Cut and come again

What has happened to our long grass?

 There has been a cutting of at least some of it, which will stimulate the roots to produce new green growth.

Someone has been busy.

Aha!  It's Andy and Robocut, the magic munching machine.

Many thanks to Andy and Marcus from South Glos Council.

Now all we have to do is rake the cut material off.    That should only take us a few weeks!  

By removing the arisings we prevent an increase in fertility which would inhibit the survival of wild flowers and the butterflies, bumble bees and other insects that depend on them.

Knopper galls

Volunteer Andy Farquar copped this Knopper Gall on an oak near post 3.  These galls overwhelm the acorns, as the photo plainly shows, with a growth  that looks a bit like a pine cone when it changes from its green beginnings to a brown maturity. 

I went up a couple of days later to find that it is a bumper year for these galls.  They are on lots of our oak trees.

They are produced by the tree in response to a female gall wasp laying her egg where the acorn is set to develop.  Hard luck, little acorn.  

Knopper galls arrived in the UK in the 1960s and the media tried a panic story that all the acorns would be neutralised and we would have no new oak trees.  This proved to be a ridiculous over-reaction and the knopper gall has taken its place in our wild world without causing a crisis in oak fertility.

Lammas growth

Unlike most trees, oaks are able to have a second flush of growth.  As this occurs around August 1st, Lammas, the traditional festival of the wheat harvest, it is known as Lammas growth.

This is handy because there are so many insects that feed on the oak that it gives it a chance to recover.  

Unfortunately you may also notice a white powder on the oak leaves.  This is oak powdery mildew and can have a bad effect on the growth of the tree.

It is a species of fungus which feeds on the sugars the tree has been producing to feed itself.  Not only is the mildew plundering the sugars but it also coats the leaves, thus preventing them from working properly to produce more sugars by photosynthesis.

Hopefully our trees are big enough to fight back.

Hedge Woundwort

The leaves of this rather hairy plant have a rather unpleasant smell when crushed.

The flowers look greyish red at first sight, but close up you can see they are beetroot red with white blotches.

Hedge Woundwort is so called because it used to be used for poultices applied to wounds.

Agrimony, Hogweed and Scabious

Also known as Aaron's Rod, Agrimony flowers follow each other up the spike.

Here it is along with white Hogweed (which is just everywhere at Filnore this year) and mauve Field Scabious.

Here's a better pic of the scabious, a favourite nectar source for butterflies.

and two more photos from Simon Harding showing a burnet moth and a small tortoiseshell butterfly

A view from a bench

From the viewpoint, the blue hills of Gloucestershire.

Ain't it grand.

A vital food plant

What charming flowers are these?

The flowers are easily overlooked 

but the plant is one of the first we learn as children - stinging nettles.

In late summer when these flowers produce huge numbers of seeds, they are relished by sparrows and chaffinches and bullfinches.

Caterpillars of four of our commoner butterflies -  small tortoiseshell, peacock, red admiral and comma - feed on nettles, and at least nine species of moth.  

Nettles support over 40 species of invertebrate and therefore the creatures that prey on them such as blue tits and ladybirds.