A WALK IN MAY (YES, UNFORTUNATELY, MAY!)

Dandelion seeds don't get enough attention.

This is significantly maddening.

For ages it was my laptop. Eventually, I bought a new one. Then, on 20th May, my camera stopped. It's away to be mended but in the meantime . . . no new photos.

However, some things, within a broad season, don't change and although I took this photo on the 17th May - other dandelions are in a similar phase.

At this point . . . there were more pictures . . . but I've taken them away. I like the dandelion. It can stand alone.

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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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I THINK WE'LL HAVE SOMETHING PRETTY

I expect it happens to you. You are pottering along and something catches your eye. So you take its picture. You potter further, begin a project and it starts to rain. You notice this. You snap at that. It's all beautiful but it doesn't amount to a post.

But these are memories which can't be lost. The world wasn't created blog-sized. It's both bigger and smaller than that; bigger and smaller than anything that can be expressed.

So this post is a bundle of pretty things.

First up a Passion Flower.

Where I live, passion flowers are not wild plants but this one has bunged its way through a fence, tangled itself with burdock, bramble and teasel - escaped! There are other plants round here which have done the same thing - honeysuckle, crocosmia, Spanish bluebells.

Next up, a Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus). I'm so bowled over by its wings I have this little creature as my desktop picture.

Clicking to enlarge recommended!

And it's very little - a little less than a centimetre and ever so thin. Much thinner than, say, the Batman Hoverfly (Myathropa florea) or the bright and substantial Eristalis tenax. (While I'm going on about hoverflies - remember this one a Sphaerophoria scripta? - Oddly long instead of strangely small and thin.) (The usual caveat - I don't know what I'm talking about and rely heavily on fellow iSpot members for IDs.)

The trouble with the picture above though is that it obscures the white in the stripes. Here's the same little creature prancing around on the same flower. Because it's moving, the picture of it is blurred. But I like its elegance as well as its stripes.

And now to the beach where the sea has been chucking up red seaweeds.

There's a kind you can find here and hardly anywhere else in the UK. It's called 'Solieria's Red String Weed'. Isn't that a wonderful name? (Solieria chordalis.) When I first came across it in a book I misread it and for ages thought it was called 'Soldier's Red String Weed' and constructed a complete image of a soldier tying his boots with red laces.

I'd quite like to find out this is what this one is - but it's more likely to be Gracilaria bursa-pastoris. (It's amazing how wise one can seem when spouting Latin possibilities.)

So we'll finish with the prosaic. Sticking up above the brambles and framed by ivy is a dead branch of . . . oh! bother! What is it a dead branch of? Elderberry? It's got lichen on it, whatever it is.

Isn't ignorance wonderful?

The less you know, the more possibilities there are.

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Do you know my other blog, 'Message in a Milk Bottle'?
A photo a day. Mostly plants and trees but not exclusively so.
And you can have the pictures sent directly to your inbox if you wish.
How's that for a bargain?

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).

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!

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SLICING THE TREE - TREE FOLLOWING FOR AUGUST

Across the road from the tree I'm following there's a diminishing number of similar ones. One by one they are being felled. It's been going on for a while and I thought I knew which would be the next to go. Its needles are brown on the tree.

I was wrong. Another has gone. Given that all the the trees in the group are a bit tatty it's clear they will all be cut down in the end. But the latest to vanish seemed the healthiest of the lot. I've photographed it more than the others. I'd thought it would outlast the one I'm following.

You know the resin that weeps in golden droplets from the trunk and collects in lumps and hardens and solidifies white and brown - like an unsightly lava flow that's been brought to a cold stop? I've found out what it does to the inside of the tree.

Here is the edge of the stump of the recently chopped tree - a tree of the same kind as the one we're following. On the right is the remains of an ivy which was almost part of the tree. It's about three inches across. On the left is the red wood of the felled tree. In between . . . grey and white. This seems to be an internal collection of resin. It's hard. If you came across it away from the tree you might, at first, think the white is some kind of quartz. Maybe this internal bleeding and setting is what's killing the trees? The work of the bark is being interrupted. Does anyone know?

Back to the individual we are following. Needles are collecting in the fork of the trunk.

A cone has fallen to ground and broken open.

The grass has been cut. The plants which grew in it have gone. We've had little rain. There was an outburst for a couple of hours a few days ago but it's done little or nothing to dampen the ground under the tree.

Its exposed root stays bare.

What a brown post!

One little bramble is all that grows.

I'm Following A Tree
Are you?
For more information
click
HERE
#treefollowing

I hope your trees show a little more green!

The Link Box for Tree Following Posts

Opens at 7am UK time on 7th August

and will close at 7pm on the 14th

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A WALK AT THE END OF WINTER

Peeping between trees in annoying rain.

For all that we are trying to celebrate spring, for all that blogs are full of hellebores and hopes of blossom, I feel we are straining at the leash. We aren't there yet. Daffodils may be nearly over but they flowered in late winter rather than in spring. There may be primroses on the hedgerow banks but they are like little beacons of what's to come. Birds may be noisier than they have been over winter but they aren't in full voice yet. Not here they aren't. Indeed, the mornings seem to be getting darker. Perhaps we will be skipping summer this year. The trees won't properly open their leaves or bother with autumn.

Plants, trees and creatures may have been knocked back by unusually strong winds and wet weather. I don't think it's the same all over the country. 

Horsetails - Equisetum arvens

Even only a few miles away from the sea I came across a bank of horsetails more advanced than I've ever found them here. And it's bound to be subjective too. Even if everyone else smells spring in the air - I don't. To me, it's still late winter. The light is almost consistently dull. Rain un-refreshing. The ground cold.

The pictures in this post are from last week - when beetles unexpectedly took over the blog. Nature can move fast at this time of year and has moved on a little since then. But I wouldn't want those of you who live in cities or in other parts of the world to miss out on this last fling of cold weather in the English countryside. But I do hope it will be the last of the dull-light posts. Or second to last! I've been to visit my tree-following tree - and, guess what? The sky was overcast. You'll see pictures of it on the 7th - which is the day after tomorrow - Monday

Are you too ready with your tree-following posts? I'm hoping the link box will come up of its own accord at 7 in the morning UK time. Scheduling can sometimes go wrong so, if it doesn't appear straight away, don't worry. I'll be hot on its heels to put it in manually.

March 25th 2014

Snails in this tree, partially protected by thick ivy stems, still seem to think it's winter.

Posts about Horsetails closer to the sea. You can tell by the dates they grow later here.

April 25th 2013

May 2nd 2011

AND REMEMBER!

I'm a Tree Follower

ARE YOU?

It's not too late to join us in following the progress of individual trees through the year - garden trees, park trees, hedgerow trees, wild trees.

Let me know if you'd like to be added to the list of tree-followers and put a link to your tree following posts in the link box here on Loose and Leafy on the 7th of every month. (Nobody is obliged to post about their tree every month but the more you post, the more we know - it's in your hands.)

SEE YOU ON THE 7TH!

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THE END OF A TREE-FILLED WEEK

Tree at the end of a day. I think it's an Ash.
Time (in the way of flowers and leaves) will tell.
The photograph was taken on March 13th.
The blur in the lower part of the picture is mist over the sea.

Well, folks. Didn't we do well? Aren't we all inspired by the number of Tree Followers this year? Have you noticed how infectious the enthusiasm has been? And what about the quality of Tree Following posts? Aren't they good?

The March Link Box is now closing. It will remain as a route to Tree Following posts but won't accept any more URLs.

A new one will be opening on 7th April as near to 7am (UK time) as I can make it. This too will be open for 7 days so there's plenty of time in which to get to know our trees before we meet again as a virtual group and compare notes.

About dates . . . Some people have chosen to look at their tree on 7th of every month - a snapshot of change. But for most of us . . . we will be watching to see what happens as it happens. Many, if not most, participants live in regions where spring is 'doing things' to our trees just now. There will be new leaves and blossom.You may want to post about your tree more than once. If birds are building a nest in it - you'll probably want to share this with your readers straight away. Great! When it comes to the 7th April perhaps you will be able to give a link leading to an index of all your observations?; a view of the month passing. Don't feel you have to do more than you want. But don't feel limited either!

A couple of practical points.

One of the debates on the Tree Following posts has been over the impact of ivy on trees.
This ivy is on an elderberry tree. Photograph taken February 12th 2014

As you will see on the Tree Following page, I've offered to make space for Tree Followers who don't have blogs. One reader has sent photos and text so I'll be working out how to present these in the next few days. So . . . if there are other blog-less readers who would like to take part like this, please send your material as soon as you can.

And if you haven't yet joined the Tree Following project, it isn't too late. It will never be too late. You can start at any time of the year. Just choose your tree, email me at

looseandleafy@googlemail.com

. . . . . post about it and . . . away you go! There's more information on the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

.

I'm a Tree Follower

(Are you?)

Click here to read all 56 Tree Following posts in the March Link Box.

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ELDERBERRY - TREE FOLLOWING

The Elderberry tree I may switch to.           Februay 11th 2014

I first began following 'my' hedgerow elderberry tree in December 2008. In theory, I later moved on to a sycamore (about which more in another post). In practice, I've never left it.

This was before I ever thought others might want to do something similar and, with what may seem an odd sort of precision, I didn't follow the tree so much as a point on it where several leaf buds were forming - just that one place. Before long, it was impossible to see it. In the autumn, when the tree shed its leaves, there it was again. In the meantime, I was following something almost invisible and in shade. So I switched to another leaf bud on another tree in the same little group - which was also often in shade and produced the smallest leaves on the whole tree. The next year, the leaves there were a bit bigger. Then the branch broke off. Hmm.

Ivy berries on the original elderberry tree.
February 13th 2014

And, over this time, I found myself more hooked on the ivy that is gradually taking it over than the tree itself. Ivy, it turns out, is absolutely gripping. Its flowers have no petals. In the autumn they look like fireworks. Hoverflies can't leave them alone. The berries change from green to brown to black - then they drop seeds. How many of us have thought to look for ivy seeds? Sometimes, when my head is in a bush, people stop and ask me what I'm looking at. If it's a butterfly they are pleased. If it's a hole in a leaf, less so. If it's ivy flowers - they are stunned. Hardly anyone, it seems, has ever thought to look out for ivy flowers. That they don't even look like flowers adds to the . . . well, it's like being in a detective story.

And I've been hooked by the lichen on it too - lichen which is sometimes orange and sometimes yellow and sometimes green - depending on the weather.

Because there is more light around the new elderberry,
I'd be following 'new' plants beneath it too.   Feb. 16th 2014

Meanwhile, the elderberry itself goes under-observed. So, this year, I'm thinking I might 'do' elderberry again - but a tree which is better lit and less ivy clad. With this tree, we may have more of a chance of seeing flowers before they are lopped off by the machines which the council sends to keep branches back from the path. Of course, branches may fall off of their own accord. This is not a new and supple tree. But we've had such strong winds recently and this tree is so very exposed, I'm hoping anything naturally loose will already have fallen off.

We'd see the flowers.

We'd see the berries.

Lichen and leaf shoots on the 'new' elderberry tree.           February 16th 2014

Not that I'll be able to resist the lichen.

We'll see.

* * *

To find out about tree following, read the first post in this series. Holm Oak - Quercus ilex - Tree Following.

If you too will be following a tree this year, do add your name and blog into the linky box below. At the moment, we're simply building a list of people taking part. (For the growing list - see the Tree Following page at the top of the blog.)

If you have already added your name to the list and now have a tree-following post to announce - use the linky for that too. Come the beginning of March, we'll have a formal tape-cutting post. After that, we'll have a linky box once a month. For the moment though, I'm putting a new one at the end of every post so there are lots of opportunities for people to join in.

I'm Following a Tree

If you would like to use the Tree Following motif, feel free to use it on your blog.

Janet at Plantaliscious has introduced her hawthorn. You can read about it in her post Juggling with Trees
And read about Lucy's Common Alder on her blog Alder & Ash.
And at Flighty's Plot - What Willow?
To see the growing list of Tree Followers - click here.
Duncan is reviving his blog Duncan's Wild Garden specially to follow a tree!

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The current linky box is with the post for February 21st.