Brimstone and Buckthorns

A late Brimstone butterfly captured by lepidopterist Alan Watts's camera.

The greeny yellow males may be the species that gave rise to the name 'butterfly'.  The females are paler and can be mistaken for whites. 

They are very long-lived for a butterfly and can be seen at almost any time of year.  In the winter they hang like withered leaves in leafy bushes to hibernate, but will wake up in sunny weather and are the first butterfly to appear in the spring.

They roam far and wide looking for common buckthorn and alder buckthorn plants for their caterpillars to feed on.  

Common Buckthorn - an invasive weed in North America

Students and staff from the Sheiling School planted two of each species in the top meadow at Filnore Woods a few years ago and they are growing well, if slowly.  

The orchard and wildflower meadow group have also planted buckthorns down near the Anchor at Morton and a couple of buckthorn plants are also surviving on the Pollinator Highway along Morton Way in Thornbury but they are struggling a bit.  

Alder buckthorn - wildlife trust

Buckthorns occur naturally in hedgerows but are easily overlooked by humans - though not by Brimstones.

Prickly food for pigs.

With leaves like a thistle but yellow dandelion-type flowers, this is the Prickly Sow-Thistle, one of the flowers still in bloom at this time of year.

With a cluster of flowers at the top it is a fast growing annual, more welcome in the fields at Filnore than in your garden.

The thick, white central vein on each leaf looks almost like Swiss Chard, but I wouldn't fancy chewing these leaves.

Wild Sevice

With leaves a bit like maple, the Wild Service is one of our rarest native trees.  So we just planted the one when Filnore Woods was created just over 20 years ago.  You can find it near post number 10.

Actually those leaves are different from maple leaves because instead of having all the veins radiating from one point at the top of the stalk, Wild Service has one central vein with three or four pairs of side veins.

Our tree is carrying little bunches of brown fruits at the moment.  They resemble rowan or whitebeam berries and these trees are all in the same Sorbus genus.  

In bygone years these berries were made into a drink called chequers, which is probably why so many pubs are called 'The Chequers' - nothing to do with chess boards.

Green lacewing

This green lacewing on a house wall is probably looking for a hibernating site - somewhere cosy for the winter. 

The wings are covered with a network of veins giving that lacy look.  Notice the long antennae and the beady black eyes. 

Lacewings are mostly carnivorous, eating smaller insects.  Their spiky larvae love to scoff aphids so lacewings are a gardener's friend.

Hornbeam fruits

Although Hornbeam is a tree native mainly to south-east England, we have several, which were planted when the part of Filnore Woods, near posts 15 and 16, was a council tree nursery.

At this time of year the little nutlets hang in papery sheaths arranged in vertical chains.  It makes a pretty sight as they are yellow or brown when the leaves are still green.

Hydrock volunteers

Last Tuesday, 15th October, we had 10 volunteers from Hydrock, the civil engineering firm from Almondsbury.  They spent the whole day with us and achieved a lot.

As well as scything in the top meadow and coppicing in the woodland, they cleared a large area of brambles that had re-grown after last February's blitz.

Altogether a very willing and energetic group. They certainly worked hard and managed to relax a bit during lunch break.

It made a change from their usual indoor work and we hope they also enjoyed themselves.

Huge thanks to them all.

Some of them were also in last year's group of Hydrock volunteers so it can't have been too bad. 

Fruit of the lime

The fruit of the lime or linden tree is not a lime.  It is a small bunch of pea-sized nutlets on a stalk, attached to an oblong bract.  The bract acts as a sort of wing to help distribute the seeds in the wind.

Until 20 years ago lime trees hardly ever produced viable seed in the UK.  Although about 6,000 years ago, when the climate was warmer, they were the dominant tree in most of England.    But now, in warm summers, some of them actually germinate and grow into seedling lime trees.  There may be some connection to climate change.

We have two native lime trees the small-leaved lime and the broad-leaved lime.  Their hybrid is the common lime,first imported from the Netherlands in the 17th century.  It is the one with all the sprouts up the trunk.  If you are going to plant one, buy a small-leaved lime as it is the most attractive tree when mature - in my opinion.