A Knotty Problem

Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica)

Dear Readers, a few weeks ago I was alerted to the presence of Japanese Knotweed growing beside the playing fields which border Coldfall Wood. A worried person had reported the plant to Haringey Council, because he was concerned that it would spread into the wood itself. It was reported that children were using its stems as swords, and that ‘Japanese’ ladies were taking cuttings. Naturally, I had to see this botanical phenomenon for myself.

Once I’d found it, I could not believe that I’d missed it. There are two stands of the plant, one bordering the cemetery, the other close to some houses on the other side of the playing fields. Each stand is about three metres tall, but what amazes me is how dense it is – the bamboo-like stems erupt within centimetres of one another, forming something that resembles a panda’s breakfast. Nothing can grow where Japanese Knotweed grows, I’m sure.

How can you identify Japanese Knotweed? Its leaves are described as ‘shield-shaped with a flat base’.

The stem is hollow, and flecked purple-red. Older stems become very clearly striped, which perhaps accounts for its name in Chinese Medicine (Huzhang – Tiger Stick).

It flowers in late summer, and has tiny spikes of white flowers. These are the female flowers – male flowers are unknown in the UK. This does not stop the plant from spreading, however, as we shall see.

Japanese Knotweed in flower (By MdE (de) (own photo) [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The most distinctive feature of Japanese Knotweed, however, is its rhizome, which is a kind of root which sends out new stems and stalks. If you dig some up, it looks a little like ginger, but the inside is orange, and it is said to snap like a carrot. It is this rhizome which enables the plant to form thickets, and which means that it is so tenacious – it can regenerate from any tiny piece which is left behind.

Someone having fun with a Japanese Knotweed rhizome (Klarerwiki [CC BY-SA 2.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons)

As I stood and looked up at the Japanese Knotweed ‘forest’ that was growing, I could easily see how it could block waterways, out-compete all other plants and be a nightmare to get rid of. The rhizomes can also occasionally cause structural damage, which led to a period of hysteria by mortgage companies who refused to lend to home-owners with the plant in their garden, or in a neighbouring garden. This prompted the following response in a 2012 report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, who described Japanese Knotweed as ‘being treatable and rarely causing severe damage to the property”:

“There is a real lack of information and understanding of what Japanese knotweed is and the actual damage it can cause. Without actual advice and guidance, surveyors have been unsure of how to assess the risk of Japanese knotweed, which can result in inconsistent reporting of the plant in mortgage valuations. RICS hopes that this advice will provide the industry with the tools it needs to measure the risk effectively, and provide banks with the information they require to identify who and how much to lend to at a time when it is essential to keep the housing market moving.”

—Philip Santo, RICS Residential Professional Group ( 05 Jul 2013 (2013-07-05). “RICS targets the root of Japanese Knotweed risk to property”. Rics.org.)

As a result of this, many lenders relaxed their criteria, and are now mainly concerned with the plant if it is growing within 7 metres of the property. If so, it will ask for a guarantee of elimination. Many companies are now offering ‘Knotweed Solutions’ and a warranty to vouch for the extermination of the plant.Property Care Association chief executive Steve Hodgson, whose trade body has set up a task force to deal with the issue, said:

“Japanese knotweed is not ‘house cancer’ and could be dealt with in the same way qualified contractors dealt with faulty wiring or damp.”

By the way, I suspect that trying to get rid of a well-established plot of Japanese Knotweed by yourself would be back-breaking and probably ineffective, plus the remains of the plant are classified as ‘Controlled Waste’, which requires disposal at registered Landfill sites.

The normal way to get rid of Japanese Knotweed involves a massive dose of herbicide, followed by lots and lots and lots of digging and sieving. However, there are alternatives. In Haida Gwaii, islands to the extreme north-west of Canada with a rare and beautiful flora, they have been experimenting with the application of sea-water to the plant, which is said to be showing promising results. Here in the UK, a Japanese aphid (Aphalora itadori) which preys specifically on Japanese Knotweed was released back in 2010. It seems to be establishing itself well, and although I am nervous about ‘fighting fire with fire’ in this way, so far there seem to have been no detrimental side-effects.

Japanese Knotweed is not new to the UK – it was first introduced in 1825 as a garden plant, and was first recorded in the wild in 1886. As I turn to my trusty Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey, I discover that it was a great favourite with Victorian gardeners, although they tended to plant it in their plantations and by their streams as it was too vigorous for any smaller space. Alas, it was a plant with ambition, and by 1900 was growing wild in London. By the 1960’s it was everywhere, from Lands End to the northern tip of the Isle of Lewis. In Cornwall it is known as ‘Hancock’s Curse’ because it was originally planted in the garden of a Mr Hancock. Everywhere it is discovered it seems to generate a frisson of alarm, much as if John Wyndham’s Triffids had turned up. And yet, like all plants, Japanese Knotweed is not an unalloyed monster, just a plant that has found itself in a habitat that is to its liking, and which is taking advantage of the fact.

One way of keeping it under better control might be to do what the Japanese ladies who selected some ‘cuttings’ were probably doing, and that is to eat it. The plant is in the same family as sorrel and rhubarb, and the young shoots can be used to make pies or jam (though it is recommended that the shoots are under a foot tall when picked, so you’ll need to be quick!) In Dyfed in Wales, the leaves are used like spinach, and in Swansea the children suck the sap from the stems, and call the plant ‘Sally Rhubarb’. There is a fine selection of recipes for Knotweed here but if you are foraging, do take care not to spread the plant in anyway, and to make sure that any waste parts of the plant are disposed of properly (i.e not thrown into your compost bin 🙂 )

It should not be forgotten that Japanese Knotweed is also a valuable plant for pollinators, and is useful for beekeepers because it flowers late into the year, when many other plants have past their prime. The honey is said to taste like a mild form of Buckwheat honey, which is not surprising as Buckwheat is another member of the family that includes the Japanese Knotweed.

In Chinese traditional medicine. the plant is used for treating some heart conditions, as a laxative (let’s not forget that it is a cousin to rhubarb), and as a tonic. Some research has shown that it may be useful in treating Alzheimer’s disease, and it is a useful source of vitamins A and D. Like rhubarb, it also contains a lot of oxalic acid, which can aggravate rheumatism and kidney stones, so it should be used with discretion.

So Japanese Knotweed, like any plant, is not a thug without any redeeming features. In its original habitat, I suspect that it was a graceful, useful plant, and maybe it could be here, too.Few organisms are entirely heroes or villains, and it is often our lack of knowledge that makes us consider them so. There is no substitute for a little research, and for taking a deep breath before demonising anything, plant or animal.

Wednesday Weed – Scented Mayweed

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Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Scented Mayweed (Matricaria chamomilla)

Dear Readers, there are a large number of white daisy-like plants in flower at the moment, but the combination of a faint pineapple-scent and a ‘squashy’ receptacle (the round yellow bit) tells me that this is Scented Mayweed. It is one of a large family of plants which have the word ‘chamomile’ included in either their common or Latin names – ‘Chamomile’ comes from the Greek for ‘Earth-Apple’, which seems to be a reference to its fruity scent. Scented Mayweed is also known as German Chamomile, and is an annual plant of bright, open places, often with disturbed soil. ‘True’ or Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) has a stronger scent, and is a rare perennial plant of damp turf and sandy, mildly acid soils. There has been a lot of confusion about these plants, but both have been used for their extensive medicinal and cosmetic applications. I was pleased to see Scented Mayweed in the Unadopted Road in East Finchley last week for another reason – its open flowers are very popular with pollinators such as hoverflies.

Scented Mayweed is described as an ‘Ancient Introduction’, which means that it arrived before 1500 (in this case from the warmer parts of mainland Europe and northern Asia). It has a venerable history: garlands of this flower were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and it is included in the herbal traditions of no less than 26 countries. It has been used for many things: as a tea for relaxation, as an insecticide, as an anti-inflammatory and for digestive disorders. No wonder it arrived in the UK – it sounds as if it would have been an indispensable part of any healer’s medicine kit. It does contain a small amount of a poisonous chemical called coumarin, which could cause nausea and vomiting, and on the Plant Lives website it warns that this is what will happen if the flowers are boiled for ‘more than seven minutes’. It can also be an allergen for those susceptible to hay fever, which is one reason why my husband doesn’t drink chamomile tea – he finds it sets him to sneezing.

Scented Mayweed produces a yellow dye, which is used in many cosmetic products for blonde hair. It is also a perfumery ingredient: the oil which contains the distinctive pineappley smell is dark blue, and is called Azulene. I am indebted to the Fragrantica website for this information, which also contains the interesting fact that Chamomile is a keynote in Dior’s Fahrenheit for Men.

In the book by Beatrix Potter,Peter Rabbit’s mother gave him a cup of chamomile tea to help him after his ordeal on Farmer MacGregor’s farm, and what a wise thing this was. When I’m feeling anxious, I find that chamomile tea helps me too. What I had never done was make the link with Scented Mayweed. Plants have such a lot to teach us, if we have ears to hear, and curiosity, and that most wonderful resource, the Internet.

An Unadopted Road

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Dear Readers, in the middle of East Finchley there are a number of what are called ‘unadopted roads’. These are strange little snickleways which are not the responsibility of the council or of the Highways Commission. In theory, they ‘belong’ to houses that front onto them, but this one has only the back gates of properties, so it is unclear who should be looking after it. In some places, the patches around the garages and back fences have been planted up with garden flowers, to the detriment of the wild plants – I turned up my nose at one patch of paeonies and pyracantha. In other places the brambles, ivy and nettles grow wild.The road might be unadopted, but it has been taken to the hearts of many weeds and creatures.

I was planning to write about Cherry Tree Wood this week, but once I was in the unadopted road, and having found a patch of bramble which was just about to open, I found myself detained by the sheer number of insects. First up was a metallic green Flower Beetle. I tend to forget how important insects which aren’t bees can be in pollination.

Flower Beetle (Oedemera lurida)

We also tend to forget that flies are pollinators too. There was a wide selection of hoverflies, some of them spending up to half an hour on a single blossom, others restlessly dashing about. So much biodiversity in one tiny spot!

This rather fine hoverfly is, I think, Eupeodes luniger, a migratory species from southern Europe. Who would have thought that such a small insect could fly so far?

And then, there were the ladybirds. This one is a Harlequin, which was recently described as the UK’s fastest invading species. It is rather larger than our native species and, if you get close enough, you can see that it has two little dimples at the back of the wingcases. Although it is accused of out-competing other species, it is now so well ensconced that I doubt if anything will shift it, plus it eats aphids and all kinds of other pests in preference to more valuable insects. We will have to wait and see how things pan out.

Harlequin Ladybird (Harmonia axyridis)

Another Harlequin ladybird – they are very variable in colour.

But it’s not all Harlequins. I also found a larvae of our largest native Ladybird, a 7-Spot. Maybe when there is enough food, the different species can coexist, and there were certainly plenty of aphids around. The larvae are just as predatory as the adults, and they always remind me of little tigers, prowling through the foliage.

7-Spot Ladybird larva.

As I stood there with my camera, I was passed by:

A white van that was using this tiny road as a cut-through, and was probably doing his chassis a damage as he went
A man with a small dog, who let it crap on the path and then hurried past while I was busy photographing a creature. Shame on you, sir!
A very nice woman who lived in one of the houses, and who explained about the road’s unadopted status.

But as I stood there, I realised that I could hear buzzing, over and above the occasional passing bee. It led me to a huge bank of ivy, which was growing over a fence. I watched as bumblebees flew into and out of the foliage. On the way out, they flew like small furry bullets. On the way in they were more hesitant, as if trying to find their way, or even as if they were checking out if it was safe.

It dawned on me slowly – I’d found my first ever bumblebee nest! These are White-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lucorum). I’d always wanted to find one, and harbour dreams of a nest in my garden, but this was the next best thing.

In the spring, Queen bumblebees come out of hibernation, and look for somewhere to make a nest. This is often a deserted rodent nest. The Queen gathers pollen from whatever plants are available, and uses this to build a ball, onto which she lays her eggs. She also collects some nectar to sustain herself and the larvae, and puts this into a ‘honey pot’ out of wax. Then she broods the first eggs: bumblebees can control their body temperature through a considerable range, and can keep the eggs at a temperature of 25C even when it’s cold outside. When the eggs hatch, she will be the sole provider for the larvae until they pupate and emerge as workers, which is why it is so important that there are early spring flowers for food. Once the workers leave the nest, they can start to forage, and the Queen’s responsibility is now mainly about laying more eggs. Bumblebee nests are much smaller than those of honeybees, with a maximum of 400 individuals, but this still requires a lot of pollen and nectar. As most of the bramble flowers were still closed, I wondered what the bees were feeding on. I didn’t have to walk far to find out. The Pyracantha bush that I’d been so sniffy about when I’d walked past it earlier was just ten metres from the nest, and was full of bumblebees. What a great illustration of the importance of providing pollinator-friendly plants in our gardens. I’m sure that this one plant is making a great difference to the number of larvae that the bees can feed, and to their rate of growth. Plus, even in poor weather the bees will be able to nip out for sustenance. The Pyracantha is filling the gap until the brambles opened fully, even if it was planted more with a view to security than to invertebrates.

As I walked back along this unprepossessing little track, I thought about all the things that go on around us that we don’t notice. I could easily have missed the bumblebee nest if I hadn’t slowed down to take some photos, and hadn’t noticed that tell-tale buzzing. I am often in such a rush, but if I settle down and really pay attention, there are fascinating things happening all around me, and around all of us. It’s a lesson to me of the value of slowing down.

Wednesday Weed – Broad-leaved Willowherb

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Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Broad-leaved Willowherb (Epilobium montanum)

Dear Readers, I am always surprised at what turns up along the dark, gravelly path that leads to the side entrance of my house. Yellow corydalis, greater celandine, forget-me-not, buddleia, Mexican fleabane, Canadian fleabane, sow thistle and chickweed all put in an appearance, but this is the first time that I have spotted this little beauty – Broad-leaved Willowherb (Epilobium montanum). I have a garden full of Great Willowherb, but this plant passed me by. It has a delicate, shy habit that means that it is often overlooked but once I’d noticed it, I realised that it was everywhere.

The plant has four, deeply-notched mauve-ish petals, and the stigma in the centre form a distinctive four-lobed shape. The leaves are rounded at the bottom (hence the ‘broad-leaved’), and are practically stemless. Like most of the other willowherbs, it’s native.

Note the notched petals and the stigma, which are ways of identifying the plant (By Frank Vincentz (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

As with all the willowherbs, the soft leaves seem irresistible to insects, and the plant that I used for identifications was covered in enthusiastic greenfly. However, the genus is also subject to the depredations of some larger creatures, such as the caterpillars of the Small Phoenix:

Small Phoenix (Ecliptopera silaceata) (By Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark (Ecliptopera silaceata) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

the Striped Hawkmoth:

Striped Hawkmoth (Hyles livornica) (“Sphingidae – Hyles livornica-1” by Hectonichus – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sphingidae_-_Hyles_livornica-1.JPG#/media/File:Sphingidae_-_Hyles_livornica-1.JPG)

and, most spectacularly, the Elephant Hawkmoth and the Small Elephant Hawkmoth, shown below:

Small Elephant Hawkmoth (Deilephila porcellus) (“Deilephila porcellus-01 (xndr)”. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons )

Plants of the Epilobium genus have long been used as a treatment for prostate and urinary complaints, and indeed a company which manufactures supplements made from willowherb has taken the genus name of Epilobium for its company name (note that this is not an endorsement). Although the showier members of the family are the ones most often used in herbal medicine, Broad-leaved Willowherb was singled out in an Austrian study as having a stronger effect than the others. While there is a lot of interest in Chinese herbal medicine and Ayurveda, herbal medicine in the West is still seen as something of a niche area. Maybe this is because when something grows all around us, it’s difficult to make money from it.

I love Rosebay Willowherb and Great Willowherb. I admire the way that they can take over a spot of damaged and derelict land and turn it into a sea of cerise. But this little plant lurks in the interstices of the city, at the bottom of walls, in the crevices and the dark places, cheering them up with its mauve flowers and graceful habit. And, when the time is right, it fires its fluffy seeds with just as much vigour as its bigger relatives. It might be little, but it’s a plant with ambition.

Seeds of Broad-leaved Willowherb just waiting to emerge (By Frank Vincentz (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Bugwoman on Location – ‘In With The Spiders’ at London Zoo

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Dear Readers, when I read that London Zoo had created Europe’s first walk-through spider house, I naturally had to go and have a look. I am fascinated by spiders, and I was also intrigued to see if any actual conservation work was going on. Whilst I believe that most animals suffer as a result of incarceration, I suspect that, if well kept, invertebrates might be an exception. Plus, anything that helps humans stop killing spiders has got to be good for everybody.

The first exhibit features a typical UK spider scenario:

Yes, there’s a House Spider, located as usual next to the plug hole. I did wonder whether there were a series of spiders who were each star for a day, or if it was the one unfortunate individual who spent his life disgusting the visitors.

There are numerous species of spider here: there is a tank set up for a Fen Raft spider, one of the UK’s most endangered species. The keeper that I talked to told me that the spider had produced several egg sacs already in her previous home, and they that hoped that she would do the same in the exhibit, so that the youngsters could be reared and used to repopulate their original habitat in the Norfolk Broads. Thumbs up to that!

Fen Raft Spider with spiderlings. One of our rarest spiders (“Dolomedes fimbriatus”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

There was also a very splendid centimetre-long jumping spider with bright blue jaws. I couldn’t get a photo as he was jumping about trying to catch a bluebottle, but this is a male of the same species. I love that the English name for the species is Daring Jumping Spider.

Phidippus audax (also known as the Daring Jumping Spider) (“Phidippus audax male” by Opoterser – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons )

Then, it was into the walk-through part of the exhibit.

The exhibit holds two species of Orb Web (Nephila) spiders: the Golden Orb Web Spider (Nephila inaurata madagascariensis) from Madagascar and the Golden Silk Orb Weaver (Nephila edulis) from Australia and New Guinea. Both, as you might guess, spin a kind of golden silk, which has been used to make clothes such as the cape below, made from the silk of the Madagascan species.

“Spider silk cape” by Cmglee – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spider_silk_cape.jpg#/media/File:Spider_silk_cape.jpg)

This is a female Madagascan spider, and what a fine creature she is. She reminds me rather of a licorice allsort.

As in most spiders, the females are much larger than the males (up to 30 times in the case of this species). The largest female had a leg-span roughly the size of my hand. All of the spiders were very sedentary, sitting happily on their webs and being fed with waxworms, although the keeper told me that there had been a flurry of excitement a few days earlier when the unluckiest bluebottle in Britain managed to fly into the only spider house in Europe.

Adolescent Golden Orb Web Spider

As we watched, however, one adolescent female Golden Orb Web managed to force another off of her web, and away from her waxworm. It was interesting to see how conflicted the winner was – she would take a few bites, then turn to check on whether her rival was creeping up on her, then turn back to the food. It might be anthropomorphic to ascribe such human feelings as nervousness to an invertebrate, but the keeper told me that she’d noticed that some invertebrate individuals were bolder than others, and that they had their preferences and character traits just like more ‘advanced’ animals. So, maybe it’s not such a daft notion. After all, there would be an evolutionary advantage to have personality variation, just in case the environment changed to favour creatures with a particular set of behaviours.

Golden Silk Orb Weaver female (Nephila edulis)

The Golden Silk Orb Weaver is less brightly coloured than its Madagascan relative. It has a dough-coloured body with little dimples in the abdomen, and dark red legs. The web is so tough that in New Guinea, the fishermen make nets out of it. This particular individual had recently shed her skin, and so was looking very new-minted. The keeper had found her shed skin, called an exuvia, and it looked like a perfect crumpled spider. I imagine it takes quite a while to extract those long legs from their outworn armour. Incidentally, all spiders do this, and you can often find exuviae in cobwebs.

Shed skin of Golden Silk Orb Weaver

Of course, the people-watching in the spider house was as good as the spider-watching. A group of primary school children came in while I was taking photos, and I was very impressed with how sensible they were. In my experience, youngsters often take their cues from how the adults are, and the female keeper in the spider house was calm and enthusiastic.

I have long been interested in the whole notion of femininity and fear of insects and other invertebrates. I have seen more wasps swatted, more spiders stamped on and more perfectly innocent beetles crushed at the behest of ‘terrified’ girlfriends than in any other circumstance. I am not talking here about genuine arachnophobia, which I know can make people’s lives an absolute misery, and for which I have the utmost sympathy *. I also understand that if you live in a country which is home to dangerous spiders, you might be inclined to take action first and ask questions later. I’m talking about the kind of uncontrolled, slightly affected reaction that demands that someone step in and get rid of a harmless creature whose only crime is to have more than the usual number of legs. I am always a bit taken aback by how proud some folk are of their prejudices. I talked to the young woman who was serving in the zoo coffee shop, who announced that she hated all spiders, and would swat them on principle.

“But why? ” I asked. “After all, we’d be ankle-deep in flies if we didn’t have any spiders”.

She gave a delicious little shudder.

“I just don’t like the way they look”, she said.

Now, lots of people don’t like how spiders look. I cannot imagine a creature that is more physically different from us. There is nothing cuddly about spiders, nothing child-like or furry (unless you count those hairy legs). It’s OK not to like them. It’s the random swatting that gets me. My eighty year-old mother, who is not very mobile and who really doesn’t like spiders very much at all always removes the spiders using a handy spider-catching device on a stick and puts them outside, and if she can do it, so can the rest of us.

I’d like to think that the kind of education that the children who visited received might help them to live and let live when they see a spider advancing across the great plain of the kitchen floor. I’d also like to point out that if you have a spider reserve in your house, you are less likely to have all kinds of household pests. I suspect that if someone could find a spider that specialised in catching and killing clothes moths, a great enthusiasm for indoor spiders might develop. But in the meantime, if you are interested in spiders, the new London Zoo exhibit is a great place to watch some truly impressive specimens.

Little male and big female. The male is so small that the females can’t be bothered to eat them.

* If you are spider-phobic, and live within reach of London, can I suggest that you have a look at London Zoo’s Friendly Spider Programme? I’ve heard very good things about it from a number of ex-phobics, and the keeper in the Spider Exhibit told me that one of the women who now handles tarantulas for the ‘Meet the Creature’ sessions was too terrified to even look at a photo of a spider prior to going on the course.

Wednesday Weed – Oxford Ragwort

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Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Oxford Ragwort (Senecio squalidus)

Dear Readers, Oxford Ragwort is one of those plants whose roots are so deeply entangled with humankind as to be rare outside of urban and industrial areas. Unusually, its path to freedom is well documented, and yet again Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey can be our guide. It was first planted in the botanical gardens of Oxford University, having been reputedly gathered from the rocks of Mount Etna. We have noted on several occasions that plants of mountain habitats often make excellent city dwellers, as they have a built-in tolerance for poor, scant soil and bright, dry, exposed situations. Furthermore, the genus name ‘Senecio’ refers to the way that the air-borne seeds resemble the white hair of an elderly person. So, with its tolerance for city streets and its wind-carried seeds, it was tailor-made for urban colonisation. By the 1830s its seeds had wafted on to the old walls of Oxford, but it was soon provided with a mechanism for a much more ambitious journey. Like Buddleia, it was greatly aided by the railways, in this case particularly the Great Western. Oxford Ragwort loved the clinker beds by the side of the track, which maybe reminded the plant of its volcanic home, and its downy seeds were carried along in the slipstream of the passing steam engines. And so it advanced through England and Wales, providing a cheerful yellow chorus for mile after mile of the route. Indeed, on a recent trip to Surrey it seemed as if the whole trackside was a great flowerbed of Oxford Ragwort.

I have a great personal fondness for Ragwort, which dates back to the days when Bugwoman was Bug-girl. I was forever trying to rear caterpillars, and was particularly attracted to the yellow and black larvae of the Cinnabar moth. What child could resist these tiger-striped beauties? I found three, and spent the whole summer finding Ragwort for them to feed on. When, eventually, they turned into conker-coloured chrysalises, I put them in a big sweet jar containing twigs for them to climb up on when they emerged. I then put the jar into the cool darkness of the coal bunker under the stairs, and checked on them every single day.

Caterpillar of the Cinnabar Moth (“Tyria jacobaeae qtl1” by Quartl – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

The bright colouration of the caterpillar is a bit of a giveaway that the insect is poisonous, and it acquires this poison from its foodplant, which is any species of Ragwort that it can get its diminutive jaws into. The plant contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which can damage the liver of humans and some mammals, but it is these very chemicals which apparently excite the caterpillars, according to a study of ‘gustatory responsiveness‘. There has been a great deal of excitement in the UK recently about Ragwort being poisonous to horses. This is true, but a call to eliminate the plant altogether would be a disaster not just for the Cinnabar moth, but for the 150 other species of insect which eat it or feed on its nectar. For a measured response to the debate, I recommend this website, which lays out the issues for both horse and insect enthusiasts, and those lucky people who are both.

One day, I opened the door to the coal bunker to find that, responding to some innate signal, my moths had emerged. Two of them were hanging from the twigs, their wings like blood-streaked black velvet. One, however, had not made it. It had got trapped between the edge of the jar and the twig, and had died without its wings opening.

Adult Cinnabar moth (“Tyria jacobaeae-04 (xndr)” by Svdmolen – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons )

This was an early introduction to the unfairness of life. How could this creature have made it all the way to the door of adulthood and then died? The occasion called for a ritual, and so I dragooned my poor younger brother into a moth funeral. I put the moth into a matchbox lined with cotton wool, while my sibling did the hard work of digging a grave. We solemnly processed the ten feet from the back door to the graveside. I intoned a few words while my brother looked solemnly on. Then, we laid a tombstone which consisted of a tile from the recent demolition of our fireplace. On it, in wax crayon, were scrawled the words:

‘Born only to die’.

I was a child of Victorian sensibilities, as you can see.

My little brother aged about 4 in 1966. What a long-suffering sibling he was. And is.

When I see Ragwort, I am instantly reminded of those days of childhood, when time stood still at the sight of a caterpillar scraping endless half-circles from a leaf and when a small ritual seemed the only way to right the world when something went wrong. I still feel most truly myself when I am totally absorbed in the goings on of a plant or an animal – time seems to fall away, along with all my mundane concerns. The phrase ‘inner-child’ makes many people cringe, and yet I think that all of us are like Russian Dolls, with our earlier versions still alive and sometimes kicking. To me, there is nothing wrong with that non-judgemental state of child-like wonder, when we have no preconceptions but truly ‘see’. I’m sure it’s a better tonic than anything the doctor could prescribe, and with no side-effects other than a new bounce in the step and a softer, more open heart.

Bugwoman on Location – A Bog Blog

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Dear Readers, a few weeks ago I discovered, to my astonishment, that London is home to several peat bogs. What on earth are they doing here? I associate them with the bleak, wet, windswept north-western coast of Scotland, or with parts of Ireland. But as I read further, I found that peat bogs were once widespread across the whole of the country. However, as land has been drained for building and for industry, and as the peat was dug out for fuel and latterly for compost, these habitats have dwindled to a few sites. The best are in the south of the capital, but on Bank Holiday Monday I decided to explore the bog closest to my home patch, Rowley Green Common at Arkley in the London Borough of Barnet. This tiny patch of bog is said to be home to Star Sedge, Nodding Bur-Marigold and Lesser Spearwort, although this early in the year I was not holding my breath.

Star Sedge (Carex echinata) (By Franz Xaver (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Nodding Bur-marigold (Bidens cernua) (By Malte (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Lesser Spearwort (Ranunculus flammula) (“RanunculusFlammula4” by Christian Fischer. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

You would think that a bog would be a fairly easy thing to find, if only because you would suddenly find yourself up to your knees in mud. But no. There is a problem in this nature reserve, and it is that the areas of bog are gradually being colonised by other plants, like willow saplings for example.

Still, there are some open, boggy areas if you follow the less-trodden paths.

I love bogs: there is something about their claggy serenity that piques my imagination. I would not be surprised to see a green figure made entirely of sphagnum moss emerge from the sediment and dance amongst the reeds. However, he would have a problem here, there being no obvious sphagnum moss at all.

Sphagnum moss (“Sphagnum.flexuosum” by James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Sphagnum moss is the building block of a bog. As you might remember from a previous post about moss, it can absorb large quantities of water, like a sponge. This helps to keep the water table high, normally making bogs wetter than their surroundings. Layers of moss and other water plants grow on top of the sphagnum, and the lower layers slowly decay and turn into peat, at a rate of only two millimetres a year. The mossy mounds that we see in bogs are a result of this process. Here in Rowley Green, I saw only one such mound, stranded high and dry amongst the brambles, though there were probably more hidden from view.

In the past, the boggy area here was much larger – until World War Two the area was kept open by grazing cattle, preventing the encroachment of the scrub and forest. Small-scale gravel extraction also opened a series of ponds, which helped with the boggy environment. But now, this little patch of wetland is under siege on all sides. To one side, there is a golf-club, with a huge, dark cherry-laurel and rhododendron hedge along the boundary with the reserve.

Golf Club boundary

Fore!

Furthermore, there is a huge rhododendron growing right in the middle of one of the boggy areas.

We tend to think that forests and bogs and heathlands can be left to look after themselves, but most kinds of habitat have a desire to move on. Every pond, in its heart, wants to become a bog. Grassland wants to become a forest. The only reason that it doesn’t is because there is some resource constraint or very particular environmental factor, or because humans intervene. In Coldfall Wood, coppicing has changed the environment and increased the number of species that will survive. Here in Rowley Green Common, it will take some active management to make sure that this little bog doesn’t disappear altogether, along with the unusual species of plant and invertebrate that depend on it. It reminds me of the importance of local Friends groups who keep an eye on their local wild spaces – Hertford and Middlesex Wildlife Trust seem to have Rowley Green as part of their remit, but they have a huge area to look after. In all our time at the reserve, we didn’t see a single other person. Ironically, although an unvisited reserve may be good for the plants and wildlife, it might also mean that no one cares enough to save it when things start to go wrong. And surely the only peat-bog in Barnet is worth saving.

Walking along the edge of the golf course in Rowley Green Common nature reserve

To read more on the Peat Bogs of London, have a look at this excellent piece by the London Wildlife Trust.

Wednesday Weed – Ivy-leaved Toadflax

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Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Ivy-leaved Toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis)

Of all the things that grow in our cities, I have a soft spot for the ones that make their homes in walls. There’s something about these plants, clinging onto life in such a dry, sun-baked, inhospitable situation that fills me with admiration. On Sunday, I found a whole wall full of Ivy-leaved Toadflax. Tiny plants were growing on the top and then seeding right down to the bottom, like a kind of botanical candle-wax. Once I got home, I started to do some research and discovered, to my delight, that the plant is designed to do just this: when in flower, the blooms turn towards the light, but once the flowers are over, it becomes ‘negatively phototropic’ – in other words, the seed heads bend away from the light, to deposit their seeds into darker places, like cracks or the shadow at the bottom of a wall. When I find out something like this, I want to rush out into the street, stand by a patch of Ivy-leaved Toadflax and tell everybody who passes about what a fascinating plant it is. Fortunately, my blog enables me to do this without being arrested.

On the top of the wall….

…trickling down the wall…

..at the bottom of the wall.

Toadflaxes are a member of the Figwort family, which also includes such plants as Mullein, Foxglove and Antirrhinums. However, the trick to identifying a toadflax is to look at the lower ‘lip’ of the flower – this is called the Palate (because it guards the ‘throat’ of the flower), and is formed of two lobes.

Looked at up close, the flowers of Ivy-leaved Toadflax are remarkably complex. The two-lobed ‘lower lip’ is indicative that this is a toadflax. (By The original uploader was Sannse at English Wikipedia [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Ivy-leaved Toadflax was brought to the UK from southern Europe in the early seventeenth century, and was said to have originated in the packing material of some statues that were imported from Italy to Oxford, hence its alternative name of ‘Oxford Weed’. It was a very popular addition to the walled gardens that were being built everywhere at this time but, in the way of things, it didn’t take long before it was advancing over the walls of inhabited places all over the country. Other vernacular names include ‘Mother of Thousands’ and ‘Travelling Sailor’, which attest to its colonising zeal. It covered the walls of Kenilworth Castle so vigorously that yet another name for it is ‘Kenilworth Ivy’. There is a lovely description of Ivy-leaved Toadflax in medieval times on the Highbury Wildlife Garden website:

“In Reading the Landscape of Europe, May Theilgaard Watts calls it Runes-de-Rome: “This plant is a part of every medieval city wall’ in France. “Clinging to the massive masonry that lifts Chateaudun above the Loire Valley, it undoubtedly felt the breath of molten lead poured on the enemy from the apertures above and received many a misdirected arrow from below.”

The plant seems to like the scabbiest, most broken-down walls, maybe because these contain the greatest variety of crevices and cracks. Richard Mabey notes that it is ‘virtually unknown in natural habitats in this country’.

In its native Italy, Ivy-leaved Toadflax is known as ‘the plant of the Madonna’. It is also said to be edible: it is described in old herbals as ‘anti-scorbutic’, which means that it is high in vitamin C, and has been eaten in salads. Its flavour is described as being similar to cress. I can imagine that those little flowers would look very pretty too, although taking them would mean depriving the bees of their nectar – like most plants with ‘snapdragon’-shaped flowers, it is insect-pollinated.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax growing alongside the A6 between Matlock and Bath (© Copyright Mick Garratt and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.)

This leaves me with just one question. Why is a Toadflax called a Toadflax? The answer is lost in history, but one explanation is that the flower looks like the wide-mouthed face of a toad. Another is that the flower looks like a whole toad! There is also a theory that toads liked to shelter amongst the leaves, which, as they also like the crevices in drystone walls, seems to me the likeliest of the explanations. At any rate, having noticed Ivy-leaved Toadflax, I am now seeing it everywhere, and will certainly tell you if I spot any toads.

Does this look like the face of a toad to anyone? I’m struggling to see it, I must admit….(By Hans Bernhard (Schnobby) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Something of a Kerfuffle

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A fine collection of Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) fledglings

Dear Readers, have a look at the photograph above and see how many fledgling starlings you can count. This is one branch of my Hawthorn tree, and on Thursday this week it was a heaving, wheezing mass of babies. Every year, the youngsters emerge en masse and I am always touched that the parents bring them to my garden, though I suspect the neighbours are not so impressed with the noise and mess and general kerfuffle from dawn till dusk.

When they first leave the hollow tree that has been their home for the first few weeks of their lives, the fledglings seem wide-eyed with wonder. They follow their parents to the hawthorn tree, and sit there waiting for something to eat. While they wait, they investigate. The urge to peck anything that looks remotely edible reminds me of the way that human babies investigate everything mouth-first.

The fledglings spend a lot of time looking up hopefully, and wheezing every time an adult hoves into view. How the adults identify which baby is theirs is one of those mysteries of nature, but each youngster is as distinctive to his or her parents as our babies are to us.

The adults, strangely enough, seem rather relaxed. Do they know that the most frantic part of their job is over, and that soon their offspring will be independent? Or are they just exhausted and having a breather?

I have been in this house since the autumn of 2010, and every spring brings this flush of new life. I like to think that some of these birds are the youngsters of previous years, who are bringing their own fledglings to a reliable source of food. Feeding wild creatures is a big responsibility – although animals will find alternative sources of food if we suddenly stop providing for them, they are very vulnerable at times when they need extra supplies, such as now, or during a cold winter. I always have some food on offer, but try to adjust the quantities according to need. An added incentive for year-round feeding is that starlings are a Red List species – according to the British Trust for Ornithology, their numbers have dropped by 80% nationally since the 1970’s. One reason for this is that fewer fledglings survive, possibly due to the difficulty in finding food during our drier summers, so I like to make sure that there is always some food available.

In a week or so, the fledglings will have learned to feed themselves, and will start to disperse. The frenetic pace in the garden will die down, and things will go back to normal. But for now, the hawthorn tree reverberates to the sound of hungry youngsters, and the starlings have left their ‘mark’ all over the garden furniture. My bird food budget is well and truly blown, and the man who delivers the suet pellets has probably developed a hernia from lifting all the heavy boxes. But there is something about this great burst of animal fertility that fills me with hope. In spite of everything that we are doing to mess things up, some things are still working.

Wednesday Weed – Fringecups

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Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Fringecups (Tellima grandiflora)

Dear Readers, during a walk in Coldfall Wood last week, I was surprised to see a stand of Fringecups alongside the stream. They are a member of the Saxifrage family, although they look very different from the others, with their strange green-pink flowers peering like giraffes over their neighbours. They are the sole member of their genus, and as such are somewhat out on a limb: most saxifrages are five-petalled, open-flowered plants, although a few do share the long stem of the Fringecup. As the flowers grow older, they start to change from greenish-white to pink, and even to red.

Older Fringecup flowers, rapidly turning red(“Tellima grandiflora 07469”. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tellima_grandiflora_07469.JPG#/media/File:Tellima_grandiflora_07469.JPG)

This is a plant that my North American readers might recognise, as it is a native of the north-western corner of the continent, including Alaska, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Alberta and British Columbia. It is a plant of woody, shady, wet places, and in my garden at least the bees are very fond of those unassuming flowers.

Here in the wood, they have certainly made themselves at home. They mix happily with the nettles, the violets and the marsh marigolds, and keep themselves largely to themselves. It is not difficult to see how it has made the leap into ‘the wild’ – I have it in my own garden, and there are many varieties for sale. Its tolerance of shade is a great point in its favour in many people’s eyes.

Fringecups growing in my garden.

I think that this looks like a fairy-tale plant, ethereal and delicate. The flowers look as if they could be hats for pixies, and, indeed, there is a Canadian folktale that elves ate Fringecup in order to improve their night vision. The First Nation Skagit people used Fringecup to make a tea for treating many illnesses, including loss of appetite.

In many of the books that mention Fringecups, there is a reference to its fragrance. I have to admit that this was not something that I’d noticed so, in the interests of research, I went down to the garden to have a sniff. And there it is, a faint hint of sweetness, as fragile as the scent left on a silk scarf. This is a modest plant of strange and elusive beauty, which only reveals itself if you have the time to stop and look.

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Bug Woman – Adventures in London

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Something of a Kerfuffle

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