ONE YELLOW FLOWER AND THE SOUND OF WIND AND SEA

In theory, I'd gone to look for a Stuck Foot Post. In practice I came back with nothing but one yellow flower.

I liked this flower so much I thought I'd give it a post of its own.

But I'd also taken a standing-still video for the sake of listening to the sea. Back home I noticed this yellow flower is part of 'the scene' and as it thus plays a supporting role decided to add the sound (and minimal movement) to the post.

The video was set to 'poor'; and as it was supposed to be for a Stuck Foot Post it's a bit wobbly towards the end - I couldn't twist as far as I'd hoped while keeping my feet glued to the path!

If you are receiving this post by email, 

you might need this link 

to view / listen to the video.

Hey ho!

The next link box for Stuck Foot Posts will be open between the 21st and 25th of September.

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THE RAGBAG

November 24th 2014

As you know, I'm distracted and busy so proper posts are somewhat adrift. But . . . well, do you have photos which start off stacked and ready to use but which drift down like half-used balls of wool in a knitting bag?

I do!

So for this post I'll rescue a recent few and bung them here.

First is the section of Dorset cliff which begins at West Bay and runs east towards Portland. It's where Chesil Beach begins (or ends, depending on which direction you're coming from). (So for all that these soft and golden and fast eroding cliffs are beautiful and impressive, look at at their feet.) For a while it runs along like an ordinary beach slam up against the shore but gradually and extraordinarily it drifts off into the sea, first leaving gaps and pools then peeling away completely leaving the Fleet Lagoon between it and the land. And as it goes East, the lagoon widens and the beach rises till it becomes a looming pile of up to fifty feet running parallel with the continuing cliffs and fields till it launches off on its own for a couple of miles then is stopped short by the very different grey stone cliffs of Portland. (Apologies for long sentence.)

Here at the beginning, the pebbles are really gravel. But if you were to follow the beach along you'd find the pebbles get bigger and bigger so by the time you arrived at Portland you would find not only that your legs would hurt horribly but the pebbles would now be flattish and smooth and many colours - pink and brown and grey. Most of them would be about the size to rest comfortably on the curved palm of your hand.

I don't think it's possible to explain anything of what this is all like. You have to see Chesil Beach to make sense of - and even then it's pretty hard to grasp and even when I see it every day I never fail to find it extraordinary.

There are so many extraordinary things to wonder at; things which go beyond the merely geographical - like what is that man doing on top of the cliff?

He was there quite a while. Is he practising golf strokes? Is he? And, if so, why there? . . .

Now we'll flit to the New Forest in Hampshire. Whenever I mention the New Forest I need to make it clear this is a very old forest. (Developed from pre-existing woodland in 1079) And here is a very old tree beside the village of Fritham. And on the very old tree there is lichen. Indeed, the tree seems to be plastered in lichen . . . and moss . . . and I wish I had had time there to look at it properly while I was there. But I didn't. It was a 'Hang on can you wait a minute while I take a picture,' sort of moment. Snap. Snap. And we were away. Hurray for cameras that's what I say! In a sense I was able to bring the tree back home with me to look at it here.

December 17th 2014

November 1st 2014 - but fairly confident ragwort will be flowering there still in December.

And a third extraordinary. I don't know when autumn ends and winter begins. Whichever it is, it's not still summer. But some flowers flower and flower. And some flowers, like this Oxford Ragwort like to flower in extraordinary places. In Poole, Ragwort has taken a shine to the railway. This plant is growing through the zig-zag slats there to dissuade pedestrians on a level crossing from veering off down the tracks. And it hasn't noticed it's season is over. It's carrying the Ragwort banner, ploughing on well after its companions have died down.

Closer to home, out of an urban setting, nearly always there will be an Oxford Ragwort plant flowering in winter. Personality!

Ain't nature wonderful!

Related Posts

CHESIL BEACH

Nothing But Stones

Thrift on Chesil Beach

NEW FOREST

Redwood Trees in the New Forest

On My Other Blog - Message in a Milk Bottle

The same beginning but with Portland in the distance.

External Links

Chesil Beach on Wikipedia

Chesil Beach - lots of info. provided as advert by commercial company specialising in measuring underwater noise.

The New Forest on Wikipedia

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A BEWILDERMENT IN (at least) TWO PARTS

The ivy I'm examining is on this old elderberry tree.
We could equally well be examining the lichen on it or the insects boring holes in the trunk.

Remember I'm always saying I don't know anything? It's (almost) true. But there's a possibility (maybe a niggling hope) that one day I'll learn. I don't mind this much. Indeed I revel in it. One can get bogged down in facts.

I'm grateful that those who make medicines or collect mushrooms know what's what. I would never try either. The pleasure of ignorance has its limits! I buy veg. from an organic veg. supplier (you can see their emblem in the side-bar) and the only medicine I'm ever likely to concoct is honey with lemon to sooth sore throats. (Not that this works. Sugar makes me cough.)

Here you can see the little roots which attach ivy stems to trees.

This not-knowing is fine. It's what this blog is based on - the joy of looking, the joy of awe.

BUT I find it really frustrating is when I know I CAN'T understand something however hard I try. When it's as far beyond me as any of the subjects I failed at at school. A mystery that slips through my fingers. I look around and see others busily solving the problem but I don't know where to start. The issue is a sort of blob with no obvious entry point.

Here you can see the marks ivy roots have made in the wood of the elderberry before being
pulled away.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time peering into flowers trying to see how they change into fruit or seeds. The theory is ok - mixture of pollens. But then what happens?

And if the flower doesn't look like a flower?

Ivy flowers don't look like flowers. They look like clusters of berries. If proper botanists are jumping up and down saying 'of course they look like flowers!' - I'm not the only one who's puzzled. Of those who've stopped to ask what I'm taking photos of not one person yet has realised ivy even has flowers, let alone that ivy flowers in autumn. And because ivy only flowers when it's a mature plant and on the sunny side of it and when the ivy leaves no longer look like ivy leaves . . . sometimes one has to start by persuading them it is it really is ivy we're looking at.

A ball shaped cluster of ivy flower buds just beginning to open.
I promise you that when they do they won't look ordinary flowers.

Ivy flowers are grouped in balls.
I think the little yellow blobs are anthers
emerging from the flower before the (green)
petals open.
(It's only because I've already seen what happens next
that I can say this.)

The language we use about flowers sometimes bewilders me; at times it gives the impression that plants make conscious decisions about their appearance.

'Plants use their bright petals to attract insects. 

'Ivy doesn't need brightly coloured petals to attract insects because it's one of the few plants flowering in autumn when there's little competition for the attention of pollinating insects.'

All very well. But where are its petals?

(I plan to show you where they are next time.)

This year, I think I'm getting a bit further with seeing what's what but there are loads of things I still haven't grasped yet. Can you help me?

1. What does it mean that mature ivy is free standing and doesn't have roots'?

The Natural History Museum site says about ivy

'When the plant reaches maturity it produces rootless, self-supporting stems with unlobed leaves.'

Do I dare find a remote tree with ivy and dig it up (the ivy that is!) when no-one's looking to find out what's happening under ground?

Maybe you have some ivy you don't mind tearing out? (Not pulling down but pulling up.) Then you could tell us what you see . . . ? Please?

2. How does pollination in one place cause fruit in another?

Here's my problem.

Flowers have stamens (little sticks poking up from the flower) and on the end of the stamens are little blobs (anthers) and on the anthers there's pollen (which looks like coloured dust). When the pollen is moved from one anther to another (sometimes on the same plant, sometimes from a different one) it fertilises the flower and it produces fruit. But how? The fertilisation happens on the end of the stamens. You don't get fruits there - you get them lower down where the petals are joined onto the stems. (If they have stems - dum-de-dum!) So how can that be? Fertilisation in one place. Fruit in another.

3. Does Ivy need insects to bring pollen from other ivy plants in order to produce fruit or does it work equally well with all the pollen coming from the same plant?

There's no way I'll be able to tell simply by observing. I need someone to tell me.

_____

It's going to take several posts to get to grips with all this. My observations and your input may mean that what I tell you as wobbly 'facts' may have to be changed as we go along.

Help me out folks? Please look at your ivy. Botanists - tell me (please) when I'm wrong - and the answers to things no-one could know without a microscope. (Anyone got a microscope?)

Already the flowers have changed since I took the pictures for this post. Already I'm accumulating photographs of the insects drawn to their pollen. It'll be a marathon catch up when we get to it.

If you are in the UK - find an ivy plant in flower and walk up close. There are likely to be masses of interesting flies hanging out there at present. Hoverflies are my favourite but there are likely to be loads of others too.

If you are outside the UK - do you have this kind of ivy (Hedera helix) where you live?

(Not 'Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) - that's different.)

* * *

Readers Coming to the Rescue!

Wa -hey! This is brilliant. On her blog 'Close to Home' Jane Strong has written a post about ivy in response to these very questions! 'Ivy for Lucy'. Thanks Jane. Much appreciated.

Hollis explains flower fertilisation thus:
'Fertilization requires that pollen be transferred to the FEMALE organ, the pistil (not to another anther). Hopefully it ends up on a stigma and then a pollen tube grows down to the ovary where the ovules reside; fertilization takes place if all goes well. That's the basic story but of course it's a bit more complicated -- more here:
Fertilisation in Plants (Wikipedia)'

Here's what Amanda says:

'Hi Loose have been having a go at answering your questions, there seems to be two camps on Ivy.. Pull it down or save it for the bees. 

Ivy can take many years to mature but when it dose it shifts to forming mature branches that produce fruit. There are two types of roots, vine roots when they touch the ground they grow in to the ground ( could this be the bare roots you mention) and aerial roots that help it climb "trees".
Have found this post on Pollination which is a good read.
http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/104/7/1397
and this paper as well.

Pollinator Effectiveness and Fruit set in Common Ivy (Hedera helix (Araliaceae)Hope these help a little.

* * *

You might also like to read the post about ivy on 'Urban Pollinators'.

* * *

It's TREE FOLLOWING in less than a week (7th November) so the next ivy post will be after that.

> > > > > > >

TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX ON THE 7th NOVEMBER - TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX ON THE 7th NOVEMBER - TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX ON THE 7th NOVEMBER - TREE FOLLOWING LINK BOX ON THE 7th NOVEMBER

P.S. Photographs on this blog were taken on the 24th and the 28th of October 2014.

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A WALK BY THE SEA IN AUTUMN

If you are looking for the Tree Following

 Link Box for October, click here.

Usually I show you plants. I'm going to show you plants now.

Usually the pictures are silent. You don't know what I hear. What you may not realise is that in one of my favourite spots for plants, if I pop up below hedge level the sea is what I see. Often it's silent because this bit of sea is contained within a massive harbour. But today it was noisy. So were the birds. But the birds were boring. They were taking it in turns to sing or croak or caw. There were Dunnocks. (Pretty.) I think there were Robins. (The best singers of all.) There were magpies squabbling and crows shouting randomly in what they may have thought was a chorus. So I decided that in terms of a sound-scape the sea was best of all. After a couple of minutes of magpies I want to ask in an irritated way if that's all they have to say. Click, click, shriek, click. But I never tire of the sea.

Here, then is a sound track to go with the pictures. I'll not say much about the plants in thm. They're the kind you are familiar with on Loose and Leafy. So I'll leave you to listen to the sea while you scroll down the page. If you don't have the kind of computer which can cope with video clips I apologise. You'll have to imagine a gentle but persistent hum rising and falling with the wind interfering every now and then.

This is one of those plants one forgets what they are once the flowers have gone. At least I do. I find white umbeliferous plants hard to identify even in the summer.

(To see what this seed head looked like in September, click here. You'll see some seeds are still hanging on.)

Haws are falling.

Quite a lot of them are still on the trees. They are crinkling up and going brown and waggling around on their branches because they are camera shy and the wind is rising.

The round things are ivy flowers. Another mystery.

Lichen which is orange (I'd say yellow but it's called Common Orange Lichen - Xanthoria parietina) is changing to green as it gets wet in the rain and general autumn dampness. When the weather is dry, it reverts to yellow. If you look carefully you'll see the lichen on the upper part of the branch is greener than the lower part. In the summer all of this was a mixture of bright orange and yellow. (Here's a picture I took of the same lichen on a nearby branch on a dry day in January last year.)

Do I understand what lichen is? No. To me it's a science fiction creature (I say this every time because I don't get much further forward it's sort of unbelievable - a combination of algae and fungus. When it's damp the algae element (green) shows through the fungal element which contains a chemical (xanthorin) which protects it against the UV rays in sunshine. 

This is what flowers come to!

Blackberries are falling, leaving brown whirls behind. They look rubbish from a distance but are beautiful close to. (You might want to click the picture to enlarge it.)

And on the way home, out of the way of the sea, the sycamore in a drain we've been following for the last couple of years. It looks a bit tatty but autumn hasn't reached underground just yet.

* * *

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Xantharia parietina on Nature Spot

Xanthoria parietina on Wikipedia (if you're in the mood for really, really concentrating).

TREE FOLLOWING BOX for OCTOBER

Buddleia flowers are dying.
Many of these skeletons will hang from their trees all winter.

September 24th 2014 

This is about the daftess thing ever. How could I not realise the 7th was so close?

I woke up this morning, pottered around making tea and watching the news on the television.  I looked out at the day. Murky at first but brightening. Maybe for the first time in ages I'd take pictures of my tree in sunlight instead of dingy-about-to-rain-ness ready for tomorrow's Tree Following. First though I'd check emails.

In the bottom right of my screen is a little calendar.

It says it's the 7th.

So I'm springing into embarrassed action. Here's the rushed link box - accompanied as yet by no introductory text or pictures or anything except panic.

Will vamp it up later.

Million apologies!

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Links to October Tree Following Posts

Message From a Tree Follower

Linda of Linda's Wildlife Garden has sent a message to let us know she is not posting about her apple trees this month. She is being evicted from her home and is too busy house hunting to blog. With a family of Linda, her husband and her three dogs this is not an easy task. Best wishes Linda. May you find somewhere soon.

More about Tree Following on the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page

THE EVER UNCHANGINGNESS OF TREES

As we approach autumn the posts of other Tree Followers are filled with the excitement of change. Some trees already have a lot of colour in their about-to-fall leaves. Others are green still for all that they are tatty and marked by dust and insects.

This is because everyone except me has chosen a tree that does things - that perceptibly changes. Of course, my tree does change. There will be new needles, new little cones high up there. But I'd need powerful binoculars to see them. What I have to observe is a trunk.

In many ways it was a silly choice. But I've been following one tree after another for several years and I wanted a challenge. The challenge, in some ways, has turned out to be as challenging as cataloguing the gradual decay of a concrete post. Or faint scratches arriving over time in the paintwork of a shiny car.

You might expect me to say how if one pays special attention changes come to notice which one would otherwise miss. And this is what I had expected. At the very least, I anticipated insects. I think I've seen one spider. Last month I found a seed on a white umbrella caught in a thread of web across the rough bark of 'my' tree. It's still there! Still there! Wind and rain have failed to shift it. There it is, just where last I saw it. How can that be?

And the tree still weeps. For the sake of variety I photographed a different drip this time. If you enlarge the picture and look closely you'll see it reflecting the roofs of houses nearby and another tree.

One of the troubles with going back and back to observe change is that when change seems to have happened it's not necessarily easy to know if it's genuinely changed or that something which was there before got missed. Maybe it's a lapse of attention. Maybe it's a trick of the light. But this time I found another kind of drip. A black shiny, tarry kind of leakage.

(See below.)

If I visited the tree daily, maybe I'd notice which bits of bark have flaked newly away. The flaky-ness of the bark, the multi-layered-ness of it is what keeps me going back - what kept me going to see it before I chose it as 'my' tree for this year. It doesn't have the colour of Yew bark but the textures are phenomenal.

Here is a base cleff!

And at the base of the trunk on one side, little swirly things. (Very scientific!)

iSpot members have identified this plant as Bristly Oxtongue. (Pichris echeoides).
Isn't that wonderful?

At ground level, a few of these sticking up through docks. Pretty, eh? But ephemeral.

For all that I semi-wish my chosen tree was about to have an autumn, I appreciate its decaying solidity. There's something very special about the unchangingness of my chosen tree.

This post is sponsored by Buy Trees Online

I'm Following a Tree.
Click the tree to find out more.

Trees don't know the names of months.

There's never a 'right' or 'wrong' time to

start following the life of a tree.

Don't wait till next year!

If you'd like to join us, chose a tree

and become a Tree Follower right now!

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CHEATING

I know this is cheating. I know this isn't a proper post. But I've fallen in love with a fly.

A little less than a centimetre long. Photo taken September 2nd 2014

I don't know what kind it is. Just that he (he?) is the pantomime villain. Pure evil to be hissed at and hated and applauded and wanted-to-see-agained. The star of the show. What character!

It's the great thing about cameras. If I hadn't taken this photo, if I hadn't cropped it and enlarged it almost to extinction, I wouldn't have noticed his stand up prickles and strange feet. All I would have remembered would have been his big brown eyes.

Dear Fly,

If you are a 'she' I apologise. But I doubt you noticed me or observed me long enough to register my gender.

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MY STUCK FOOT POST FOR AUGUST

You might like to click the picture to see the teasel in the foreground close up.

This is all a rush. Very silly. I dashed out to choose a place for a Stuck Foot Post.

Nettles with their flowers silhouetted against gathering clouds.

I thought I might go to the sea and find sand and shells and seaweed and driftwood and all sorts of plants and objects. It was going to be very interesting and artistic - and we haven't been to the sea for a while. Erosion and cliff falls have seen to that.

But the moment I set out the weather began to glower. I had to choose somewhere to put my feet fast.

I saw some teasels in flower and stopped. I like the sea but I like teasels too.

This little flower was a bit pinker than it looks in the picture.

I grabbed some snaps and hurried home before the rain started.

Initially, I took this to be the flower of the Common Mallow - Malva sylvestris. But I was wrong. It's a Cranesbill. (But of what kind?)  I can never get these two straight! 

Brambles, brambles everywhere!

Blackberries are ripening. Some look deceptively tasty. They aren't yet sweet enough to eat - but there are lots of them this year.

These blackberry flowers were tucked under the hedge.

And when I got home? The rain came in a great squirt - as if someone had turned a hose on and was directing it directly at the windows while throwing pebbles at the same time. It didn't last long - but I'm glad I didn't go to the beach.

The idea of a Stuck Foot Post 

is that you choose a place and put your foot there.

Any old place will do.

You can choose it because it's familiar and you want to know it in more detail.

Or you can choose it at random.

Then you see what you can see.
Without moving your feet. Not once. Not even slightly!

There will be a Stuck Foot Post link box open for a week on Loose and Leafy -

starting on Thursday 31st August.

If you'd like to know more - there's a Page for Stuck Footers

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THRIFT ON CHESIL BEACH

Sea Beet  (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima) (I think!)
The white flowers beside it are Sea Campion. (Silene uniflora)

June 1st 2014

Let me first remind you of the context.

(We began this exploration in the last post - Nothing But Stones.)

A sea of stones between sea-and sea.

Where somehow, some plants grow.

Not many. And only on the lower levels. But they do grow.

This Sea Beet plant plant in the picture above is about two feet across.

The focus of this post though is Thrift (Armeria maritima).

Thrift - Ameria maritima. June 1st 2-14

In the foreground, Thrift. Further back - green patches where plants also grow. These in the picture are several feet across but some little islands of green are only twelve inches. Even in these small circles there are Thrift flowers in May.

For an idea of scale - the dots are people climbing to the top of the beach.

A sea of Thrift with the cliffs of Portland beyond. May 6th 2014

In the winter months of early 2014, this part of the world was specially storm tossed. Not only did great waves come over the top of the beach but tides came up higher than usual. The road that runs beside this part of Chesil Beach had to be closed from time to time because it was flooded.



The extraordinaryness of this is hard to explain if you've never been here. And if you have . . . it is probably even harder to understand. For when you see where the sea is meant to be, it is . . . well it's terribly hard to believe that it can have come so far over its usual bounds. But come it did - up and over from one side and in on the tide from the other. So, to my mind, it's not only extraordinary that Thrift can make a mat for itself (along with other sea plants . . . and the odd dandelion that gets in on the act) and grow among pebbles, it's astonishing that it can make such an incredible display where everything has been thoroughly salt-soaked and under water.

May 6th 2014

Here is an individual flower. For those of you who have not met Thrift in person - they look very much like chive flowers. They stand five or six inches high. Their leaves are a mat of spikes; barely distinguishable from mown or cropped grass.

May 12th 2014

This incredible flowering began in late April and has continued right through May.

Now we are at the beginning of June the great expanse of colour has gone, even though there are still many blooms.

Spent Thrift. June 1st 2014.
(Ignore the green furry thing on the left. That's something else.)

But even dying flowers are lovely. And soon there will be seeds.

These Thrift flowers were growing on the other side of the road - next to Portland Harbour.
The ground there is dry, hard earth rather than pebbles. May 14th 2014

Then, next year. It will all happen again. (Though 2014 has, I think, been a specially spectacular year.)

Notes.

Here is the RHS page about Thrift. The description there suggests Thrift will grow almost anywhere - but . . . does it?

If you look at the top left hand side of the picture with the cliffs of Portland, you'll see a cluster of white buildings. This video clip from February shows the sea coming over the beach where they are. (At the very beginning of the clip. After that it's beer barrels and things floating around in the flood.)

Our World Tuesday

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IF IT'S NOT ONE THING, IT'S ANOTHER

Thorncombe Woods, Dorset. April 13th 2014
Not autumn - but spring!
We'll come back to the mosses, fungi and lichens another day.

So many Tree Following posts! So many comments! It's good to see the conversations:

trees of the same kind are leafing at different times - sometimes within the same garden - why?

was Venice built on alder?

is ivy inevitably bad for a tree?

are hawthorn leaves and buds really as tasty as bread and butter?

New words - is your tree monoicous or dioicous? (Here's the Wikipedia link.)

April, for many trees, will be a month of particular change. By May - will all the snow have melted? Will blossoms have come and gone? Will southern leaves have fallen? How many bees will we have seen?

The next Tree Following link box will open at 7am (UK) time on 7th May and close 7pm (UK time) on the 14th.

* * *

New Forest, Hampshire.
April 17th 2014

Since the last post I've been pottering around Thorncombe Woods in Dorset and The New Forest in Hampshire - enjoying the mosses and lichens and fungi and flowers and insects . . . and (apart from a few familiar flowers) not knowing what any of them are. Some will appear in later posts - whether identified properly or not!

SLOWLY OUT OF THE WOODS AND INTO THE LIGHT

In the meantime, I keep finding myself looking at things other than what I've set out to find.

Hawthorn Trunk - April 13th 2014

I was planning to photograph bluebells in their variety - blue, white, pink, 'native' and Spanish - but found myself looking at the bark of a hawthorn tree instead

Snail on Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) - April 13th 2014

which reminded me of the shell of an ordinary snail

Aprill 11th 2014 - See the pollen sack?

and while I was looking at snails, a bee came by

I've been trying to understand how a bee puts pollen in its sack - I think it's like this . . . With its front legs it churns pollen into the air so it lands on the hairs of its back. It then licks the feet on its middle legs to make them a bit sticky, picks up the pollen with them and pops it into the sack which is attached to its back leg. Its back leg works as a pollen press, bending to squash the pollen tight so it's delivered back to the hive in the form of compressed pellets.

Bee experts - please mark my homework! Is this a right description?

April 15th 2014

Another snail

(do you see it on the Red Valerian (Centranthus ruber)) . . .

Holly Blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus) - April 15th 2014

and near this other snail there's a Holly Blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus) on an Alexanders plant

and not far from the butterfly, caterpillars of the Brown Tail Moth (Euproctis chrysorrhoea) recently emerged from their gossamer tent and sitting around on brambles.

Which is where things go wrong. I never delete anything from my camera; ever; in case I delete something I don't want to delete. I'm good at mistakes. But videos take a lot of space, both on the card and on my laptop so . . . having taken several videos of caterpillars going in and out of their nest, and deciding one was so interesting I kept watching it over and over . . . and having decided it was so interesting and so clear and the camera held so steady I couldn't possibly want any of the other tries - I deleted it. I suppose there's virtue in consistency. Hey ho. Never mind.

So here's what remains -  a caterpillar pottering around in the remains of its nest. (April 16th 2014)

If it's not a bluebell, it might be bark; if it's not bark, it's a snail; if it's not a snail, it's a bee; if it's not a bee, it's a flower; if it's not a flower, it's a butterfly; if it's not a butterfly, it's a moth . . . or a twig . . . or a - there's always something to see!

* * *

Links

Identify Your Bluebells (Natural History Museum - take a look in the sidebar of that page for more bluebell info.

Identify Snails (UK)  (Bug Blog)
Key To Snails Which Live in and Around Bristol! 

Identify Gastropods (USA)  (The ID Tools site may be very useful to readers in the USA - and can be fascinating for those of us who live elsewhere too.)

Brown Tail Moths - This Wikipedia entry is interesting on two scores. (Probably more but there are two which stand out for me.) First - it shows what the moth itself looks like (very pretty) and says to look out for it in July and August. Second - it shows the impact the hairs of the caterpillar have on human skin. Which leads to the question - why did the woman in the picture have caterpillars wandering around on her neck? 

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