30 DAYS WILD : DAY 20 - THREE SMALL THINGS

This morning I went for a walk and stopped at a stone bridge over a stream and there I saw three small things.

A fly with big brown eyes

A seed growing in the moss on the parapet

A stripey something on a leaf with galls. It was only a few millimetres long and I have no idea what it is. Have you?

30 DAYS WILD

Today's Random Act of

Wildness is to

see three tiny things.

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30 DAYS WILD : 19 - MAKING CHOICES

Every so often, the Wildlife Trusts sends emails to those registered for 30 Days Wild with suggestions of what they might be doing for their 'random acts of wildness'. One of them recently is to go litter picking. Gathering litter is a bit of a challenge. Not only am I currently extra-wary of germs there's always the problem of what to do with the product of one's 'gatherings'. Most weeks the council collects things to be re-cycled (paper, plastic bottles, cans) and food-waste; but 'residual waste' (i.e. more or less everything else) is taken once a fortnight - and sometimes there's a delay with that. Even a short excursion to pick up crisp packets, stray plastic bags and fish and chip cartons can land one with more 'stuff' than will fit even in a big black wheelie bin when combined with one's own accumulated bits and bobs of packaging etc.. And if it doesn't fit in the wheelie bin, it won't be taken away.

I do put things in my bin if they land up outside my house, whether they have been dropped there by passers by or blown there from further along the terrace. But street responsibilities don't stop there. What about the plants which grow in the gutter or up through the pavement? For all that I enthuse about wild plants in the street, I remove these too. Plastic bottles and cans come bobbing along when it rains, form log-jams against any plants they come across and water pools across the road. It gets in the way. If there were any traffic, pedestrians would get splashed. I've been splashed. I didn't like it. Plants which come up through the pavement tip the slabs into an angle and people trip. Plants which push their way through tarmac cause cracks and the pathway disintegrates. So I pull them up too. When I'm doing this 'street tidying' I don't feel in the least bit 'wild', I feel fuddy-duddy and mean. I can even sense some of you looking over my shoulder, being critical, saying 'I thought your blog celebrates street plants?'. Well it does. But even they have to be in the 'right' place. 'Nature' is pretty strong. We humans can be overwhelmed. We aren't always as indomitable as we think. Let buddleia take root in the tiles of our roofs and our houses will fall down.

Quite a lot of us have become interested in the way the coronavirus pandemic has led to an increase in plant-life. Verges have been left un-mown. More plants than usual have been left unmolested in urban settings. Which means ordinary citizens are having to decide 'what is to be done'; what is to be removed and what should stay. It's not just me.

And so it was, that when I was photographing a wall full of ferns (Maidenhair spleenwort do you think?) with flowering yellow poppies at its feet, a voice came shouting across the road,

"THEY ARE POPPIES'. 

I knew. I turned to see who was telling me. A woman who lives in that street explained from a healthy 'social distance' that she had pulled out other plants along the foot of the wall but had left the poppies on purpose. I really like this. It mean these poppies are not here by chance but by choice. Someone had chosen to leave them - and that is as much a choice as it would have been to have put them there in the first place.

I have a neighbour who lets ragwort grow in a pot outside her front door each year. I do love this neighbourhood! And ragwort is currently almost everywhere. Dandelions have stopped flowering but we still have lots of yellow flowers. A spontaneous 'Britain in Bloom'.

I've even come across a teasel. This is my biggest surprise. Not only has it been allowed to grow taller than me, it seems to be the only one. How did it get to be there? It has three seed heads. Maybe there will be more teasels next year. 

30 DAYS WILD

Today's Random Act of

Wildness is to

pick up litter and

choose which flowers

can stay in the street.

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30 DAYS WILD : DAY 18 - EVEN CUT FLOWERS DO THINGS

The chive flower is beginning to 'die'.

On Monday, I posted a photo of a little vase of flowers which had been picked from my allotment. It included Horse Tails (Equisetum arvense) and Ivy-Leaved Toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis). Neither are popular in flower arrangements but both are beautiful. Indeed, it might be tempting to say the Equisetum isn't very popular anywhere. Once it finds a place to grow it spreads and spreads - downwards as well as sideways. It's well nigh impossible to get rid of. That, however, does not stop it being beautiful and interesting. In fact, I find it breathtaking. (I used to enthuse about it on my old blog - Loose and Leafy in Dorset). As for the Cymbalaria, I think it's just a matter of it being small and people just don't think of using it. Admittedly it doesn't last long once picked but it lasted long enough to be enjoyed.

I loved this little collection of flowers while it was fresh.  I am finding it fascinating as it decays. In particular, the poppy and the chives are providing interest. I'm not sure if either will produce seeds. They have been indoors too much, away from pollinators. But they are worth 'watching' - to see what happens.

The yellow poppy has lost its petals.

Already the yellow (Welsh?) poppy is at a stage I've not noticed in a poppy before. I see poppies in flower each year. They are all over the place: in gardens, wild in the countryside and sprung up in town. And I admire their seed heads. Depending on the variety they can be quite large and dramatic. But I'd not previously noticed them with a frill round.

What's more, I had assumed all poppy seed heads have a star on the top. I've seen these stars even when the petals are still on board. Here you can see one on a 'coronovirus poppy' - one of the plants that have only been 'allowed' to grow because the grass has not been mown this season round an electricity sub-station.

But the yellow poppy, has a pom-pom instead of a star.

30 DAYS WILD

Today's Random Act of

Wildness is to

observe changes

in dying flowers.

So my Random Act of Wildness today is not to throw flowers away but to 'notice' them (enjoy them!) right to the end. Let's start a new movement. 'Let your dying flowers be adored'.

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30 DAYS WILD : DAY 17 - GRASS AND BARK

17th June 2020. I'll have to go back to find out what kind of tree this is!

I went out briefly this morning, intending to take photos of 'coronovirus plants' - plants which would not, in the usual way of things, have been left in place but would have been swept up, mown down, taken away. This photo of grass in flower was to illustrate what happens when the grass isn't cut. There were red poppies too in the rising-high lawn beside an electricity sub-station. Poppies and other coronovirus plants can last till another day for although I was struck by the beauty of the grass flower, when I viewed the picture on screen I was equally struck by the bark of the tree behind it. . . . Which in turn reminded me of the bark on silver birches that I'd come across yesterday.

Silver birches can look elegant when their bark shines but they can look pretty tatty as well. Only recently have I come across silver birches which I would describe as 'characterful'; their trunks and limbs describing interesting shapes, 

their bark beautiful in a variety of colours.

Which is why my purpose for today's post wandered around a bit. 

30 DAYS WILD
Today's Random Act of
Wildness is to
place grass and bark on
the virtual
nature table.

So today . . . on my virtual nature table . . . I place grass and bark.

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30 DAYS WILD : DAY 16 - A TALE OF THREE LEVELS - LICHENS

It's very hard to stay on track with the 30 Days Wild Challenge. 

Although Loose and Leafy is predominantly about plants and insects I'm used to doing my own thing and over these last few days I've found I've been wandering around (in so far as I can wander!) photographing walls. One can stretch a theme so far but I don't think a wall can be counted in itself as 'wild'. So I scanned the info. to see where I could squeeze 'walls' into the project and found that one of the squares on the nature table is 'Moss and Mud'. I do have some photos of mud but I'm not in a 'mud' sort of mood today. All this sudden fresh air and exercise is making me a bit peevish and very tired. I keep telling myself it's good for me and that strength will properly return but it's a bit of a slog. 

As an aside - I was enlivened somewhat today by hearing a cuckoo. I haven't heard a cuckoo for years. I can give myself a tick for this; 'Listen out for birdsong and learn who it's coming from' is on one of the squares on the 30 days 'passport'. (Squares figure large in this challenge, there's even a 'bingo' card - more squares.

However, today I walked past this stone building which is gradually being overcome by moss; I'll put this building with its moss then on the virtual nature table. There are lots of stone buildings being destroyed by nature around here but this one looks as if its managing to hold its own despite the onslaught. Roots are the real demolition gang and mosses don't have any - just things called 'rhyzoids' which help them stick to whatever they are sitting on.

Looking at walls though will, also, almost inevitably, bring one face to face with lichen. Lichen is even weirder than moss, being not one organism but a conglomeration. I knew lichen is fungi and algae together but when I was looking it up I found there's another thing involved - cyanobacteria. Until today I'd not heard of cyanobacteria. Should I try to learn about them? understand them? interest you in them? explain them?

Wikipedia says this:

"Cyanobacteria /saɪˌænoʊbækˈtɪəriə/, also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum consisting of free-living photosynthetic bacteria and the endosymbiotic plastids, a sister group to Gloeomargarita, that are present in some eukaryotes. They commonly obtain their energy through oxygenic photosynthesis."

I haven't the foggiest idea what any of this means so I'll leave it hanging. One of the basic tenets of Loose and Leafy is that it's possible to to appreciate things to a significant degree without necessarily knowing what they are. This is not to say that I would not benefit from knowing more. Rather it's a determination not to let lack of knowledge deter me from exploration. And in the presence of lichens, it's not only that I rarely know what kind of lichens I'm looking at, I find them so science-fictiony I'm almost frightened to think about them.  This, of course, is contradictory but I expect you can cope.

Stepping sideways . . . When I lived in Dorset, I lived by the sea. The natural history interest of the seashore is never ending and even when I went inland, the sea was never far away, not really. And when I was walking by the sea, the green hills of inland Dorset were never far from me either. I wouldn't expect to find a jellyfish on a hilltop, obviously, or honeysuckle rambling over a rock that's submerged at high tide but, broadly speaking, there was an interconnectedness between the various sceneries.

Here in West Yorkshire, I am finding it very different. The hills are steep, the valleys deep. Within a few minutes I am walking between different worlds.

A few days ago, up on Warley Moor, I found masses of tiny butterflies rushing about my feet. None would stay still long enough to photograph and in all their brief pauses they shut their wings. There were tiny, tiny bumblebees as well. Ordinary daisies were a fraction of the size of the daisies I'm used to. And there was an odd heathery plant that had just four pink bells on the top - very understated. The whiteness of the Hare's Tail Cottongrass seedheads had receded and was almost completely gone now. There had been acres of it only a few days before. I'd been told (on iSpot) that the difference between Common Cottongrass and Hare's Tail Cottongrass is that Hare's Tail Cottongrass has only one seedhead on a stem and Common Cottongrass more than one. Apparently the wind and the rain can fuse them so it might be easy to muddle which is which. Definitely these had only one head per stem.  I picked one stem to photograph when I got home. 

First, though, I wanted to photograph a lichen I'd first met a year ago on the little stone bridge I showed you on Day 8 so I gave the seedhead to my companion to look after. He put it in his hat. In his hat! Would you put delicate samples in your hat for safe-keeping? No. I didn't think so. They get squashed. Obviously. I'll need to wait almost a year for another chance. But that's good. Thinking ahead!

So . . . back to today, I began my walk lower down the hill. Not that it feels as if it's down a hill. It feels very high and windswept there. And, on a dry stone wall, were the fruiting bodies of another lichen. Very tiny. Very ethereal.

I think these are 'Pixie Cups' - (Cladonia pyxidata)

There was more than one patch of it.

A difference in the landscape. Less mud than higher on the moor! There are few dwellings on the tops of the moors but lots of people live at this middle height so there are houses and farms, even if they aren't in the picture; and more discernible divisions between the fields.

But still there's further to go. Further down and down into Luddenden valley towards the stream (brook?) at the bottom. The mossy building is half way down the hill. Further round on roughly the same contour is a little stand of trees and yet another kind of lichen on a rock that's part of a fallen wall.

And, eventually reaching the bottom, in a place where it's warm and still and sheltered and green, on a branch across the stream is yet another kind of lichen.

I don't know what any of them are!

What of the tiny butterflies? On the Butterfly Conservation Site where you can get help with IDs, I ticked boxes for 'England', 'Small' 'Orange' and 'Grey'. Up came 'Small Heath'. That was what they looked like. That it seemed, was it! Except . . . it can be found in southern England and I am in the north of England. But the text also says it is widespread so may be that was ok. I read on.

"Occurs on grassland where there are fine grasses, especially in dry, well-drained situations where the sward is short and sparse. Typical habitats include; heathland, downland and coastal dunes, but it is also found on road verges, moorland and in woodland rides."

It wasn't feeling quite 'right'. This was not a 'dry, well-drained situation'. (See the photo of the sky reflected in the puddle above!) There are big yellow notices all over the place warning us to take care not to sink.

Despite it being a very small butterfly, I clicked for 'Large Heath'. 

"The main foodplant is Hare's-tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum)" 

Bingo! 

And . . .

"The butterflies breed in open, wet areas where the foodplant grows, this includes habitats such as; lowland raised bogs, upland blanket bogs and damp acidic moorland. Sites are usually below 500m (600m in the far north) and have a base of Sphagnum moss interspersed with the foodplant and abundant Cross-leaved Heath (the main adult nectar source)."

Another hurdle . . . what is 'Cross-leaved Heath'? I go to Google images and Wikepedia (as one does) and . . . it's the tough little plant with the meagre display of pink flowers. So . . . my little butterfly is a Large Heath even though it's a little butterfly.

Very exciting. I've got three layers of habitat, the high moor, the middle and the valley. I've identified a butterfly, a heather (a heath is a heather) a sedge (Hare's Tail Cottongrass is a sedge) heard a cuckoo, inspected several lichens and admired a mossy stone shed.

30 DAYS WILD

Today's Random Act of

Wildness is to

look at moss

and lichen,

listen to a bird,

identify a butterfly

and two plants.

Links:

Listen to a cuckoo on the RSPB site.

Cross-leaved Heath (Erica tetralix) on Wikipedia.

Large Heath Butterfly (Coenonympha tullia) on the Butterfly Conservation site.

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Linking with Nature Notes at Rambling Woods.
And to Our World Tuesday