A WALK AS THE SHADOWS LENGTHEN

Psst! Tree Followers.
The next Link Box
is onMonday 7thJuly

Sometimes it's good to look for something particular for a post. Sometimes it's fun merely to walk out and do nothing more than see what's there.

Perhaps it would have been better not to go out just as the light was fading; when bright streaks crossed gathering shadows. But I did. I went for my walk when it was sunny in some places and shady in others. Impractical for photographs but a summary of the day within a minute. Some flowers wide awake and some getting ready for sleep.

This is a time to notice how reactive many flowers are.

It's the same in the morning. Sometimes I've gone out to photograph a particular flower. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. And there on the wrong side of the path is my plant - eyes shut and dozing. Dandelions and daisies are like that. Scarlet pimpernel too. Catch them at the wrong moment and you catch them shut.

When I went for my walk, buddleia had its head in the sunshine - above the shadows.
You can glimpse the horrid open flowers in the lower corner
while admiring the grace of the others.

I don't like buddleia flowers when they're fully open. They're gross. Repellent. In bud they're fine. When dead - interesting. Buds and dead are similar. In between they fatten up, go lumpy and have too many petals packed in tight and too close. And the centres of the little flowers that make up the big one are the wrong colour. Some clashes make my heart sing. These make me wince. I find them so ugly I can't even show you a plump and open lump. (I like their leaves and bark though. I never pretend to be objective!)

Caught in the grass, are the flowers of Common Knapweed (Centauria nigra). They are a bit like prickle-less little thistles - only they aren't prickly and the leaves are long and thin.

And right out in the sunshine, one of my very favouritest flowers - Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare). A shame it has such a terrible name! The flowers are interesting and vibrantly coloured. The seed pods are silver (when they come) and are covered in fine hairs that stick in your hands and hurt and are so thin and floppy they are difficult to get out. Ow! Very ow!

In front of the hedgerows, where the grass is short and coarse and rough after a council mowing, there are masses of white gossamer tents with tiny spiders inside.

With them, in each tent, is a creamy white, papery structure that looks like a wasp's nest in miniature - the egg sack they came from. For most of the time, the little spiders are spread around the tent. When disturbed, they hurry together into a pillar shape. I think they are Nursery-web Spiders (Pisaura mirabilis). Africa Gomez has information about them on her Bug Blog. (Do you know Bug Blog? Wonderful, clear photographs of insects and a commentary by someone who, unlike me!, really does know what she is talking about.)

I'll return and lurk every so often; find out how fast they grow. They've been growing slowly over the last couple of weeks; hardly perceptibly. Perhaps they'll accelerate? I'll look out for their mums standing guard. (I've not seen one yet.) I'll watch out for them leaving home and dispersing. (I expect they'll be there one day and gone the next. So I'll probably miss them Sigh!)

As well as following a tree - I'm now following spiders!

And on the way home, convolvulus trumpets close as shadows densen and fall across them. Elegance; with the white shining through the gloom much more brightly than the picture shows. Restful. Reassuring. Lovely.

The end of the walk.

* * *

All photos in this post were taken on the evening of 3rd July 2014.

A couple of new links on the Loose and Leafy 'Help with Identifying Things' page:
British Arachnological Society
Spider and Harvestmen Recording Scheme Website

* * *

Don't forget

the next date for our Tree Following updates

is 7th July.

Monday!

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P.S. I'd like to ask a favour. It would be helpful to know how many readers live in Dorset and the surrounding counties. That way I can get an idea of how much local information I can assume and how much I should make sure to add in. In order to gauge this, it would help me a lot if you would tick one of the location options where it says 'REACTIONS' below. The ticks are anonymous. The information is only as you see - numbers. But it might make Loose and Leafy (even!) better. (Perhaps you could leave a tick for each post you read. This won't go on for ever. Maybe four posts?)

COHABITING WITH TREES - TREE FOLLOWING - CHOOSING THE TREE

The leaves of this particular hawthorn tree open earlier than any other hawthorn nearby.
The white string-like thing is the remains of  last year's bindweed.

This photo was taken on 3rd February 2014.

A problem with choosing trees at this time of year is that, come high summer, some will be knee deep in undergrowth, shaded beneath bigger trees and covered in plants which use them as climbing frames. This, in itself is interesting. When following a tree, you as much find out what happens to it as what it, itself does.

I've always found this interesting. As the year goes by, my focus shifts from tree to plants growing by it. Then in autumn it reverts to the tree itself and the changes it undergoes - if it's deciduous its leaves will change colour and fall. If it's not - they won't! - though its seeds may. May!

In previous years of tree following, an initial flurry of posts can be followed by a gradual drifting away. Spring gets better cover even than summer, let alone winter. What happens? So it's good to think this out in advance. We can decide, now, if we wish, to see any tree as part of its environment; decide to appreciate the undergrowth which obscures it as much as the fruits which fall from it. After all, if trees were animals, we wouldn't think twice about examining their habitat. Or we can make sure to choose trees which will keep their trunks clear for most of the year.

Part of the fun can be in choosing randomly and finding out what will happen. Keeping an open mind. But a little detective work can offer good hints about what will happen in the year ahead. We can allow this to influence our choice if we want it to.

11th February 2014

A broken branch of a blackberry bramble cuts across this view of blackthorn.

Blackberry brambles don't go away in the winter. Their thorny branches stay put - as do many of their leaves. Brambles don't recede. They advance. They are vigorous. They are prickly. If you see your tree as a princess and you as a prince on the other side of thorns - ignore the presence of brambles.

Convolvulus (Bindweed) August 28th 2012

This is what convolvulus (bindweed) looks like when in flower.

This was growing on the fence of a school sports' field.

The problem with convolvulus is not just its vigour but it produces so many large leaves

they cover any sight of their host beneath - whether chain link or bramble or tree.

Some plants grow as well in the wild parts of town as they do in hedgerows.

Convolvulus is one of my favourite wild plants. If you are not familiar with it - think of a vigorous, very very vigorous, overwhelmingly vigorous Morning Glory in white. It's not called Bindweed for nothing. Its stems wind round and round everything they touch - grass, trees, even themselves. They are like rope. The flowers are fantastic - huge, huge (huge for a climate like ours in England) trumpets. Everything under convolvulus disappears. If your tree is under a pile of it you may find your centre of interest switches to which direction it twines in. Watch for its white strings still hanging from trees and bundled in undergrowth and decide accordingly. Where it was last year - it will return. (See the picture of the hawthorn tree at the top of the post.)

11th February 2014

If I follow this tree, I won't be able to get close to its trunk because of a steep bank and undergrowth.
But there is a wild rose nearby. I could include that in my study.

Then there are the insects. I've been looking at buddleia bushes and trees, wondering whether to choose one of these for 2014.

Their bark is fantastic - contorted and flaky. Their leaves come early. Their flowers stay late; and remain like dark, stiff fossils over winter. I don't specially like buddleia flowers - but butterflies do. What's more, butterflies seem to distinguish between one buddleia tree and another. Some years there seem to be hundreds of painted ladies on one while further along another is largely ignored. I don't know why. Maybe I should choose two and compare? Or I might chose a tree whose trunk is hard to get to close for the sake of seeing the insects I know will come and haunt branches overhanging the verge. Or I might chose a particular buddleia because the plants around it will be interesting. This one will have wild roses nearby. I could include them in my tree following.

(For more about Tree Following and how to join in - go to Loose and Leafy's Tree Following Page.)

* * *

Beth at Plantpostings has introduced her tree - a Shagbark Hickory.

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The next linky box for tree following posts will be on March 7th. After that, there will be a linky box on the 7th of every month. Each box will stay open for a week. That way, we will be able to compare the progress of 'our' trees through the year. If you too would like to follow a tree and your name is not yet on the list (see the Tree Following Page) - let me know either by leaving a comment or emailing me at looseandleafy@googlemail.com .

HAWS!

I knew it, I knew it. Come autumn, I'd lose balance. All is everything. Thistle down everywhere. New leaves, new flowers, popping up by surprise.

Ivy buds are silhouetting themselves against the skyline. They are making stars in the foreground. Christmas is already there in the hedgerows. Why wait for holly berries to ripen? We are blasted by haws.

One is always surprised by latecomers.
Don't know why.
There are always some - like these new hawthorn leaves. 

I couldn't choose between them.

We'll have have them all!

For this one - haws.

(The fruits of hawthorn.) 

Thistles will come.

(And a view to follow.)

I tire of summer.
I didn't discover spring till my camera revealed it.

But autumn?
Flowers and (the almost obligatory) hoverflies - and berries.

Autumn is where it's at.
And it's beginning!

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BEFORE THE POWER GAVE OUT

The only connection between these pictures is that the moment I left my house, the sun went in; and the moment I turned my camera on a little sign came up to say the battery was about to give out; so I rushed at it. What could I do before it rained (which it didn't - the sun shone as soon as I was back inside) and the camera went on strike?

Cur from the picture on the right.

Yellow flowers are always cheerful and almost irresistible to many flying insects!

This convolvulus pillar has fascinated me for months. If it were to flower, it would look spectacular but, so far, it has merely dangled from a hawthorn tree.

Speaking of trees - the elder tree I've been following is doing so little now so I'll watch blackberries ripen.

Overall - whenever you go outside, dull or sunny, summer or autumn (at present it's a bit of a mix) . . . there's always something to see.

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HERE COME THE OLYMPICS (IT'S SURPRISING WHAT YOU SEE BEYOND THE UNDERGROWTH!)

Do you know the story of Burglar Bill by Alan and Janet Ahlberg? When Burglar Bill goes into a house to steal, he takes more or less anything his eye falls on. "That's a nice toothbrush," he says. "I'll have that." As he dips in and out of other people's houses, liking the things he sees, he gathers up not only a toothbrush and a tin of beans but a box - with a baby inside. Never mind if you're seventy. You'll enjoy it.

Sometimes, when I go out with my camera, I have a similar approach. "That's a nice flower," I say to myself. "I think I'll have that!" Snap! Today, 'having that' turned up a surprising surprise.

Off I went.

That's a nice Convolvulus flower, I think I'll have that. Oh, look, there's an oak leaf, the ripening burrs of goose grass, blackberry leaves too.

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There's some nice Viper's Bugloss. I think I'll have that!

After all, it is the prettiest of flowers.

Plod, plod, plod. If the Council hadn't cut the verge when it did, there would have been lots. Never mind, here's a small crowd.

Here's a nice fly. I think I'll have that!

Here's a nice snail. I think I'll have that too!

Here are some nice flags . . . here are rather a lot of flags!

Beyond the Blackberries

I don't just take pictures of flowers, I like the colours and shapes of other things too. Boats and wires and sea and blackberry bushes and . . . flags!

I'm not an Olympic kind of person. The nearest I've got is to try, three times, to find out if the Olympic Torch will pass the Elderberry Bush we are following. Still not clear about this. It may . . . but, if it does, I think it might be in a van. Doesn't seem quite right - carting it about in a van. We'll see. Van . . .

Beyond the flowers of Rape Plants

. . . The Greek Olympic Sailing Team. (Above)

The Alexanders are going to seed . . . beyond them . . .

One of the German Olympic Sailing Team cars on the left.

And the Turkish Olympic Sailing Team are here too. (The white van.)

For a reason I can't explain, I can feel excitement rising. A row of flags. Vans and cars parked by the sea. Is it possible that the sight of these is making me look forward to it just a little?

The Olympians were visiting a local sailing club. The Sailing Academy, home base for the Sailing Olympics is over there, below the big lump of land which is Portland.

But Loose and Leafy is a nature blog so I'd probably better bung in . . . what's nice . . . Comfrey?

June 2nd

Yes, I think I'll have that!

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