By late December, the trees around the community garden were mostly leafless. Their leaves now littered the ground creating a mosaic of shades of brown occasionally rearranged by winds. Leafless, though, did not mean featureless. The branches of a tall hawthorn were richly decorated with plump, claret-coloured berries that glinted in the low sunshine and the nearby crab apple sported groups of small round fruit resembling reddish Christmas baubles. Bare branches of a guelder rose held clumps of berries of a surprisingly luminous bright red as if lit from inside (picture at the head of this post). These berries and fruits, formed earlier this year, will provide a well-stocked larder for birds seeking food in winter (more pictures at the end of this post).
It wasn’t all looking back, though, and there were clear signs of the forthcoming season. Leafless hazel stems carried many small, thin, pale green, finger-like growths. These are immature male catkins that will gradually increase in size to form the familiar yellow lambs’ tails ready to cast pollen on to passing breezes; some have already matured in nearby private gardens. Just above the male catkins on the bare branches, a few scaly buds were opening to display small dark red female flowers, often likened to tiny sea anemones. Wind-blown pollen reaching these female flowers from other hazel trees will begin the process of fertilisation and nut formation.
Towards the rear of the garden was a large stand of winter honeysuckle, an unruly twiggy mass liberally sprinkled with pairs of creamy white flowers each with two petals, one smaller and one larger. Emerging from the petals were several long stamens, their ends coated thickly with pale yellow pollen. These flowers are a magnet for insects still about at this time of year, especially on sunny days when I saw a few flies and several hoverflies and bumblebees.
The hoverflies (mostly the marmalade hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus) with their stripy abdomens (silver, black and orange) moved noiselessly about the bush before landing deftly on flowers to feed. The bumblebees (buff-tailed bumblebees, Bombus terrestris) moved quickly from flower to flower buzzing loudly, seemingly hanging from flowers to feed on nectar and to collect pollen that accumulated in sticky lumps on their back legs. These bumblebee workers with their characteristic yellow, white and black hair bands must be supporting a queen that has set up a winter-active colony rather than go into hibernation. Winter-active colonies are a relatively recent phenomenon in the UK, thought to result from warmer winters, the presence of flowers supplying pollen and nectar, and the relative adaptability of Bombus terrestris.
Hawthorn berries
Crab apples. With the mild wet autumn many have already begun to decay
Hazel catkins – the finger-like entities are the immature male catkins and just above each cluster are the tiny red female flowers.
Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) on winter honeysuckle
Buff-tailed bumblebee worker (Bombus terrestris). Note the pollen she is carrying on her back legs and the way she hangs from the winter honeysuckle flower,
Leaves lay by the side of the road as I walked down to reach the lane I have been visiting for the past few months. A large sycamore tree across from our house was the source of the roadside decoration and a few more leaves fell as I paused to look. Many of the leaves lay flat on the wet road, here they were mainly a uniform dark brown, well on their way to forming a slippery leafy sludge. Some, though, stood out, their greens, yellows and pale browns caught in the morning light, each leaf exhibiting a different pattern, each expressing a different personality.(see picture at the head of this post)
Further along, some uncultivated land contained all that was left of a group of umbellifers, probably hogweed. Their skeletal remains stood in a vague row, pale brown traceries of dry stems and flower heads, some still holding lozenge-shaped seed pods.
The mid-October sunshine that morning was welcome but deceptive. Recent weather had been very wet and when I reached the lane, the track and surrounding trees still showed evidence of the previous day’s rain. I pressed on up the lane, still mostly green but with a few hints of seasonal change, some curling browning leaves, plumes of bright colour on other trees and one a striking overall yellow. The track itself was quite muddy and strewn with increasing numbers of fallen leaves (photos below). By the side of the path there were a few flecks of pink from campion and herb robert flowers, now looking rather sad. One white bindweed flower stood out, home briefly for a foraging bumblebee.
I stopped to listen to the sounds of the morning: water running in the stream that follows the valley bottom, leaves rustling as a gentle breeze passed, the occasional flick as another leaf fell from one of the trees, some birdsong including the insistent trill of a wren and later the mewing of a buzzard circling overhead. Also, although it’s not a sound, almost below the level of conscious detection I thought I could smell the odour of decay.
the fern-lined green tree-lined tunnel
The green tree-lined tunnel was dark, dank, and muddy with ferns dominating as always but I saw plants growing here that I had previously overlooked probably because there had been so much else to see. Spiky, glossy, green holly grew in several places as did hawthorn; ivy crept surreptitiously across any surface it could find. There were, though, some new emergences. Wall pennywort pushed its slender stems and small dimpled leaves through the soil banks in several places. The leaves will grow gradually and cover some areas next spring. Also, on the soil banks was a creeping plant with opposing pairs of oval, fleshy green leaves. This is opposite leaved golden saxifrage a plant of dark, wet places and it will flower early in the new year. Extensive mats of this plant grew further along the lane in the very wet areas. Both the pennywort and saxifrage featured in my March walk when fully grown so, as the year moves on, we are beginning to see annual cycles. (photos below)
Beyond the green tunnel, the track became a conduit for water running off nearby fields following the recent heavy rains. Among the trees lining this very wet path was a large holly bush, distinguished by splashes of reddening berries. I wonder how long these will last? Will the birds take them or will they go for early Christmas decorations? Interestingly, this holly had many non-spiky leaves unlike others seen earlier. Spikiness in holly leaves seems to be a natural variant and some say that leaves become spiky to deter grazing animals. There are deer about in the nearby woods but I can’t see why this particular bush would be spared animal damage.
Further on, I came to a sunny clearing, lined by brambles earlier in the year but now dominated by two huge spreads of ivy scrambling over trees. The ivy was covered in flowers and their distinctive sweet odour perfumed the air. It attracted many insects, mostly wasps. I searched in vain for ivy bees but with the recent poor weather, the ivy bee season seems to be over.
The ivy flowers are contained in umbels of 20 or so individual flowers arranged in an almost perfectly spherical array. Each flower shows five-fold symmetry in the arrangement of its sepals and stamens. The anthers are exposed on the surface of the sphere so that the umbels appear yellow at a glance. I can’t help but marvel at these examples of the beauty contained in the non-human world.
An umbel of ivy flowers with a marmalade hoverfly. Note the five fold symmetry of the individual flowers, the spherical nature of the umbel with anthers around its surface,
While I was gazing, a pretty hoverfly with bands of black, yellow and silver-grey along its abdomen landed to feed from the ivy. This was Episyrphus balteatus, also known as the marmalade hoverfly. This odd name is said to derive from the thick and thin black bands on the body of the fly which remind some people of the thick and thin cuts of fruit in marmalade. I also see the yellow and silver-grey bands and think of the golden shred and silver shred marmalades made from oranges and lemons respectively.
One last thing. When I stopped earlier to listen to the natural sounds of the morning, I was surprised to hear another noise, one that I recognised as a train hauled by a steam engine and coming from the other side of town. The noise from the engine increased to reach a peak when it blew its whistle before the sound gradually died away. There is a heritage steam railway, the South Devon Railway, with its terminus in Totnes and I presume that this train had just left the station. We don’t normally hear the sounds of these steam trains so the particular atmospheric conditions must have been favourable that morning.
leaves along the lane
wall pennywort leaves, some tiny, pushing through the soil bank
Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage leaves, spotted with rain water. These are the basal leaves from which flowers will grow in spring.
holly bush with red berries and mostly non spiky leaves
For my next Lockdown Nature Walk I took advantage of a rain-free day to cross Totnes to look at some unusual flowers growing on the northern edge of the town. Here is my account of the walk (taken on January 25th 2021)together with a poem by the American poet Ruby Archer entitled Fire in the Sky. For my previous Lockdown Nature Walks, please click here.
The day dawned to a washed out, almost translucent, pale blue sky. To the east, though, there was a hint of what was to come as an apricot halo crept above the low hills as if a fire were burning behind them. Then, as the sun rose, a raft of thin cloud towards the south east caught its light, first a rose-pink, then orange before relaxing to cream. It was a good way to start the day.
No rain was forecast so I decided to walk across the town, past the castle to the northern edge, where semi-urban and residential gradually give way to rural. It was a day of light and dark, a day of bright sunshine and long shadows, and a cold day where frost lingered in areas inaccessible to the sun.
A minor road, Barracks Hill lies in this transitional zone, striking north away from the bypass past a modern housing development. The road rises gradually between rough grassy banks and then more steeply to cross a low ridge. This section of the road is enclosed and dark. It rises, like a sunken green lane, between steep sides, some rocky, some covered in rough vegetation, emerging eventually into sunshine and open countryside with farmland and trees. There was once a Barracks along this lane, built in the late 18th century. Some of the buildings remain but most were demolished when a fine Georgian house was built in the 1820s.
But I want to go back down the hill to the lower part of the lane to look at the scruffy areas of vegetation that line the road. Where it can, the sun casts pools of brightness on to these roadside banks, its spotlight picking out pennywort, hart’s tongue fern, brambles and what looks suspiciously like garden rubbish. Whatever can get a foothold here seems to flourish and there is a long section of the bank where lime green, heart-shaped leaves push through a mass of dark brown, dry, decaying vegetation. Unusually for the time of year, many sturdy flower spikes also rise above the leaves, some sporting striking blue flowers that sparkle in the sunshine like sapphire jewels. This is oriental borage (Trachystemon orientalis) commonly known as Abraham-Isaac-Jacob. A relative of wild borage (Borago officinalis), this plant was introduced into gardens in the UK in 1868 from its native Bulgaria, Georgia and Turkey where all parts of the plant are consumed as a popular spring vegetable.
This patch of the plant is probably a garden throw-out and it seems very happy here, covered in flowers and having elbowed out all the competition. At a first glance, the flowers look rather chaotic but this is because several different forms and colours exist together at the same time.
First there are the pink tapering flower buds about 1cm long, decorated with a fuzz of white hairs resembling the stubble on an old man’s chin. The buds open to reveal the strikingly beautiful complex flowers. Each has five petals that curl and twist backwards creating an intensely blue frilly decoration around a crimped white collar reminiscent of a sapphire-coloured ruff around the neck of an Elizabethan lady. Adding to the complexity, five stamens, each about 1 cm long, and a single slightly longer style protrude proudly from the collar as a tight cluster. The stamens themselves are multicoloured starting white at the top, then pinkish-lilac, terminating as indigo anthers clasping lumps of pollen.
As the flowers mature, they discard the petals and stamens leaving an odd-looking remnant where a spiky pinkish-lilac style emerges from hairy sepal cup. This form in particular contributes to the overall messy look of the plant. Unusually, all three flower forms, representing different stages of maturation, are present at the same time. This may be the inspiration for the common name of the plant, Abraham-Isaac-Jacob, itself a reference to three generations of a biblical family. [Photographs at the end of this post illustrate the three different flower forms.]
A plant that produces flowers at this low time of year is a rare discovery and these out of season sources of pollen and nectar often attract winter-active insects. Nothing was about when I looked, though, and the day was probably too cold. I came back a few days later on a warmer afternoon and was pleased to find a fine hoverfly on the flowers (see picture at the top of this post). With its bulging brown eyes and distinctive barcoded abdominal pattern of yellow, silver and black bands this was a marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) a species that overwinters as an adult and emerges on mild winter days. It was collecting pollen from the indigo-coloured anthers and nectar from the nectaries in the white collar.
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Fire in the Sky by Ruby Archer
I thought the darkness would not yield, Glooming the sun-forgotten sky, ‘Till pulsing, surging glows revealed A far-off burning,—home or field, Up flung the light. Oh whence? O why?
I thought forgetfulness had spread A Lethean gloom athwart one sky, ‘Till memory’s light crept warmly red From flame I deemed in ashes dead. Up leapt the light. Oh whence? Oh why?
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The roadside bank with the lime-green leaves and blue flowers of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob
Pink tapering flower buds with their decoration of white hairs
Three of the beautiful and complex flowers showing the frilly decoration of blue petals around the white collar and the tight cluster of stamens and style. Note also the indigo-coloured anthers with pollen.
Some of the spiky remnant flowers
Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) feeding from the anthers of one of the flowers on Abraham-Isaac-Jacob
Philip Strange Science and Nature Writing 