Dear Readers, over the years I have used lots of books to help me with the creation of the Wednesday Weed, so today I thought I’d share four very different works. Some are useful for ID, some are full of information, and I use all of them practically every week. So, to start with, here is that old favourite ‘The Wild Flower Key’ by Frances Rose. This is the first book that most people use when they start to become seriously interested in identifying plants, because it is concise without being too simple, and because the illustrations are clear. You can use it as a proper ‘key’ once you know the basic plant terms, but I find it most useful in identifying plants when I already know roughly what they are.

Incidentally, with a surname like ‘Rose’, how could Frances Rose have become anything other than a botanist? In New Scientist they have called this ‘nominative determinism’ – so my plumber is called Mr Boyle, and I once had a dentist called Mr Fang. I’m sure you can find lots of others.

I love Rose, but I have to admit that there is a lot of writing. If I want photos, I always turn to this book.

I often use this in combination with Rose: I find the photos very useful, and it sets out the key ways of telling the difference between different plants by putting the diagnostic features in bold. For example, the position of the buds is a key way of telling the difference between oilseed rape and wild turnip, and I learned this from Harrap. Plus, the photos, though small, are rather lovely.

Another book that I’ve found to be full of useful information is in the New Naturalist series – Stace and Crawley’s Alien Plants. Stace is a master botanist, who produced the definitive guide to plants in the UK, and this work on ‘Aliens’ is fascinating. He explains the various paths by which alien plants have arrived in the UK, the reasons why they thrive, and how they impact on native flora.

He has a list of the most common alien plants found in different parts of the UK, and who would be surprised by the number one plant in London? Yes, it’s that old favourite the buddleia. Who’d have thought that petty spurge would come in at number four though? It hasn’t even made my Wednesday Weed list yet (though sun spurge has). I shall have to pay closer attention.

But finally, here is my favourite book on the folklore, uses and culture surrounding plants in the UK. Richard Mabey is probably my favourite author on plants, and his books will certainly crop up in future when I’m thinking about books on ‘weeds’. In Flora Britannica he gathered information from the four corners of the UK, and you cannot open a page without finding a useful factoid. He reminds us that our plants have a biography and a historical significance too, and, as it was originally published in 1996 it was before its time in its focus on what we were in danger of losing.

In addition to describing the various plant families, Mabey also has special sections on areas such as ‘spring flower festivals’ and ‘plants, places and names’. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for sheer breadth of knowledge. It single-handedly reclaims the history of plants in the UK and reminds us of how long we have been admiring, using and destroying them.

So, that’s a small selection of the plant books that I find most useful for the Wednesday Weed – I could easily add in another half dozen that I use more occasionally. What are your ‘go-to’ plant books? I think there might be room on my bookshelf for a couple more….

Dear Readers, I was sitting in the garden on Sunday when I heard what  I consider to be the first sign that spring is easing gently into summer. Way up above my head, circling in the clear blue sky, were swifts, scything through the air. Their shrill cries may be a way of keeping in contact with one another, but I sometimes wonder if they are just for sheer joy. Swifts fly high as they follow the clouds of insects, but on a hot, drowsy day I have seen them zipping through the garden just a couple of metres above the ground. By the end of July they will be done, these most ephemeral of visitors.

Spring starts for me with the frog chorus, and the sound of chiff chaffs in Coldfall Wood. But what marks the midpoint is the arrival of those papery-skinned nuggets of loveliness, Jersey Royal potatoes. I am a latecomer to asparagus (I think it was a very local, and probably very expensive, crop when I was growing up), but how my family loved a Jersey Royal. My earliest memory of them is my Nan sitting in her navy-blue quilted dressing gown with a yellow plastic bowl on her lap, scraping the skins off with meticulous care. We didn’t have proper cooks’ knives, but we did have a single bone-handled dinner knife with a blade that bent to the left. This knife had about an inch-worth of exquisite sharpness where the metal had thinned, and this was used for anything that required precision. Nan would work over each potato, no matter how small, until its creamy perfection was revealed. Sometimes, enough potatoes for the five of us would take her an hour and a half. Then it was into a pot of boiling water with them, with salt, and some mint thrown it at the end. With an essential knob of butter dropped on to them  and another sprinkling of salt, they were the high point of a Sunday dinner, and I could eat a bowl of them on their own, picking them up with my fingers and blowing on them until they were cool enough to eat.

Later, after Nan died in 1965, it was Mum who took up the mantle of the Jersey Royal scraping. Like Nan, she was a perfectionist, and a potato wasn’t done until there wasn’t a vestige of skin left. When I was in my teens we started on the New Potato wars: I would scrub the potatoes so that most, but not all, of the skin came off, because I rather liked the rustic appearance. Also, I had learned at school that most of the vitamins in a potato are just under the skin, and so why would you risk getting rid of it? Mostly, though, I think I was just expressing my independence in the way that teenagers so often do, by being contrary. Later, when I had Mum and Dad over for my legendary dinner parties, I would serve up the Jersey Royals scrubbed not scraped, and would watch Mum for the slightest hint of disapproval. I can still see her taking each potato in turn, perusing it with a slight frown, and then meticulously removing every scrap of skin before she started eating. As Mum was always a slow eater at the best of times (unlike the rest of us who could shovel it down for England) this could make for a very long meal.

I soon learned that Jersey Royals were either scraped or off the menu. I seem to remember that we came to a compromise and I served peeled King Edwards, roast or mashed, instead.

Now, I see it a little differently. For Nan and for Mum, spending all that time scraping the potatoes, doing something ‘properly’, was an act of love, something that was offered up to a largely unappreciative family. I once asked Mum why she was taking such care over something that she was knitting, when it was in a part of the garment that wouldn’t be seen.

‘They won’t even know, Mum’, I said, as she unravelled a sleeve.

‘Yes, but I’ll know’, she said.

When is something ‘good enough’? I have struggled with this my whole life, sometimes to the detriment of my mental and physical health. It’s as if I have a little voice in my head that judges whether I could have done more, worked harder. I gauge my mistakes against an impossible standard, while forgiving the mistakes of others with ease. And while it is good to be conscientious, it’s also true that some things matter more than others. People matter. Time spent creating matters. Doing things with love and care matters. But breaking yourself on the wheel of a scraped potato seemed a step too far for me earlier this week, as I scrubbed my Jersey Royals and threw them into a pot of boiling salted water, and delicious they were too, though I’m not sure they tasted quite as good as they did when I was a little girl.

Let me tell you a secret, though. I would scrape Jersey Royals with a bone-handled knife until my hands bled to share one more bowl of potatoes with Mum.

Photo Credits

Photo One from https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/buttered-jerseys

Dear Readers, as you know we have recently been allowed back into St Pancras and Islington cemetery at weekends, and so I am making the most of it with a nice long walk, usually going right up to the perimeter fence which is next to the North Circular Road. Once you realise that you can orientate yourself by the roar of traffic, you are much less likely to get lost, but I usually hurry along this bit, head down, until I can walk away into the quieter parts. However, on Saturday I was stopped in my tracks by this showy purple flower with bright yellow pollen. It was a rather odd plant, with a bulbous stem and very pointy petals. My husband took the pictures on his phone, as I had decided to leave my camera behind for once. I thought it looked a bit like an osteospurmum and thought no more about it. But then, I looked at the photos again and realised that something wasn’t quite right, so off I went to my Facebook Plant Identification UK group, and back they came with a most unexpected answer – salsify.

If you think this sounds rather familiar, it’s because salsify was a vegetable much loved by the Victorians, and which is now making a comeback. The roots and shoots can be eaten after they’re boiled, and are said to taste rather like seafood (hence the alternate name ‘oyster plant’). Cultivated varieties have a much better shaped and larger root than the wild plant, as you might expect (anyone who has ever dug up a wild carrot in the hope of a big juicy orange vegetable will know what a disappointment is in store in terms of size, though the taste of the wild plant is often much more intense than the cultivated variety). The Great British Chefs website has all manner of tasty suggestions, with Richard Corrigan’s Turbot with Mussels recipe aiming to capitalise on the shellfish flavour of the root. For the vegans among us, roasted salsify with toasted walnuts and a lemon tahini dressing sounds delicious.

Salsify is a member of the daisy family, but its genus puts it amongst the goatsbeards. It was originally native to North Africa and southeastern Europe, but it has been introduced right across the rest of Europe (including the UK), and is present in North American and Australasia. Sometimes it was introduced as an edible plant, but it was also a garden plant that came in and out of favour. It was first recorded in the UK in 1597, and has been known to crossbreed with our native goatsbeard, Tragopogon pratensis or meadow salsify.

You might think that this plant looks nothing like ‘our’ plant, but have a look at the bud. It’s nearly identical. In both salsifies, the bud closes up once the sun has passed, which is probably why I’d never noticed it before – our native salsify is also known as ‘Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon’ for this very reason.

The hybrid of the two species is known as Tragopogon x mirabilis, and you can read about it here. The ‘child’ seems to have characteristics of both ‘parents’. In North America the situation is even more confused, as ‘our’ salsify and meadow salsify were both introduced, and crossed with the native salsify, Tragopogon dubius. Truly the sex-life of plants is a wonder.

Medicinally, it seems that salsify has been used to ‘thin the bile’, and also (in East Anglia) as a treatment for jaundice. Like many members of the daisy family, salsify has a white latex-like sap, which was used as chewing gum by some Native Americans. And, according to this article from the Independent, one pronounces it as ‘sals-i-fee’ not ‘sals-i-fye’, so there. Don’t say I never save you from social embarrassment.

Yet another alternative name for salsify is ‘star of Bethlehem’. I can see why.

And finally, a poem. Mona Arshi was born to Punjab Sikh parents in West London, and is a poet and human rights lawyer. She won the Magma Poetry Competition in 2008 and the Forward Prize in 2015. I find this poem most intriguing, with its domestic detail and lurches into the surreal. What is actually going on here? One dramatic image follows another. See what you think.

Bad Day in the Office – Mona Arshi

Darling, I know you’ve had a bad day in the office
and you need some comfort
but I burned the breakfast again this morning
and the triplets need constant feeding –
they are like little fires.  And the rabbit ….
the rabbit topped himself but not before
eating the babies and the mother stared at me
as if I was the one who did it!
Everywhere there is the stink of babies and it’s a good job
I can’t smell my fingers as they’ve been wrapped
in those marigolds for weeks.
The mother-in-law has been.  She didn’t stay,
just placed a tulsi plant on the doorstop,
with a nose saying she had high hopes of it
warding off those poisonous insects.
That estate agent arrived for the purposes of the valuation.
He dandled the babies on his lap and placed his index finger
on my bottom lip.  There’s some paperwork somewhere.
As for dinner, well that’s ruined.  Those chillies you sent for
from Manipur? The juice from the curry bored a hole
in the kitchen tiles and I’ve had to move the pot to the stump
at the bottom of the garden, next to the dock-leaves;
it was a short trip but it was good to get some air.
We need to keep reminding ourselves that when it rains
it is not catastrophic it is just raining.
The lady radio anouncer has addressed me on several occasions,
– did you know orangutans are running out of habitat
and we don’t have much time?
I’ve become quite adept at handling the eccentric oranges,
those root vegetables need sweating out . . . but it’s difficult
to concentrate when that sodding bunny blames me
though how could I have done it when all morning
I’ve been next to the stove stirring the damn pot.
The salsify is eye-balling me, it’s lying on top
of that magazine  article – Bored with the same old winter veg?
Give salsify  a go.  We promise you’ll never look back. 

The poet’s website is here. Well worth a look.

Photo Credits

Photo One from https://www.exceedinglyvegan.com/vegan-recipes/soups-starters/roasted-salsify-toasted-walnuts-and-lemony-tahini-dressing

Photo Two by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=196810

Photo Three by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=424886

Photo Four from https://www.ukwildflowers.com/Web_pages/tragopogon_x_mirabilis_hybrid_goatsbeard.htm

Photo Five by By Roger Culos – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86154437

Dear Readers,

What a corvid-aware bunch you are! In joint first place with 16 correct out of 16 were Sarah and Andrea Stephenson, you both deserve gold stars! In second place, only a single point behind, were Fran and Bobby Freelove with 15 out of 16. And in a very respectable third it’s Charlie Bowman, with 12 out of 16. I couldn’t be more choughed with the results :-).

Here are the answers….

Ok, so as if that wasn’t tricky enough, here are the calls. It can be so hard to pinpoint them when they’re out of context.

9. Magpie alarm call. I always think of this as a ‘machine gun’.

10. Jay. A bit of a wheezy sound

11. Raven. I only have to hear this to remember grey skies, the call echoing over a mountain tarn.

12. Rooks. This sounds so much like the West Country to me – there were rookeries both in Somerset where my Aunt Hilary lives, and in Dorchester where Mum and Dad lived.

13. Carrion crow

14. Hooded crow – until recently this bird was thought to be a subspecies of the carrion crow. It’s now out there on its own as a species, but I think the call is remarkably similar. Take a gold star if you were able to tell these two apart!

15. Jackdaws

16. Chough! Its call is described as a ‘richocheting bullet’. See what you think.

 

 

 

Dear Readers, today I was mostly weeding in the garden – I have a high tolerance for wild plants, as you might imagine, but the cleavers (Galium aparine) was getting away from somewhat. Although it doesn’t actually climb, it does smother other plants, and so up it came. Meantime, my intrepid husband was wrestling with the bramble that lives behind the shed and is impossible to eradicate. I don’t mind brambles up to a point, what with the blackberries and the pollinators and all, but in some years it has actually grown through some of my pots and into the soil beneath, so I do need to keep some kind of control.

And once we sat down with a cup of tea to treat our various scratches and nettle stings, I noticed that one of the two collared doves who were working their way through the upturned soil was not like the others. For one thing, the bird was not as confident a flyer: s/he kept landing on things that were too flimsy to bear their weight. But for another thing, there are very subtle differences in the plumage. A juvenile collared dove has less variation in the colour of its plumage (though this is subtle at the best of times), and the neck ring in this one has not quite grown in yet. Plus, is it just me or is there something about the eyes that is different? Maybe it’s just that innocent, slightly gormless look that most young birds seem to have.

In other good news, the collared dove with the horrible chest injury seems to be almost completely healed, with just a tiny dent where the feathers are growing in. I shall try to get you a photograph later in the week.

The mother squirrel and the babies are still about: the youngsters are putting on weight at an amazing rate. The only way to tell them apart, unless they’re standing next to one another, is by the slightly less bushy tails of the youngsters, and their appalling behaviour – swinging from branches, chasing one another through the undergrowth, running at the starlings and almost falling in the pond.

But we do have another completely new youngster, and I couldn’t be more delighted.

Young robins have completely different plumage from the adults, and yet their behaviour is essentially identical. Although this one is not long out of the nest (to judge by the remnants of the gape flanges). And what is a gape flange, I hear you say? When baby birds are in the nest, the part of  beak where the upper and lower bill meet is often fleshy and sometimes brightly coloured, which probably helps the parent bird to know exactly where to stuff the caterpillar they’ve caught. Sometimes parts of the mouth are also visible in ultraviolet light, which birds can see, but we can’t. This ‘hinge’ is known as the gape flange.  In our robin there is still a tiny hint of yellow at the corner of the mouth, showing that s/he is still young.

The young robin’s parents were still about, seeing off any other robins and generally keeping an eye open, but the youngster was foraging for itself, especially in the area where I’ve pulled up weeds and there were worms and other invertebrates on show. When the parent bird sounded an alarm because a cat was wandering through, the youngster flew up and took up the call (a very distinctive ‘chink-chink’ sound that always reminds me of someone hitting a teeny-tiny anvil with a small but effective hammer). I was pleased to see that the collared dove flew up as well, though whether because it understood the alarm call or because it noticed the behaviour of the other birds I’m not sure. Many creatures listen to one another’s alarm calls, and also understand the variations that indicate if the predator is airborne or on the ground.

A young robin leaves the nest after about fourteen days, and all subsequent care is normally provided by the father, as the female settles down to produce a second batch of eggs. Robins normally breed twice a year, but can go through the whole performance another couple of times if conditions are good. I wonder what effect the lockdown will have? Less disturbance, more people providing bird food: maybe it could be a bumper year. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. After all, this is officially the UK’s  favourite bird.

Dear Readers,

The crow family is not universally popular, and yet for me it contains some of the most interesting and enigmatic birds of all. There is no doubting their intelligence and ingenuity, even if their omnivorous habits and look-at-me antics attract the disgust of those who want to protect their smaller, more vulnerable garden birds. But can we tell them apart? And, trickiest of all, can we identify them by call alone? Hah! Here’s a challenge for you all.

Firstly, what crows are these? Some of these are my personal photographs and, just to make it a bit trickier, they aren’t always the best of shots. I know you’re up to the task.

Ok, so as if that wasn’t tricky enough, have a bash at identifying these crows by call alone. Good luck! NB All of the calls below were made by one of the birds in the photos above.

9. An ‘easy’ one to start 🙂

10. Often heard in autumn in oak woods…

11. Is this the most evocative call of all?

12. You country folk will be familiar with this sound…(not the woodpigeon in the background, that was last week 🙂 )

13. Sounds familiar?

14. If you think this sounds almost identical to (13) you’d be right…

15. What a cheerful bird!

16. This bird is said to say its own name, though I’m not sure I can hear it…

So there we go. As some of this is extremely difficult, I am going to give you until Tuesday to come up with your answers. Good luck!

And I would love to find out what other quizzes you would like, so for the first time ever I have added a poll. I have no idea if it’s going to work, but give it a go! You should be able to choose multiple subjects, or add some thoughts of your own. Let me know in the comments if you’re having any problems

 

Photo Credits

Photo One by David Hofmann / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Two by gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Three by By Andrew – originally posted to Flickr as chough, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7204919

Dear Readers, I have always been interested in the edges of things, the places where one landscape bleeds into another, and so this morning I took a walk along the edge of Muswell Hill Playing Fields. Before the lockdown this would have been full of people playing football, walking their dogs, flying kites and picnicking, but today there was a handful of pooches illicitly chasing the crows, a couple of runners and us, puffing along on our daily exercise. The Fields are bordered on one side by the cemetery and on another by the woods, so there is a fair variety of things to look at.

Look at this sapling horse chestnut, for example. I love the way that the leaves unfurl and turn into loose shuttlecocks. When the tree is older there will be those ‘candle’ flowers that look so exotic close up, with their long stamen and carmine centres. According to my Collins Tree Guide, the middle of the flower starts off yellow and goes red after pollination. Sadly, by about July the tree’s leaves are likely to already be turning crisp and brown, having been mined by a tiny moth caterpillar. If the tree is particularly unlucky, it may also suffer from horse chestnut leaf blotch fungus. Such diseases weaken a tree, but don’t usually kill it. There was some evidence that blue tits were learning to eat the moth caterpillars, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that some ecological balance is soon reached.

There are lots of ash trees in the cemetery, many of them self-seeded, but this one has ‘escaped’ onto the edge of the fields. I love the way that the buds of ash look like the sooty-black hooves of tiny deer. I have learned so much about my local environment through writing this blog, and through the people that I’ve gotten to know through it: a friend mentioned the hoof comparison and it stuck, so that I can now instantly recognise an ash when I see one. We learn through metaphor, through making the connections between what we already know, and what we are trying to understand. I love that sense that we are able to constantly enlarge our mental territory, just by pushing on through the undergrowth.

This plant has always puzzled me. It grows in swathes along the edge of the playing fields, in shades from butter-yellow to palest cream. It is definitely a brassica, but which one? My suspicion is either oilseed rape (Brassica napus) or wild turnip (Brassica rapa). Both have waxy green foliage, and the leaves ‘hug’ the stems, but in rape the buds are higher than the flowers on the flowerhead, producing a ‘domed’ effect. In wild turnip, the flowers overtop the buds, leaving a little dimple.  Goodness only knows what’s going on with these – I shall have to have a proper look next time I’m there. Whichever they are, they are going strong and seem to be increasing.

I remember as a child being enchanted by the fields of acid-yellow oilseed rape when we went for a drive in the country. How beautiful they looked against the green trees and the blue sky! However, when they moved to the country, Mum hated the stuff because she always said that it had a strong smell. I have to say that I never noticed, but then Mum always was sensitive to these things. Has anyone else noticed?

It certainly makes a pretty picture alongside the cow parsley.

Now, unless I’m mistaken this little tree is a crack willow (Salix fragilis) – the shiny green foliage and the very long fruits seem indicative to me. This tree grows elsewhere in the damp places in the wood, and so I’m not surprised to see it here. What an elegant plant it is! Left alone it can grow to about 20 metres tall, but its sideshoots often break (hence the name ‘crack’ willow). Fortunately, the broken twigs can take root easily and, as the plant often grows alongside water, this forms a handy way of colonising the whole river bank. The catkins are very popular with bees, who collect the pollen for their developing broods.

I think of elder as the quintessential ‘edge’ plant, growing in hedgerows and in the places where woods thin out to meet open ground. There is an elder right at the very entrance of Coldfall Wood, and I think it might be at the very limit of its tolerance for shade. I love those big, open clusters of white flowers, beloved by hoverflies and, more recently, by those with a taste for elderflower cordial, which has become Quite the Thing here in the UK. If the flowers are left along you will end up with heavy dangling bunches of elderberries, which are full of vitamin C. I suspect that elder kept our elders healthy for many millenia.

And finally, at the start of May, the May (or hawthorn) blossom is out in abundance, spreading its slightly sickly sweet vaguely fishy smell out on the warm air. Hawthorn is another plant which gives multiple gifts – it supports a whole range of invertebrates, the blue tits in my garden have been plundering my hawthorn for caterpillars, and in the autumn the blackbirds will be gobbling up the haws.

And finally, here among the Japanese knotweed is a dock that is in absolutely pristine condition. Later in the year it will look blotched and tatty – so many insects and fungi feed on it that it inevitably looks like something the cat dragged in. And yet, at the moment, I think it looks rather magnificent. My guess is that it’s broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius) because the leaves are only very slightly wavy at the edges (unlike the inventively-named curled dock (Rumex crispus) which has something of the Mobius strip about its foliage. However, I will have to wait for the summer to be sure. If it sends up great spikes of rusty-red branched flowers, I was right. Anything else, and it’s back to the drawing board (or to Harrap’s Wild Flowers in this case).

And so we head home as one of us has a nine a.m. team call (and one of us is free to write their blog). On the way, I notice the crows, who are socially distanced and are pecking for earthworms – it was very wet yesterday so their lives have been made a bit easier. i watch as an over-excited young dog tries to catch a crow, who only flies up at the very last minute, before settling down again just far enough away for the dog to keep a vestige of hope in its little canine heart. So many animals like to tease dogs that it seems a bit unfair – I’ve seen squirrels taunting them, crows chasing a greyhound and once, in India, some Hanuman langurs jumping down from a tree, slapping a poor sleeping hound and bouncing back into the branches before the dog could even look round. What is that about, I wonder? Dogs are so intelligent but they also have a kind of innocent naivete that other intelligent creatures seem to take as carte blanche to be hooligans.

Incidentally, when I was growing up I was taught that crows were anti-social creatures, hanging out in pairs. If I saw a lot of black crows together, they were undoubtedly rooks. However, I think it’s different in the cities, where there is abundant food – I regularly see a dozen crows bathing in the stream in the woods for example, and I pass a park in Hackney where there are hundreds of crows. There is a scientific study going begging on urban corvids, I’m sure. What have you noticed? I wonder if this is just a London thing, or if, like many animals, crows in cities lose their territoriality. And I further wonder if, with food being scarcer during the lockdown, things will change.

Dear Readers, what a day! I have been beset by brain-fog, and have been chasing an amount of 36 euros round and round my financial statements until I feel like throwing my laptop out of the window. I don’t think people talk enough about how being recently bereaved takes about a hundred points off your IQ, makes you completely incapable of concentrating on anything for more than thirty seconds, and completely wrecks your short-term memory. And then, I had an 8 o’clock call so I didn’t get out for my brisk walk (extremely bad planning on my part). Finally, every time I look up it has been pouring with rain. But nonetheless, here I am, still. And I wanted to share some of my very favourite books with you, because my library is full of well-thumbed, much-loved favourites and also because I might do this regularly, if anyone is interested. There’s so much out there that’s it’s sometimes difficult to know what to buy, so let me do a little filtering for you first.

My favourite guide to what I see in the garden is Richard Lewington’s Guide to Garden Wildlife. This is the second edition, and I am still holding onto the first one. Many fieldguides are just too overwhelming, but I think this is a great book both for those who already know a lot of the creatures that they see, and for complete beginners. The illustrations are utterly beguiling. Richard Lewington, who also wrote the text, has done the paintings for most of the book, but his brother Ian Lewington does the birds. This is a real labour of love, and I especially like the detail and care that has been brought to the illustrations of insects, who are often not depicted in all their beauty.

It’s not just about the illustrations though – I often turn to this book when I’m writing the blog, because each entry has at least one fact that I didn’t know. Plus, the illustrations show male and female of a species alongside examples of typical behaviour.

If I knew someone who was just getting interested in their garden wildlife, this is the book that I would buy them as a present.

Now, a more London-centric book, but one that I think has something of interest for all you dendrophiles out there. Paul Wood’s ‘London’s Street Trees – A Field Guide to the Urban Forest’ is packed full of stories about urban trees, different species, and features such as ‘what does a London Tree Officer do all day’ and ‘what does the future hold for London’s planes (as in tree rather than airplane). Furthermore, it contains four guided walks, one of which kept this blog occupied for a whole two weeks The Street Trees of Archway Part One and The Street Trees of Archway Part Two. The first thing I shall do when this lockdown finally ends and I can loiter without attracting opprobrium is go on another tree walk, and I am in luck, because the book is being reprinted with more trees and additional walks in May.

I remember that when I was visiting my Mum in Whittington Hospital in 2016, I was often intrigued by some huge trees planted on the other side of the road. They looked familiar, but strange at the same time. On my street tree walk I revisited the site and discovered that one of them was the tallest lacebark elm in the UK. So many street trees go unremarked, and Paul Wood is here to bring them back to our attention. I know that during the lockdown many people have been paying attention to their immediate surroundings in a way that they never have before, and I know that trees can bring so much pleasure at any time of year. This is a great book for getting to know your local planting. There is something about being able to put a name to a tree that is very satisfying, and shows a kind of respect. Not all trees are the same, just as not all people are the same, and it’s good to recognise the fact.

And finally, this one.

In some ways this is a very strange book indeed. Each page shows a gathering of a particular species, in all its variations: adult, juvenile, male, female, flying, perching. The illustrations are a kind of collage of photos of the species, making it look as if Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ was happening with every kind of flying animal. And yet, I love it! Have a look at the pages on pigeons, for example.

Having seen this, could you ever get a stock dove and a woodpigeon muddled up again? Richard Crossley even has a woodpigeon in the picture of the stock doves so you can tell the difference. Both species are flying about so you can tell the difference when they’re on the wing, and the woodpigeon has a handy juvenile just in case you’ve not come across one before. The whole thing is a bit mad, but it works for me. It’s not a straightforward field guide (and I’d love to know what you birders out there think of it), and it’s certainly not for purists, but it has that ineffable spirit of fun and a sense of abundance that I find very appealing.

I like the rather disgruntled- looking juvenile heron, and that the cattle egrets are pecking around behind a herd of what look like Guernsey cows to me. There is even a purple heron at the top of the left hand page, just in case you get really lucky. I think that having photos of the birds in the landscape adds something too – having lots of pictures gives a sense of the ‘jizz’ of the bird in a way that just a single, beautifully executed portrait doesn’t. The only problem is that it makes me yearn to go out to the RSPB reserve at Rainham, or Woodberry Wetlands with my binoculars. Never mind. Like everyone else, I’ll have to pay extra special attention to my poor neglected local birds. Who knows what we might turn up?

Dear Readers, once I’d finished work yesterday I decided to sit quietly in the garden and enjoy the serenity. Hah! Fat chance. For no sooner had I sat down than I realised that no less than three woodpigeons were eyeing up the suet pellets on the bird table. There was plenty for all of them but, sadly, these are not birds that like to share.

First there was the inevitable eyeball to eyeball confrontation between two of the birds, while the third watched and waited. Each bird stands up on its tippy-toes and tries to look as large as possible.

Neither bird dares to put his/her head down to actually feed, because the other one will undoubtedly give a ferocious peck.

Then they begin to flick one another with their wings. This gives a surprisingly loud report, like someone cracking a small and inadequate whip.

And then, if neither bird backs down, the whole thing escalates. Both birds fly into the air, flicking and kicking and pecking and generally being antisocial. I have no doubt that the lack of food from restaurants and takeaways and garbage means that these birds are genuinely hungry, poor things.

In the end, it seemed to me that each of the three birds had a bit of time on the bird table, so they all had something to eat, but what a palaver! Later, one flew onto the bird bath, and when another woodpigeon arrived the first one gave it such a clap around the ear with its wings that it echoed around the garden. They seem to me a bit like those Regency gents who used to slap one another around the face with their gloves. Just as well the woodpigeons don’t have pistols, that’s all I can say.

But after all the flying of feathers, calm was restored. Remember me mentioning that I thought one of the squirrels who visits the garden had babies hidden away somewhere? Well, I was right, and I managed to get a few photos of the well-grown youngsters as they explored the world under the watchful eye of their mother. One of them fell out of the whitebeam, and another one appeared to be trying to eat leaves.

The mother was very watchful, as well she might be: these little ones have no idea of the hazards that they’ll face.

 

The mother has done a very good job with these kits though – they both look in excellent condition, no doubt having been fed on milk that is powered by all those sunflower seeds from the bird feeders.

So, I don’t know about you but I have found sitting in the garden and just watching is as good as any television programme. I am starting to know the different individual animals, to recognise their calls and to be drawn in emotionally to their life stories. Already I am worrying about that swooping magpie and what will happen when the baby starlings emerge, and I am wondering where the hell the foxes have gone over this past few weeks. But what an antidote it all is to the news and the misery that is piped into our homes every minute of the day. Outside of our little human lives, life goes on as usual, and the world is all the better for us not being so visible.

 

Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

Dear Readers, I thought that I’d said everything that I had to say on the subject of bluebells back in 2016, but it seems that I was wrong. As everyone seems to be turning to gardening if they’re lucky enough to have a bit of soil to play with, I am hearing some positively rabid reactions to ‘Spanish bluebells’ (not here on Bugwoman obviously). One poor lady was told to dig up and burn all the hybrid bluebells that she had in her garden, even though she loved them in their delicate shades of white, pink and pale blue. Other folk. have apparently been told to dig up these plants in woodland, even where there aren’t any native bluebells.

This isn’t really anyone in particular’s fault – back when I wrote my original piece, there was a fear that hybrid bluebells were going to ‘swamp’ our native ones. My impression then was that the biggest single risk to native bluebells was climate change and the impact that it would have on the ecosystems of woods, not to mention habitat destruction (HS2 anybody?). Furthermore, there was a lot of illicit digging up of bluebells, both to plant in the garden and to sell (although this is actually illegal). However,  the thought of foreign invaders encroaching on our land and ravishing our native plants seemed to be a more romantic explanation.

First things first.

Native bluebells tend to be a much deeper blue in colour, the flowers have a ‘nodding’ habit, and the smell is absolutely gorgeous. If you are out walking, you can gaze into the heart of one of the bells and if the pollen is purest white, you are looking at a native. They don’t travel far and are an indicator of ancient woodland for that reason. When I re-read my original post I was reminded that I’d been to visit the bluebell wood close to my Aunt Hilary’s house in Somerset, and had been positively entranced by the spectacle. I have never seen a photo that does such a wood justice. As the UK is home to over 50% of all the native bluebells in the world, it would be a tragedy if they disappeared, for sure.

Secondly, there are Spanish bluebells. These are native to (as the name suggests) Spain, Portugal and North Africa, where the conditions are hotter and drier than in the UK. They are commonly planted in gardens, and in fact it is illegal to plant them in woodland or hedgerows (though, as I know from our local wood, people often cheerfully dump their plants in such places). They are more upright, paler coloured and have blue-green pollen, plus they have very little smell. However, the ‘pure’ Spanish bluebell is actually quite a rare plant.

What are much more common are the hybrids between these two species. They come in all shapes and sizes but tend to be midway between their parents in the shape of the ‘bell’. However, none are the deep blue of the native bluebell, and none (as far as I’m aware) have pure white pollen.

And so, what is the truth concerning the hybrid bluebell and its rampant habits? A recent study (published in 2019) involved planting Spanish and native bluebells next to one another in large numbers, and then standing back to see what would happen. As it turns out, the Spanish bluebells are much less fertile than the native ones: it was even thought that the Spanish bluebell ‘species’ might already be a a hybrid. Professor Pete Hollingsworth, Director of Science at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh, had this to say:

“The greater fertility of the native British bluebell coupled with the huge numbers of individuals that exist in the wild means that it’s got considerable resilience against any threat from these introduced plants”.

So, it seems that the threat of all our bluebells turning into hybrids is overstated. My anecdotal impression is that non-native bluebells can often be seen on the edges of woody patches, in the cemetery for example, but they don’t penetrate into it: maybe they have a preference for brighter environments. At any rate, I suspect that a lot of non-native bluebells appear where native bluebells would find it too dry and exposed to survive, and that native bluebells specialise in the dark, damp heart of the wood.

Should we be careful? Of course. Native bluebells are extremely vulnerable to trampling, and this is thought to be an increased risk where people are looking for the perfect Instagram post (hopefully not at the moment however). As we know, bulbs build up their strength during the summer via photosynthesis (one reason why, however tempting, you shouldn’t tie the leaves of your daffodils into neat little knots). I have already mentioned habitat loss, bulb-stealing and climate change. But in some habitats I suspect that the choice is not between native bluebells and hybrids, but between some bluebells and none at all.

Let me know your experiences, and what you think.

Photo Credits

Photo One bySchnobby / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)