TREE FOLLOWING OCTOBER - SYCAMORE BY THE SEA

I'll begin by zapping you with colour.

This is 'my' sycamore - the one I'm following; taken in the evening.

I was going to say "It's not really that colour" when I realised I don't really know what colour it is. If I were nocturnal, daytime colours would be an aberration. And in the rain it's something else.

Here it is on the morning of the same day.

Yet this isn't exactly right - for the sun was ahead on the right and not only was it lighting the tree in a morning-way, my camera and I were seeing it differently from each other..

Approached from another side, it was gently green and yellow and brown. From another a silhouette. From another it was almost wiped away in the white glare.

I can't get right close to its trunk because it's surrounded by brambles. Of the ones nearby (and there are many) these blackberries are the last to ripen. The sycamore's shade and a curve in the path combine to keep the sun away. They are sweet though.

(I know this because in a spirit of scientific enquiry I ate all the ripe ones I could reach.)

Quite a few leaves are falling onto the path before they are brown - maybe because the tree is exposed to strong, easterly winds which drive straight at it from the length of the English Channel.

Its seeds are blowing aside too. This one was a few feet beyond the over-hanging branches. One of the helicopter-blades has broken in the fall.

Peering closer one can see that while autumn hits the tree, little plants are growing through the dry and un-nutritious soil. They will be trodden down before they get very tall but for such plants the year is a perpetual spring, regardless of the official season.

We can see that one of 'our' pair of seeds on 'our' tree is broken too. I have photo after blurred photo of this same seed because the tree wouldn't stop waggling around in the wind. But I've followed the progress of this particular seed over the last couple of months so I kept going back. (One day, I'll go and they'll be gone.) 

I can't say this tree is lovely at present. As the leaves change colour (and some fall)  tightly packed clusters of seeds are revealed either against the sky or against the new yellows and paler greens. Individually they are fine - it's almost impossible to walk by without picking them up from the path and throwing them in the air to watch them spin round as they fall. But bunched up they can be ugly and unpleasant. These clusters here are looser and smaller than most - prettier.

(The reason I am able to identify one particular seed again and again is that the seeds on one low-hanging branch have developed farther apart from each other than those on the main part of the tree and one hangs at an odd angle.)

Slightly beyond the tree's shadow other plants are turning into skeletons. These dried stems will stand like this all winter.

But chicory is still flowering and hoverflies are fighting over individual flowers; dive bombing each other even if there are vacant ones on the same plant.

Why? Perhaps some flowers are already drunk-empty of  nectar and pollen? Or maybe hoverflies are jealous of each other and can't stand to see somone else on something good. Or maybe they don't like hoverflies who look different from themselves? (See below.) Anyone know?

Are you
Following a Tree?

Do join us! There's more information on the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

Tweet

WHY DO LEAVES CHANGE COLOUR IN AUTUMN?

Wonderful, easy to grasp first time and brilliantly short explanation from Peter Gibbs of the BBC.

HOVER FLY SITES

Royal Entomological Society
"Over 250 species have been recorded in the UK, and more than 85 species have been found in a single garden."

British Hoverflies - Useful for ID because there are masses of pictures!

Nature Guide UK - I've only just found this site and have added it to the Loose and Leafy list of helpful and interesting ID sites. Even bigger pictures! It has other insects too. Well worth a browse.

Nature Spot

also on Nature Spot

Some Loose and Leafy blog posts where hoverflies make guest appearances.

The Next Box for Tree Following Links

will open at 7am (UK time) on 7th October 2015

and close at 7pm on the 14th.

Tweet

YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR

Chicory.
The picture is dark but I wanted you to see the curly stamens.

I'm horribly repetitive. It's because of the seasons. I'll blame it on them entirely. Every year come spring I go and look at a hawthorn tree. Not any old tree; the same one every year. Come autumn, when the haws are almost overwhelming in their colour and quantity I go and see a different tree. Absurd but . .  it just happens. I head back to the familiar.

It's wonderfully reassuring. It may be that what I saw in the spring, or last year, or the year before is still there. Or it might not be. Either way it helps me feel rooted, part of the year. My input is zilch. But it confirms I belong.

Ivy flowers with a fallen haw.
Unconventional as flowers go but beloved of hoverflies.

Perhaps I also feel a little smug. I could stop people and say 'there were rose-hips here last year. Do you see, there are only three this year and even they are buried in the undergrowth'. It would be getting my own back from all those who stop to ask me what I'm looking at and are disappointed when I say 'the back of this leaf'.

The rose-hips I visit really are missing this year. And, oddly, where there's a gap between hawthorn trees the one on the left has few berries but the one on the right has just as many as usual. Esoteric and completely pointless knowledge!

Haws - the fruit of hawthorn trees. Still in profusion on 25th September.
A sharp wind at this time of year can easily transform the view.

I was looking for hoverflies. I'm always looking for hoverflies!
And I was eating blackberries as I went.
(One always eats blackberries while walking in autumn.)
Leaning into a bramble across trampled ground
I came across a Dark Bush Cricket.
(Pholidoptera griseoaptera)
There it was. Then it was gone.
I was lucky it paused between leaps.

Stamens are fascinating.

Photography made me see them. I'd never noticed them before I started taking pictures of flowers. And once I'd seen them in their elegance and beauty and different-one-plant-from-another-ness, and the blobs of pollen on their ends . . . all that stuff, I've not been able to stop trying to take their pictures.

Why this happens specially in autumn I don't know. Perhaps because of the light. Maybe it's a time when they show up well. Or maybe it's because the plants which flower at this time of year have especially prominent ones so they catch my attention.

I always try to take photographs of Viper's Bugloss seeds - merely for the challenge. They are very tiny and they are held tightly within pale prickles which look like frost patterns. Every year I take a million photographs. Sometimes I'm lucky and one comes out all right. Mostly not. I haven't managed one this year yet. Maybe I won't. The seeds are already falling onto the earth.

And finally - the late escapees. Honeysuckle round here isn't truly wild. It's crept out from gardens. And it isn't the right time for it to flower. Many plants seem able to produce a late and surprising flowering and their one-off-ness draws the eye. (And they have dramatic stamens!)

I realise most of the pictures in this post are set against inappropriate paragraphs. But I put them in order before I wrote the post and didn't get round to changing it. You'll cope!

* * *

Three site recommendations. 

House and Garden Spiders (in Dutch.) It's a PDF illustrated chart so you can print it out.

Dave's Garden Site - another of those sites where once you've arrived you hardly want to stop exploring. (Not sure who Dave is. The site is run by a Digital Software company in California. Don't let that put you off.)

The Meaning of Latin Plant Names - on the Seed Site. It's short. It's fun. Try it.

* * *

All photos were taken on September 25th 2014.

As always I rely on iSpot for IDs. I reckon I can identify the Speckled Bush Cricket (Leptophyes punctatissima) but this is the first time I've come across a Dark Bush Cricket long enough to look at it. They don't 'arf boing so!

Posts about these flowers from other years.

Chicory

Viper's Bugloss - This is a post from June 2012, not autumn. I know there are Viper's Bugloss seeds on this blog somewhere but I can't have labelled them so I haven't tracked them down yet.

Ivy

Haws

Honeysuckle - can't find honeysuckle on this blog. Bet there is some. Better labelling required!

Tweet

STUCK FOOT POST

What is a Stuck Foot Post?

A stuck foot post is where you plant your foot firmly in a roughly random place and see what you can see without moving. Best is when you plant both feet but sometimes, as in this post, where you are on a slope or some other kind of difficult ground you may need to move the other around for the sake of balance. But you mustn't move the 'stuck' foot. You can bend your body this way and that. You can lean forward and twist at the waist - but you mustn't swivel that stuck-foot.

For Loose and Leafy I tend to look at plants and insects but the idea works anywhere. Perhaps I should do a non-plant stuck-foot-post for my other blog sometime. ('Message in a Milk Bottle')

There's a Path I Know

marked by a Sycamore tree, or maybe a Maple. Either way, it produces pretty key-seeds. The base of its trunk is below the level of the path so its seeds and leaves are close over-head. I used to go there often but the cliff below is sliding towards the sea so it's no longer safe to walk there. It's tantalising.

That's where I stood. And while I stood there, a hoverfly arrived and flew between brambles (blackberry bushes) and wild clematis.

Wild clematis (Clematis vitalba) flowers are small and pretty and round and spiky. Pale yellow. Or maybe rich cream. Borderline colours are hard to describe. They are called 'Traveller's Joy'. Remember them. We'll re-visit in autumn and see their seeds.

The hoverfly went. Then it came back. Well, I can't guarantee it was exactly the same one. I'm not sure what it's doing in the picture - but it's fun to see insects getting on with their everyday lives instead of posing scenically on the flowers.

When I put a photo of it on iSpot, Wildlife Ranger commented that we can tell it's a Myathropa florea because it has a Batman sign behind its head and a hairy fringe along its abdomen. See them?

And while I stood there, taking pictures of the hoverfly, a tiny green spider came down on a thread from the sycamore, landed on my camera, hung on, then dangled below it. Gently, I lifted it by its web and put it on a bramble bush. I don't know whether it wanted to be on a bramble bush but if it didn't I expect it would have liked me to take it home even less.

I would call this a Cucumber Spider - but that's because I'm not very specific. You'd only be able to tell the difference between it and similar spiders at a micro-level. Going for the Latin - it's some kind of Araniella. BUT if I see another, I'm going to call it a Cucumber Spider regardless. It's only about 4mm long and it's bright green.

Twisting down to my left, right under the bushes, was a little chicory flower (Cichorium intybus). Chicory grows tall. On other plants the flowers are my-head-high. It was a surprise to find it at ankle level.

Swinging up and round to the right - there was this blue bit of something caught on a thorn. I don't know what it is. I didn't touch it. I left it there. It was 2 - 3 millimeters across. I doubt it has anything to do with plants. But it was there.

That's the point. It was there.

Have you written a 'Stuck Foot Post'? I'd be happy to put a link on Loose and Leafy.

All photos were taken on 26th July 2014.

Tweet

LEAVES, SEEDS AND FLOWERS

Just as human seeds contain within them the imprint and hope of a being yet to form, the seeds of seasons are mirrored and grown in every month of the year. Spring holds the beginning of autumn and autumn is torn between memories of summer past and spring to come. It's a mixture of natural cycle and muddle.

I'd say a blackberry flower is muddled when it turns up just as the cold is kicking in.

That chicory flowers are like enthusiastic teenagers, determined to enjoy the party right to the very last minute.

That buddleia bushes and trees show a wonderful confidence in producing new starts of leaves just as their flowers are turning from lilac and purple to dingy dark brown.

That the seeds of wild clematis - Old Man's Beard - flamboyantly flaunt beauty in the face of their own aging and knowingly turn their faces from the inevitable. Their glorious champagne fizz and froth will soon sink into grey, Miss Havishamesk, dusty decrepitude. Fresh snow is lovely when it falls but when it has been trampled and fouled it's . . . well it's not as nice as when it was new. Ditto Old Man's Beard.

THE END OF OCTOBER

You have no idea how many photographs I've taken recently, nor how many topics I've covered. How could you? I've not been churning out posts - and even this is late. Trouble is, I've been overwhelmed by choice. In the end, I've cheated and will simply present you with a small selection of autumn photos. After all, it is autumn. What more pressing subject could there be?

October 30th 2012

Chicory.

October 30th 2012

Chicory is one of my favourite plants. Its flowers get smaller as the season advances but they stand out specially against the aging vegetation beside the path. Some petals have fallen. Some seeds are forming.

October  15th 2012

Some parts of the landscape are still green.
Others are brown and white.
Autumn takes its time.

Teasels.

Teasels are another favourite.

October 30th 2012

Hawthorn.

Hawthorn doesn't 'do' autumn - not in the striking way of some other deciduous trees. Most of their leaves drop discreetly but there are prima-donnas among them, leaves which decide to do a dazzle all on their own.

October 30th 2012

Willow Herb.

This is one of the larger ones.

I photograph it in the same place every year.

Wonderful shapes it makes against the sky.

* * *

The Follow Section

The most recent tree following posts . . .
from

Experiments With Plants
London Plane Tree

Down By The Sea
Willow

Anyone else?

And, finally - the view I'm following through the seasons.

Sandsfoot Castle
Ten to four in the afternoon,
Tuesday 30th October 2012

Have a good autumnal week.

(Or is it spring where you are?)

Tweet

You may also like my other blog

 - Message in a Milk Bottle

(a new photo every day)

BEWITCHED BY BLUE

Chicory Flowers

I could do nothing but post about chicory.

Here it grows up to about four foot high.

Hoverfly on Chicory Flower

I am not the only one who loves it.

Bee on Chicory Flower

Though my admiration does not extend to bathing in its pollen.

Willow Herb

There's a lot of blue and pink and purple around at the moment. The sky switches between blue and grey. If you look into sun-glare, it looks quite dramatic.

Except for leaves dropping from the tree in the autumn,
new ones arriving in sprin
and growing again through the summer,
this view stays much the same through the year.

This is looking up to where these plants grow.

I'm pretty much alone . . . but not quite . . . look behind me and a solitary herring gull swims away.

Tweet

WALKING INTO THE BLUE

There's a little path I like. It goes down to a little beach - and I often go there. You've been with me before. It takes about one and a half minutes to walk down and the same coming back - probably less- yet the undergrowth is so dense and varied, I could write a post a week about this one short stretch and there would still be more to see.

This is a little of what I saw on 17th November 2011.

At the top of the path - Chicory Flowers.

A few years ago, I complained to our local council that it cut back blackberry bushes when fruit was on them - and, at the same time, raised questions about the spring trim in relation to nesting birds. I don't claim it was my email alone which got it changed. Indeed, it may have had absolutely nothing to do with it but, since then, the autumn tidy has happened later - and they've just done it so only the shorter chicory plants are still standing. They've had a bit of a tough time this year because the spring trim happened immediately after the first were tall. They are one of my favourite plants so I was pleased when others grew to replace them. I will miss the tall white stems they would have left through the winter if they'd been left uncut but there's no point in a path if you can't walk along it!

Summer here lasts long - right into autumn. Here's a Viper's Bugloss plant. It too has been cut. It has to be done - but look it was still in flower when it fell!

Also at the top of the path - a small maple. (You'll know from previous posts that I'm no good at distinguishing trees in this group so you may say "No! It's a sycamore!" or . . .) (I hope you won't pop up and say no! It's rhubarb!)

The light is uncertain. It flickers between sun and no-sun. The sea is impressive whatever the weather but, since this post is called 'Walking into the Blue', let's choose a sunny moment.

It's evening in mid-November so the sun is low and there's a glare on the water. It's also the time of year when seaweed washes up in bunches.

Back up the path and, caught in the blackberries (you could cut them back for a million miles and we wouldn't run out of blackberries!)  . . . keys from the maple / sycamore / (or even rhubarb!).

Autumn.

Tweet

HOW NATURE CREEPS INTO ARCHITECTURE

Even if it hadn't rained, we would have visited Gloucester Cathedral. And the rain wasn't too bad that day, more like on and off drizzle, so we were able to visit parts of the town as well - but the cathedral cloisters caught my imagination beyond everything else. (If you've seen the Harry Potter film where Hermione fights a troll - you've seen them too - and I understand they were used as a set for one of the Doctor Who episodes.)

I walked round and round (or square and square!). There's a garden in the middle but you can't see it unless you go out through one of the small doors.

These cloisters are large and wide. Very beautiful, clearly very old - but not exactly material for a nature blog so it took me a while to decide whether I should include them.

So, once back here in Dorset, I went for a walk. And as I went, I thought. And as I thought, I took some photos. Then I came home, turned on the computer . . . and looked at them all, holiday and here.

Part of why I felt so at home in those cloisters was evident.

It's a very outside sort of place. I doubt it would always have been glazed - even though monks would have washed in the basins at the side. And there's a stone bench running around the inner walls. You could sit there and be cool, or cold . . . depending!

These cloisters were begun in 1351 and construction continued over the next . . . well, decades. Never mind Rome not being built in a day - some cathedrals took centuries to build. Durham, which we visited later in our journey, took four - and they hadn't stopped tinkering even then! We may have less reason to complain about having the builders in than we think. The building of buildings like these was part of life's fabric through generations of workers and couldn't but have had an impact on everyone who lived in the town and the lands around.

Looking up - fan vaulting - the earliest surviving. Some of it probably the first ever built.

But 'fan' vaulting . . .

This post is a struggle. I'm heavily dependent on the internet for information and, so far, I haven't been able to find who first thought of the name.

To me, the 'fans' look more like support structures of umbelliferous flowers

- and such flowers are not a silly place to find inspiration. In the middle ages when towns were smaller and the country always close at hand, for people interested in pattern and structure (architects!) plants like these could not have been other than fascinating. So, for me, this is fennel vaulting. Whether fennel had been introduced by then is beside the point. There would have been all sorts of umbelliferous plants in the gardens and hedgerows of Gloucester and beyond.

(This family of plants has now been renamed 'Apiaceae' but (to me) 'umbelliferous' describes them better. Think of prongs which hold up umbrellas.)

I once spent ages trying to find out how long roses had grown wild in Britain - and writing a post like this forces me, once again, to realise that the English countryside is not ever-unchanging.

I don't know whether chicory grew in its mediaeval hedgerows (I suspect not) but the flowers, though striking in their blueness, are not alone in their umbelliferousness. Look at the shape of the petals too - tall, with straight, parallel sides and a toothed edge at the top. Look at their simple circularity. Then look at the lines and shapes and circles of the cloister windows.

This is a shoddy post. It is dreadfully short of information even though my brain is bursting. That's why it's taken so long to write. I've been hoping to find time to check out the facts, fill in the gaps - but, in the end, I've decided I'd rather post something inadequate than to let Loose and Leafy grind to a halt while I swim through a sea of research . . . so . . . take this next bit with care.

I'm not an indoors kind of person. Well, I spend a lot of time indoors but indoors is not where I feel most at home. Yet these cloisters entranced me.

Here is a door.

And this is a familiar walk along our old railway line.

There will always have been routes through woods where the trees arch over. There will always have been bridges of some kind to walk under. Doors into . . . where . . . ? One catches one's breath.

And ever since I walked in these cloisters, I've been plodding around taking pictures of the spikey tops of leafless bushes - and chimney-scapes. Of telegraph poles and trees. And examining the way flat topped builidings don't seem to fit into our particular landscape as comfortably on the eye as those with sloped roofs and overhanging eaves. Is this because some reflect the shapes of oaks and mushrooms but others clearly don't? Do I like some buildings more than others because I begin from nature (in other words, is this is a matter of taste) or does architecture go wrong for everyone when it abandons the way things grow and form?

(I put it this way because buildings which suit a rocky country might well need to be more angular than those which 'fit' here.)

No way is this to do with simplicity. The cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral are far from unsophisticated structures. They didn't take a long time to build because workers were short of JCBs and tall, metal cranes. They were a radical innovation. A new design. Something people hadn't seen before.

If only we in the twenty-first century paid as much attention to ceilings!

Tweet