Dear Readers, during a walk through Coldfall Wood in East Finchley today I noticed that in  a fenced-off area close to the stream, there are several clumps of common figwort. What a joy it is to see this compacted area, completely free of any vegetation only a year ago, restoring itself as the seeds in the seedbank germinate (see photo below). I can’t wait for some photos to show how the plants have come on since June.

This is a plant that it’s easy to overlook, but the flowers are extremely interesting, and there aren’t that many chocolate brown blooms out there so it has a lot of novelty value. And in the USA, native figworts used to be planted specifically for their copious nectar, as a food for honeybees. A beekeeper called James A. Simpson wrote a book on apiculture called ‘The ABC of Bee Culture’ in 1888, and in it, talking about figwort, he states:

“This is a queer tall weed that grows in fields and woods, and it bears little cups full of honey. It has produced so much honey under cultivation on our honey farm during the past two years that I am much inclined to place it at the head of the list of honey plants.”

No wonder there were so many bees (mostly bumbles) visiting the plants in Coldfall Wood! You can read more at the Honeybee Suite website here.

And now, on to my original figwort post. It’s always so good to rediscover an old friend.

Flowers of Common Figwort (Scrophularia nodosa) (Photo One – credit below)

Dear Readers, what a quiet and inoffensive plant Figwort is! I have it growing in my pond, but I first spotted it at East Finchley Station, growing alongside a drainage ditch where there was also lots of horsetail. It certainly attracts the bees, even when not in full bloom – the flowers seem perfectly bumblebee adapted.

Herbalists thought that the plants  resembled a human throat, and so they were used medicinally for tonsillitis and all kinds of ailments related to this part of the body. In particular the plant was used to treat scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that led to enlargement of the neck (hence the plant’s genus name). Long term readers might remember the Doctrine of Signatures, a belief that a plant would indicate what it was useful for by its shape, colour or scent, as if a ‘clue’ had been planted by God when the Garden of Eden was created.

Figwort is in the same family as the Buddleia and Great Mullein (the Scrophulariaceae), though you’d be hard put to notice any obvious similarities. If we’re looking at just the figworts there are over 200 species spread across the Northern Hemisphere, and telling them apart can be somewhat challenging. Are the plants in my pond Common Figwort or Water Figwort (Scrofularia auriculata) for example? I hope the latter, because otherwise I’ve been drenching my plants rather more than they’d like.

Rose chafer on young common/water figwort

Figworts are eaten by the caterpillars of the Mullein moth, and I would be very delighted to see one.

Caterpillar of the Mullein Moth (Curcullia verbasci) (Photo Two)

The caterpillars of the Six-striped Rustic moth (Xestia sexstrigata) also feed on figworts. The adult is subtly beautiful.

Six-striped Rustic (Photo Three)

The jury is out concerning the plant’s edibility by humans, however. It’s said to have a foetid smell (I haven’t noticed any such problems with my plants), but in addition to the medicinal uses mentioned above, the plant has been used as an antihelmentic, which means that it’s poisonous to intestinal worms at the very least. In Mrs Grieves ‘A Modern Herbal’, she mentions that the root was used to feed the populace during  the 13 month Siege of Rochelle, but that the taste is so appalling that it would only ever be considered a famine food.

Mrs Grieve also mentions that Common Figwort was considered a lucky herb in both Ireland and Wales (where it was known as Deilen Ddu (‘good leaf’). The Medieval herbalist Gerard says that people used to wear the plant around their necks to keep themselves in good health. Furthermore, the plant was a treatment for rabies (hydrophobia), the patient being required to take:

‘every morning while fasting a slice of bread and butter on which the powdered knots of the roots had been spread and eating it up with two tumblers of fresh spring water. Then let the patient be well clad in woollen garments and made to take a long, fast walk until in a profuse perspiration, the treatment being continued for seven days.’

And finally, a poem. This is by John Lindley, who was the poet laureate for Cheshire in 2004, and it’s inspired by the Sandstone Ridge in that county. It is about a very specific place, but it is so full of hope that I thought I’d share today. We could all do with some inspiration, I’m sure.

Stone by Stepping Stone (John Lindley)

From ‘landfill’ to ‘lapwing’
requires more than a dip in the alphabet,
more than just a leap of faith
yet it begins
and it begins not letter by letter
but hedge by fattening hedge.

It begins as small as a bird table
and grows as wide as a field, as long as a ridge.
It begins amongst foxgloves and figwort,
in a morning of meadowsweet
and though no wild boar witness it
it is noted by hairstreak and peregrine,
by badger and owl.

It begins stone by stepping stone
and who would have thought such stones
could be engineered and sown?
Who would have thought
they could be dreamt, mapped and moulded
into more than fancy, more than symbol?

Still, it begins. From Frodsham to Bulkeley Hill.
From corridor to green corridor
a land found and refashioned
reclaims itself and swells until each corridor
is no longer measured by the wing span of a hawk
but by the circumference of its flight.

Born of a glacial shift –
a sandstone ridge,
red raw with promise,
skirts hill fort and castle.
A raven hunches like age
against the gathering mist.

Put an ear to the earth,
hear a seed splitting with new life.
Cast an eye to the hills,
see elms able again to stretch and touch fingers.
Woodland and heathland –
all are a heartland
and it is a heart that beats from Beacon Hill
to Bickerton and beyond.

It is a heart thought still,
jumpstarted by other hearts:
by landlord and farmer,
by owner and tenant,
by craftsman and labourer,
by the you and me we call a community.

It is a heart that drums
in the small frame of newt,
the slick casing of otter,
the sensual hide of deer
and grows louder,
like the echo of those lost skylarks
who went with the grassland
but now sing of recovery, sing of return.

Photo Credits

Photo One © Copyright Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Photo Two by By Bobr267 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61678532

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

Hollyhock on the unadopted road

Dear Readers, it’s always nice to rediscover places that are familiar to you, but not to the person that you’re walking with. Today, I took a walk along the unadopted road that leads to Cherry Tree Wood here in East Finchley with my friend S. I remember my joy when I first came across this strange little path, that leads between the garden ends of two blocks of housing. It’s a bit straggly and random, but then so am I, so I love the mixture of domesticated and wild that the plants represent. At one point, there is a stately hollyhock just getting ready to come into flower, next to a magnificent fennel plant.

Someone has strewn some wildflower seeds, so there are poppies and ox-eye daisies…

But there are also the wilder sisters of these plants. There’s nipplewort aplenty…

The little shaggy wigs of herb bennet…

and the red leaves of herb robert blazing away behind the grass.

But this is a bit of a mystery. S had a look on iNaturalist, and we both think that it’s probably rosy garlic (Allium roseum) – this is a new plant to me, but is apparently an introduced plant, usually found on sandy or rocky ground. So, what it’s doing here is anyone’s guess, but then such are the joys of the unadopted road. The leaves didn’t seem to have any garlicky smell, but apparently the bulb is enough to deter squirrels and deer, so it must be pretty pungent. You’d almost think that the little red objects were berries, but in fact they’re bulbils, already to go.

And of course, we couldn’t leave the unadopted road without taking a turn around Cherry Tree Wood, in particular to have a look at what I think is the finest wild service tree in Barnet. It grows right next to the splendid café, and I think it will be covered in berries this year.

And finally, a quick look at the completed mosaic on the wall of the women’s toilet. Made by Debora Singer, it shows many of the key plants and animals that live in Cherry Tree Wood, including parakeets, yellow flag iris (in the wetland area beside the tennis courts), a red admiral butterfly and the splendid Archer from East Finchley station. It’s gorgeous, and although some urchins have covered the plaster beneath the mosaic in black graffiti, the mosaic itself is untouched, so thanks for that, at least.

There is a lot of good work going on in Cherry Tree Wood – I noticed a fenced-off area to protect the wood anemones, and a bug hotel (‘Bugingham Palace’). All in all, we are so lucky to have so many pockets of ancient woodland and other green spaces so close to where we live. And what could be nicer than exploring them with someone else who is a bit of a plant enthusiast! Well, maybe getting home before the rain started was an additional bonus.

Dear Readers, usually it’s the starlings who are the juvenile delinquents on our road here in East Finchley, but this year has been a great year for house sparrows, and goodness knows they could do with some luck, as their numbers have been going down and down over the past fifty years, for reasons that are still not clear.  Anyhow, I was delighted to see them zipping about in both the front and back gardens. Has anyone else noticed how fast they are for such small birds? They can disappear into a hedge or tangle of honeysuckle faster than any other bird I know – sometimes I almost expect them to rebound straight back out again.

Anyhow, this gang seems to consist of several pairs of parents plus their hungry offspring, who follow the adults about as if attached by a length of elastic. Occasionally they’ll wait in the undergrowth waiting for food to arrive, usually with one eye on the sky.

Sometimes the adults take a sneaky breather, like this adult male, parked up beside a young starling. Usually I’m mobbed with fledgling starlings, but it’s been very quiet this year, I suspect because the wet spring led to a mismatch between the emergence of insects and the breeding of the starlings (who need invertebrate food for their youngsters).

Eventually the young sparrows start to peck tentatively at the plants around them while they wait for the adults to arrive. The one below was definitely looking for caterpillars or something similar when s/he wasn’t watching the sky.

I’ve been watching the little flock zipping around at the front of the house too – they often perch in the buddleia, which is having a tough year this year, but which is fortuitously home to all manner of small bugs.

And so, although house sparrows are the quintessential ‘little brown jobs’, I have thoroughly enjoyed watching their breeding success this year. And, as sparrows rarely travel more than a mile from the place that they were born, maybe the fledglings of these birds will visit next year.

I haven’t yet worked out where they’re breeding – certainly not in my sparrow ‘terrace’ which has been a resounding failure so far – but there are a number of dense hedges at the corner of the road, and some houses have little gaps in their Victorian eaves that the sparrows can use. House sparrows aren’t called Passer domesticus for nothing – they aren’t found very far away from human habitation, and they seem to rely on our kindess for housing, and our gardens for food. Fingers crossed that their numbers will soon be going up again. London wouldn’t be the same without its ‘cockney sparrers’.

Dear Readers, it’s been less than 24 hours since I finished my exam, and already I have signed up for my module for next year – it looks as it it will be seriously science-y (as opposed to ‘multidisciplinary’) so I am getting in the swing of it by doing a bit of citizen science this weekend. Yay!

The Natural History Museum, in collaboration with Natural England and several other bodies, is doing research into the biodiversity in urban ponds in London, Bristol, Cambridge, Plymouth, Manchester and Newcastle, and they’ve offered anyone with a pond, however small, in those cities to contribute to a survey that they’re running. The project is now closed for this year, but my pack arrived last week, and it’s very full of syringes and sampling bags and various ways to check pH, water ‘hardness’, nitrate content and phosphorous content. Most excitingly, though, the water that I sample will be tested for eDNA.

A pond skater approaching a water snail in a rather menacing fashion.

eDNA (otherwise known as environmental DNA) is the genetic material found in water, soil, or the air. It includes the DNA from bacteria and other microorganisms, but also trace DNA from larger animals that live in, or visit, the pond. When the water sample is analysed and combined with results from other London ponds, it should give an overall idea of what’s living in the capital. It will be interesting to see how London ponds compare with those in other regions, and I’m hoping that they might also look at things like the overall communities of organisms in a pond.

The great thing about eDNA is that it can find tiny organisms, ones that are difficult to identify (especially when two species look very similar) and, even if the organism isn’t present when the sample is done it will indicate that it was present at some point. In this way it’s a bit like a scent lingering after the cause of it has gone, and gives us a picture of the pond inhabitants over time.

Smooth newt in the pond!

The Natural History Museum will also freeze some of the samples, for analysis in the future – in this way we can compare ponds over time, to see the ebb and flow of species.

Garden ponds have become vitally important sources of biodiversity, especially as so many country ponds have disappeared or degraded, and as many gardens have been turned into patios or car parking spaces. I won’t get the results of my sampling back until spring 2025, but I am really looking forward to taking part. Hopefully neither my husband nor I will end up falling into the pond, but if we do it will all add to the comedy value. I’ll keep you posted.

New Zealand’s Tree of the Year – The Walking Tree (from https://www.treeoftheyear.co.nz/) Photo by Gareth Edwards

Well Readers, we’re all done for another year – notebooks are put away, textbooks are stowed, the scientific calculator is in a drawer, and my mind maps are on the shelf, becoming less and less understandable with every passing hour. However I could have tightened up my essay conclusion or  found a more apposite example for my discussion, it’s too blooming late now! It was a very fair exam, with nothing that we couldn’t have anticipated, and it will give everyone a chance to shine rather than trying to catch them out. I think I’ve done ok, but how well is now entirely up to the examiner, so I shall forget about it until mid July when the results are out. And I’ve already signed up for my very science-y biology module for next year. I’m four years through the six year study period – how did that happen? And it’s fair to say that I’ve enjoyed pretty much every moment.

And so, I turn my attention to my latest passion, this remarkable tree that has just won New Zealand’s Tree of the Year 2024. Look at it strutting about ent-fashion, and wearing high-heels to boot. It’s an arboreal supermodel, for sure.

The Walking Tree is a northern rātā (Metrosideros robusta). What a cheeky tree it is! It starts life as an epiphyte, high up in the branches of a mature tree. Then it sends roots down to the ground, and over centuries it forms a shell around the original tree, with the roots forming a kind of pseudotrunk (or two, in the case of the walking tree). The rātā has been  described as a ‘strangler’, but it appears to favour mainly trees that are already in decline. This is a patient plant that can live for up to a thousand years.

A less eccentric ‘walking tree’ (Photo By Callum O’Hagan – originally posted to Flickr as Kaitoke Tree, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4178957)

The main enemy of the northern rātā is the common brushtail possum which, though adorable, is not native to New Zealand, and eats the leaves, shoots and buds of the tree.

Common brushtail possum (Photo By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5992634)

At any rate, the Walking Tree is a very fine tree indeed, and a most deserved winner of New Zealand’s Tree of the Year. I wonder if someone will turn it into a children’s book? It looks as if it’s already two-thirds of the way to becoming a character.

…my exam will be open on the Open University website though as this page goes live at 5 a.m. in the UK I’m pretty sure I won’t have started it yet! This year I’m studying Environmental Science (I’m combining it with Biology in an Open degree), and my exam is 40% data analysis (which will hopefully be a cinch, as I love that stuff) and 60% an essay, choosing one question from three. Now, I know I do a lot of writing, but coming up with 1500 words can be tricky – I’ve loved the module, but there are so many concepts/theories/paradigms etc that choosing the right ones, and making a coherent argument, will be the challenge.

Last year, I had two exams of three hours each – once you opened the exam paper you had 180 minutes to get everything done, plus an hour’s grace for uploading everything in case of technical problems. This year, the paper is meant to be doable in 3 hours, but we actually have 24 hours to submit it. I find that a little bit the worst of both worlds – I don’t really want the blooming thing hanging over me until 23.59 tomorrow night, but equally I don’t want to submit substandard work. And it’s open book. Really, it’s all about putting a coherent argument/discussion together, covering as many of the elements of the course as are strictly relevant, and illustrating it with some lovely examples. Simple!

Still, I wouldn’t want it all to be easy, because then what’s the point? If I’m not scratching my head and feeling my brain getting bigger, I might as well not bother. It does occur to me, though, how much we undervalue the things that come easily to us (as I have done with the data analysis bit of the paper). Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating the joy of doing something well that is entirely within our comfort zone, be it knitting a jumper, or making a cake, or being a good partner or a good friend. And it’s also about recognising that things that seem easy often aren’t. On the subject of which, I love this. See what you think.

The Exam
BY JOYCE SUTPHEN

It is mid-October. The trees are in
their autumnal glory (red, yellow-green,

orange) outside the classroom where students
take the mid-term, sniffling softly as if

identifying lines from Blake or Keats
was such sweet sorrow, summoned up in words

they never saw before. I am thinking
of my parents, of the six decades they’ve

been together, of the thirty thousand
meals they’ve eaten in the kitchen, of the

more than twenty thousand nights they’ve slept
under the same roof. I am wondering

who could have fashioned the test that would have
predicted this success? Who could have known?

Long-wattled Umbrella bird (Cephalopterus penduliger) Photo By Hectonichus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22003026 

Dear Readers, Ecuador is a very interesting country from a conservation point of view. Although the agricultural sector has been involved in decimating vast areas of rainforest, some of the poorest farmers are now realising that the forests, and in particular the birds that live in them, may have a greater value than the scratch-living that they might be able to achieve through cutting the trees down.

Ecuador has 1600 species of bird, more than the whole of Europe combined. I spent a very short period of time in the rainforest close to Quito many years ago, and I was stunned by the sheer variety of hummingbirds. There are many other fascinating species too – diminutive ant pittas (not an invertebrate-filled flatbread, in case you were about to ask), the bright orange cock-of-the-rock, and the enigmatic and  rare umbrella bird (pictured above). Birdwatchers flood to Ecuador to see them, and the locals are providing lodges, turning their farms into reserves, replanting trees and often finding themselves fascinated by the bird life that they were previously too busy trying to survive to appreciate. It’s a real win-win situation – the money from tourists can go directly to some of the poorest people in South America, and the tourists can see and photograph birds that we can only dream about here in the UK.

Andean Cock-of-the-rock (Photo By Devin Morris – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110542923)

Chestnut-naped Antpitta (Photo By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136415915)

The Andean Emerald Hummingbird is endemic to one tiny corner of Ecuador, and can be found on the Mashpi Amagusa reserve. It’s worth clicking through to read the story of just one of the many reserves that are springing up.

Andean Emerald Hummingbird (Photo By Michael Woodruff from Spokane, Washington, USA – Andean Emerald, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5185236 )

The Rose-faced parrot is another Ecuadorian endemic that can be found in the reserves.

Rose-faced parrot (Photo By Bärbel Miemietz – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121265417)

There have been government-run schemes to encourage subsistence farmers to preserve their rainforest, but it was somewhat hampered by paperwork and red tape. Instead, the ever-entrepreneurial farmers have been cutting out the middleman, clubbing together to find enough money to develop facilities for birdwatchers without destroying the very thing that they’ve come to see – the forest, and the birds that live there. Sounds like an encouraging win-win to me.

You can read the whole story (by Stephen Moss) here.

Beryl-spangled tanager (Photo By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137150897)

Dear Readers, East Finchley Festival is happening on 23rd June, and for the first time in ages the community group that I belong to, Friends of Coldfall Wood and Muswell Hill Playing Fields, is taking a stall. But what to do? We have lots of exciting ideas, but I am planning to do a plant identification quiz on these two window boxes, which feature meadow plants for clay soil – this is what we’ve planted in the meadow on Muswell Hill Playing Fields. We’re also planning to raffle the mini-meadows to raise funds so that we can do more walks, and activities.

To be honest for an introvert like me, being at a huge community event  can feel a bit overwhelming, but I’m looking forward to the chance to meet and chat with people, and to hang out with other nature-inspired folk. This is the Festival’s 50th Anniversary, so fingers crossed for dry weather!

And in other news, I was planting up the mini-meadows when I heard the magpies going absolutely berserk.

They’re at that stage when the nestlings are just about to leave the nest, so they’re on very high alert, and one of the things that they hate most is a cat, however innocent. So I went to see what was going on, and found this little beauty, though when I saw her/him they were perched precipitously  above my garden side-gate, which means that they were a good ten feet off the floor. It didn’t stop the cat from doing that funny rattling call that they do when they see a bird, but I think that a magpie is a bit big for a light snack.

Still, this one has obviously not forgotten its wild origins. S/he stalked off after a few minutes, as if to indicate that the magpie hadn’t actually scared the bejassus out of them, and everything was absolutely cool. Off s/he went, tail in the air, to torment some other feathered creature. Or to find a sunny spot to doze in, which ever is easier.