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.

Busy moles

Now is the season of mole hill abundance.  Although it can be irritating if you are a lawn junkie, we should really be thankful that moles are still surviving when so much wildlife is in decline.

They don't give up

Although they are a bit tatty at this time of the year, buttercups, daisies, dandelions and clovers keep on blooming in a quiet way.

The creeping buttercup

   

The common daisy

    

Now I took photos of some dandelions and some autumn hawkbits but I can't tell which is which from the top-down photos.

  

Actually they are very different from the side, most notably the flower stalk, which is wiry with the hawkbit while a dandelion stalk is a hollow tube, as in this photo of a dandelion clock.

    

White clover looking in better nick than its red cousin.

mmmmmmmmm

Wasps and ivy

Peter Acton found this miniature wasp's nest inside the roof of his shed, a little smaller than a golf ball, he said.

I had previously removed one from inside my shed too.  Why do the queen wasps abandon these little nests?  Do they decide it's not such a desirable location and move on to build another nest?  More likely something gobbles them up before they can lay their first eggs.

If you look inside this one below, you can see seven little hexagonal cells waiting for eggs.  Normally the queen lays a few eggs and feeds and nurtures the grubs until they pupate.  When they hatch out as workers, she settles down to egg laying while they enlarge the nest, build more cells, and care for the grubs which become their sister workers.  By the end of the summer a nest can contain 20,000 individuals.

But then the queen stops laying and the workers go on holiday, heading for your beer or jam.  They also like fallen apples and plums.  Or nectar if they can find it.  This lucky little wasp found some ivy flowers.

Ivy supplies nectar in the autumn and berries in spring, the other way round from most plants.  You can see that some of the flowers are already turning into brown berries, which will be black when ripe.

Haw haw haw!

The fruits of the hawthorn are called haws.

They are a plentiful food for blackbirds and thrushes.

Fattening up for autumn

Leaves carpeting the ground for the autumn solstice.

In the sunshine some of the many webs show up, strung between twigs and dead plant stems.  

With somebody waiting in the middle for a passing meal.

Viewed from the other side, you can see she is all curled up, with each foot on a different line, ready to detect any unwary insect that flies into the sticky silk.

Sweet chestnuts

 Even without the very prickly nut cases you can recognise a sweet chestnut tree by its long leaves with forward pointing teeth along the edge.  The leaves helpfully persist on the ground through the winter.  

The shell around the nuts is much pricklier than a horse chestnut or conker.  The trees are not even distantly related but the fruits have a very slight resemblance.

These are the nuts you can eat, if you can find any fat ones - not the conkers.  Our Christmas chestnuts usually come from warmer places like Italy.

Privet hawk

Peter Blenkiron spotted this splendid caterpillar.  You can see a tiny 'horn' at its rear end, which shows it is a hawk moth caterpillar.  The distinctive white and purple stripes and the shiny black horn are clues that it is a Privet Hawk Moth. 

It is pretty well grown and so is probably looking for an underground retreat to pupate in for the winter survival test.

A few years ago I saw two teenage lads looking worriedly at one of these on a path.  They wanted to save it from being trodden on but were apprehensive because of the horn.  It looked like a sting -  which it is not.  All four of us were relieved to get this sorted.

Autmn fungi in different habitats

This Brown Rollrim fungus grows in the grass.  If no-one has kicked it you can see it just inside the main entrance to Filnore Woods.

Photo on left taken 24th Sept and then 5 days later. 

  Below: seen from the side.

An underneath view would be interesting too but I don't like to destroy these rather magical structures

In contrast these Common Puffballs prefer to grow in leaf litter.

 When they are mature, raindrops falling on them puff clouds of spores out through a little hole in the top. 

These Sulphur Tuft fungi inhabit old dead stumps and help to recycle them.

They're not full grown yet.

And this Artist's Fungus bracket grows on dead or living wood.

You can find it on the fallen beech trunk near post 14.

Fungal identification thanks to local mycologist Simon Harding