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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I HOPE YOU LIKE BARK AND LICHENS - TREE FOLLOWING FOR MARCH

Last month when I introduced you to my new tree I showed you a little of the town where it stands - Weymouth in Dorset on the south coast of England. And several of you mentioned you'd be interested to know more about the wider context for this tree as well as the tree itself.

It's a bit difficult this - how to approach it; for in my my mind 'context' has tended to mean the absolutely immediate environs. But I now realise how insular this mind-set is. Many bloggers say quite a lot about the parts of the countries in which they live so regular readers already know whether they are talking about a big city or a wild and empty place, a hot and arid climate or freezing cold. All these things have an impact on whatever grows - including humans!

But on Loose and Leafy, it's only in the street plant posts that I show much of 'place' - and the 'place' for those posts could be in quite a range of towns so they don't help in the least when explaining my new tree. And because I was inspired by Janet at Plantaliscious to choose a tree near a coffeee shop I'm not in my usual hedgerow and wind-swept-pebbles context for these posts but standing in a well-tended park in Weymouth instead. So . . . .  As there is no way this tree would survive on Chesil Beach (!) and as it isn't growing in a hedgerow either I'd better say more about the town where it is growing. (Not that last year's tree was on a beach or in a hedgerow either. I can get a bit bogged down in this!)

I'll do this post in two parts. Town first. Tree second.

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Now . . . unfortunately, and regretfully, I've had to sweep aside my original starting point. I chose my coffee shop. Brilliant. Good coffee. Pleasant location. So what's the problem? It was . . . it was near the bridge at the top of the post. It closed. Not just for winter or re-decoration. It's for sale. (The tree I'll now be following is on this side of the harbour.)

Here's another blow. The bridge should have opened up like Tower Bridge at four o'clock to let boats with masts go through. There weren't any. The bridge stayed shut. In the summer you can wait and wait and wait for ages while first the boats leaving the marina process through in single file; then the boats wanting to go in slowly pass in the other direction. For tourists that can be great fun and there's sometimes quite a festive atmosphere. If you are on the wrong side from the station and you are wanting to catch the next train it can be . . . can be . . . a bit frustrating!

But this is not the summer. There are few people around. The bridge stayed down. I didn't get my picture.

The merry-go-round is netted over. The music silent. The horses still.

It's altogether a netted-up and tied-up time of year. In some parks some small and delicate trees will be netted to protect them from winter cold. On the promenade most of the palms (or giants ferns? one of you is bound to know!) are tied round with ropes. I think this is to stop water getting in and rotting them through the winter . . . or to keep them warm . . . or to stop them thrashing around in the salty winds . . . again . . . one of you is bound to know!)

Diggers on the beach are a familiar sight and emphasise the prospect of summer. They rearrange the sand to make courses for motorbike races. They put back the sand and pebbles to where they were before winter tides inconveniently reorganised them. In the major holiday season the beach is machine-combed every early morning to clear it of litter and make it pleasant and safe for holiday makers. This digger is working on the start/end point for donkey rides.

And here too there's netting in winter; the railing between the promenade and the beach is netted like the trees. Well, no, the nets which used to be there in winter got torn up. The boards which used to be there in winter got broken down. Here, there's a heavy blue plastic material instead. The idea is to stop sand being blown up from the beach and running round town. It's all very well crunching escaped beach under foot when you go shopping but to have a blast of it in your face and eyes can be very painful.

RIGHT. . . . .  BACK OVER THE BRIDGE, UP THE HILL AND TO OUR TREE!

Hm. I still haven't taken a picture of it as a whole. In part this is because it's my habit to look at things in parts. And in part it's because I have an awful habit of arriving in the evening when it simply won't show up well in the fading light.

It had been sunny when I arrived in town and when I hung around waiting for the bridge to go up. But when it didn't go up, instead of visiting the tree, I trotted off to take pictures of a summer resort in winter so by the time I'd re-crossed the bridge dull light was well established. (And I hadn't even had the bonus of a cup of coffee!)

Never mind. Here ( I mean just above) are its toes. (I mean, its flare.)

And its bark.

My last tree got me fixated on bark. Sometimes it seems that every deciduous tree in existence is a sycamore - but this isn't sycamore bark is it? (or is it?)

And the lichen! If only I knew about lichen! (Actually - if only I knew about anything it would help!) Never mind. Plough on regardless. The bright yellow sort is the only kind I'm able to recognise. It pops up quite a lot on Loose and Leafy; Common Orange Lichen - Xanthoria Parietina. It's very common round here - being a lichen that thrives in a nitrogen rich atmosphere. (By the sea that means gull-droppings. In other places it means traffic. In others farm chemicals.)

There are masses of grey kinds on this tree too.

'Masses' may be an exaggeration but there are lots. Any chance anyone can name this large grey one? (Or even a little grey one?)

Whatever this tree turns out to be, it has wonderfully wibbly branches and twigs. Fairy-tale stuff!

Yup. That light is fading fast. But buds waiting to open show up well against the grey-ing sky so that's ok. And look at all those twists and twiddles.

My first post about this tree was in February 2015 - My New Tree .

I'm Following a Tree.
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There's more about
Tree Following
on the Tree Following Page.
A link box for Tree Following Posts opens every 7th of the month and closes on the 14th.
It's never too late to join in!

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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).

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.

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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.