TREE FOLLOWING FEBRUARY - BEGINNING TO LET GO OF MY PINE

If you read my post on the 5th of February you will already know I went in search of a new tree to follow and, indeed, found one.

It's a bit sad though, saying goodbye to the tree I've followed since last March. Not that it's done much. I'd thought branches would be lopped. I'd imagined by now it might even have been felled. No. Well, that's good. But . . .

Next month I'll see if there's anything to compare between last March and this.

But this month - there weren't even any woodlice! There were webs still - but no spiders to see.

What a weird tree! Or perhaps I should say - what a weird tree to choose. But it's hard to let go. So there'll be a couple of months overlap. This mini post. Then a compare. Then over to the new one.

I think the only new thing to see was a load of litter that had arrived around it.

Don't you just grieve a little?

I'm Following a Tree (Are you?)

To find out more about Tree Following, click the emblem and it will take you to the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

Click here for the February 2015 Tree Following link box.

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My New Tree -
Is Here

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

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

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

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

was Venice built on alder?

is ivy inevitably bad for a tree?

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

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

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

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

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New Forest, Hampshire.
April 17th 2014

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

SLOWLY OUT OF THE WOODS AND INTO THE LIGHT

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

Hawthorn Trunk - April 13th 2014

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

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

which reminded me of the shell of an ordinary snail

Aprill 11th 2014 - See the pollen sack?

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

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

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

April 15th 2014

Another snail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Links

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

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

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

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

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HEDGES, WALLS, WEBS AND HUMANS IN BLEAK AND DRIZZLEY WEATHER

Clearly, the season is turning. Some days, everything is crisp and warm and breezy. Other days, it's grey and drizzly and cold and webs in the bushes become sinister. For most of the time, they are almost invisible. Come the rain and it turns out the place is covered in them.

It's raining. Webs are full of drips.
Leaves are limp.
Haws are red.
Alexanders seeds are black.
(Not because of the rain.
Black is their colour.)
I could have brightened the image,
made it look as if the sun was shining
- but then you wouldn't see what
this bundle 
of bushes is really like
on a dull, autumn afternoon
- messy, wet and muddley.
It's not pretty!

It's a mixture and a muddle. Leaves darken and drop, berries brighten. Much dies. Other plants pop back for a final fling. Some flower unseasonably. I'm always excited by these. The seasons sometimes feel relentless. They, and the whole of nature with them, plod along the groove and there's nothing we can do except live through what comes. When a primrose rebels against autumn and waves a flag for spring by flowering in September - I salute it! When it whithers I grieve more for it than for the rest of its family when it drew back earlier in the year. 


But there are other plants which grab their chance to re-surge and, like bad memories, do their very best to stay through winter. New Buddleia is already on a fight-back, springing out of drains and bursting out of walls. If previous years are anything to go by, ground elder will soon march up to join the newly growing nasties. There's a silly song 'Old judges never die, they don't even fade away.'. I think it's by Instant Sunshine - someone will know (? ? ?). Nettles are old judges in the hedge rows. They grow threadbare and lean a little but stay. New nettles grow up round them. Little barristers.

In the photo (above) of the web smothered hedges, you'll see a window in the upper right hand corner. Humans (as well as spiders) live round here. How else would the hedge be there? And where am I? I'm on an old railway line which is now a path for pedestrians and a cycleway. (I've taken against cyclists. Pensioners on racing tanks too. I think The Council should take the names of pedestrians going onto the path and check them off at the other end to make sure they've survived!) Back to the point. That window in the corner decided me to make this a wall post as much as a hedgerow one. An 'oh look humans are here after all' sort of essay instead of pretending we are the only two-footers on Earth as I usually do.

So . . . here is a 'not a hedge'.

 I drew attention to the vegetation in this wall in a previous post and wondered whether it might fall because of it. A while after, the buddleia was cut away but plants know where they like to live - Aspleniums find it an especially congenial home. This wall is north-facing and right on a dull, lots-of-traffic road. If I were a gardener and this were my garden, I'd welcome them. (Until the wall fell down!)

Buddleia too!

Lichen likes a stone wall and will be here all winter (for ever!?).

On the old railway line itself, in front of a platform (in effect, a the foot of a wall) - this.

And on the opposite platform . . . what it one day will be?

Here is some other new life.

Cheerful weather!
September 22nd 2010

Disgusting if you look close. Some caterpillars are nice. These are not. En masse, they are horrid. Their nest is about four inches long and strongly built. If you want to see them, you'd better click the picture.

And here's how the seasons are muddled in with each other. The same nest, a few days later.

Winter seems closer when it rains!