STICKING ONE'S FOOT AND CHASING BUTTERFLIES

For the last few years, every so often, I've planted my foot somewhere, refused to move it, and looked about me to see what I could see. A 'Stuck Foot Post'. And I've encouraged you to do the same. You might begin by thinking 'bother, there's nothing here'. Then bits and bobs emerge from the general blur. A blade of grass. A fallen feather. A stranded worm. A bottle top. A daisy. The original Loose and Leafy practice - which seems very long ago now - was to alternate between Stuck Foot Posts and Street Plant ones; and April should have been for Street Plants. But I'll do a Stuck Foot post today as a way of inviting you to join in next month and stick your foot somewhere - sometime between the 21st and 25th - and tell us about it. What do you think? You can choose your foot-hold randomly (often the best because it's a challenge) or somewhere familiar (and see it through new eyes) and, mostly you will do it according to the rules (not moving that foot) or you might find yourself chasing butterflies. (Which is what happened to me this time.)

Spring seems late this year. And erratic. I was hoping to show you Blackthorn (which produces sloes). The blossom is fantastic. It's light and airy and early. But for all that it's currently frothing up many Dorset hedgerows it's almost over round where I live. And once it's gone, and it's replaced its flowers with leaves, it's hardly visible again till autumn - when it suddenly shows up with sloes.

Time for confession. I only thought of reviving the 'Stuck Foot' idea because I was left on a limb. There I was, vaguely in the presence of Blackthorn but too late for its flowers. So I asked myself 'right, now I'm here, what shall I do? I know! Move along a little (away from disappointment) and stick my foot somewhere.

This bramble can have a spotlight of its own.

I decided I should probably show hawthorn instead so I plonked myself in front of a hawthorn tree and settle in to see what I could see. Hawthorn flowers are very different from blackthorn. Readers from previous years will know I don't like it much. It's too dense. But hawthorn has stolen blackthorn's place. Prominent. (Along with suddenly enthusiastic brambles.)

The Woodland Trust is having a campaign this year to record the places where native bluebells grow and where there are Spanish ones. By my hawthorn - I take these to be Spanish bluebells. (Their heads don't hang down as meekly as the native kind, and their petals don't have such turny-uppy frills.) Bluebells are not among my favourite flowers either. They look brilliant en-masse - famous as woodland carpets - but up close they aren't that inspiring. Native bluebells are a bit limp and thin, with flowers on only down one side. Spanish ones are bulkier and have flowers all the way round. A few too many. A bit of a jam. I don't like grape hyacinths for the same reason. As long term readers may now be remembering, Spring brings out the worst in me - I'm a total grump until the early flowers are gone. In my calendar, Blackthorn belongs to late winter.

(Do you have personal categories where you knowingly put plants or birds or insects between the wrong brackets?)

Dandelions are one of my big-deal favourites. In some areas they are almost as plentiful as the grass they grow in. Here, though, the first burst is over and there are more clocks than pennies . . . 

. . . And Goose Grass (Cleavers) is still young enough to be upright and pretty. Before long it will topple over and stretch along the ground and its leaves will catch hold of you in a slightly sticky way . . . and it will grow little white flowers, then little velcro balls which you'll have to pick off your socks when you get home.

And the butterfly . . . Right. Along comes a Speckled Wood.

Away flies the Speckled Wood.

For a while I stayed steadfast to my intent; stood resolutely facing into the hedge and waited for it to come back again. If it didn't return a bee might arrive and pose for a portrait instead. Nothing.

(I think there are fewer insects this year. Do you?)

There's a limit to the time one can remain staring into a hedgerow on a path that's busy with families out walking on a sunny Sunday afternoon. One can end up feeling a little . .  er . . . self-conscious. Could people think I'm dangerous? What if someone stops and asks what I'm doing?

I will say 'I'm waiting for that butterfly (I point) to come back here so I can takes it's picture on that leaf. (I point to the leaf.) Or perhaps another leaf. I wave my hand vaguely. There are many leaves but not all of them in easy reach when you have to keep that foot stuck.

I brazened it out till I had no braze left and set off to run after the butterfly. (Uncomfortably aware that the touch-screen controls on my new camera were bleeping happily and randomly re-setting themselves.)

Inspired?

If I can still work out how to do it after all this time, I'll put a link box here on 21st of May and close it late on the 25th. Then you can stick your foot somewhere if you like - and tell us all about it. You might manage not to cheat . .  or you too may find yourselves chasing butterflies!

Speckled Wood on the UK Butterflies Site.

Woodland Trust 'Big Bluebell Watch'

Another view of the Speckled Wood on Loose and Leafy - 'The Speckled Wood's Bottom'.

P.S. The Speckled Wood on the right is the same individual only with its wings open. This Alexanders flower next to it very small - this isn't a giant butterfly! See the Bindweed?

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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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TREE FOLLOWING OCTOBER - SYCAMORE BY THE SEA

I'll begin by zapping you with colour.

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

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

Here it is on the morning of the same day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you
Following a Tree?

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

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WHY DO LEAVES CHANGE COLOUR IN AUTUMN?

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

HOVER FLY SITES

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

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

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

Nature Spot

also on Nature Spot

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

The Next Box for Tree Following Links

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

and close at 7pm on the 14th.

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'MY' NEW SYCAMORE

The tree I've tried to follow this year has turned out to be too far away. Not only that - I never really liked it.

Not 'liking' a tree should be irrelevant. If it had been easier to get to I might have asked myself why I found it boring. I'm certain that would have been an illuminating exercise. After all, my choice of tree last year was absurd: it was a pine and the branches were too high to see properly let alone the needles. So I concentrated on its trunk - the point at which it went into the earth, the root flare round it,  its bark. And I loved it - having that small focus.

But this year . . . . I've abandoned the boring, far-away tree and have chosen one nearer; one I like.

It's another daft choice. Instead of being able only to see the trunk - I can only see the top. Its roots are down in a dip. I've visited this sycamore before and keep going back. To go back and back to see just a bit of a tree is a testament to its character and beauty. So I'll be following its top for a year beginning now.

  Join us and Follow a Tree

And having decided, and having noticed that some trees reach autumn earlier than others . . . and having photographed one of its beautiful and colourful and wonderfully designed seed-wings (on the 15th August)  . . . I'll keep my fingers crossed that I can get back to it again in time for October's Tree Following posts.

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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

SWEET PEAS AND NETTLES

There are always surprises. The absence of summer is one. There's been been heat. Yes. (Rather a lot.) It's been dry. Yes. (Too dry.)

But in Loose and Leafy terms we've leapt from spring to autumn in one bound. Which I don't mind because autumn is my favourite time of year. Autumn in the midst of summer. We've had some rain. (If only it hadn't come all at once and as fast as it could and all concentrated in an hour.) Some freshening breezes would be welcome now.

This recent and sudden and explosive rain has battered haws out of the May Trees. The ground is spattered with them - brown and unripe.

It has knocked down elderberries. See the gaps? Fortunately, there are many left. It has beaten up convolvulus leaves and mangled chicory petals . . . but has also, somehow, released the butterflies. They are all over the place. Yesterday I saw a dragon fly.

There are other surprises. Surprises which come every year but which I forget in between.

Like the way garden plants creep into hedgerows and tangle with the nettles. The hedges are high and often on top of a bank. I'm not always sure which plants have worked their way up from tended gardens and which have self seeded - or are the remnants of gardens where houses once were but were demolished in the last century.

Here are sweet peas climbing above the nettles. See their pods?

Click to enlarge if you'd like to find the fly!

I went back to find 'my blackberry' - the one we saw a bee on. The bit of grass I'd tied to a branch to mark the place had fallen off or . . . or . . . the branch it was tied to had itself vanished. Maybe it got in someone's way. Maybe the rain was briefly so heavy it drooped into the bushes.




I took photographs where I thought it almost was then, when I got home, spent ages comparing the new picture with the one I'd taken last week. Nope. Not the same branch. Pretty though. And the surprise - a fly on a flower.

It often happens. You take a picture. You take it home. You put it on a screen - and there, bang in the middle - something you hadn't seen. Something you'd never have seen otherwise.

These are the joys of the ignoramus. There's nothing wrong with knowing. Of course not. I'm unduly proud when I 'know' something or learn something new; but as I nearly always everything within five minutes of finding it out - the world's forever full of surprise. Knowing nothing can be . . . well, I find it fun.

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You know the Stuck Foot Posts . . . and the Street Plant Posts?

Both are occasional.

Stuck-Foots are thoughtful. Street-Plants are adventures.

Both are fun.

Do you write them too? In case you'd like an easy way to let others know about yours . . .

In addition to the regular link box for Tree Following (on the 7th of every month)

There will be link boxes on Loose and Leafy several times a year for these other kinds of post. If we put dates beside the entries they can be round-ups rather than the regular kind of meme.

Link Box Dates for Stuck Foot Posts
November     21st - 25th
January         21st - 25th
March           21st - 25th
May              21st - 25th
July               21st - 25th
September     21st - 25th
November     21st - 25th

Link Box Dates for Street Plant Posts
December    21st - 25th
February      21st - 25th
April            21st - 25th
June             21st - 25th
August         21st - 25th
October        21st - 25thDecember    21st - 25th.

Both kinds of post now have their own pages for information. They give dates for link boxes, an opportunity to ask for reminders and an invitation to include your blog in a list of bloggers who make occasional Stuck Foot or Street Plant posts.

Stuck Foot Bloggers

Street Plant Bloggers

Do let me know if you'd like your name to be added to the list. (Leave a comment or email me at looseandleafy@googlemail.com)

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STUCK FOOT POST

What is a Stuck Foot Post?

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

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

There's a Path I Know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's the point. It was there.

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

All photos were taken on 26th July 2014.

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LET'S LOOK AT A DEAD DANDELION

Regular readers of Loose and Leafy will know I have a fascination with dandelions. Not only are the flowers uplifting, their leaves a refreshing shade of green and well shaped - 

these plants bear very close attention.

Of all the flowers I know, they provide the closest to an infinity of beauty - especially when they are dying and turning to seed.

As posts go, this is pretty much pictorial. But the pictures prove the point - at least, I think they do - that there's nothing more wonderful than a dandelion.

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THE TROUBLE WITH NETTLES - URTICA DIOICA

Stinging nettles (Urtica Dioica) aren't specially famous for their flowers. This is not surprising for they dangle uninterestingly and herald tattiness. No-one would ever dream of bringing them into the house to look pretty in the middle of a dining table. If the wind hadn't been waggling them about I would have taken their portraits so you could see what I mean. Instead, my memory card has filled with green blur after green blur after green blur and the blurs are are so dreadfully blurry they couldn't even be considered artistic.

New leaves are arriving. New plants. And the wind has played on. But if it were to leave them alone it wouldn't be blowing pollen between male and female flowers and any seeds which managed to form would drop in a pile at their feet instead of being thrown around. The reproductive life of the nettle family would be arrested. Banning the wind in October might, therefore, be a tempting option for those with omnipotence up their sleeves. On the other hand . . . there are those tough, long, yellow roots from which more nettles spring without its help . . . .

But I've managed, at last, to catch a glimpse of seeds on a few standing-still nettles. But just a glimpse. Another time I think I'll chop a few down and take them home and lay them out and photograph them that way . . . but it wouldn't be the same. 

If you'd like to know more about nettles, the University of Wisconsin has dedicated nettle pages for its students.

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TIME FLYING FROM THE CLOCK

I hope you don't feel cheated but I want this to have its own post.

March 16th 2013

The dandelion clock is shaking its head in a mild breeze, sending its seeds spinning.

We'll pay a closer, more focused attention to these seeds in another post - to the bright yellow flowers of dandelions too. But I feel the spirit of the season in captured here and I want it to stand alone.

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For Skies on Other Blogs

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FOLLOWING TREES AND VIEWS AND WILLOW HERB

What is Tree Following and Who Does It?

Although I'm officially following an elderberry tree - or, rather, a clump of tangled elders, I've not abandoned the sycamore I've been keeping an eye on for several years. Indeed, there are quite a few trees, and bushes and patches of ground that I am specially aware of. This post is about five of them.

We'll begin with that elder.

As I've mentioned, it was cut back during the summer so the berries went AWOL and the undergrowth in front disappeared. This cutting, I have learnt over time, has a reasonably short lived impact - even though though the result is a one-sided tree. And, of course, I've yet to see what happens in the very long term.

One of the things I've noticed when choosing particular leaves to follow - observing them right from when they are little green blobs - is that the ones which come to my attention early tend not to do well compared with those which burst later. This happened with the hawthorn I thought was a blackthorn (oh dear!) and it is true of the elderberry too.

February 5th 2012

This is the shoot I chose on the elderberry tree. It seemed a good one at the time because it's in the crook of a branch and easy to find over and over.

This is how it was earlier in the year.

(February 2012)

September 27th 2012

This is how it is now.

Familiar pattern?

Sycamore I'm following - September 22nd 2012

Then the sycamore.

The ivy clinging to it was cut back during the year. Necessary, perhaps, but sad for me - I'm fascinated by the elegance of single strands and the beauty, the colour, the shape of its leaves. Of the trees in this little woodland area, it is not the leafiest, despite its sturdy trunk(s!) - and autumn this year is odd. A curl up at the edges and fall off kind of event instead of dramatic colour.

September  22nd 2012

Same Tree - September 2008

On the other hand, another elder bush - one which attracted my attention as early as 2008 (when I was using my phone as a camera) continues to grow and thrive and produce yellow leaves. This is not down to autumn. This is how the bush regularly is. Maybe it isn't an elderberry?

Remember the thistle from a couple of weeks ago? Where the bees gathered in June?  I've not been 'following' that particular plant. More, I've been aware of that patch.

Willow Herb Shedding its Seeds - September 21st 2012

Willow Herb grows there too. There are lots of Willow Herbs - not just the well known Rose Bay variety (Fire Weed on the western side of the Atlantic) and I don't want to hazard which this is. However, until very recent heavy rain and short, sharp wind, they were opening their pods and releasing seeds.

September 20th 2012 (in Esther's Garden)

I've not understood how this works before. One minute there are tall, thin, upright pods. The next, the plants are 'decorated' with an ugly, fluffy, tangled mess. By being more aware, this year, I've seen what happens. The seeds are evenly spaced in straight lines up the pods and each seed is attached to a closed parachute above it. The pods don't split at the sides so much as peel back from the top and, as they dry and open, they pull open the parachutes. This, to me, is clever and marvelous but, also (to me) the next stage is less impressive. Instead of flying away like dandelion seeds, they seem to fall where they are and get caught in the peeled back bits of the pods lower down the plant. This, presumably, is why tall willow herbs grow in clumps. Some seeds get away though and it's a good 'spreader'. The smaller versions which arrive in gardens, I have noticed, are more likely to give each other space.

Willow Herb which has dropped its seeds onto opened pods on the same plant - September 13th 2012

This picture is of a middle sized one in my neighbour Esther Montgomery's garden after the seeds have fallen into their old-cotton-wool muddle. (All sorts of things can look better in a photograph then in 'real' life!)

And, last up - a view.

This is new. Well, clearly not a new view but new that I'm following. Because it's by a bench, and because there's a castle to fix in the middle of the picture, we should be able to follow it through the seasons, certain we are looking, each time, in the same direction!

September 21st 2012

By putting the ruins of Sandsfoot castle centre frame, it should be reasonably easy to keep a steady eye on what is happening to the tree on the right of the picture, the brambles on the left and the view beyond.

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For more about Tree Following - Click HERE

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