Bindweed Archives - A Year in the Valley

Today in the Valley – and a Goldfinch

The valley today is windswept and rainy as yet another storm blows in. The grass is flattened, and the green clumps are tangles of bindweed tumbling over the skeletons of hemlock water dropwort and other foliage, their white bells scattered over the valley. The far edge is hemmed with a flourish of bracken. Any brown you can see is dead HWD. There are some frothy white flowers in the distance, but I’m not sure what they are, possibly meadowsweet, but I’ll have to investigate when the weather improves. Finally, there are some swathes of purple, which is willowherb, probably the great willowherb that has been in our patch. Compared to last month, the valley is greener and lusher, generally, due to all the rain we have had.

Close-ups:

To brighten up the post, here is my best goldfinch photo so far, which I took the other day, when we were doing the Big Butterfly Count. It is sitting near the top of one of the sea buckthorn trees.

Daisy D

05 August 2023

Birds, Views

Bindweed, Goldfinch, Great Willowherb, Hemlock Water Dropwort

Common Green Bottle and Green Dock Beetle

I’ve heard of blue bottles, but this is a green bottle. It eats pretty much the same things as blue bottles – dead and decomposing plant and animal matter. Here it is resting innocently on some grass. I wondered whether it was going to drink the dew on the grass and found out that adult flies have a more varied diet, including pollen and nectar. Also, they are attracted to flowers that smell like carrion, and the colour yellow.

The Green Dock Beetle appears to be relatively common in the watermeadow. It feeds on dock and sorrel. Here it is on some bindweed, but there is a dock leaf skeleton next to it.

I spent the morning trimming round the alders we have planted along our back fence. One of them had got strangled with bindweed and had its stem/trunk broken. I weeded a lot of bindweed and stinging nettles and chopped down the hollow stalks of Hemlock Water Dropwort that were leaning against the back fence. I strimmed a pathway across the bank and around the alders so that they had a nice wide margin round them. They are growing fast but were only 1-2ft when we planted them in April. Now they are 2-4ft, but still prone to getting hidden and tangled in the undergrowth unless we keep a check on it. Whilst I was over the other side of the stream, I saw a brown type of damselfly, but didn’t have my camera with me. So, I went out with my camera later and managed to take some photos of grasshoppers and butterflies.

Daisy D

08 July 2023

Insects

Alder, Bindweed, Common Green Bottle, Common Nettle, Dock, Green Dock Beetle, Hemlock Water Dropwort, Sorrel, Stinging Nettle

Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium)

We have been mistakenly calling this Bell Vine, but I now discover that that is something else entirely and this plant is Bindweed. It’s a real pain as it twines round the Reed Canary Grass and pulls it down. It has broken one of our Alders. And although I try to pull it up in the late spring when it emerges, I can’t keep on top of it and have to resort to damage limitation. Also, it’s probably not right to eradicate it entirely from the watermeadow. There are several types of Bindweed. This is Hedge Bindweed as it has large white trumpet-flowers, a red-ish stem, but no hint of pink on the flowers. It’s not one of my favourite plants, but I have to admire its tenacity and striking white bells.

Update – we spotted some Meadow Bindweed in Wadebridge by the River Camel. It was creeping along in the grass. Very different to the Hedge Bindweed.

Daisy D

07 July 2023

Flowers

Bindweed

Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens)

The buttercups in our watermeadow are not the neat little pops of colour studding the lawn again two days after mowing. They flourish in the undergrowth, delicate stemmed with three-lobed intricate leaves, the familiar flowers bold gold splashes in the marine-like depths of the undergrowth. Fifteen months ago, we planted a Kingcup, or Marsh Marigold, the supersize version of a buttercup, with a stout stem and flat, scalloped leaves. It has settled in well – loves paddling, even swimming, in the winter – but has long since flowered for this year, so I hope to feature it next spring. Then, up in Pagham Harbour Nature Reserve, I spotted tall-stemmed, slim-leaved Water Buttercup flowers in a pond. Interesting that three similar flowers have such different leaves, but I have since discovered that there are a number of different kinds of buttercups.

We’ve been away for a week (I took loads of photos before we went and scheduled some posts) and on our returned have been stunned by the change in garden dynamics. The first Hemlock Water Dropwort trunks have crashed over our back fence burying two of our alder saplings. The tall grass (Reed Canary grass, I think) that thickly populates the valley and our patch is now at least 8ft tall and has overtaken the top-heavy HWD. The pathways mown into our watermeadow are in danger of closing up due to overhanging foliage. The Bellvine is also dragging it down; and the Pendulous Sedge has daubed us with smudges of chocolate brown pollen.

Daisy D

16 June 2023

Flowers

Bindweed, Creeping Buttercup, Hemlock Water Dropwort, Pendulous Sedge, Reed Canary Grass