, and the trees are looking magnificent.

Then it’s out of the wood and onto the unadopted road, a laneway at the back of the houses on Park Hall Road and Summerlee Road. It’s often been an interesting place for plants and animals, and today was no exception.

Look at this little beauty! This is a female Flower Crab Spider (Misumena vatia) – this species comes in many colours, and I’m not quite sure that this one has got that camouflage business right, though she’d do really well on some gorse or tucked inside a daffodil. They can change colour from white to yellow to green apparently, but a complete colour change takes up to 25 days, which isn’t going to be very helpful for our spider. However, her prey insects (hoverflies and bees) see colour in a different way, so maybe she isn’t so conspicuous to them as she is to us.  Judging by the size of her abdomen I’d say she’s pregnant, so there will soon be the patter of many, many teeny-tiny feet.

And this tree is looking particularly splendid – it’s a foxglove tree (Paulownia tomentosa), and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in flower before. I feel a Wednesday Weed coming on….

And finally, a brief word on weeds. The green alkanet is having a particularly good year – those blue flowers are so intense, and I love the way they look against a red brick wall. I know that they’re a thug but the pollinators love them, and they grow in places where other more delicate plants would give up the ghost.

And aren’t they preferable to this? Just before we left the weedkiller man came round on his little electric vehicle with a huge tank of herbicide on the back.

At least this time he spared the tree pits that people have planted up. Look at all that greenery, making food for insects and cover for all manner of little creatures! Let’s face it, we all need as much greenery as we can get.