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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A WALK AS THE SHADOWS LENGTHEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The end of the walk.

* * *

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

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

* * *

Don't forget

the next date for our Tree Following updates

is 7th July.

Monday!

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

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

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

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

Off I went.

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

http://looseandleafy.blogspot.co.uk/

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

After all, it is the prettiest of flowers.

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

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

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

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

Beyond the Blackberries

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

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

Beyond the flowers of Rape Plants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 2nd

Yes, I think I'll have that!

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