WALKING IN THE WOODS

This is really a post about fungi. I have to tell you this because, if I don't, there will be no way of you knowing because, after this paragraph, they won't be mentioned again until the end. But it's good to have a context. These woods are the context for the fungi in the next post and for them, you will have to wait!

They are on the edge of the River Stour, which runs beside Blandford Forum in Dorset and which is, as you can see from the gulls swimming on the grass, prone to flooding in wet weather. The woods themselves, at least on the bank we are about to walk along, are on enough of a rise to be mostly protected from the water and they are, I reckon, one of the most beautiful places you could ever be.

They are wonderfully and sensitively managed; the lightness of touch is impressive - old logs left and lots of undergrowth but paths kept clear so people (and horses) can walk through safely. To get there, it's a bit more than half an hour's walk followed by an hour's bus-ride from the places I usually show you so forget the sea, forget pebbles . . . and, in winter, you can think snow.

November 17th 2012
The grey behind the leaves is the water of the Stour.
Some  branches are branches, some reflections.

At the beginning of the walk, there are yew trees. After that, at this time of year, it's the beeches which most attract my eye. The ways through the woods are wide so it's reasonably safe to look up as you walk; though it is, in places pretty muddy.

Some of the leaves, as you can see, are quite a deep bronze. Others, brighter.

And, under foot, a carpet of both - with more and more falling as you walk.

(Notice the ivy?)

Through the trees, you can see St Martin's - the church of Bryanston School.

If you keep going (which you have to unless you turn back, there's no-where in between!) you will come out beside it, or near it (depending on the route you take) and, all the time, you will have been looking out for fungi - or, at other times of year, maybe . . . beetles? I don't mean it's rock solid with fungi - but there are enough to make it extra interesting, especially because they are not the same as the fungi I know from the woods nearer home.

* * *

For the post about the fungi in this wood, click
HERE

How are the trees you are following doing
 now it's autumn?
My elderberry seems pretty mundane
compared with the beeches in
these woods but,
not withstanding,
I'll catch you up with it soon.

For the post about the fungi in this wood, click

HERE

Tweet

A POST IN GREY

One of the delights of autumn is the way the skies swing between grey and blue. How a plant 'looks' (it's emotional appeal to humans) is closely connected with how brightly the light shines. There's something cheerfully heart lifting about crisp colours and lots of easily discerned detail. When colour and detail vanish, texture tends to vanish too. We are left with shape and awe.

November 15th 2012

Immediately - a problem with ID.
Is this the top of a sycamore or maple?
Looking around for an answer, I've come across a tree called
Sycamore Maple
(Acer pseudoplatanus)
Descriptions suggest we might not only confuse this maple with sycamores
but, in some seasons, with plane trees too.
Confusion comes easy!
Meanwhile, I don't know what this pretty tree is.

This is one of my favourite times of year and, although I realise it would be boring to have non-stop silhouettes, I'm always pleased when these newly re-revealed structures of the natural world re-appear against the sky.

November 15th 2012

This is very top of the tree above.
Asking if anyone knows its identity

would have made more sense when it still had leaves!

BUT - once one knows . . . 

being able to identify a tree from its winter shape would be a handy skill,

don't you think?

As ever, I'm aware I have taken these very same pictures before - same plant, same angle, same blank grey sky. It's almost like the annual school photo. The subjects up, fix their smiles and - zam, that's them to put in the album. Once I like something, I tend to get stuck on it. When I see the same shape as last year, I find it oddly heart warming. But, this time, old scenes have given me a new idea.

November 15th 2012

This blackberry loop is hanging from the elderberry tree I'm 'following'.

The clump is so well covered with ivy and brambles, I missed it shedding its leaves!

When I'm trying to identify a plant or tree (and this can be a very ordinary plant or tree, I rarely come across anything exotic) I plough around blogs and ID sites and, of course, upload pictures to Ispot (which I can never plug enough!). But it's often difficult to draw things together. There's a real leaf here, a drawing there, a diagram of tree shape, a flower alive but not what it looks like when it dies. Very hit and miss - and will remain so. Apart from all the other practicalities, every leaf is different. Each tree has a history written in its bark.

November 15th 2012

These are blackthorn leaves.

Blackthorn belongs to the plum family. In summer, its leaves are glossy and dark green.
Its autumn transformation is startling, more so than in trees like sycamores whose
autumn leaves, apart from a change in colour, aren't much different from their summer selves.

The range of plants and trees I cover in this blog is very, very narrow. The challenge of this is to keep it interesting. The advantage is that I have a lot of pictures of the same ones at different times of year. Even then, there are glaring gaps. I may photograph the same branch every autumn because I welcome the re-emergence of its shape . . . but miss the bark every time round. Even bark changes. A sudden downpour and its colours are altered in seconds.

November 15th 2012

Hawthorn leaves.

In spring, hawthorn leaves are a delightful light green.

The blossom (May) comes later and tends to hog attention till the autumn

when the berries (haws) steal the show.

Meanwhile . . . don't forget the leaves!

So . . . a new discipline. I'll look for a way of gathering pictures of individual varieties of plants into separate, easily accessible albums. I tried doing this with elderberry a few years ago by giving it its own blog. The project foundered. And the labels in the side bar aren't a lot of use if help is needed with ID because they link to posts, not pictures.

November 15th 2012

I'm a fan of buddleia bark.
(I'll have to look out old pictures - and add some new.)

I like dead buddleia flowers (like these) - but not when they're live -
their florets are packed so densely, there' something disconcerting about them.

The discipline in this is double. First, it might be boring. Indexing takes a special kind of mind and a lot of time. The other - and this simultaneously enlivens my interest and makes me feel guilty because it highlights the gaps . . . why do I not have more pictures of bark? But . . . . I'll see what I can do . . . and if you have experience of drawing things together in this way and have advice - please do share it if you are willing.

November 15th 2012

Gorse against a blue sky spells summer heat and picnics.

It's grey-sky shape has a starkly different atmosphere.

A sad addendum.

As UK readers (especially, I think, those of us in England) will be all too aware - our Ash Trees are under threat from a fungal infection called Chalara fraxinea (Ash Dieback). Potentially, it can kill almost all our ash trees (Think Dutch Elm Disease).

November 15th 2012

Two Ash Trees.

When the undergrowth pulls back a bit for winter, I'll see if I can get closer

to show you the trunks as well as the top-most leaves!

The picture above shows the edges of the tops of two young ash trees. We are all being asked to keep an eye out for Ash Dieback. This will be a new kind of tree following - a sombre one. Do click this Forestry Commission link . Towards the bottom of the Forestry Commission page, there's a short video. If you have a moment, do, please, watch it. It's both interesting and important. Important because the only way to stop the spread of this disease is by taking out affected trees. Specially interesting beause it shows not only the external signs of the disease (the leaves, the lesions) but what is happening inside the wood too.

* * *

The latest tree following post I know of is
from Gary Web at Compton Verney.
Not only is he following it through its seasons
but a family has adopted it too!

Plane Tree - Autumn 2012

Have you updated your tree?

Tweet

P.S. All photos in this post are in colour.

RED

November 9th 2012

When leaves are under stress, they can turn red. I don't know why. Nor do I know why some leaves do it and others on the same plant don't. They can do it in the middle of the summer - one bright leaf in a sea of green. Even in autumn, when we might expect browns and yellows, they catch the eye.

This post highlights blackberry leaves, not because they are the only kind which can go red like this, but because there are more blackberries here than almost any other kind of plant and these are the ones one notices just now. In the summer I saw a dandelion with one deep red leaf when all the others on the plant were green. Like a special streak you might put in your hair for a party. (Or, maybe not you . . . or, maybe you should try it . . . ? Solidarity with the plant world.)

Yesterday afternoon, I set out to photograph some. This, of course, was quite the wrong moment and the post is now as much about how quickly gloom comes in on November evening as it is about leaves.

November 9th 2012  

The colour doesn't necessarily touch the whole leaf, it can be partial and patterned.

November 9th 2012

This picture, of course, is irrelevant - except that the bright red dots of unripened blackberry fruits brighten the hedgerows too. Maybe this bunch says something about the direction from which the sun shines most?

November 9th 2012

The light is going. We may miss the special touch of sunlight but red leaves still stand out.

November 9th 2012

In their variety.

* * *

Following a View

November 8th 2012

Leaves on the right hand tree are almost all gone now. As vegetation recedes, houses on the left are revealed.

Notice too, the blackberry tangle. You'll see that red is certainly not the dominant colour!

* * *

This, I think, below, is my favourite of the red-leaved-group. I'm putting it separately for two reasons. First because it was taken a day before the others. Second because there's some kind of miner activity. Maybe that's got something to do with it?

November 9th 2012

But that can't be the explanation. Masses of leaves have miner damage but the patterns go yellow or brown, not red. Nor do miners synchronise their burrowing to create the kind of symmetry you see here.

I don't know!

Interesting though.

P.S. This , it may strike you, is a stunningly information free, un-erudite, post.

If you would  like to leave an explanation for these reds and patterns in the comments, please do. Don't worry about its length.

Otherwise, if there's something which could usefully be added to this post, do email me at

looseandleafy@googlemail.com

and I'll add it in.

Tweet

CARDING THE SEA

Autumn on the land - so in the sea, it seems. Around this time each year, the sea gathers armfuls of seaweed and eel grass and places it on the beach. In other years, I might have said 'thrown' but, as with finding lots of red admirals on the ivy - much depends on the day, the moment you look.

On 15th October, the sea was gentle. Great lumps of seaweed and eel grass were bobbing about in the shallows. I don't know whether you are familiar with carding wool (this is not a digression) but before wool can be spun, the strands have to be pulled straight. To do this by hand, you spread threads from the fleece over a grid of pins which stick out from a rectangular piece of wood which has a handle. Then you pull a matching 'carder' across it, over and over, till the 'grain', as it were, is smooth and straight. A deft realignment of the carders lifts the wool from the pins. As it comes away, it is rolled into a sort of tube called a rolag. A fleece, when it comes from the sheep is oily and smelly and, most likely, has bits and bobs of debris - straw and the like in it. Getting it ready for spinning is hard work on the arms but gentle on the wool. Mid October - and the sea wasn't hurling weed onto the shore, it was carding it - gently disentangling the threads, laying them out on the beach and rolling them (or, perhaps, nudging them, there are no exact parallels) into piles.

The short video below shows it happening.

Some of the seaweed clumps waiting to land are still attached to their 'holdfasts'. (A holdfast is a sort of foot which keeps the plant anchored to its rock.) These, in my mind, are the seaweed equivalents of 'staples'. Sheep's wool grows in clumps - staples. The length of the wool in the staple is one of the factors which determines the quality of the yarn made from it and, hence, the cloth. Mixed with these, and in different states between whole and broken, are strands from other plants. It's a right tangle. A tangle waiting to be 'carded'.

Watch the gap between the piles of weed on the shore. First one thread is drawn from the sea and straightened. The next wavelet pushes it a little further out of the water and attaches another strand to it. You'll get the idea. (Watching full screen helps.)

And here . . . in stills . . .

15th October 2012

This is dried and broken eel grass being sifted out of the sea.

15th October 2012

With each wavelet, other seaweeds are nudged against it, then pulled straight as the sea sucks out.

15th October 2012

As the sea brings more, it pushes what's already there into piles.

15th October 2012

More and more variety, in various stages of a seaweed 'autumn'

15th October 2012

Until everything that will come ashore with that tide is drying above the water line.

Then . . . well . . . then there are so many piles along the beach they join in an ugly, decaying ridge. Then it all gets sucked back out again. We'll ignore that for the moment and enjoy it in its fresh colour.

* * *

It's raining. I can't update the view I'm following while it rains so here's one from the first of November.

November 1st 2012

I began following this view on 21st September.
To see what it looked like then see the post
'Following Trees and Views and Willow Herb'
* * *

P.S. I've not yet put links with this post. So far, the demonstrations of carding I've found seem to have been made using clean and fluffy pre-carded wool and internet explanations about the word 'carding' seem, to my un-botanical mind, to be muddling teasels with thistles. However . . . if I can find links to clear and relevant information which doesn't confuse me - I'll add them here.

Tweet

THE END OF OCTOBER

You have no idea how many photographs I've taken recently, nor how many topics I've covered. How could you? I've not been churning out posts - and even this is late. Trouble is, I've been overwhelmed by choice. In the end, I've cheated and will simply present you with a small selection of autumn photos. After all, it is autumn. What more pressing subject could there be?

October 30th 2012

Chicory.

October 30th 2012

Chicory is one of my favourite plants. Its flowers get smaller as the season advances but they stand out specially against the aging vegetation beside the path. Some petals have fallen. Some seeds are forming.

October  15th 2012

Some parts of the landscape are still green.
Others are brown and white.
Autumn takes its time.

Teasels.

Teasels are another favourite.

October 30th 2012

Hawthorn.

Hawthorn doesn't 'do' autumn - not in the striking way of some other deciduous trees. Most of their leaves drop discreetly but there are prima-donnas among them, leaves which decide to do a dazzle all on their own.

October 30th 2012

Willow Herb.

This is one of the larger ones.

I photograph it in the same place every year.

Wonderful shapes it makes against the sky.

* * *

The Follow Section

The most recent tree following posts . . .
from

Experiments With Plants
London Plane Tree

Down By The Sea
Willow

Anyone else?

And, finally - the view I'm following through the seasons.

Sandsfoot Castle
Ten to four in the afternoon,
Tuesday 30th October 2012

Have a good autumnal week.

(Or is it spring where you are?)

Tweet

You may also like my other blog

 - Message in a Milk Bottle

(a new photo every day)

OF COURSE GEESE HAVE TEETH

The sea can be a pain. It's all connected to the moon. Sometimes, the tide goes so far out, I wonder if a Tsunami might be imminent. In 1824, the village of Fleet, a little further west but still well within Dorset, was swept away by a tidal wave - so it's not impossible; unlikely, perhaps - but it comes into one's mind. At others, the sea hardly goes anywhere, just potters around on the rocks.

This very tiny yellow snail
(less than a centimeter)
is, I think, a
Flat Periwinkle (Littorina obtusata)

I'd been pottering around on the rocks with it - looking at seaweed and snails and wanting to take a picture of Sandsfoot Castle from the shore. There's a new little balcony where you can stand and look out to sea in a romantic sort of way, pretend you are a mediaeval princess (for all that it was built in the 1530s) or Juliet transferred from Italy to Dorset and on the look out for an aquatic Romeo. Visitors like to stand there. (I like to stand there!) It's very nice for them - but it sort of spoils the look of the castle. (And I'm reluctant to take pictures of people without their permission.)

So . . . I'm sitting on a rock, waiting for them to leave, when I notice a dead Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) between me and the not-very-far out water's edge. What a photo op.!

It had not been there long. There was no smell, no decay. Indeed, I couldn't tell how it had died. There was a little dot of damage beside its nostril - otherwise, it was intact and the tail feathers and the feathers on the land side were dry.

I've not noticed Canada Geese along this stretch before. That doesn't mean they are never there. Of course not. But it was a surprise. If it had been a Brent Goose, it would have been interesting in a different way - they are gone in the summer so it would have been a sign of seasonal change - but less puzzling. The issue of how it had died would still have been a challenge. It was as if it had dropped out of the sky, or settled to rest for a few moments and had never managed to leave. Even the tiny, slightly bloody (freshly bloody) little wound might have been made on the spot by a flying stone, chucked out of the water by the sea as it retreated. Not enormously likely to have killed it but I was stuck for an explanation. And it wasn't that big. And the feathers weren't tatty. I don't think it was old.

Canada Geese are not popular. They were imported from North America in 1665 because they look good, settled in, bred, and have become a bit too numerous for comfort. They specially like ponds and lakes in towns and villages (not so much rocky seashores though they do eat seaweed as well as pond weed). They live in flocks and a flock of fifty birds can produce two and a half tons of excrement in a year. No wonder they aren't always welcome on village greens!

A digression. (Except it isn't really.) Two questions. Have you ever seen elephant teeth? How would you define teeth?

I first came across elephant teeth in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and was fascinated by the patterns and grooves in them. Elephants, being vegetarian, need to grind up the leaves they eat. Specially interesting (to me) was that elephants are born with a life-long supply of teeth already intact. At first, they don't use the back ones. As the front ones wear down, the back ones gradually move forward to replace them. When they run out of teeth they can no longer eat - so they die.

That's one question. Here's the other.

What are teeth? To me, they are bony bits in our mouths which we use for biting and grinding and chewing. Usually, they are inside the mouth but if you think of crocodiles, we know they can also stick out of the mouth so they can be used for tearing. Until I met this goose close up, I would not have included gums in my definition. Yet looking at this one's beak, it clearly has what I would describe as teeth (called lamellae) - hard, pointy things and grooved grindy things with patterns on (just as elephants have patterns) which they use for snapping off and tearing up the weeds and grasses they eat. They also work as sieves when they are feeding on plants in water. All they are missing are gums. If I had hard lips, I don't suppose I'd mind having my teeth sticking out from them as long as I had a tongue capable of helping me to transfer the food to my throat and good enough muscles in my neck to mean I could swallow it. Which means, in my mind, that, whatever the convention is about birds in general - geese have teeth. Well, this one does!

* * *

Some references.

A picture of elephant teeth (scroll down the page) on the Elephant Facts site.

How to Identify an Elephant's Tooth on the Natural History Museum Site

Eleaid - Elephant Teeth

* * *

Below are some Canada Geese links. You won't want to look at all of them - and, believe it or not, this is a (roughly) random selection. I put the list here because it gives a snapshot idea of how widely found these birds are - and some of the sites are worth knowing about in themselves because they have information about other birds and animals too.

I'm always interested in how sites present their material. There's a great variety here. And it's interesting  (and frustrating) how different sites filter information. Each tends to have a snippet that can't necessarily be found on others - so you only begin to get a picture by plowing around.

Another frustrating thing is that I can't re-find my favourite site. It was made by a student in the U.S.A. as part of her course work. When I find it again, I'll give it a special place in the list.

Geese have teeth? - Picture of Canada Goose with open mouth - on the Natural History Museum site

Canada Geese info. RSPB site (You can even hear what they sound like except they sound better in real life! This makes them sound as if they are woofing. It gives a bit of an idea though.)

Canada Geese in Illinois - which may sound odd given that this goose died in Dorset - it is interesting though - on the Living With Wildlife in Illinois site.

Canada Geese on Animal Diversity Site for University of Michigan

Canada Geese on Citizens for the Protection of Wildlife site

Canada Geese on Critter Catalogue (Detroit!)

Canada Geese on BBC Science and Nature Site

A bit about Canada Geese migration (in North America) at Waterfowl Hunting HQ!!!!!!!!!!

There are an awful lot of them - video of migrating Canada geese - shows why you might not like them to land near where you live!

P.S.

I'm an idiot.

There are some tree following posts

ready on other blogs for you to read.

My eyes are going bleary for having looked at the screen for so long.

I'm off to make a cup of tea.

I'll make a big deal of these posts later!

Meanwhile - if you haven't let me know of your latest tree following post -

do.

Here's your chance.

(And I'll make a fuss of your blog too!)

* * *

Tweet