Category: Flowers

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.

Cannon Hall Farm Shop

Tête-a-Tête

daffodils3.15 p.m., 43ºF, 5ºc: As I draw these small tête-a-tête daffodils a dunnock hops about unconcernedly beneath the bird feeders just ten feet from me.

blue titI’m pleased to see that the blue tit with the drooping wing can now fly. It’s spending less time on the ground and more time on the feeders.

catdunnockIt’s as well that it can fly. The large fluffy black and white cat that lords it over all the other cats on our street is on our front lawn, very interested in something but I can’t see what but at least there are no feathers lying around it.

Dog’s Mercury

dog's mercuryStoneycliffe Wood, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve, 3.30 p.m., 39ºF, 4ºC: The only flowers showing on the woodland floor so far are the spikes of male flowers on dog’s mercury. The inconspicuous female flowers are on separate plants. Dog’s mercury is a member of the spurge family.

first celandineIn south-facing hedge-banks, lesser celandine is already in flower but here in the wood so far there are only a few heart-shaped leaves.

The larger leaves in the bottom right corner of my drawing are ground elder. Ground elder was introduced to this country by the Romans who cooked the leaves like spinach. While the right-hand leaf of the ground elder has been well nibbled there is very little sign of damage to the leaves of the dog’s mercury which, like the spurge, is poisonous.

pigeonThe stem of the bush in the top right corner of my drawing is elder, another plant with similar looking leaves. Glossy bluebell leaves are springing up but wood anemone and wood sorrel have yet to appear.

robinA robin is singing, a wood pigeon calling and pheasants are grockling.

Cardiac Hill

‘Did I hear the man on the phone describe this hill as Cardiac Hill’, I ask three passing dog walkers.

‘No I’ve never heard that one!’

‘It would be a good name’, I suggest, ‘the way it gets steeper and steeper as you get towards the top.’

jack russel‘I always come down it!’

‘Very wise!’

Snowdrops

snowdropsblackbird43ºF, 8ºC, 10.15 a.m.: In the back garden a robin is singing; a pair of magpies call raucously; a blackbird splutters in alarm and house sparrows chirp continuously from the hedges.

A fragment of shrivelled crab apple drops on my sketchbook, then another. There’s a male blackbird seven feet above my head in the branches of the golden hornet. Blackbirds and thrushes prefer the fruit after the first frosts of winter, when it has started turning brown.

bluebottleIt’s warm enough for me to spot a bluebottle investigating the snowdrops which are now in flower in foamy strands along by the hedge in the meadow area and here by the raised bed behind the pond.

I’ve been reading up on botany recently: the petals and sepals of the snowdrop appear identical so, as in other monocots, they are called tepals.  The leaves don’t appear to grow from a stem but there is a short squat stem which lies hidden in the bulb. 

Chickweed, Groundsel and Foxglove

cold frame weedsmagpieThese lush weeds grow in a corner of the cold frame. As I draw, there’s a confrontation between two pairs of magpies with a lot of irate clacking. They meet on our chimney and two of the rivals lock feet together and roll down the roof tiles. The dispute moves on to the next door neighbour’s roof and, as I pack in, magpieI can see them in the top of one of the ash trees in the wood, joined by at least two more magpies and a carrion crow who seems to be just an onlooker.

Weeds in a Square Metre

Using Roger Phillips’ Weeds, a photographic guide to identify garden and field weeds, I’ve identified a dozen species springing up on the raised veg bed at the end of the garden. Forget-me-not and bush vetch didn’t get included in my short YouTube video.

Look out for the guest appearance by a tiny slug, ready and waiting for us to plant some tender juicy seedlings.

Mouse Ear of the Fields

forget me not
Scanned at 300 dpi.
forget me not
Scanned at 100 dpi.

Common or field forget-me-not has hairy leaves, hence its Latin name, Myosotis arvensis, which translates as ‘mouse ear of the fields’.

leaflets leafletsHairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, reminds me of a small version of lady’s smock, Cardamine pratense. It’s one of the earliest of weeds to flower and one plant can produce 50,000 seeds.

groundselgroundselI always think of groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, as a user friendly weed. It doesn’t have a taproot or spreading rhizomes, so you can soon clear a bed of groundsel just by pulling it up. Although it will probably soon appear again as its seeds can germinate within a week.

Whitlow Grass

common whitlow grass, Erophila verna

weederophilaSo far I’m struggling to identify this little weed. Possibly common whitlow grass, Erophila verna. As my drawing is is just an inch and a half across, I’ve scanned it at a higher res to show a bit more detail but I’m not drawing it with the aid of a hand lens so my slightly blurred macro photograph is better for showing details of the flowers and seed-pods.

Sow-thistle

slug on sow-thistlesow-thistle leafsow-thistleWe get several dandelion relatives in the garden. This is smooth sowthistle, Sonchus oleraceus. Note the slug that has already made itself at home in the rosette of leaves.

Sow-thistle stems ooze a milky sap when broken, so the slug must have a way of dealing with this latex.

Bulbs and Corms

crocus bulbsThinking of spring, we’re planting bulbs. The crocus bulbs are already putting out shoots, the Eranthis, better known as winter aconite aren’t showing signs of life but they should flower before the crocuses.

eranthis cormsThe winter aconite ‘bulbs’ are actually corms, swellings of the base of the stem of the plant. A bulb is a short stem surrounded by fleshy leaves or leaf bases.

The crocus is a member of the iris family, winter aconite, as you’d guess from its large, glossy yellow flowers, is a member of the buttercup family.