Down in England

 July and August involved visits to family in various parts of England. Although I am there to enjoy my family, I keep an eye out for plants that are new to me.  The first visit was to Sunbury-on- Thames. While walking along the road to collect grandchildren from school, I spotted a grass growing at the edge of the pavement that was unlike anything I had seen before, and looked like fingers. There was more of it growing in the adjacent drive, between the paving.

Hairy Finger Grass

It turned out to be Hairy Finger Grass, Digitaria sanguinalis. You can see where the name came from (digit meaning finger) and the stems were hairy.  The BSBI distribution map shows that it is spreading north but has not reached my area, yet.

I think it is very likely that in this case the seed was introduced with the imported sand used when laying the pavers in the drive. 

In a naturally sandy path in Sunbury Park, there were a series of little holes.  If you were patient and waited for a while, the digger of these holes came along.  

Apologies for the length and quality of the video (24s) but my video editing skills are nil. I can't identify what kind of wasp it is. Let me know if you can!

An easier insect to identify was a Jersey Tiger moth that got into the house and had to be rescued.

Another insect-to-be was spotted in Sunbury Park on the Ragwort: the caterpillars of the Cinnabar moth.

Later in the week, we went down to Somerset and I did a bit of botanising in Crewkerne. One new plant was Caper Spurge (Euphorbia lathyris).

Caper Spurge

The plant exudes a white liquid when broken which can produce nasty blisters on the skin and the plant is poisonous so not one to meddle with. There are lots of fascinating facts about it here including that medieval beggars used it to induce blisters on their skin in the hope of eliciting sympathy (and a monetary contribution). I also saw the red berries of Cuckoo Pint or Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum), another plant that is common elsewhere but not in Newtonmore and the Cairngorms.

Cuckoo Pint berries

The final visit was to North Cheshire and South Lancashire. I was shocked by the amount of Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) by any waterways. It is an invasive weed and it was certainly out of control in the places I visited.

Himalayan Balsam on the far bank of the canal

The bees and butterflies found it attractive though so at least it was benefiting some of the wildlife.

Small blue butterfly on Himalayan Balsam

Grasses, Caterpillars and Flies.

While at the Kingussie allotments, I spotted a grass in a waste area that was not familiar to me. It reminded me a bit of barley with the long awns (stiff hairs) sticking out.

Mystery grass

 I took a sample home to see if I could identify it.  It looked as if it was either Barren Brome (Anisantha sterilis) or Great Brome (Anisantha diandrus) but I had never seen either species and I could not tell which it was. I tried taking some measurements  - but as usual, if there are 2 options e.g., 70mm or 60mm, to distinguish between the 2 species, my measurement was 65mm! It was quite important to get the correct species as there were no records of either grass locally, so in the end I posted a sample off to a referee - nothing to do with football - but an expert in a particular area of botany. In this case, it was a man called Michael Wilcox who identified it as Great Brome.

Great Brome

I was quite pleased to find it was the  first time it had been recorded in Cairngorm National Park. (It doesn't take much to excite a botanist!)

Map showing distribution of Great Brome (Arrow points to my record) (BSBI map)

A few days later, I was parked near Inverness airport, waiting to collect a friend.  Rather than wait at the airport, I went to the car park at the new Railway station which boasted car parking for 64 cars.  Not a parking space to be had - cars parked everywhere, along the verges etc.  Pretty obvious that most were probably not using the train but going away and avoiding  expensive airport parking. After parking a bit further away I checked out the plants on a grassy slope whilst waiting.  And what did I find but another Brome grass, a different species that was also new to me! Strange how these things happen - find one and then you find  something similar once you have "got your eye in". This one was Soft Brome (Bromus hordeaceus).

Soft Brome

Back at Kingussie Allotments, there are a lot of nettles on the path from the car park. I have patches of nettles in my garden as you read that they are good for caterpillars. But I never see a caterpillar on my nettles.  But there were plenty on the Kingussie nettles! Black caterpillars with white dots and spikes.

They turned out to be the caterpillars of the Peacock butterfly (Aglais io).

Back in my garden, my perennial cornflower was attracting some insects. I was not surprised to see a bee on the open flowers, but I was surprised to see clusters of greenbottle flies on the dead flowerheads, on the part under the flower head. I could see that they were using their mouthparts on the surfaces so presumably there is something tasty there.

And finally, a view of the pond showing a water lily bud and a small white flower of the Water Soldiers (the spiky plants sticking out of the water). The other leaves are Iris  and Bogbean.

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