Category: Flowers

Ribwort Plantain

plantain3.05 p.m.: A dunnock bursts into hurried song from the top of the freshly green hedge, then flies off on its rounds.

sparrowmagpieHouse sparrows are engaged in some dispute down in the hedge, repeatedly cheep, cheep, cheeping at each other.

The breeze whips around as a large grey cloud arrives from the west. Hanging from my bag in the sun, my key-fob thermometer shows a pleasant 70ºF, 22ºC; as the sun goes behind the cloud the temperature drops 20 degrees Fahrenheit to 50ºF, 10ºC.

bumble beeA large bumble bee prospects under a pile of mossy/grassy debris by the compost bin. I’ve been considering providing an insect hotel.

Common knapweed,  ribwort plantain and cow parsley are sprouting in our meadow area; less welcome are the creeping buttercup and particularly the chicory which, attractive as its sky blue flowers are, could easily take over, spreading by its rootstock in our deep, rich soil.

handGold-tipped feathery moss spreads over the bare patches of soil. My aim is to weed out the chicory and docks and this year to plant pot-grown wild flowers to add some interest and wildlife value . . . and to give me more subjects to draw.

Grape Hyacinth

muscari
Grape hyacinth, Muscari

4.45 p.m., 51ºF, 11ºC: Grape hyacinth was included in the ‘good for pollinators’ collection of bulbs that we planted in the shady, north north-west facing bed below the window at the front of the house. It’s the first time that we’ve had this familiar looking spring bulb in flower in our garden.

Parts of a Pansy

viola flower partsviola tricolorThese miniature pansies, Viola tricolor, have numerous common names including heartsease and love-in-idleness. We’re planting them in our revamped bed in the front garden (see below)

Bees have to force their way past those lateral hairs when the flower starts to open. Do the combs of hairs loosen pollen already on the bee so that it gets transferred to stigma just behind them? Or do they helppansies keep other insects out? 

The lateral hairs are said to reflect UV light so they must present a glowing invitation to bees. The dark honey guide lines look as if they’ve been added with a fibre-tipped pen.

Continue reading Parts of a Pansy

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Gatepost

gatepostgatepostCoxley Valley, 5.30 p.m., 45ºF, 8ºC: At the entrance to the woods this rough hewn stone gatepost stands by the beck next to an ivy-covered alder. Fresh leaves of wild garlic grow behind it, escaping being trampled on a wide and muddy stretch of the path.

There’s a bit of an evening chorus amongst the birds – the wistful robin, the monotonous wood pigeon and the powerful projection of the wren – but when the blackbird starts singing we’re in a different league: melodious, mellow and relaxed.

Thornhill Hall Moat

thornhill lake2 p.m., cloudy with spots of rain: Two kestrels are perching in the treetops, including in a tall lime, in Thornhill Park on the slope above the moat of the old hall, destroyed during a Civil War seige One of the kestrels sees off a wood pigeon but going down onto the ground it’s the kestrel that gets pestered, by a pair of magpies.

kestrel soarsIn the hedgerows ground-ivy, red dead-nettle, chickweed, dandelion, dogs mercury and lesser celandine are in flower, magpiealthough on this cool afternoon the celandine flowers are closed.

Hemlock Water Dropwort

hemlock water dropwort10.45 a.m., 48ºF, 9ºc, overcast, cool; Hemlock water dropwort grows on a silty, gravelly inside bend of the stream by the sawn-off bough of a crack willow. Its luxuriant, fresh-looking rosettes spring up along the banks and even in a few places from the stream bed itself. It’s not surprising that none of the leaves has been nibbled because every part of this plant is extremely toxic.

squirrel poleThe harsh chatter of magpies contrasts with the restful rhythmic babbling of the brook. That’s a cliche but babbling is the only way to describe it this morning.

wagtailA smart looking grey wagtail, a male, performs a mid-air pirouette when I disturb it and its mate flitting about over a gravelly section of the stream at the entrance to the wood.

A grey squirrel has been leaning over to reach our solid-looking ‘squirrel proof’ sunflower heart feeder. As it hangs upside down from the pole, it rotates the feeder with its front legs, always in a clockwise direction. Eventually this unscrews the feeder from its hook and the lid comes off as it crashes to the ground. I pick pigeonup what seed I can and replace the feeder. Blackbird, robin, goldfinch and pheasant appreciate the bonus of spilt seed but it’s the wood pigeon that steadily gets through it.

Golden Saxifrage

golden saxifrage3.10 p.m., 45°F, 7ºC; A little black fly visits the tiny flowers dotted with yellow stamens of the golden saxifrage, growing on the bank of the beck in the wood. In Plant and Planet, Anthony Huxley writes that golden saxifrage is also pollinated by springtails. Springtails feed amongst the leaf litter and need humid conditions.

Coxley beckIt’s not obvious from my drawing, but, when I went back and checked, I found that this is the opposite-leaved golden saxifrage (there’s also an alternate-leaved species), Chrysoslenium oppositifolium, a common native plant of wet, acid soils in habitats such as woodland flushes, springs and stream sides.

The golden saxifrage is dotted along the waters edge like dapples of sunlight in this rare un-trampled corner of the wood, alongside bramble, nettle, lesser celandine and bluebell (not yet in flower) which spread further onto the banking amongst holly, hazel and hawthorn.wood pigeon

Blackbird and robin are singing, a pair of wrens perch on a log and flit off into the undergrowth. There’s a clatter of wings in the top of an ivy-covered alder as one wood pigeon harasses another.

Ruby Giant

South Ossett roof.

crocus ruby giant
Ruby Giant Crocus

The mixed pack of Wildlife Haven bulbs that we put in a shady, clayey north-east facing bed at the front of the house last autumn are doing well. I’ll put some more elsewhere in the garden next autumn.

The crocuses Cream Beauty and Ruby Giant are in flower but not open on this cool afternoon (39ºF, 4ºC).

Winter aconite
Winter aconite

Winter aconites are starting to show and we’re curious to see the aliums and the eranthis also included in this selection.

front garden, South Ossettbulb packdaffodilsI prefer the miniature daffodils to the full size version in this bed. The clumps of large daffodils usually end up sprawling over the path, weighed down after rain.

Link: Verve and Blooma who produced the collection of Wildlife Haven bulbs for pollinators (which were stocked at B&Q last autumn)

Spring Weeds

red dead-nettle red dead-nettle1.15 p.m., 49ºF, 9ºC, sun through high hazy cloud, cool breeze from north northwest: These weeds on the L-shaped bed are going to have to go soon as the weather has suddenly turned springlike, the vernal equinox is almost upon us and it’s time to start thinking about planting veg.

I draw red dead-nettle and a weed, a crucifer, which I wouldn’t attempt to identify before the seed-pods start showing, and by that time I should have weeded it out.

mystery weed weed stemOur crops will need protection, not only from the wood pigeons but also from the possibility of next door’s hens coming over to scrat about. The little red hen has already made it through to us under the hedge and she must have liked what she found as our neighbour couldn’t entice her back and had to come around to retrieve her.

dunnockAs I draw there’s a loud song from the hedge just a few yards from me but every time I turn around there’s no sign of the bird. Eventually its head pops up at the top of the hedge: it’s a dunnock. It’s song has more get-up-and-go than the comparatively relaxed, reflective phrases of the robin.

Plant Plumbing

xylemxylem experimentRed food colouring added to the water and taken up by a plant stem reveals the arrangement of xylem tubes in a cross section. Xylem tubes transport water up the stem from roots to leaves and flowers. These two stems had been left in the solution for two days.

Each yogurt drink container started out with 100 millilitres of water. As you’d expect, the daffodil took up more than the leafless stick of celery, eight millilitres as opposed to the five. There was no detectable evaporation from the container filled with water only.

Monocots and Eudicots

Two seed leaves of a dicot seedling emerging from a cushion of moss on the garage roof.
Two seed leaves of a dicot seedling emerging from a cushion of moss on the garage roof.
Wall barley, a monocot.
Wall barley, a monocot.

The experiment reveals that the xylem tubes in the daffodil, a monocot, are loosely clustered around the centre of the stem whereas in the celery, a eudicot, the xylem tubes appear more organised, arranged around the central pith along the edge of the stem.

Monocots are flowering plants that are so called because the emerging seedlings have one seed leaf (cotyledon). They typically have parallel veins in their leaves. Monocots include onions, bluebells, grasses and maize.

Dicots have two seed leaves and typically have a network of veins in their leaves.

Eudicot means ‘perfect dicot’. The eudicot clade (group) includes the majority of dicots but excludes basal angiosperms such as hornworts, water lilies, magnolias, avocado* and bay laurel, the herb that gives us bay leaves.

Deceptive Fruits

lemon avocado

megatherium
Avocado eating Megatherium from ‘The Golden Play Book of Animals of the Past Stamps’, a childhood favourite, and still there on my bookshelf!

*We’ve just returned from the farm shop and noticed that on our bill the assistant had misidentified the avocado (Basal Angiosperm;clade Magnoliidae; order Laurales) as a lime (Angiosperm; clade Eudicotyledonae; order, Sapindales). I can see how you could mix these up! We still think that the fruit on the right is an avocado but we won’t feel totally sure until we cut into it. The texture feels different to the lemon; it doesn’t have the same give in it, so it’s not ripe yet.

It’s been suggested that avocados evolved their fruits – which botanically are berries – containing one large seed, to be eaten by large mammals that have since become extinct, such as Megatherium, one of the giant ground sloths.

Links

I’ve been reading various books on botany and enjoying these two online resources:

From Roots to Riches: Our changing relationship with plants over the last 250 years – from tools to exploit, to objects of beauty, to being an essential global resource we have to conserve. Presented by Prof Kathy Willis. BBC Radio 4, Kew Gardens.

E O Wilson’s Life on Earth available as a free download from iBooks. Part 5 introduces Plant Physiology, which includes the experiment to demonstrate the properties of xylem.

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