September 2023 - Page 2 of 2 - A Year in the Valley

Dandelion and his friends

Common Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

This is a common dandelion. Its leaves are soft, lush, smooth, hairless, flat, and toothed. They grow up from a rosette not a stalk. The familiar yellow sunburst flowers grow atop an unbranched hollow stem, which bleeds milky sap. They are up to 50cm tall and grow just about everywhere.

Cat’s-ear (Hypochaeris radicata)

This is Cat’s-ear, also known as Flatweed or False Dandelion. Its long-stemmed bright yellow flowers have fringed petals and its leaves grow from a rosette and are the same shape as dandelion leaves but are covered with white hairs. Like the dandelion, it grows to 50cm in most habitats, but its stems are solid, not hollow.

It is thought that the name Cat’s-ear comes from the shape and texture of the furry leaves. Like the dandelion, Cat’s-ear is edible. Young leaves can be eaten raw in salads or steamed, while the root can be roasted and ground to make a coffee substitute.

Look at the top leaf – you can clearly see the pointed ‘collar’ as it clasps the stem.

Smooth Sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus)

This was a difficult plant to identify because the first photo I took showed arrow-shaped leaves, which is a variant, but not the norm. Apparently, there are eight kinds of sow-thistle in the UK and I thought it was a marsh sow-thistle until a photo confirmed that the leaves are long and willow-like and the plants stand tall and proud, up to 6ft tall.

Here are the clinchers: the leaves are flat, not crinkled, with weak prickles. They clasp the stem, wrapping around with pointed collar tips. The paler outer petals of each bloom give a unique “pineapple” colouring, leant by a grey-pink stripe down the outside of each outer petal.

For future reference – Perennial Sow-thistle stems and green bracts under the flowerhead are covered in hairs with sticky yellow blobs on the tip of each. Prickly sow-thistle has crisped and shiny leaves, spiny like a thistle, and the wrap-around leaf bases are rounded, not pointed. Marsh sow-thistle as already mentioned is tall with long willow-like leaves.

Daisy D

08 September 2023

Flowers

Cat’s-ear, Common Dandelion, Smooth Sow-thistle

Garden Cross Spider

I’m really pleased that the big spiders spinning webs across the path and in the grass turned out to be a spider I hadn’t photographed before. Unmistakeably the garden cross spider, it’s a big old orb spider with a cross emblazoned on its back in white dots, set within a brown Christmas tree shape. It hasn’t been often that species have been this easy to identify. Hurrah!

Garden cross spiders are a type of orb spider and are known for their large webs often strung across pathways, as I have found. If it is disturbed it will try and shake the web or drop down on a silken thread and hide till danger has passed and it can return to its web.

These are big-bodied spiders, especially the females. It looks quite fierce but is not known to bite humans.

In spite of the heatwave we are currently experiencing, I associate these large spiders webs draped everywhere with autumn and ‘Back to School’ because they are usually dripping prettily with dew drops against a misty backdrop. I wondered if that was just me, but the Natural History Museum say that although spiders webs can be found all year round, it is in the autumn that we are most likely to notice them, when they are revealed by dew and mist droplets. Also the spiders are fully-grown and looking for a mate, so they are more visible too.

Birds were gathering on the telegraph wires yesterday evening and we are wondering whether the housemartins will be leaving us, soon. The swifts went weeks ago.

Daisy D

07 September 2023

Spiders

European Garden Spider, Garden Cross Spider, Housemartin, Swift

Today in the Watermeadow

Pretty much the same as the valley – lush with new grass and punctuated with clumps of purple loosestrife and single bulrushes waving their cigar-like flower heads above the grass.

Again, the difference between the beginning and the end of the summer is striking.

Daisy D

06 September 2023

Views

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Today in the Valley

The main difference between the valley this month and last month is the weather. For this week, at least, we have the return of summer, and the sunshine is casting a glaze over all the foliage. The reed canary grass toppled over after flowering but is now sprouting fresh green blades. In previous years I haven’t noticed this second ‘crop’, but I am not expecting it to flower again. Bursts of colour come from the purple loosestrife, which is still flowering.

Below, I have pasted the picture for June, so you can see the difference from the beginning to the end of summer.

More things that got away – I had to mow the pathways down in the watermeadow yesterday, as it was my only chance for the next couple of weeks. My back was well enough as long as the mower’s motor assisted me. I tried not to think about the wildlife I was rampaging over. Many grasshoppers hopped out of my way as did a couple of frogs which I was peeved about as I didn’t have my camera with me. There were three huge spiders guarding webs across the left-hand pathway, but they scuttled back to their anchorage points before I came barging through and I know they will soon build more cobwebs. I missed a beetle on the ramp and a red dragonfly, which might have been the Common Darter, but it flew off before I could examine it close-up. I straightened one of the stone steps and a centipede scuttled away. I went back down with the camera a little later and didn’t see as much that time, though I got an excellent photo of a green-veined white butterfly and one of the disgruntled spiders’ cousins whose web in the middle of a grass patch remained undisturbed. Lots of carpet moths and speckled wood butterflies and swarms of dung flies of various sizes.

PROJECT UPDATE – I have just realised that at this point, I am a quarter of the way through the year that started on 5^th June 2023. So how’s it going? My goal was to record 260 species in the year, which is 65 per quarter and I have recorded 120 so far, which on paper looks way ahead of schedule!

However, there are lean times ahead! The meadow will be flooded for a month or two during the winter and, yes, I could paddle, but I don’t want to turn it into a quagmire. During that time, I can try and spot birds from the decking or the house and I can record the rest of the trees – alder, willows. Also, I have some photos that I still haven’t identified, like grasses, docks, and toadstools.

There will be a fresh scattering of flowers in the spring, and I hope to be able to do some pond-dipping. The pond and stream are too overgrown to get to at the moment, so I haven’t recorded any pondlife at all as yet, but I know it’s there.

So, until then, I’ve got to keep my eyes open and my camera clicking. There are probably tiny plants that I have been overlooking, the centipede that got away and there will undoubtedly be more fungi in the autumn. I wasn’t expecting to see any during the summer – and I still haven’t identified what I saw.

Daisy D

05 September 2023

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Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

I was waiting for this to come into flower before I posted it, but it is now going red and dying off. I looked it up in my Collins Wild Flower Guide and found out that it flowers March-May, so I missed them, just before the blog started. However, I should be able to update the post with a flower picture next spring. The purpling leaves are a harbinger of Autumn and look quite nice at the moment. This creeping plant grows in a variety of habitats and can be found nestling by some logs on the ramp down to the watermeadow. It is said to be an evergreen perennial, so perhaps it isn’t actually dying off, but just changing colour for the winter. It is also supposed to be edible as a salad green.

UPDATE – 04/10/23

Daisy D

04 September 2023

Flowers

Ground Ivy

Bulrush (Typha latifolia)

The bulrush is also known as Great Reed Mace. Our first bulrush came into flower at the end of July, but now we have half a dozen or so scattered over the watermeadow. They seem to come up randomly each year, singly rather than in clumps.

The bulrush grows in shallow water and, at 2m tall, has been described as “a very architectural plant” on www.naturespot.org.uk. Like teasels, the bulrush seed heads stay standing over the winter until they finally get blown down by a strong enough wind.

The flower is structured in two tiers – the brown-velvet cylinder is the female section, and this is topped with a straw-coloured male plume.

Daisy D

03 September 2023

Sedges, rushes, grasses

Bulrush, Great Reed Mace

Sea Buckthorn

Trees in our watermeadow include willows, alders, and sea buckthorn. On the bank we have planted a silver birch and a mountain ash, which are doing quite well as the bank is drier. The sea buckthorn is at its best now with clusters of bright orange berries nestling among its spikey silver-green foliage.

It turns out that sea buckthorn berries are a bit of a superfood – full of vitamins and anti-aging properties. The oil is supposed to help with skin conditions and burns, but evidence is purely anecdotal, rather than scientific. The berries can be made into jellies or syrups and more to the point, they provide food for birds, in particular over-wintering thrushes.

Our sea buckthorn trees are quite prolific with thorny saplings sprouting up in close proximity to the trees. They are native to the east coast of England but have been planted in other places to help stabilise sand dunes. It’s possible therefore that ours were planted to help prevent erosion of the bank. For that reason, we would keep them, though we have pulled up some of the saplings.

Daisy D

02 September 2023

Trees

Sea Buckthorn

White-tailed Bumble Bee

I’m playing catch-up for the next few days, as I have a back-log of photos to identify and log (and also sciatica, so I am not tackling the steps down to the watermeadow). This is a white-tailed bumblebee on some toadflax. It is similar to the garden bumblebee and the buff-tailed bumblebee, but its bands are bright yellow, like lemon curd, whereas those of the buff-tailed bumblebee are more orange-yellow, and the garden bumblebee has beige stripes. They all have a white bottom, though the white-tailed bumblebee has the purest white.

They can all be found in a variety of habitats, as long as there are flowers present.

Daisy D

01 September 2023

Insects

White-tailed Bumblebee