TWO PERFUMES IN ONE PLANT

Meadowsweet is a fairly recent arrival at Filnore Woods, just downhill from the pylon.

'Meadow' because it usually indicates slightly moister ground in a ditch or a streamside or a damp meadow.  And the perfume of the flowers is certainly sweet.  But if you pick and crush a leaf it has a medical smell, rather like Germolene ointment. 

  

 

ORANGE ON CHOCOLATE

The Gatekeeper is also known as the Hedge Brown as it likes shrubs and hedgerows.  'Gatekeeper' maybe because it sometimes basks in gateways where vegetation is low.  The eggs, however, are laid on grasses for the caterpillars to munch.

The above image is of a male, which is easy to tell because of the dark brown 'sex brands' across the forewings.

You might confuse the gatekeeper with the meadow brown, which is larger and duller.  If the butterfly perches with wings folded back, look for two white dots in the black spot on the forewing, or several tiny white dots on the hindwing.  The meadow brown only has one white dot in the black spot and no white dots.

Photos: Alan Watts

 

WILD ARUM

Hiding in the green undergrowth, the green seed clusters of wild arum.

Each spike covered in as many as 40 berries.

As you can see from those I culled in my garden, they change gradually from green, through orange to red.  

 Then they fall apart and each seed tries to become a new plant for the following season.

THE COMMA

The Comma butterfly is so called because it has a tiny white, c-shaped mark on the dark brown underside of its wings.

It has a rather ragged look which helps it to hide from predators when it rests with wings closed, looking like a dead leaf.

When on the wing or feeding it is a very colourful orange.  In the photo below it has its proboscis into the bramble flower, sucking up the nectar and inadvertently pollinating the plant to make blackberries for you and me.

Photos: Alan Watts

 

FLOWERS: BLACK & WHITE

Maybe not the most popular plants but attractive to insects and striking to look at, here are three more flowering plants to notice at Filnore Woods.

First up, the Field Bindweed.  The white, pink or pink-and-white striped flowers are much smaller than the large white trumpets of hedge bindweed, but like its larger cousin, field bindweed is a real bind in our gardens.  Here among the grass  at Filnore, though, it is very pretty.

Next we have the dead flower shoots of Stinging Nettle.  Nettles are not popular with humans for obvious reasons, but caterpillars of four of our common butterflies feed on them as well as numerous attractive moths and a whole host of other little creatures.

There is even a book by B. N. K. Davis called 'Insects on Nettles'.

And of course Hogweed which is present in bloom for much of the year and provides nectar for all sorts of beetles, flies, bees, etc.

I've included the beautiful structure below in the black and white section because it is currently white.  But the flower of Goatsbeard is yellow, like a dandelion.  The flower opens only in the mornings and then closes up, as you can see in the 'bud' on the right here, only to open up the next day as this surprisingly large seed head.  It's other picturesque name is Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon.

Don't know what that fly is up to.

THE MARBLED WHITE

Marbled White butterflies are usually a bit harder to approach but Alan got this one to pose.

They are around in numbers during July but by the end of August they disappear.  The caterpillars hibernate in grassy tussocks as soon as they hatch and then wake up again to feed on fescue grasses in spring, until June, when they pupate - again in grassy tussocks .  This means we have to keep some tussocky grass on site throughout the year.

A very summery butterfly, I always think, despite spending so many months as a caterpillar. 

 

FLOWERS: ROYAL PURPLE

Hedge Woundwort hiding in the grass at Filnore.  The flowers are really beetroot red rather than purple.  Check you've got the right one by crushing a leaf and smelling it.  Rather unpleasantly pungent, as one of my flower books says.

   

Flower buds of Creeping Thistle are also purplish but will change to pink when the flowers open.

Flowers of Tufted Vetch are a rich violet purple.  The plant scrambles up other plants by clinging on with tendrils at the end of each compound leaf.

This odd little character is Crow Garlic.  

Photo: Alan Watts

In spring it looks like chives as the green tubular shoots grow in clumps.  The flower heads at the top of long shoots are often not flowers at all but clusters of  bulbils, ready to start new plants vegetatively.   The photos below show: on the left a flower head still inside its papery sheath, and on the right a head full of bulbils already beginning to shoot.

By the time they drop to the ground they are already little clumps of new plants.