IVY-LEAVED TOADFLAX

This wall climber is in flower from April to December and even through mild winters.

Although it is called ivy-leaved toadflax the leaves are not  very much like ivy leaves. 

The mauve, snapdragon flowers have yellow honey guides to show bees where the nectar is.

The flowers have a clever technique:  while attracting pollinators they are pointing outwards, but as soon as they have been fertilised the long stems curl back into the wall to plant a seed in a crack where it can grow.

 

CHURCHYARD BEETLE

May I introduce Mr Blaps Mucronata, the Churchyard Beetle.

Actually he is more often found in caves, cellars, stables and other damp dark places and this specimen was trundling around in my cellar.

He is flightless and operates mainly at night 

scavenging on any damp, dark vegetable material he can find.

Not a very fast mover, so I managed to temporarily capture him under a glass.  

Easily recognised by the distinctive tail-end.

There are about 4,000 different beetle species in Britain and over 300,00 species worldwide.

 

BIRD'S EYE WITH HAIRY LEGS

Germander Speedwell is also known as Bird's Eye as it looks out at you from the grass.

It is the largest of our speedwells 

and there is a way of testing to be sure it is Germander Speedwell.

It has two rows of hairs along the stem.  

Hold it against the light one way and the hairs are almost invisible.  

Twist it 90 degrees in your fingers and the two rows of hairs appear.

Double Mohican hairstyle

 

YELLOW ANTS

Our olive tree wasn't doing too well in its pot so we repotted it.

I tipped the soil out on to a tarpaulin and . . . .

. . . . the soil was alive with yellow ants.

They were really disorientated and wandered about with no obvious sense of purpose.

There are about 15000 species of ant worldwide but the most common in Britain are red ants (Myrmica rubra), black ants (Lasius niger) that nest under paths and paving slabs, and yellow meadow ants (Lasius flavus) that make those tumpy anthills in rough grassland.

I suppose they thought the flower pot would be a good anthill.

SOFT SHIELD CROZIER

The opening croziers of Soft Shield Fern remind me of the dragon figurehaeds of Viking ships.

 

DRONE FLY

With the windows open in this hot weather, there are unfortunately a lot of pollinator deaths and bug demises.  They get trapped inside the house.  Unfortunate for them but interesting for an old bugger like me as a whole lot of interesting specimens that I would otherwise have overlooked become available

.

The photo below is of a recent victim, the Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax). 'Drone' because it resembles a male honey be or drone, not because it is a remote controlled flying object.  As you can see, the colour soon fades when they die.

It is one of the commonest hover flies and is quite colourful when alive as in the photo below from my 'Collins Pocket Guide' by Michael Chinery.

Drone flies are part of a closely related group illustrated below in which there is a noticeable u-shaped kink in one of the veins in the wing - a useful identification tip.

 

OAK APPLES

This is an oak apple, home to several gall wasp grubs. It is soft and spongy and rather larger than the hard marble galls found on young oak saplings.  These were found on oak trees up at the viewpoint at Filnore Woods.  The grubs will emerge as adult mini-wasps in June and July and the oak apple will drop off and decay, unlike marble galls which persist on the tree.

Here are some marble galls, photographed in February.