Common poppy (Papaver rhoeas)

Dear Readers, I am always astonished by the plants that just seem to pop up in urban areas. This poppy has emerged from the pot where I planted some crocuses earlier this year, and I have no idea where it has come from – much as I like poppies, I’ve never planted them, so this is something of a gift. I love the way that the bud seems almost too heavy for the stem, and how the flower opens its face to the sun. I fully expect all the petals on this one to have dropped by this evening – it is amongst the most ephemeral of plants, plus we are expecting a thunderstorm here at (checks watch) 15.00 so that should put paid to that.

I am also noticing the ants marching up and down the stem. Chances are that they’re moving some aphids about, bless them. We also have a few ants in the living room at the moment – they must feel as if they’re marching across some huge, featureless plain as they explore the floorboards in search of something edible, though I notice that they walk right over the croissant crumb that some greedy person dropped in their haste to get some carbohydrates this morning. They seem to have a great fondness for cat food however, so I have moved the cat’s feeding bowls upstairs. Let’s hope the ants never get their heads around stairs.

This morning I was over at Coldfall Wood, and, growing right beside the road I spotted another plant that I’d not seen before. The yellow chap in the middle of the photo is goatsbeard (Tragopogon pratensis) – otherwise known as salsify, though it’s another species with purple flowers that is the one where the roots are eaten in fancy restaurants. There is lots of purple salsify over in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery and, as with this yellow species, I have no idea where it’s come from, or why it’s popped up now. But it does show, yet again, that an interest in plants (or indeed any part of the natural world) enlivens even the most ordinary of days. You just never know what you’re going to see when you step out of the front door.

Dear Readers, I’m sure that if you’ve been reading Bugwoman for a while you’ll know that I have an inordinate fondness for bumblebees. My husband was nervous about insects as a child, but he is completely relaxed with bumblebees flying within inches of his shoulder. I always think of bumbles as being ‘entry-level’ for people who are slightly insect-phobic – they’re big and furry, like flying teddy bears, and could not be more gentle – if you get a little too close they’ll raise a leg as if to say ‘thus far and no further’, but they will usually fly away rather than get confrontational. Plus, they pay humans practically no attention, unlike their relatives the wasps, who often seem a little too curious about what exactly we’re eating.

Bumblebees are also able to cope with very complex flower designs that other bees can’t seem to master – note the bumble in the first photo who is accessing the nectar in the just-opened honeysuckle. Of course, being heavy (so that plants such as antirrhinums open when they land on them) helps, as does the fact that different bumblebees have different tongue-lengths, and so can access different flower designs. But experiments seem to show that bumblebees can memorise how to access about five different ‘types’ of flowers. In order to learn another one, they have to forget one of the earlier designs. This sounds rather like me as I revise for my OU examination, so I am sympathetic.

Anyhow, I planted some Sicilian Honey Garlic especially for the bumblebees, and it seems to have worked. The upside-down flowers of this allium hold no fears for them.

Now, what’s interesting about this plant is that as each flower is pollinated, it closes up and becomes more ‘bud-like’, which means that the bees can’t access it any longer, and have to move on to other, unpollinated flowers. Watch as this bumble does exactly that, rejecting the flowers at the top of the plant which are closing up, and moving on to the ones that are still providing nectar. I love seeing this kind of relationship between plants and their pollinators.

Here is the Sicilian honey garlic only yesterday…

And here it is today. Note how several of the flowers are now closing up and starting to move into a vertical position. In the end, the plant will look as if it has a miniature Disney castle on the top. I promise to include a photograph. The one on the left that looks like a bud is now completely inaccessible to anymore bees, forcing them onto the flowers that are still open.

Anyhow, in spite of my obvious bumblebee favouritism, I do still love all the other bees – we’ve had ashy mining bees and early mining bees back on the flowering hydrangea today. The plant has a lovely subtle smell, especially after rain, and it is my pride and joy. Last year it was a bit shielded by some scaffolding, but it’s making up for it this year.

Ashy mining bee

Early mining bee

And finally, after an unfortunate incident in the shed (wherein an unidentified rodent gnawed through the last remaining non-metal container, and deposited a small hillock of peanuts in the middle of the floor), we are distributing said peanuts to all comers on the bird table. The jackdaws have taken a few, but basically it’s down to this guy. 

And here is a little film of him or her enjoying this sudden bounty. I know they’re a pest, but I always say that when you decide to make your garden welcoming to wildlife, you can’t be picky about who turns up. Plus, I have always had a soft spot for the underdog, for the less-than-glamorous, the maligned and the misunderstood. After all, many of us have fallen into at least one of these categories, and some of us know what  it’s like to have been at the intersection of all of them. It’s hard not to feel at least some empathy for our fellow creatures of all species as they just try to live their lives.

Dear Readers, this week I’ve started reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville, inspired by one of the other participants on my Azores trip. And what an astonishing read it is! It’s a beefy book and I’m only about 15 per cent of the way through if my Kindle is to be believed, but already it’s had me roaring with laughter, scratching my head and holding my breath.

And this got me thinking about what other books are out there that I’ve never tackled. I studied English for my first degree, so I’ve read a lot of ‘the classics’ – the whole of Austen, Dickens, most of George Eliot, a lot of European fiction. But here, off the top of my head, are some of the books that I’ve never read and would like to have a go at at some point.

• The Great Gatsby (Scott Fitzgerald)
• Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
• Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achuebe)
• In Search of Things Past (Marcel Proust)
• Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
• The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
• The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)

And I’m sure there are hundreds more, but one has to start somewhere. However, I also have a pile of non-fiction books nearly as tall as me waiting to be read. I think that now I’m retired I can justify popping a ‘reading hour’ into the day’s activities somewhere – I read before I go to sleep, but sadly these days sometimes that’s about 20 minutes before I’m dropping my book on the poor unsuspecting dozing cat, who curls up on my stomach and complains if I’m not in bed by 9 o’clock.

So, Readers, over to you. Do you have books that you feel you’d love to read, but have never managed (so far) to find the time? Have you read any of the ones on my list, and if so, do you have thoughts about them? Which of the books that you’ve read do you wish you’d never bothered with? Let me know in the comments if you are of a literary persuasion.

Mother and calf sperm whales (Photo by Gabriel Barathieu, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Readers, after my sperm whale adventures a few weeks ago I was very excited to read an article in New Scientist which suggested that the language of sperm whales could be the closest yet found to human language. But how so?

Sperm whales are long-lived, social animals, who communicate with one another using clicks. They also use these clicks to echolocate, much as bats do – they dive down into the blackness of the deep abyss (up to 2 km down) to hunt their prey, the giant squid. However, until recently scientists were bemused as to how the clicks were used. A study by Daniela Rus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology recorded over 9000 calls from a population of sperm whales in the Eastern Caribbean (small devices were attached to the whales using suction cups).

Here is the sound of a sperm whale hunting for prey. Note the regularity of the clicks.

And here is a sperm whale homing in on its prey – note how the clicks merge together to form what’s known as a ‘creak’.

Incidentally, the clicks of a sperm whale can be up to 230 decibels, making the sperm whale the loudest animal in the world. Some people believe that sperm whales might stun their squid prey, just as some bats ‘shout’ at moths in order to knock them out. There seems to be no truth to the idea that a sperm whale ‘shout’ has ever damaged a human diver, however, in spite of some stories about such things.

The scientists, however, are interested in the social calls that sperm whales make. These are called ‘codas’ – there are 18 of them, each comprising a particular click pattern.

What fascinated the scientists was that these basic codas can be amended by adding an extra click to the beginning or end – this seemed to be a signal to the listening whale that it was time to ‘speak’. The codas can be combined and recombined in different ways, and can also be sped up or slowed down. The  scientists have actually drawn up a ‘sperm whale phonetic alphabet’, though we are a long way from understanding exactly what a particular combination of codas means.

It’s clear that there is much yet to be discovered about sperm whale communication, but this is a fascinating insight into the sheer complexity of the sounds that they make, and the possible meanings that might be encoded. What conversations are they having, I wonder? I cannot begin to imagine how different the undersea world of the sperm whale is, but learning about their language makes me think that there are dimensions that we haven’t even begun to contemplate.

Sperm Whale off the coast of the Azores, Portugal (Photo by Szecska at https://www.flickr.com/photos/szecska/8986104296)

Some very healthy looking seedlings courtesy of Jill

Dear Readers, I wanted to give you an update on our  ‘Flowers for Fran‘ project. For those of you who aren’t regulars here, Fran was a regular commentator on the blog, a wonderful lady who died of cancer far too young, and who was a real friend to wildlife of all kinds. When her son contacted me to say that he had Fran’s seeds, we hatched the plan of offering them  to anyone who wanted to plant them in remembrance of her. And last week, Jill contacted me to show me how her seeds were getting on. She says that the echiums, malopes and dahlias are all up and running. I’m so pleased – some of the seeds were fairly elderly, so it’s good to see such a happy result.

This week, Jill updated me to say that the seedlings have now been planted out. Let’s hope that they survive our molluscan friends, the weather, and everything else that the British ‘summer’ can throw at them. The bees and other pollinators will be delighted, I’m sure.

Feel free to send me any photos of how Fran’s seeds are doing – I’m sure not all of them will have been as successful as these, but never mind, we all gave it a go! I’ll share any news, good or bad, here. Fran was a very pragmatic person, and understood very well the strange vagaries of gardening. I think she’d even forgive the slugs and snails. And in the summer, it will be good to see the bees and butterflies and other critters enjoying whatever makes it to flowering.

Thanks again to all of you who gave it a go. I still have some seeds left if anyone wants to go for autumn planting (or very late spring planting), just leave me a note in the comments and I’ll get back to you (you’ll need to include your email address when you make the comment – it won’t be shown here, but I’ll be able to contact you).

More of Jill’s seedlings!

Gypsywort(Lycopus europaeus) Photo Kristian Peters — Fabelfroh 11:32, 3 December 2005 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Readers, having written several hundred ‘Wednesday Weeds’ it’s always a delight when I find a new wild plant, as I did on Sunday in Coldfall Wood, North London. Gypsywort is a plant in the dead-nettle family, and at first glance you might well think that it’s our old favourite white dead-nettle. Look again, however! The leaves are deeply serated, the flowers grow in tight bunches around the stem, and the flowers are marked in red, thought to be a way of guiding pollinators to the rich nectar of the plant. Also, while white dead-nettle is largely a plant of disturbed soil, gypsywort favours damp conditions, like the wet woodland in Coldfall Wood.

The plant is also known as water horehound, and in North America (where it’s an introduced plant) you might know it as bugleweed. it certainly has a very upright, almost martial appearance. I could imagine one of the plants producing a trumpet and giving it a quick blow.

The leaves of gypsywort

What puzzles me a bit is that, although this is a common plant throughout the UK, I’ve never noticed it before. I was a bit worried that our wet woodland was losing its biodiversity (we’ve had a massive growth of stinging nettles this year, probably due to nitrates in the run-off that feeds the stream), but the yellow flag, bulrushes and marsh marigold have all done very well, and now this new plant. Fingers crossed for a revival!

Gypsywort flowers (Photo by Tico Bassie at https://www.flickr.com/photos/tico_bassie/2806141943/

Why gypsywort, though? The plant gives a black dye, and it was believed that it was used by travelling peoples, Romany and otherwise,  to darken their skin. Why they would do this is unclear, though one interpretation, from 1727, was that African people were thought to be the best fortune-tellers, and so darkening the skin would improve the credibility of people doing palm-reading or other prophetic activities. It shows that prejudice against this section of society has a long history.  However, gipsywort was also gathered and sold by travellers as a dye plant – it’s one of the few plants that produces a durable black dye, and as such was in great demand for dyeing mourning clothes.

Photo by Teunspaans in the Netherlands.

Medicinally, gypsywort has been used to treat anxiety, breast pain and overactive thyroid. Interestingly, it isn’t mentioned in Culpeper’s Herbal, but Mrs Grieve describes its uses as ‘astringent and sedative’.

As far as edibility goes, the root of the plant is described in numerous sources as a ‘famine food of last resort’. Nobody seems to be munching on those serrated leaves, not even caterpillars.

And now I am thinking that maybe I should look for some gypsywort for the side of my pond – I know that it grows locally, and that’s often the best indication of what will thrive. As I’ve said before, there’s little point (in my view anyway) in trying to grow plants that will only be lacklustre and unhappy in a damp, dark, heavy-soiled garden. My next problem will be where on earth to put it, as the hemp agrimony and meadowsweet do battle with the greater willowherb and purple loosestrife. Clearly I should be trying to re-wild a country estate rather than a North London back garden, but there we go! Let me know if you’ve come across this plant – I’m especially interested in how much of a pollinator-magnet it is (the RHS have it in their ‘perfect for pollinators’ section). And I will soon be back in Coldfall to have a closer look at those intriguing flowers.

Wood Avens

Dear Readers, on Sunday a group of us went for a walk in Coldfall Wood, led by local photographer Mike Segal. The aim of the walk was really to get us all to look more closely at the trees, plants and animals that surround us, and to think about how to look at things from a different angle. Well, it certainly worked for me, and what a treat it was to wander in the wood without any preconceptions. I love this time of year, when everything has just greened up and the trees are full of song thrushes and nuthatches.

Anyhow, here are a few of my shots.

I love the way this elderflower is half bud and half bloom.

Bumblebee on green alkanet!

The scribbly traces of leaf miners on this sow thistle.

I really liked the delicate tracery of this elder…

And how about these hornbeam leaves from below?

Some areas in the wood have been fenced off to allow them to regenerate, and I love the way that the biodiversity is coming back.

And I have never seen the yellow flag looking so good as this year.

And finally, the crows are about, as usual. They are the real royalty of the wood, shiny-feathered and boisterous.

Although this squirrel might argue that they’re actually in charge.

You know, I haven’t seen the woods looking this good for a long, long time – after the pandemic they seemed to be beaten up so badly that I wondered if they’d ever recover. But now they are, and it’s so heartening. Let’s hope that it continues.

Dear Readers, having been away in Canada and the Azores this spring the garden has burst into full leaf/flower without me noticing the transition. Gordon Bennett! The place is like a jungle, and today we did a little bit of judicious cutting back, in particular of the green alkanet which, lovely as it is, was completely blocking the path. And then, after a bit of duckweed removal, we got the chance to sit back and see what was going on, to the continuous chorus of baby blue tits in the high-rise nest box. We tried to avoid looking at the adult blue tits, as they won’t return directly to the nest if they think they’re being watched. I just hope that everyone fledges successfully. We’ll keep you posted.

Anyhow, just have a look at what else is going on.

Sicilian honey garlic

The Sicilian honey garlic is one of my favourite bulbs, and as soon as the flowers are fully developed they’ll be mobbed by bumblebees.

Honeysuckle

The honeysuckle has scrambled up through next door’s cherry tree, and  I have never seen it better. It’s tangled up with some clematis, and I would dearly love the bittersweet to come back too, it was such a favourite with buzz-pollinating carder bumblebees.

Herb Robert and Red Valerian

Every year this patch of ‘weeds’ grows around the water butt, and every year my husband tries to dissuade them. This year, he’s given up.

We’ve had a good skim of the duckweed, so it’s a bit better now. This frog obviously doesn’t mind….

…and there are lots of happy tadpoles.

Large red damselfly

The Large Red Damselflies are back. What a pleasure they are, as they fly around like fluorescent red sparks! One was flying around next door’s garden, and landed on the arm of the child who lives there – she was delighted, and so was her mother. It’s so important to teach small children how to behave with animals, and how to treat them respectfully.

And finally, here was a visitor that I half expected to see yesterday – an ashy mining bee, the third species of mining bee in two days. It didn’t stay long so the photos aren’t the best, but I was just glad to see the little chap/pess. My neighbour said that she thought my garden was like a nature reserve, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.

In the autumn I will get the whitebeam and the hawthorn trimmed back, and the hedge (which is fast turning into a linear forest) tidied up, but for now I just need to do a bit at a time, and to remember that the garden is for enjoyment, not perfection.

Orange-tailed/Early Mining Bee (Andrena haemorrhoea)

Dear Readers, my magnificent climbing hydrangea is a magnet for all kinds of mining bees during the few weeks when it’s in flower, and on a warm day it fills the sheltered side of the house with a sweet floral scent. Plus it’s absolutely busting with pollen! No wonder it’s so popular with the bees, and in particular the little mining bees that we normally don’t notice. iThese bees belong to the genus Andrena, and can be tricky to identify to the species level, so feel free to correct me, bee experts! All are hairy-legged (for collecting pollen) which you can see clearly in the photo above, The bees make tunnels in light soils or in the mortar in old walls or buildings, and in the spring the males emerge first. In some species they’ll hang around and wait for the females to emerge, whilst in others they’ll lurk around flowering shrubs that they know the females will visit in a ‘lek’, waiting to grab a mate if she shows any inclination. In some species the males are much bigger than the females, an indication that they’ll fight to mate with as many females as possible. 

The Orange-tailed Mining Bee in the photo above is no surprise as a visitor – it tolerates clay soils as a nesting substrate, and is often found in urban areas. In fact, it was one of the first colonisers of my garden – you can read about it here.

Grey-patched Mining Bee (Andrena nitida) ???

I’m a little less sure about this bee – if it is a Grey-patched Mining Bee it’s one of the commonest mining bees in southern Britain, and I’m surprised I haven’t noticed it before. Again it likes spring-flowering shrubs, but it builds its nests singly, rather than in aggregations like the Orange-tailed Mining Bee. This bee likes formal lawns and sheep-grazed pasture, if you happen to have any handy. 

While I was skipping amongst the hydrangea blossom I noticed the blue tits making a couple of trips to the nest box. Fingers crossed for baby blue tits! I heard my first fledgling starlings and sparrows today too. Spring is peaking!

And finally, here’s a little video of a mining bee enjoying the pollen. It’s so worth spending ten minutes to have a look at who is coming and going in the garden – some of these bees have a very short flying season, so blink and you’ll miss them. And if you’re not sure what they are (and goodness knows I’m often confused) the people over at the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants Facebook ID group are very helpful. Have fun!

Dear Readers, I have always been fascinated by snails – back in 2019 I wrote this piece after observing all the molluscs popping out into the front garden on a wet day.  And so I was very interested to read about the phenomenon of ‘snail tapping’.

What in the okey-dokey is ‘snail tapping’, I hear you ask? The theory goes that if you suddenly pick up a snail in order to, say, move it off of the pavement  so that it doesn’t get trodden on, the snail feels pain as it is ripped away from the ground. However, if you give the shell a gentle tap first, the snail will withdraw, and you can pick the snail up without causing it any discomfort and move it to a more suitable location (say, your neighbour’s garden 🙂 )

Well, I regret to say that I have long been a ‘snail-ripper’, as there are few things sadder than the gentle ‘pop’ of a snail shell bursting underfoot as you run out through the rain to put the wheelie bins out. But since reading this, I have turned into a ‘snail-tapper’, and it certainly makes lifting the little chaps/chapesses easier when they aren’t clinging on for grim death. How long it takes them to recover from the trauma of thinking that they’ve just been grabbed by a song thrush is anybody’s guess.

Incidentally, if you regularly ‘tap’  a particular snail, s/he will eventually stop withdrawing  because s/he has worked out that you aren’t a predator, and it takes a lot of energy to fling yourself back into your shell on a regular basis. This implies to me that snails can learn, and is yet another example of even ‘primitive’ animals being a lot more complicated than we give them credit for.

Do snails feel pain, though? Does being ‘ripped’ from the pavement cause them discomfort? There has been a lot of work done on pain perception in invertebrates over the past twenty years, and it’s always a bit problematic – even amongst humans it’s impossible to know how much pain someone is in, as one person’s excruciating might be someone else’s just about tolerable. What’s generally recognised is that in sentient animals there are two components to pain – the actual physical effect, and the ‘suffering’ that can be brought on by anticipation/past experience/fear etc etc. Do snails feel a moment of angst as they feel themselves grabbed from above? Or is the pain purely that of having their ‘foot’ suddenly torn away without any chance to withdraw?

Well, who knows, but I prefer not to cause gratuitous suffering if at all possible, so I shall be tapping away in future. And here is a short and slightly-out-of-focus video of a snail as it ambles around the edge of a tray before being returned to the garden. Enjoy!

And finally, here’s Fleur Adcock’s poem ‘For a Five-Year-Old’. Much to think about, here…

For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.