THE TREES GO ROUND AND ROUND

February 24th 2013

On March 14th 2010 I published a post called 'Take One Tree'. It it's a sycamore and I've been following its progress ever since - though 'progress' probably isn't the right word because it never seems to do anything. Even the ivy which was cut away last year is re-growing this. There's a Hart's Tongue Fern that never moves. There's an Arum maculatum that dies down and come back. There are celandines which used to flower with exuberance but have become a bit tatty and drab over the last few years. The ditch at the foot of the bank is a bit more silted than it was. And that's about it! It's not a very leafy tree and the leaves it does produce are very high up. But, still, I follow!

Then there's the clump of elderberry trees.

March 14th 2013

I began following them in December 2008 when I was still using the camera on my phone. I even gave them a blog of their own. (The Elderberry Log Blog been much neglected. Perhaps I should revive it.) At first,  I followed a particular whirl in the wood of one of the trees. This turned out to be a mistake because when the leaves had grew round it, it became impossible to photograph. It time, bits flaked away. So I switched to a crooked branch. (You can see the crook clearly in a post from August 2012 called 'Who Stole My Leaf'.) And now a bit of the crook has broken away so it's a crook no longer.

At first, I thought it had gone completely but 'our' shoots are still there, simply a little higher because, with less weight on it, the branch has sprung higher.

March 14th 2013

And now that it's March, our eyes begin to turn towards the hawthorn and blackthorn trees. Of the blackthorns, I've been specially noticing some young trees. On this one, you can still see the shriveled remains of last year's sloes.

And all the time there's gorse.

March 14th 2013

.

Soft green buds.

March 14th 2013

And startling bursts of gold.

The years go round. They stay the same. They flake away. Things live. Things die. And live again.

Click HERE for previous Sycamore Tree Following posts.

I'm Following a Tree

Are You?

A Growing List!

Some people follow a tree for a year, some for longer.

There's a list of tree-following bloggers under a tab below the picture at the top of the page.

Over the next little bit, I'll be revising it and visiting tree-following bloggers to find out if they are still following their tree . . . or have stopped . . . or have moved on to a new one.

Meanwhile . . .

Joy at The Little House in the No-so-big Woods is setting off this year with a cedar elm. Her first post is Be careful, tree: there's someone following you!

(How's that for a title!)

and

Laura (who used to blog at Patio Patch) is following a London Laburnum on her new blog, Tell Tale Therapy.

Do you have a tree following post? If so, let me know, and, despite my profound inefficiency and erratic blogging technique - I'll endeavor to remember to put a link here!

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THE UNDERPASS - AN IRREGULAR POST

It's gloomy. It's cold. Shivery cold. We wrap up and rush by. Not stopping to notice the flowers at our feet.

Everything's grey. Traffic lights about the only cheerful sight around.

The highways department - local council - county council . . . don't know! Some department . .  has planted bushes across the bridge. They are thorny and currently leafless with the remnants of red berries here and there. When trees on the left come into leaf, the atmosphere of the place will change.

Cars and lorries and buses and bikes cross the pedestrian underpass.

If we want to cross, we must walk down. Past the bushes the council has put there to hold up the bank. Where ivy and teasels and cleavers and seedlings have found places to go.

Through the tunnel - grass at the other side.

Where there are thistles and things. (This picture is clickable. As well as thistles and grass and moss I've found in it buttercup and groundsel, daisies and what may be dead-nettles, a long leafed plant that might be plantain but I'm not sure. There's clover and possibly pimpernel - or maybe the beginning of cleavers. And several seedlings of something. There may be more. If you find them - say!)

There are daisies in the grass.

I mention  grass - but there are lots of other plants too.

And grass growing on the wall.

This lichen may be Lecanora campestris.

Lichen too.

The black cushions in white cups are its 'fruiting bodies'.

It may be dull. It may be February. It may be noisy and trafficy and not exactly scenic - but there's lots going on around town.





(All photos taken on 27th February 2013.)

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SPRING AND AUTUMN - CAN WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

Always, at this time of year, I go looking for what's left of autumn.

Usually, this means taking photos of leaves which have survived the winter, disintegrated flowers that never fell. That kind of thing. It's my version of spring cleaning.

And, as usual, at the moment I chose (which is another way of saying the only one I had available) the weather was dull. I fiddled around a bit, trying to make visible for the blog things which my eyes could barely make out in the gloom. Not a great success! So I turned the camera round the other way and decided on silhouettes instead. It was only when I got home and looked at the results that I decided the shapes I like so much weren't, on this occasion, the most interesting things there. What I had been seeing as the old stuff was really the new stuff held back from autumn and made ready and ripe for the spring. (Wonderfully scientific language on Loose and Leafy!)

I'd previously thought of dessicated blackberries as the fruits summer forgot.

I'd seen old willow herb shapes as just that - shapes left from when seeds fell.

Now, now, I see them as the winter's hoard - not for birds to eat, though with some, like teasels, this is indeed a side effect, but as plant's packets of seeds, ready to sow in the spring - and they've begun sowing.

This should not have been as much a revelation as it was. But that's the advantage of being ignorant. The pleasure when one's eyes open is immense.

Some Alexanders still have seeds in reserve.

Others  have let them all go.

Old Man's Beard (wild clematis) tends to look pretty euchy by now. The deliciously white fluff of autumn has turned into dirty gray drifts of ancient cotton wool - the kind left behind by the dustmen.

But, kept safe in the mess, the seeds are opening and dropping. They are tiny. Smaller than tomato pips.

And prickly balls of burdock are opening to release theirs.

See them? Quite large and lumpy inside.

Isn't autumn wonderful to save some of itself for spring?

* * *

All pictures were taken on 16th February 2013

Last year's post looking at the year before's leaves.

Silhouettes in January 2011

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MUD

Sometimes rocks are holey because they are softish.

As they wear through the years,

harder stones and fossils fall out. 

Sometimes it's the other way round.

There are some aspects of time and geography which fascinate and elude me. If I'm cold, I wouldn't walk a few hundred yards down the road looking for a better climate. Wherever we live, we take it for granted that the temperature in one street will be the same as the ones either side of it. But, if the temperature of every street is the same as the ones which runs parallel and near, how can some parts of the world be incredibly hot and others way below zero? I can see that a cloud might run out of rain - but can I catch the moment when water comes to the boil?

This rock holds different kinds of memories.
Some are shells but there are also
long things which might be . . .
might be the muddy casts of burrows
and root holes?

Some changes have gradations so slight, the difference between one and the next is imperceptible. There are others where things change from one state of being to another in single or multiple lurches. Some can be explained by chemistry or physics. Others not. What about accent? From left to right on a map, Devon, Dorset and Hampshire are in a row. They have no big-deal borders like rivers and mountain ranges - just road signs. But they have their own, distinct, accents and elements of dialect. How can that be?

With some rocks, it's not so much that they
contain stones but that they are themselves
made up of several kinds which means
different parts wear away in different ways.
Here, some are cracking and flaking.
Others are eroding more evenly.

And dinosaur footprints - I have no trouble understanding that mud, given time, can turn to rock (and vice versa). But how can a footprint in it stay undisturbed long enough for it to be set in stone for ever? Imagine being a dinosaur wandering across some mud and  yours being the last feet to walk there for millennia! Imagine how odd it would be to have such significance and not to know it! But how can it be that no-one ever goes there again? Or that winds, rains and tides don't blur or rub them away? It's eye-wide-opening, awe-inspiring stuff!

Dinosaur footprints have been found on Portland and on the Isle of White. I'm always hoping I might find one (or a few - can you imagine that!) where I walk. No such luck! The kind of pre-history I clamber over is made from shells and different kinds of rock which have folded and squashed and muddled together and which are constantly cracking and eroding to reveal new layers.
That a shell sinks into mud and stays there for ever; that, I can understand. But footprints?

If, in the future, people find human footprints,
maybe they will be as interested
in our various kinds of footwear
as I am in the different kinds of rocks.

Remember in the last post, I mentioned that a great groove had been dug in the path down to the sea and that it seemed to lead to a burrow? Well, the first dig seems to have set a trend. The route is getting more and more churned. Whether dogs are scrabbling for rats or what . . . I don't know . . . but there are little holes and pits all over the place and the step created by the rut has collapsed into an even steeper step. Rain and feet are taking their toll too. It looks as if someone's foot has gone right through the ground into a burrow below. Mud is oozing into the crack, filling and distorting it.

Our footprints will say something
about the routes we took.
Did we go up and down the same track
or did we go home a different way?

Someone, or some people, informally maintain the path. Somebody must bring secateurs when the brambles stick out too far. Sometimes it looks as if someone has scattered cindery stuff to keep the grip underfoot. I don't imagine the path will be abandoned . . . but, what if it is? What if it gets too slippy and too much of it collapses into burrows? Other paths nearby, paths which run parallel with the sea rather than down to it, have cracked and fallen away taking great chunks of mud and footprints with them.

The nice thing about being bewildered by time is that you can imagine almost anything happening. If a dinosaur pottered along and no-one went that way again - what if our path is abandoned and human footprints are preserved the same way? The earth is soft and flakey. I expect rain will slur everything to mush . . . but . . . what if it doesn't?

If our footprints are preserved, they may
 tell stories of how evenly we
balanced our weight, how different kinds
of footwear gave different grips.
They may indicate emotion
"Oh, help, I'm slipping!"

In England, there are probably few of us who have problems with the idea of evolution but I realise this blog is read by people across the world so it may be worth adding a post-script. When I say how extraordinary I find it that footprints can be left undisturbed for so long that they have time to get set in stone - I say this in the same way as I might look at a seed and wonder how on earth it could possibly turn into a tree. I say it in awe and with excitement, not in disbelief. If ever you get a chance to see the bendings-over, the scrolls and folds of rocks in the cliffs at Charmouth and Lulworth, you will easily see how old fossils and rocks can land up on top of newer ones - something that must be very puzzling to people digging from top down instead of seeing the earth in cross-section.

What's more, there must be a wonderful unwritten history of what people made of fossil deposits in the hundreds and hundreds of years before Darwin. Mary Anning sold fossils. She didn't discover them. What did people make of the skulls and teeth of the unknown creatures that have been falling out of these cliffs for as long as the sea has been beating against them? They didn't suddenly appear in the nineteenth century. By then (and by definition) they had been there an awful long time!

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Human footprints from pre-history on Formby Beach. Thanks to Tim at Notes of Nature for the link.
Extra link - February 11th 2013 - Landslide at Lyme Regis (Dorset) - 300 metres of cliff have fallen. If you look at the picture, you'll see some of the geological layers.

HERE COME THE CREATURES

As usual, I go out for one thing and come back with another.

This time, I went to look at the sea and came back with pictures of creatures.

Do I know anything about creatures? No! So, here are some mysteries.

The first is this little fly on an alexanders flower.

January 31st 2013
Phil at The Cabinet of Curiosities suggests this may be  a dung fly
Scatophaga stercoraria

If I had taken a picture of its back as well as its face, I might have been able to have it IDed. But I didn't. None the less, I am charmed. Indeed, I am so charmed I have set it as my laptop background and I sit here gazing inanely into its eyes (oh, fly! what big eyes you've got!) and admiring its poise, the frog-like angles of its legs. If ever one were able to fall in love with a fly, I have fallen in love with this one.

The alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) are zooming up. Most years, they do this, then they get zapped by frost and go all droopy. So far, though, so good. Not that it matters. Even if they do get zapped, they recover - and there are millions of them! I've not counted so maybe it's merely thousands. 'Lots' doesn't cover it.

They seem to be popular for sitting on. Here's another fly on an alexanders leaf. This one a little bigger.

January 31st 2013

See the round, yellow dent? This is caused by Alexanders Rust (Puccinia smyrnii). For ages, I didn't realise it is a rust and would, each year, poke around looking for insect eggs. Nothing to do with insect eggs. (I'd hoped for butterflies, ah well.) Rusts are a kind of powdery fungus (do not quote me, this is very unscientific language but, unless you are scientist, I think this is a good way to describe it). It counts as 'parasitic' because it harms the plant but it doesn't kill it. This rust, though, does make the leaves look pretty ugly when it gets a hold.

Next distraction was that a trench had been dug into the narrow path I use to make my way between brambles and buddleia.

January 31st 2013

The ground is soft from rain, though not muddy, and some animal has made a huge groove leading to a hole in the bank. It runs for several yards and includes a right turn into what appears to be a dead end part of the way along. But what has done this? Dogs sometimes scrabble around holes but they don't make a massive pathway. I don't know what a fox hole looks like but the BBC Nature Site suggests the area round it smells strongly - and this doesn't. So I'm left with badger. A badger would easily be big enough to do all this digging - and they like grand entrances to their setts. But is the hole big enough? And would a badger do this to a path regularly walked down by lots of humans? It may not be Oxford Street but it's rare one doesn't meet someone here.

Then to the beach.

I had planned to photograph seaweeds but was quickly diverted to footprints. And here's the next mystery. (Only a mystery to me. If any bird people read this, I'm sure they'll easily be able to put me out of my mysteryness.)

Two kinds of bird tracks dominated - similar except some were about two inches across and some only an inch and a half.

January 31st 2013

Some footprints are indented with clear indications of a web.

The two crisp holes in the sand beside the track print interest me too. Any ideas?
January 31st 2013

Some have depressions running either side of a ridge and no sign of a web. I don't know whether these differences reflect different foot structures or it's merely something to do with the sand and the water.

And, there we have it. Two flies, yellow rust, a dug up path and some bird prints. Not what I went to find  -  but that's the pleasure of a walk.

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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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