Category: Flowers

Ashfields and Half Moon

Rosebay willowherb and goldenrod
Rosebay willowherb and goldenrod

Ashfield signThe Ashfields, between Heath village and the River Calder (OS ref. SE 353 206), were settlement lagoons for the pulverised fuel ash from Wakefield power station which was decommissioned in 1991. In the past thirty or forty years the process of natural succession has transformed them from silty open ground to orchid meadow and then from scrub to woodland.

speckled wood
Speckled wood
A leafy stemmed hawkweed, common valerian, ribbed melilot and hare's-foot clover.
A leafy stemmed hawkweed, common valerian, ribbed melilot and hare’s-foot clover.

Longhorn Beetle

longhornlonghorn beetleTwo longhorn beetles, Stranglia maculata, rest on umbels of hogweed and in a sheltered clearings there are a few speckled wood butterflies but the most common and persistent insect is the mosquito.

Half MoonHalf Moon

bur reed

The Half Moon (SE 358 208) between Heath and Kirkthorpe is a cut-off meander of the Calder. A hundred or more whirligig beetles gyrate in a group on the surface close to the bank. Branched bur-reed grows amongst sweet-flag.

Whirligig beetles
Whirligig beetles

Amber Snail

amber snail
Amber snail, probably Succinea putris.

Amber snails graze on the sweet-flag. These snails are unable to fully retract into their shells. Their lower tentacles are much reduced.

Self-heal

self-heal3 p.m., 70°F, 22°C, 75% white cumulus, slight breeze: Where it grows on a well mown lawn, self-heal can put out tiny flower heads that stay low and escape the blades of the mower. My mother-in-law Betty objected to the self-heal dotted about her lawn. She said the little purple flower heads reminded her of pieces of ground beef sprinkled on a pizza. Amongst the tall grasses of my patch of meadow self-heal is growing to two feet, to the same height as the knapweed growing alongside it.

bird's-foot trefoilThe same is true of the bird’s-foot trefoil which is scrambling amongst the grasses rather than forming a low cushion of brilliant yellow flower as it might on rabbit-nibbled turf.

A bumble bee with ‘fur’ that resembles a brown bear in moult visits one of the flowers.

Townclose Hills

Hybrid orchid, pyramidal orchid, greater knapweed, hoary plantain.
Hybrid orchid, pyramidal orchid, greater knapweed, hoary plantain.

Townclose HillsPyramidal, common spotted and a hybrid orchid were in flower on the plateau at Townclose Hills Nature Reserve, also known as Billy Woods.

small skipper
Small skipper

Despite the breeze we saw ringlet, meadow brown, small tortoiseshell, small skipper and a few marbled white butterflies. Six-spot burnet moths were also active and a hebrew character moth lurked amongst the grasses.

Araniella curcurbitina

One of the smallest orb-web spiders, Araniella curcurbitina, was making its way across a grassy path. It’s Latin name, curcurbitina, means ‘a little member of the gourd family’;  its bright green and yellow striped abdomen looks like a water melon or gourd. It has a scarlet patch on its underside.

Restharrow, clustered bellflower and wild marjoram.
Restharrow, clustered bellflower and wild marjoram.
Field sketch of hebrew character moth.
Field sketch of hebrew character moth.

We spotted a brown hare in a field in the valley of Kippax Brook to the west of the reserve.

Townclose Hills, Kippax is a Leeds City Council Local Nature Reserve managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

Link: Townclose Hills Nature Reserve

Yellow Rattle

yellow rattle69°F, 20°C, 10.25 a.m.: At the lower end of the walled garden at Nostell Priory there are two squares of wild flower meadow. Amongst the grasses, buttercups and dog daisies there are small drifts of yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, a plant that is semi-parasitic on the roots of grasses.

Despite a superficial resemblance, it isn’t related to yellow archangel, which I photographed in Stoneycliffe Woods at the beginning of the month: yellow archangel is a relative of the dead-nettles, one of the Lamiacea (mint) family, while yellow flyrattle is a member of the Scrophulariaceae (figwort) family, related to louseworts, cow-wheats, speedwells and foxglove.

Male Fern

male fernmale fern stemA tall shuttlecock tuft of fronds of male fern, Dryopteris filix-mas, grows by the woodland path near the Menagerie. It has pale brown scales on its stems, which helps distinguish it from another tufted fern, the broad-buckler, which has a dark stripe running down the centre of each scale. The broad-buckler doesn’t form such a robust looking shuttlecock of fronds.

 

Curry Plant

aphids

curry plantThe curry plant growing in the stone trough in the courtyard of the stable block at Nostell Priory is just about to come into flower. As its name suggests, it gives off a convincing aroma of curry if you brush against it or rub its leaves. If this is designed to deter insects, it isn’t working in the case of these black aphids that are sap-sucking along its stems.

aphidsant and aphidSurplus sap excreted by the aphids is collected by ants, which have been observed to defend and sometimes to move the aphids, like farmers herding cattle. I spotted just one ant in the macro photographs that I took.

 

Spittle Bug

cuckoo spitAlso sap-sucking, a spittle bug. The nymph of the spittle bug produces a protective covering of ‘cuckoo spit’ by blowing bubbles in the surplus sap that it excretes.

Bilberry Wood

bilberry wood
Rushes and common cotton-grass growing amongst the bilberries at the edge of the wood.
Milkwort, growing by a small tributary stream running into Oughtershaw Beck.
Milkwort, growing by a small tributary stream running into Oughtershaw Beck.

The hummocky ground layer of Bilberry Wood is carpeted, as its name suggests, with bilberry which is dripping with globular pink flowers, a few of which are beginning to set berries. It has flourished in the years since the wood was fenced off to prevent sheep grazing here.

Recently red squirrels have moved into the wood. They have been caught on camera attracted to feeding boxes (see link below).

green-veined whiteBumble bees are busy in the wood but on the strips of acid grassland around it small heath butterflies are the most conspicuous insects, flitting about over damp sedgey ground pockmarked with the hoof-prints of sheep and cattle. Two green-veined whites have paired up and come to rest among the grasses, giving us a chance to take some close-up macro shots.

red damselflies

In a calm section of Oughtershaw beck, large red damselflies, Pyrrhosoma nymphula, are laying their eggs, perching on a leaf of pondweed, Potamogeton.

Link: Red Squirrels in Bilberry Wood

Red squirrels at a nut feeder in Bilberry Wood, Nethergill.

Bluebells

Bluebells and lesser celandine.
Bluebells and lesser celandine.

We follow the footpaths through the woods around the grassy clearing at the centre of Middleton Woods, Leeds. The drifts of bluebells are at there best within sight of the woodland edge.

bluebellstreecreeperThese are our native bluebells, Scilla non-scripta, with drooping bells hanging down one side of the stem. The introduced Spanish bluebell, Scilla hispanica, is more robust and its bells point out from the stem in different directions.

A nuthatch is attracted to a sawn off tree trunk adapted as a bird table. nuthatchA nuthatch has the ability to make its way up or down a tree but the treecreeper that we see later makes its way steadily up a tree then flies to the next tree and starts near the bottom again.

It’s joined by its mate; one of the birds pops into a crevice where a limb has broken away from the trunk of a tree.

Middleton WoodstoadAs we stop to photograph a toad on the path I notice on a dead bough above our heads that a queen waspqueen wasp is busy scraping away at the exposed wood, gathering material to construct the papier mâche cells of its nest.

Crab Cactus

zygocactusI’m more familiar with the crab cactus under its popular name of Christmas cactus. It’s fuchsia-like flowers, which are typically crimson, appear around Christmas.

The crab cactus is a hybrid which often goes under the name Zygocactus. One of its parents, Schlumbergera truncata, is a native of the coastal mountains of south-east Brazil, near Rio de Janeiro. It is an epiphyte, growing on trees, or a lithophyte, growing on rocks.

Wood Forget-me-not

wood forget-me-not

Comparison with the illustration in 'Wild Flowers of the British Isles', Garrard & Streeter, 1983.
Comparison with the illustration in ‘Wild Flowers of the British Isles’, Garrard & Streeter, 1983.

Look in a field guide and you’ll find a bewildering variety of forget-me-nots. I resorted to picking a stem and comparing it with the life size illustrations by Ian Garrard in The Wild Flowers of the British Isles, enabling me to identify it as wood forget-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica, which, as the name suggests, is found in damp woodland but also on rocky soils in mountain areas.

It is also found naturalised in grassy places as a garden escape and this plant, growing by the pond, may have arrived with a plant that we’ve brought from my mum’s, as she had drifts of it in amongst her shrubs and flower borders.

10 a.m., 51ºF, 11ºC, 75% cloud, slight cool breeze.

Spanish Bluebell

Spanish bluebellSpanish bluebell10.45 a.m., 50ºF, 10ºC, cool breeze, 90% cloud: As I draw there’s only one brief visit by a pollinator – a bumble bee – to these Spanish bluebells, so perhaps there’s not much in the way of nectar this morning.

bumble beeWhen we revamped the border earlier this year we took out a dense clump of Spanish bluebells by the hedge that never produced much in the way of flowers. They were already here when we moved in over thirty years ago and since then they have multiplied vegetatively by producing offset bulbs. I’ve seen no evidence of them spreading by stolons (creeping stems), which some websites say is possible. The bulbs are able to pull themselves down into the soil by shortening their roots, so the clump went down to about a foot below soil level, one bulb piled on top of another.

Spanish bluebell Unfortunately this introduced species is capable of crossbreeding with our native bluebell to produce a vigorous hybrids which can spread into woodlands. The bumble bee that visited our garden bluebells could easily make its way into the wood a hundred yards away where native bluebells are starting to flower.

I need to remove all our Spanish bluebells as I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the decline of its woodland relative.

bee on violet2.00 p.m.: A bumble bee visited all the dog violets in a group amongst the grasses but paused only briefly at one or two bluebell flowers next to them, which suggests to me that, today at least, they’re not offering much of interest to passing pollinators.

Kingcups

kingcups3.15 p.m., 50ºF, 10ºF, 85% cloud, 30.1 inches, 1022 mb: My first job this morning at 6 a.m. was to flip open the studio skylight window and emphatically bang it shut again to shoo off a pair of mallards who were tucking into the tadpoles in our back garden pond. Yes, I know that all of those thousands of tadpoles can’t possibly survive but I somehow feel responsible for them. As I draw these kingcups, I can see them constantly coming to the surface, so the ducks haven’t made much of an impression on their numbers.