Category: Flowers

Goat’s-Rue

THIS PLANT looked both striking and unfamiliar when we saw it by the ponds at Alverthorpe Meadows and my friend Roger suggested that it might be Astragalus, Wild Liquorice. In fact, it’s a close relative of Liquorice, Goat’s-rue, Galega officinalis, a plant introduced to Britain in the 16th century and now naturalised on waste ground, such as roadsides and railway banks. The trees in the background mark the line of the old Wakefield to Ossett railway and this particular bit of ground was disturbed during recent work on the ponds.

Iron Springs

As we walked up through a small wood towards Silcoates School we passed this conspicuously rust-red spring. Roger and Sue said that there used to be a spring on the far edge of this wood, at the edge of the meadow and they wondered if it had ‘migrated’, as springs occasionally do, to emerge in the wood.

As I understand it, it’s the action of bacteria which precipitates the red ochre deposit from iron-rich water. Groundwater percolating through the bedrock leaches iron salts, changing the composition of the rock. Spring lines normally occur where permeable rock, such as sandstone, sits upon an impermeable layer, such as shale.

The geological map shows that the hill on which Alverthorpe Church and Silcoates School stand is capped with sandstone. A fault, branching out like a letter Y towards the south-east is marked in the area where we photographed this spring.

Rhubarb Walkers

I can’t remember ever having met someone following one of my walks but as we made our way back to Roger and Sue’s we met a couple from north Leeds who were half way around the Melbourne House walk in my Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle. Not only that, but they were going to try Barbara’s recipe for rhubarb bread and butter pudding when they got home. By coincidence Barbara had made her rhubarb cheesecake from the book yesterday when we had friends for dinner.

It’s great to see my booklets being used. This couple were going to try all the walks (as well as all the recipes, apparently).

They said they liked the book not only because it got them out to a place that they might not otherwise have visited but it also tells them something about it’s history – in this case the story of Prophet Wroe who built Melbourne House as a kind of latter day Temple of Jerusalem and fully expected the Tribes of Israel to gather there on Judgement Day.

The man said what had persuaded him to buy the book when he saw it on the internet was the cover design. I like that rhubarb and custard coloured image and wish that I could always come up with something like that which is striking but also neatly sums up the contents.

If only one of us had had a pen, I could have signed their copy for them!

Wainwright would probably have hidden behind a rock if he’d seen a hiker approaching, following one of his routes over the fells but for me it’s a novelty. It’s encouraging to have some positive feedback.

Ringlet Triangle

 Common Red Poppy, Papaver rhoeas
Dip pen, Indian ink & watercolour 

4.45 pm: THREE SMOKY BROWN butterflies fly around our little sun-trap of a meadow, two of them are chasing each other. They’re all fresh-looking, as if recently emerged and don’t look as if they were out in the torrential rain a week ago.

My first thought is that they’re Meadow Browns and that would be appropriate as the first butterfly to appear while I’m drawing in my newly revamped meadow area but these are Ringlets.

They’re darker than Meadow Browns, and slightly, very slightly, smaller. The name refers to the ringed eye-spots on the wings but the feature that registered with me was the light-coloured margin. I noticed this along the rear edge of the hind-wing but it fringes the sides of both wings too.

The trailing edge of the Ringlet’s hind-wing is smooth rather than scalloped (as it is in the Meadow Brown). This might sound like a subtle difference but it changes the character, the jizz, of the butterfly.

Meadow Brown

A Song of Summer

It’s great to have my own little meadow area, even though it’s so small; a 7 foot triangle sown with a meadow mix, with a strip of imported (from North Yorkshire) meadow turf across one end. I can pop down there with my canvas chair and just start drawing.

What I miss though is the meadow soundtrack; nothing but the rustle of leaves, the hum of insects, the call of birds. That would be lovely; that kind of peace has always meant a lot to me. It’s one of the reasons that we head to the Lake District for a break, rather than a vibrant resort such as Blackpool. But this little wedge of meadow is in semi-detached suburban garden so the soundtrack is dominated by next door’s kids screaming. Heigh ho.

Okay, I’ll admit that they are screaming happily except when it comes, as it inevitably does as the excitement builds, to injury time! Boisterous children’s play has long been a part of the song of summer;

Whenas the rye reach to the chin,
And chop-cherry, chop-cherry ripe within,
Straw berries swimming in the cream,
And schoolboys playing in the stream

George Peel, The Old Wives’ Tale, 1595
(used by Benjamin Britten in his Spring Symphony)

Chicory and Dock

I OCCASIONALLY feel the need to do what I call an ‘inky’ drawing, with free-flowing ink, so why not go all the way and use a bamboo pen and Winsor & Newton black Indian ink?

Disadvantages;

  • once you’ve dipped your bamboo pen in the ink, the first time you hold it over the paper a drop of ink will blot down onto the paper
  • you can’t take your time drawing the lines while the ink is running freely or you’ll end up with another blot
  • the ink soon runs out and you start to get a broken scratchy line

Advantages;

  • you get a bold line, one that reminds me of a woodcut
  • there’s an organic quality to the diminishing size and changing quality of the line as the ink runs out. In the same way that slug slime trails are organic!
  • makes me work more quickly

That last one, ‘makes me work more quickly’ isn’t necessarily an advantage; the main point of observational drawing for me is to slow down and make contact with the natural world (or in some cases the manmade world).

I just try to work as accurately as I can within the limitations of the medium. There’s no rubbing out if a line goes wrong, so you just have to go for it. I’ve never skied but I imagine the feeling of barely controlled chaos that I get when I’m drawing with a piece of sharpened bamboo and blottily viscous ink is similar to the feeling you must get when you first go skiing down the nursery slopes.

Bamboo pen and Indian ink is the white knuckle ride of drawing. Perhaps next time I’ll try the comfy armchair and slippers version of drawing and go back to my ArtPen!

Ackworth School

A QUAKER SCHOOL since 1779, the main buildings of Ackworth date from 1757 and were originally built as a Foundling Hospital, taking in homeless children from London. Two decades later the Society of Friends bought the then empty Hospital and 84 acres of land surrounding it for £7000.

We’re here on a Wakefield Naturalists’ summer field meeting to explore the grounds, which originally included 5 acres of garden and orchard in addition to the the 1¼ acre quadrangle.

Gold Spot

Francis Higginbottom, science teacher at Ackworth School, our guide this morning has left a moth trap on overnight. Perhaps because of the recent unsettled weather there are only half a dozen moths in it, including this Gold Spot, Plusia festucae. This moth is found in damp habitats, such as water meadows and riverbanks. The trap was set up a hundred yards or so from the River Went. Those gold spots have a metallic sheen to them.

Bird Life

A pair of Sparrowhawks is nesting in a sycamore by the cricket pitch and Long-tailed Tit had built, and now abandoned, having reared a brood, this nest, which incorporates spiders’ webs and lichen.

Nearby on the ground there’s turquoise blue Starling’s egg.

Meadow Update

Chicory in flower later in the year.

A QUICK update on the patch of wildflower meadow that I replanted on the 6 April; it looks even smaller now that the hedge is in full leaf and the surrounding Cow Parsley, nettle and Chicory have grown but you can see how effective our weeding out of Chicory and docks in the central area has been. At this time of year this would normally be wall to wall Chicory and dock.

The strip of turf at the back has established itself successfully and the grass seed in the meadow mix has greened the bare soil but I can see that there are also a lot of seedlings of Opium Poppy coming up, a species that wasn’t in the meadow mix but whose seeds are scattered all over our garden. It’s a plant that I like to see and to draw but I’ll have to weed them out to prevent their lush foliage shading out the wild flower seeds that I’ve sown.

Buttercups and Red Clover are already in flower on the strip of turf so I’ve got some idea of the final effect.

Next job; to mow down the Chicory to create a path around the edges. I don’t want it to spread into the central area again so it’s going to mean some more weeding and then I’ll sow the edges with suitable grass seed.

May Blossom

THE FIRST Hawthorn in blossom is a bush overhanging the railway cutting at the foot of Addingford Steps. It gets the warmth from the south-facing brick embankment below.

The hawthorn blossom has a sweet smell, I wouldn’t call it a ‘heady’ smell; it’s not an over-the-top sweetness nor is it sugary sweet like sherbet it’s just, um, sweetish.

Each flower has five petals, which is not surprising because Hawthorn is a member of the rose family, Rosaceae. There’s one female pistil in the middle surrounded by a number of male stamens, each with a reddish tip. When you see the haws, the hawthorn berries, later in the year, the petals and stamens have withered away but you can still see the remnant of the pistil at the end of the berry.

Botanically the haw is a true berry, even though it might seem too pulpy and woody to qualify as what we’d expect if we bought a ‘mixed berries’ yogurt. From a botanical perspective raspberries and blackberries aren’t berries, they’re collections of drupes; fleshy, thin-skinned fruits containing the seed in a stone. Smaller versions of single drupe fruits such as the cherry, plum and olive.

Ra-cha-cha-chat

What bird sings from a bush by the canal, opposite a flooded marshy field known as the Strands, in what I’ve described in my field notes as an ‘agitated chattering, rasping, stoccato, occasional morse code phrases’?

Like smells, bird song is difficult to describe in words!

Sunday was International Dawn Chorus day. At this time of year you get the full variety of the dawn chorus as the summer migrants have joined our resident birds. I’m no expert on bird song but at least having got out a bit this spring I’m familiar enough with our residents to spot a new and noticeably different song.

 Crab Apple blossom at the Strands last week

This song is one that I’ve heard down by this marshy field before and I know that it’s either Reed or Sedge Warbler. I always forget which one by the time it appears next year. I didn’t manage to focus my binoculars on it but thought that I glimpsed it singing inconspicuously from halfway up in the bush.

The RSPB website (see link below) describes the song of the Sedge Warbler as ‘a noisy, rambling warble compared to the more rhythmic song of the reed warbler’. Reed Warblers are, anyway, as the name suggests, more typical of areas with large reedbeds. You’ll find Sedge Warblers in reedbeds too but also at damp wetlands like the Strands, where you’re less likely to find the Reed Warbler.

Link; The Sedge Warbler page on the RSPB website helpfully includes a recording of the song.

Kingcups

I’M NOT FINDING pen and Indian ink a responsive medium as I draw these Kingcups by the pond. If I don’t press heavily enough on the paper I don’t get a mark but if I press too hard on the springy nib the pressure builds up for a moment and then – whizz! – the nib sets off and draws a straighter line than I’d intended!

Surely, if I keep at it, I can exercise some relaxed control over the recalcitrant medium. The ink soon goes claggy and even during this short session of drawing I have to pause to clean the coagulating Winsor & Newton black ink from the nib.

Is it the beautifully sunny but not sultry weather that’s drying the ink too quickly or is it the shrill excited scream every five seconds of next door’s children playing happily on a trampoline a few yards away that’s putting me off my stroke?

I think that I’ve been spoilt by the predictably flowing combination of ArtPen and Noodler’s ink. It’s second nature to draw with that combination, but I would like to experiment with different mediums, which create different marks.

Anyway, time to admit defeat, perhaps I’ll add some colour later when it’s a bit quieter!

The Ionian Sea

OUR BALCONY looks out towards the rugged limestone hills of the Greek mainland across the calm (while we were there) Ionian Sea. Every evening and morning there were a few small fishing boats about. I was impressed by the variety of fish at the fish stalls by the harbour; anchovies and sardines, the occasional pipefish, Red Scorpion-fish, still alive but gasping in their crate, which the fishermen warned us were difficult to prepare, a swordfish and other species which looked vaguely familiar but which I couldn’t put a name to. I did feel that some of the fish were rather small, particularly the swordfish which was little more than eighteen inches long including the sword. Hope that’s not an indication of overfishing. If you’ve caught a small swordfish, I guess that it’s then too late throw it back in to grow to adult size, so it might as well be eaten.

Common Wall Lizard, Podarcis muralis, this lizard with an orange underside and blue beneath the chin is the one that we see basking at the edge of the pavement as we walk into Benitses.

Naked Man Orchid

The Naked Man Orchid, Orchis italica, is found throughout the Mediterranean on grassy slopes, as here amongst the olives and cyrpresses, and in heathy garrigue and maquis habitats. Edward Lear was an enthusiastic visitor to Corfu and made watercolour sketches here. These flowers, with ‘arms’, ‘legs’ and anatomical details, remind me of the species Manypeeplia upsidedownia in his Nonsense Botany.

According to Collins Complete Guide to Mediterranean Wildlife, Red Helleborine, Cephalanthera rubra, ‘favours dry, shady woodlands, invariably on calcareous soils’, which is a good description of this clearing amongst the olives.

A Blue Pimpernel

The intense blue put me off but I should have realised that this flower growing by a dry path on an east-facing slope through the olives is a relative of our Scarlet Pimpernel, that grows in similar situations back home. It’s Anagallis foemina.

The Feast of St Thomas

WE’D BEEN invited to see the church procession at the Achillion Palace by Fedon and Christina who run the apartments because their son was playing the euphonium in the Milea village band. The procession marked the feast day of Doubting Thomas.

The word iconic tends to get overused so it was interesting to see icons, the genuine item, being used in this Greek Orthodox ceremony. Two paintings formed the centre piece of the procession. Flag and banner bearers led the way followed by the village band, a  women’s choir (singing ‘A capella’ which means in the manner of the church, unaccompanied by music in the Greek Orthodox tradition), the priest and his attentdants, incense censers, cross bearers and others with bronze starburst or sun emblems on poles (heavy things to carry in the midday heat for a couple of miles) followed by what appeared to be centuries old iconic paintings of the Virgin and the saints, the second of which was further protected by a large canopy supported by polebearers.

There was a short service with hymns, prayers and a reading before the procession entered the grounds of the Achillion and another back in the village.

At the end of the ceremony, as the black-suited church elders kissed the silver cover of the priest’s Bible, Fedon explained; ‘They’re praying for the politicians who are going to take over Greece!’

We followed the procession down narrow streets – so narrow that they had to dismantle the canopy and walk single file through one alley – back down to the church.

The bells were ringing; a man had climbed a ladder to the bell tower and he was alternately ringing the bells, using straps hanging from their clappers.

Trying to use the free tourist map as a walking map didn’t work out for us as we tried to find a way across the hill from the Achillion Palace to Benitses. We found ourselves on a crag, frustratingly close, high above the rooftops of the village but with no path down. We had to retrace our steps and unfortunately by then we’d almost finished our bottle of water. But the walk did work out well for wildlife. We spotted some orchids which we came back to draw another day and on the top of the crag I disturbed an Agama, a stocky lizard with spiky scales. We got a better view of two of on the last full day of our holiday on a little crag by the road through Milia. One of those had a bright yellow patch beneath its chin.

When we finally retraced our steps back to the sea front at Benitses we got a good view of a Yellow-legged Gull, its yellow legs showing up well as it stood on the breakwater by the harbour.

The Green Sandpiper probing along the water’s edge attracted Barbara’s attention with its wagtail-like bobbing and the white on its rump.

Lemons at Andromaches: ‘help yourself if you need one!’ said Christina.

Woodchat Shrike

THE CONES of this cypress have 12 scales. On this fallen fragment the dark green scaly leaflets have dried to ochre brown. In colour, shape and texture these plates, and the tiny scales that cover the leaf stems when seen through a hand lens, remind me of the armour of an armadillo.

10.34 a.m.; the Woodchat Shrike is a summer visitor to Corfu. At 18 cm, it’s almost Song Thrush size.

This bird (right) looked very much like a buzzard but birds of prey are so difficult to identify, especially when circling against a bright sky. We saw two later and heard a buzzard-like peevish ‘mewing’ call.

As I drew this flower at the car parking area at our apartments I didn’t realise that it was a buttercup; the petals are more pointed than those of our British buttercups but I should have guessed as its mace-like seed-heads remind me of the largest of our native buttercups, Kingcups.

The nearest that I can find in the book is Jersey Buttercup, Ranunculus paludosus, which fits in almost every detail, except that I wouldn’t have described it as a ‘hairy perennial’.

I tried pencil when I started drawing the buttercup but soon resorted to the precision of a 01 sized nibbed Pilot Drawing Pen. I didn’t bring my favourite ArtPen with me because, as a fountain pen, it has a tendency to go blotty after being taken on a plane because of the pressure difference. A selection of Pilot Drawing Pens will be fine for the all too short time that we’re here.

11.40 a.m.; Soft quizzical two note call of a Jay. If flies down to a shady spot then up to the branch of an olive. It eats whatever it picked up – an olive or a snail? – then wipes its bill on the branch.

Temp. 29°C, 50% cumulus

Despite the name, Woolly Trefoil, Trifolium tomentosum, is hairless but as the flowerhead grows it becomes more rounded and woolly. These plants at the car parking area were up to 20 cm (8 inches) tall with flowerheads spreading to 1 cm. It is the dominant plant on areas where limestone chippings have been spread.

I draw these spiral seed-pods alongside my sketch of trefoil flowers later, thinking that they belong to it, but they’re actually those of the appropriately named Large Disk Medick, Medicago orbicularis. It grows alongside the trefoil by a path through the olives.

12.50 p.m.; A small, hovering bee-fly, 8 mm long with a straight tongue almost as long again, like a tiny flying kiwi, visits red and white clovers.

1.40 p.m., Benitses Taverna; A large black bumble-bee with blue on it’s rear end has a different, more direct flight to our bumbling varieties. It’s a Carpenter Bee, perhaps Xylocopa violacea.

The Canary Island Date Palm, Phoenix canariensis, introduced and planted widely around the Mediterranean, has inedible fruits.

I’m trying to get in holiday mood, so I feel that I should be trying media that I wouldn’t normally use for my regular work so I did try starting to draw the palm with an Artline ErgoLine Calligraphy Pen with a 2 millimetre nib, a pen that my illustrator friend John Welding is experimenting with at the moment. He gave me this one to try out but the unfamiliar feel made it seem a bit awkward for me, so again, as with the pencil, I went back to my everyday media.

Some day I will experiment! But I’m only here for a week and there is so much to draw so I need to get on with it in reassuringly familiar pen and watercolour wash. At least I drew the palm in pencil rather than ink!

Not so easy to identify when you see it in the water when its legs are hidden, this gull closely resembles our Herring Gull but, as we would have seen immediately if it had been standing on the rocks by the harbour, it’s actually a Yellow-legged Gull, a familiar species in the Mediterranean.

The Beech Marten, Martes foina, was, as many of them unfortunately are, a roadside casualty. It was about the size of a slim, small cat.

This Whinchat was perching on a wire by the substantial ruins of the Roman baths on the slope behind the sea-front properties at Benitses.