BRYONY BERRIES

 More berried treasure but these are not to be eaten.

Black Bryony and White Bryony are not related but both produce skeins of slightly toxic berries on their twining stems.

SLOES

The fruit of the blackthorn

 They look like little plums but they taste like . . . . well try one.  They have a peculiar drying effect on your mouth.

HIPS AND HAWS

Wild roses at Filnore give way to scarlet rosehips

and the hawthorn is covered in haws for the blackbirds and thrushes to scoff

 

BLACKBERRY & APPLE

Taken a couple of weeks ago at Filnore Woods

Legend has it that the devil spits on them at Michaelmas (29th September) and they don't taste so nice.

 These are crab apples.  You can tell they are the native crab from the rounded leaves.

STORKSBILL

The common storksbill, a low growing plant with tiny pink flowers and much-divided leaves, is usually found near the coast but it occurs in short grass in several places in Thornbury.  The flowers only last a day but there are usually lots more on the next day.

 It's name comes from the shape of its long seed capsule, like the head and bill of a stork.

Photo: Biodiversity Explorer

Remarkably when the capsule is ripe it splits into five strips which each curl into a spiral and then cleverly spiral themselves into the ground as the strip expands and contracts with changes in humidity.  And so the seed is sown.

THE SILVER-Y

'When I were a lad' we used to get moths flying against the windows when the light was on inside and if we left the windows open they would be in.  Nowadays I feel privileged if I even see a moth.

But this common moth is flying now and you may see one.  It's easy to identify.

It's called the Silver-Y and you can see the little Y-shape on its wings.  In fact it's more like the Greek letter gamma and the scientific name is indeed Autographa gamma - the gamma autograph.

I rescued this one from inside my window by catching it in a glass, which accounts for the strange background, but what appeared to be a dull brown flutterer revealed itself as a night-time beauty when I turned on the flash.

Tidying the windfalls

Once a bird has pecked even a small puncture in the skin, or a maggot has tunnelled through, fallen apples can be eaten by little black slugs and wasps on holiday.  

 What a good job they do, tidying up unwanted windfalls.