PLANTS ON THE WALLS - SANDSFOOT CASTLE IN DORSET

Near where I live there's a castle. Well, more than one. There's Corfe Castle (which I've written about) and there's Portland Castle (which I haven't).

The definition of a castle is oblique. Maiden Castle (also not far away) is a series of grass covered ramparts where Celts held out against Romans (and lost). There's a mini version too - where I came across a thistle. And there's Sandsfoot - a little ruin of a castle built first as part of Henry VIII's coastal defences. It's mostly fallen into the sea but a couple of year's ago it was stuck together a bit and made safe and a wooden bridge built so you can pretend you are crossing the moat that isn't there on a drawbridge . . . and a two-person balcony where you can stand with a friend and look out at the sea and hope the cliff won't crumble until you've gone home.

And that's where I went to look at plants.

Now, if I owned a castle, I wouldn't want flowers growing out from the stones. Heavens! The fuss people make about a little ivy on a grotty garden wall. And this is history!

How about Red Valerian growing on your roof?

Or leaves peeping over the lintel? (Sometimes I think this is buddleia - then I don't.)

This fleshy little plant may appear to be growing at the foot of a wall but no. It's nestling in the unevenness between the large stones from which the castle is built.

If the walls of my house were rickety with age, so rickety the upper floor had already given way, I wouldn't put sacks of earth along them and try to grow grass there.

But that's what happened when the castle was 'done up'. The grass died.

Other plants have taken their place.

It's getting late in the summer so they're dying too. Turning without moving (in a stuck foot kind of way) I look back under the arch of the balcony to see them.

There's a hole up the middle of the castle; a square, empty space. You can look down into the remains of the basement and up at the sky through the non-existent roof. And you can admire flowers growing in high, broken corners and window spaces.

(I unstuck my foot so see these.)

Plantain. Clover. And a bramble.

(Note to myself. Go back to the foot of the cliff before winter storms crack more of it away - and look up.)

(And down into rock pools.)

(We've been there before. We found a dead goose lying on a bed of seaweed. And I've been observing the castle as the seasons have come and gone.)

For more about 'Stuck Foot' posts - and an invitation to join in.
For the September Tree Following Link Box

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WHAT TO EXPECT ON LOOSE AND LEAFY

Hello! It's autumn! And Loose and Leafy is back!

Seasons come and go - and with them readers - so maybe it's a good moment to reaffirm what kinds of posts to expect on the blog.

The top of an ivy-clad elderberry tree. October 8th 2013

Loosely speaking, it's about hedgerow plants and trees. Saying 'Wild Plants' would sound too exotic and too technical and more specialist than it is. Here you will find the very ordinary plants which grow without encouragement along the coast of Dorset in England. The air is warm and sometimes salty so some may not be found further north in the British Isles or in countries with different climates across the world. Hopefully there's a happy contradiction. Those who live in similar areas may feel a warm sense of familiarity with the plants featured - while those living in other zones (colder, hotter, less windy or less sheltered) will get a small taste of what may be for them (for you?) the unusual.

Lichen on the elderberry branch we've been following.
October 8th 2013

But when I speak of 'similar' places, we have to acknowledge this is an especially plant rich area. The first time I came to Dorset I felt I had gone 'abroad'. I had never been to a place with so many plants, so many butterflies or with the kind of cliffs and coastal geology we have here. (After twenty five years in Dorset I reckon I can now say 'we'!) It's a place where fossils lie at our feet and are embedded in our walls and pathways. It's a place where some cliffs are whiter than the more famous ones at Dover and others are bright yellow or a deeply disturbing dark grey. There are quarries and woodlands and seaweed and shellfish and . . . and . . . and . . . !

There are lots of blackberries on the brambles

but their flavour is not good this year.

October 8th 2013

For all that we sometimes get the impression that England is 'full' - that it's almost covered over with cities and streets - there are few large towns within easy reach of the area covered in this blog. Bournemouth/Poole (with a population of around 187,000 on the Dorset/Hampshire border) is the only 'local' conurbation - and that's an hour on the train to the East. To get to Exeter (in Devon) - the nearest big town going west, you have to make an hour-and-a-half's journey by car. (Population about 118,000 - though if you count its wider commuting area the number bumps up to around 500,000). In between, there's part of Devon and much of Dorset. Weymouth, half way along the Dorset coast, has a population of around 65,000. Otherwise, it's small towns and villages everywhere. There are around 415,000 people living in the county (not counting Bournemouth/Poole because it's a unitary authority . . . ). It covers more than 1,024 square miles but I'm not sure how many people in England even know it exists!

So, what will you find if you read Loose and Leafy?

Odd clumps of ragwort are still flowering.

(See the snail on the lower edge of the picture?)

October 8th 2013

You'll find pictures and descriptions of a very, very small part of a wonderful county. And when I say 'very small' - I mean VERY! Most plants I show are within fifteen minutes walk of each other. Sometimes I merely stand still and write a post about what I can see without lifting a foot. (The 'stuck foot' posts.) Over and over, we'll return to the same trees to see their leaves unfurl and fall,

Down on the beach - I think this is a piece of eelgrass.

October 6th 2013

the same beaches to see what's been churned up by the tide,

the same view to see how it changes through the year.

The view we're following.

By placing the ruins of Sandsfoot Castle centre scene it's easy to compare

the seasons of plants and trees through the year.

This photo was taken on the 3rd October 2013 - verily a season of mists and mellow murkiness.

Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) on brambles after a sudden shower.

October 8th 2013

We'll notice pollinators and other insects in the bushes.

Sometimes we'll take a look along the pavements of urban areas, take a trip into Bournemouth or Weymouth to see how plants survive the traffic

There are a surprising number of flowering plants bang in the middle of our towns and cities.

This plant is growing wild on the top of the carpark attached to a large supermarket in the centre of Bournemouth.

July 11th 2013

and, sometimes, we'll find interesting surprises - would you believe that this too is Dorset?

Abbotsbury Sub-tropical Gardens.

October 7th 2013

Watch out for a later post when we'll explore more.

I'm looking forward to your company through the autumn, the winter, the spring and beyond!

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THE VIEW SLIPS AWAY

Things are about to change. There have been storms at sea - and seaweed in piles on the beach. There have been landslips along the coast - on the South West Coast Path there have been thirty where in a normal winter there might have been three. In Devon, the sea turned red. Buds haven't opened yet. Flowers aren't out yet. There's a dull pause. But things, soon, will change.

March 31st 2013

Look at this view.

The tree on the right - its leaves will soon cover half the scene.

The brambles on the left will fill out and provide blackberries.

But . . .

March 31st 2013

The orange blur of willows in the middle - I won't be able to go back to them because - see the orange triangle below the castle? It's rock where there should be green - the bushes have slid. I wouldn't like to be slid upon if any more of the cliff comes down.

December 17th 2012

This is how it was in December.

December 17th 2012

On the left, the lower ladder is in place. The white, bare, tree in the middle is there.

March 31st 2013

And now . . .
 gone.

I was thinking nothing much happens with this view.

I was wishing I'd chosen something more dynamic.

Then part of it went.

You never can tell with a view!

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WALKING BACK FROM THE CASTLE

Fish, Gold and Black, swimming among the Elodea crispa plants
in the pond in Sandsfoot Castle Park in Dorset, England.
Thanks to Mark and Gaz at Alternative Eden for water plant ID.
January 11th 2013

When the Castle was done up a bit last year
(and made safe to go inside)
 mats with grass on were laid along the tops of the ruins.
I don't know why. (They're falling off now.)
January 11th 2013

You know the castle in the view? The view we're following? Soon I'll show you round. First, though, I'll set up the year. Not that I've got a good record on this. I say I'll do things then never get round to them. That, or they go wrong. I decide to see what will grow in a particular patch of ground - and the council mows it. I decide to photograph the leaves of a particular tree - and forget all about them until they've not only opened but have dropped off in the autumn. Nevertheless, there are some things which are fairly well embedded in my ordinary Loose and Leafy routine. It's reassuring when we get to January to find the world is still going round much the same - at least, bits of it are! You can't stop the seasons.

Geese on the water. Portland Harbour January 11th 2013.

There's a good account of brent geese on the RSPB site.

For close up drawing to help with ID, plus more info.

So, imagine you are in the grounds of the castle-in-the-view. You've looked at the fish and the weed in the pond. Now you go into the castle itself (it's very small, what remains of it) and walk through it to a little platform overhanging the rocks to see what you can see. There's a lot of noise. A flock of geese (brent geese?) is landing on the water. They set off together for a very quick paddle - you can see where the water is left disturbed in their wake. The herring gulls on the rocks ignore them.

Dessicated blackberries.

January 11th 2013

Then you potter along a bit to look at the elderberry clump we've been following.  The remains of dessicated blackberries still stick out from it over the path. For much of the year, these trees are little more than climbing frames for brambles and ivy.

January 11th 2013
For all that it's a bit odd to recommend a video
about something quite this static,
if you haven't seen the Natural History Museum clip about
lichens as pollution indicators,
click HERE for Xanthoria parietina The Movie!
(And more .)

The lichen on it is a brash and ghastly orange. When it's densely packed like this . . . I'm not sure it's entirely pleasant.

Common Orange Lichen - well named! But it changes its shades; yellow one way and green the other. Sometimes it's very green - but not today; which is surprising because I've always associated the green with damp weather (and there's been almost nothing but recently!)

Xanthoria parietina is an indicator of nitrogen in the atmosphere too. Near the sea, as this is, nitrogen is to be expected. (Sea birds contribute a lot!)

Common Orange Lichen
(Xanthoria parietina)
January 11th 2013

The first picture shows its real colour on January 11th 2013. This is the same photo with the colours changed a bit to emphasise their gradations. (So you notice the bits which are a bit greener. Sometimes, they are greener still.)

Elderberry.
January 11th 2013

The elderberry leaf shoot we've been following for more than a year (!) and which did hardly anything last summer . . . .  There's a new leaf where the old one was. It's got a sort of head-start in height this time round. Maybe it will one day become a branch? This appears to be a long term project!

Ivy Berries
January 11th 2013

The year before last, I followed ivy until its berries ripened but never showed you what happened when they opened and dropped their seeds - so we'll take up with ivy roughly where we stopped off before. For all that it's a common plant, its flowers, berries - even the shapes of its leaves - go much un-noticed. I suspect its seeds are even more of a mystery. (See the post for December 3rd 2011 -  Exploding Ivy and for January 13th 2012 - The Berries Mature.)

Cock's Foot Grass (Dactylis glomerata) January 11th 2013

Grasses - I'm thinking it might be a good idea to make more of a fuss of grasses this year. Grass isn't just grass it's . . . well, here's some flowering already.

And the view.

The view we're following - with Sandsfoot Castle and tree.
January 11th 2013

I'm a little fed up with this view. It never does much except sit there and be beautiful. And I daren't go back to the dent where the willows are to look at the rocks because the cliffs have been so washed by rain recently I'm worried they'll slip down and squash anyone who goes too close.

So I'll pretend I've been back, even though I haven't, and put in a picture I took there before . . .

December 18th 2013

Shells emerging from one of the rocks in the dent. Prehistoric cockles? (Anyone know?)

* * *

January 11th 2013

Some tree followers have been rounding up their year with final posts about their particular tree. I'll soon do a round up of the round ups. Have you finished with your tree or will you be carrying on? Has it been interesting? Will you be choosing a new one?

This, as you can see, is the one in the foreground of my view. I'll be specially aware of it over the next few months because, by summer, it will be obscuring what's beyond - and, by then, the brent geese will have gone.

* * *

Best wishes for 2013

I hope your year has got off to a good start.

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WALKING INTO THE VIEW

December 12th 2012

This is what the view I'm following looked like 12th December.

December 17th 2012

This is how it looked on the 17th. Apart from the light - it's pretty much the same. Indeed, if it weren't that my camera marks the date on the 'negative' I would have suspected I'd got in a muddle and they were taken on the same day. I've been going spare looking between one and the other, trying to find a difference. It's a sort of puzzle. But all I can see is that the tide is marginally further out in the second. If you count how many of the nearest rocks are uncovered, you'll see there's one more. Even the blackberries on the left have retained all their leaves.

Not a lot of substance for a blog . . . so . . . I decided to walk into the view. See the group of red trees at the foot of the cliff, slightly to the left of the castle? That's where we are going. If we take a direct route, it will take us about ten minutes but everything is very muddy and slippy at present - it has rained and rained and rained - so it'll take more like fifteen. And we need the tide to go further out before we can get there. We'll have to skip to the next day. Unfortunately, by then the light is going. (That's the trouble with winter!) None the less . . . nothing daunted . . .

. . . here we go!

December 18th 2012

Willows!

We have our backs to the water. Notice seaweed on the rocks? On the right is a tall, rusty pole. It seems to be what's left of an old notice. There are lots of these along this patch of shoreline. I don't know what they would originally have said and don't know how to find out but I've always assumed they are left over from the second world war to warn vessels against landing. If anyone local is reading the blog - maybe they can leave a note to say?

See the hollow between the middle willows? That's where we're heading. 

December 18th 2012

It would be nice to say we are going into a cave but, it's more like a dent in the cliff. Given the action of the tide, maybe it will one day hollow out . . . even then I doubt it will be a cave. The ground above is soft. There's more likely to be a landslide.

December 18th 2012

In another post, I'll show you the inside of the dent. It deserves a blog of its own (let alone a post!) but, for the moment, we'll keep focused on the trees. . . . Swinging round to the left, we can see the way many of the branches are growing horizontally. The bark is rough. Some of the branches are broken - yet they are alive. There is plenty of new growth.

December 18th 2012

Here we see the reason for the reddness in the view.

And, here too, we hit a problem. What kind of willows are they? I uploaded pictures to Ispot (if you are unfamiliar with Ispot, click the link, you won't regret it) but am still up in the air about whether they are Salix alba (White Willow) or Salix fragilis (Crack Willow). Salix fragilis is called Crack Willow because it cracks easily and bits fall off. The fallen bits root easily and, thus, it spreads.

As you know, I am not an expert in anything but comments on Ispot suggest that with neither tree would one expect to have shoots quite this red. Could it be a cultivar? It would be an odd place to plant a tree - right by the shore where the sea comes up to the cliff and chucks seaweed into its lower branches. On the other hand . . . landslides have tipped Horse Chestnut trees from people's gardens onto the shore not far from here so could a garden willow have slid down, clung on and carried on growing? Another puzzling thing is that this group of willows is happily living right by salt water. How are they surviving? Could it be there's enough fresh water filtering through the cliff to keep the salt at bay? And, finally, are all these trees of the same variety or are there two kinds of willow here? At the moment, I'm thinking only one but . . . but . . . I'll have to go back to see - maybe soon . . . or maybe in the spring.

Meanwhile, let's take in two more views. The first, standing within the dent and looking out to sea.

December 18th 2012

If you enlarge the photo, you'll see cormorants sitting on the marker buoys and another swimming near them. Can you see a ship beyond the harbour wall?

And, finally, lets step back again. Below is a picture from this morning (December 21st 2012).

December 21st 2012

By chance (and I'm not sure if this is fortunate or not) the tide is roughly in the same position. (It can go out quite a long way. I'll have to make a point of catching it with the sand showing to prove it!). Do you see where we've been?

* * *

Recent Tree Following Posts on Other Blogs

Garden's Eye View - Latest view of the (Ash) stump.
Welsh Hills Again - The Chestnut Tree
Down by the Sea - Where the Willow's At
Gardening Ways - Plane Tree 2012
Experiments With Plants - London Plane Tree
* * *

Have you updated your tree?

Who else is following trees? ClickHERE

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RED

November 9th 2012

When leaves are under stress, they can turn red. I don't know why. Nor do I know why some leaves do it and others on the same plant don't. They can do it in the middle of the summer - one bright leaf in a sea of green. Even in autumn, when we might expect browns and yellows, they catch the eye.

This post highlights blackberry leaves, not because they are the only kind which can go red like this, but because there are more blackberries here than almost any other kind of plant and these are the ones one notices just now. In the summer I saw a dandelion with one deep red leaf when all the others on the plant were green. Like a special streak you might put in your hair for a party. (Or, maybe not you . . . or, maybe you should try it . . . ? Solidarity with the plant world.)

Yesterday afternoon, I set out to photograph some. This, of course, was quite the wrong moment and the post is now as much about how quickly gloom comes in on November evening as it is about leaves.

November 9th 2012  

The colour doesn't necessarily touch the whole leaf, it can be partial and patterned.

November 9th 2012

This picture, of course, is irrelevant - except that the bright red dots of unripened blackberry fruits brighten the hedgerows too. Maybe this bunch says something about the direction from which the sun shines most?

November 9th 2012

The light is going. We may miss the special touch of sunlight but red leaves still stand out.

November 9th 2012

In their variety.

* * *

Following a View

November 8th 2012

Leaves on the right hand tree are almost all gone now. As vegetation recedes, houses on the left are revealed.

Notice too, the blackberry tangle. You'll see that red is certainly not the dominant colour!

* * *

This, I think, below, is my favourite of the red-leaved-group. I'm putting it separately for two reasons. First because it was taken a day before the others. Second because there's some kind of miner activity. Maybe that's got something to do with it?

November 9th 2012

But that can't be the explanation. Masses of leaves have miner damage but the patterns go yellow or brown, not red. Nor do miners synchronise their burrowing to create the kind of symmetry you see here.

I don't know!

Interesting though.

P.S. This , it may strike you, is a stunningly information free, un-erudite, post.

If you would  like to leave an explanation for these reds and patterns in the comments, please do. Don't worry about its length.

Otherwise, if there's something which could usefully be added to this post, do email me at

looseandleafy@googlemail.com

and I'll add it in.

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CARDING THE SEA

Autumn on the land - so in the sea, it seems. Around this time each year, the sea gathers armfuls of seaweed and eel grass and places it on the beach. In other years, I might have said 'thrown' but, as with finding lots of red admirals on the ivy - much depends on the day, the moment you look.

On 15th October, the sea was gentle. Great lumps of seaweed and eel grass were bobbing about in the shallows. I don't know whether you are familiar with carding wool (this is not a digression) but before wool can be spun, the strands have to be pulled straight. To do this by hand, you spread threads from the fleece over a grid of pins which stick out from a rectangular piece of wood which has a handle. Then you pull a matching 'carder' across it, over and over, till the 'grain', as it were, is smooth and straight. A deft realignment of the carders lifts the wool from the pins. As it comes away, it is rolled into a sort of tube called a rolag. A fleece, when it comes from the sheep is oily and smelly and, most likely, has bits and bobs of debris - straw and the like in it. Getting it ready for spinning is hard work on the arms but gentle on the wool. Mid October - and the sea wasn't hurling weed onto the shore, it was carding it - gently disentangling the threads, laying them out on the beach and rolling them (or, perhaps, nudging them, there are no exact parallels) into piles.

The short video below shows it happening.

Some of the seaweed clumps waiting to land are still attached to their 'holdfasts'. (A holdfast is a sort of foot which keeps the plant anchored to its rock.) These, in my mind, are the seaweed equivalents of 'staples'. Sheep's wool grows in clumps - staples. The length of the wool in the staple is one of the factors which determines the quality of the yarn made from it and, hence, the cloth. Mixed with these, and in different states between whole and broken, are strands from other plants. It's a right tangle. A tangle waiting to be 'carded'.

Watch the gap between the piles of weed on the shore. First one thread is drawn from the sea and straightened. The next wavelet pushes it a little further out of the water and attaches another strand to it. You'll get the idea. (Watching full screen helps.)

And here . . . in stills . . .

15th October 2012

This is dried and broken eel grass being sifted out of the sea.

15th October 2012

With each wavelet, other seaweeds are nudged against it, then pulled straight as the sea sucks out.

15th October 2012

As the sea brings more, it pushes what's already there into piles.

15th October 2012

More and more variety, in various stages of a seaweed 'autumn'

15th October 2012

Until everything that will come ashore with that tide is drying above the water line.

Then . . . well . . . then there are so many piles along the beach they join in an ugly, decaying ridge. Then it all gets sucked back out again. We'll ignore that for the moment and enjoy it in its fresh colour.

* * *

It's raining. I can't update the view I'm following while it rains so here's one from the first of November.

November 1st 2012

I began following this view on 21st September.
To see what it looked like then see the post
'Following Trees and Views and Willow Herb'
* * *

P.S. I've not yet put links with this post. So far, the demonstrations of carding I've found seem to have been made using clean and fluffy pre-carded wool and internet explanations about the word 'carding' seem, to my un-botanical mind, to be muddling teasels with thistles. However . . . if I can find links to clear and relevant information which doesn't confuse me - I'll add them here.

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