Gladdon (Iris foetidissima)

The stinking iris, or gladdon, has started flowering for the first time in Medlar Wood.

Although quite large the flowers are easily overlooked and are sometimes blue rather that yellow.

These plants are bird sown from the medlar tree above and the flowers will, in winter, be followed by fat pods of red berries.

I have never heard what I would regard as a satisfactory explanation of its name 'stinking iris' as no p[art of it seems to smell of anything much.

The attractive plant bug Grypocoris stysi crept out on to one the standards as I stood admiring this plant.

A catastrophic event?

Perhaps the first day that has felt more like spring than winter with daffodils, periwinkles and camellias making a show elsewhere in the garden and a fizzy wind blowing up from the west.

Ellie did some serious raking on Troy Track and, before I spotted her, dug a large quantity of earth from Planet Terracotta with the little red rake.  This is what might be termed in the ecological world a 'catastrophic event', but nearly all the seedlings survived as the grow round the edge rather than in the centre.

Every disaster of this kind is also an opportunity and we retrieved two lumps of mineral earth from beneath the same root plate that the original Planet Terracotta soil came from and we used these to make a kind of central umbo in the 'crater lake'.

In the Square Metre itself I carefully dug up a square 'turf' of fairly bare soil 7 x 7 cm to keep in a moisture box for microfungi etc.  On first inspection under the microscope several mites were seen and few strands of springy turf moss (Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus), a new record for Emthree, though not a very surprising one.

Budding hawthorn

A couple of days ago when I was looking for rabbit damage I noticed that the hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) seedling in Medlar Wood was already showing green and ready to burst.

This is several weeks ahead of normal bud break time despite the fact that it has been a fairly cold winter.

However, I am sure this is not global warming.  Maybe young plants for some reason come into leaf earlier, though I cannot see how this could be an advantage.  It would seem to make them more vulnerable to hungry browsers and late frosts.

A cold winter

Yesterday there was some of the heaviest snow for several years and it persisted today, though with intermittent thaws. It did not seem to have covered Emthree to a remarkable depth and was melting quite quickly when I visited.

However, this is said to be the coldest winter for many years and it will be interesting to see if there are any manifestations later in the year that might be attributable to this.

Dung cannons (Pilobolus crystallinus)

I put some of the rabbit pellets in a damp box and they have developed a fine vestiture of the dung cannon fungus (Pilobolus crystallinus).

There is a much better picture here.

This humble microfungus must be one of the world's most remarkable plants.  The little black spore capsules on the top of each thread-like, crystalline stalk can be fired for up to 2 metres and can accelerate from 0 to 45 mph in the first millimetre of flight - apparently the second fastest accelerator in nature.  The pressure in the stalk below the capsule can build up to an astonishing 7 kilograms per square centimetre (100 pounds per square inch) to enable this.

Pilobolus is also the name of a celebrated American dance company (one of the founding members studied the fungus with his father when he was young). They are an amazing group as their web site www.pilobolus.com shows and somewhat more elegant than my crop of fungi on rabbit dung.

I feel quite pleased, however, that close scrutiny of a rabbit dung pellet has opened such interesting doors.

Some winter finds

Now the weather is milder it is easier to do some work in Emthree and yesterday I started to clear back some of the long and untidy grass that has been blanketing the ground since last autumn.  Underneath it is thick with moss and I discovered some tubers on the base of one of the stems of common figwort (Scrophularia nodosa).

The ones lower down the stalk had been attacked by a white mould or mildew and looked dead, but the smaller upper pair were still in good shape.

These tubers (which are perfectly normal structures rather than galls caused by an external agent) were much used in the past against conditions like scrofula (hence the scientific name Scrophularia) and hydrophobia.  In the latter case it was recommended that the dried tubers were powdered and sprinkled on bread and butter after which one was supposed to take a long and energetic walk wearing far to many clothes for comfort.

Another discovery was a scatter of rabbit droppings along the mossy top of the yew log on the edge of Medlar Wood.  Positive evidence that they are still active in Emthree.

Varied seed heads

Now the coldest winter here for several years and today with hard frost.

Everything in Emthree is brown and silent, clamped in winter's icy vice.  I expect the consequences next spring and summer will be better than if we had had a mild winter though.

Dead stems and seed heads provide some interest and it is useful, say, to learn what perforate St. John's wort (top above) or common figwort (lower above) look like in fruit.

Christmas surprise

On a quick visit on a sunny Christmas Day I was pleased and surprised to find several groups of the shining ink cap (Coprinus micaceus).

Although it often comes up in grassy places it is a species that grows on decaying, often buried, wood.

The species is sometimes said to be edible and is not poisonous as such.  Like other members of the genus it does, however, have an adverse effect if eaten in combination with alcohol and is therefore best avoided.  It is small and hardly worth it anyway.

Midwinter's Day

The shortest day brought a fine, sunny afternoon, but the Square Metre looked drab and tangled after a quite long period of frost and wet.

One of the most striking objects was a fan of leaves made by a plant of stinking iris (Iris foetidissima) growing under the medlar tree.  After flowering they produce red berries which, clearly, are eaten by birds who later void the seeds.  We have three plants in the study area that have originated in this way, but you have to be able to see a youngish plant flat on to get this pandanus-like effect.

Stinging nettle midges

Better weather but rather cold and soggy underfoot. There is an animal track of pressed grass across Emthree from the south east corner to Midsummer Pond, quite clear now I have let the grass grow longer.

Today I took some of the bamboo canes from higher up the garden that have died after flowering and used them to make short palisades round the heathers and various young trees and shrubs that may be vulnerable to rabbits and even deer.

The upper part of each cane has twiggy outgrowths and these provide additional protection. Anyway, we’ll see how it works. I also put a single cane up against the young ash tree by Ash Edge as this might deter rabbit attack too.

While ferreting about in Medlar Wood, I found one of the retained nettle plants heavily infested with galls caused by the midge Dasineura urticae – a new record for the project.

The Square Metre's fifth birthday

15 September 2008.  The project is five years old today.  It is a warm September morning.  There are purple knapweeds, yellow hawksbeards and St John's-worts, also yellow, in flower.  There is a late greater bird's-foot trefoil, a few purple self-heal and the cerise cockade of Cornish heath.

Various flies visit the flowers, bending and shaking the stalks. A cranefly (Tipula paludosa) bumbles about in my mini-Malaise trap.

The project area seems crowded now because of all the things I want to keep and so different from the first photo I took (below) just after initial clearance.

In the other world 15 September 2008 was a dark day on the global finance front.  The major American investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and there were many other manifestations of what the media frequently call 'global financial meltdown'.   I am sure we will be affected in one way or another but, hopefully, I will have another five years watching my square metre.

16 September 2008.  A cool, evenly grey day withy the temperature hovering continuously at around 60 degrees F.  There is a cluster of common bonnet toadstools(Mycena galericulata) with caps the colour of the clouds on the old log by Troy Track where the lizard used to sit.

On the last of the bramble flowers there were sleepy wrinkled ants (Myrmica ruginodis) searching for nectar and pollen and transmitting messages with much waving and mutual stroking of their antennae.

Planet Terracotta is dry again and there are now several moss species among the bittercress and grass seedlings - something for me to identify in winter.

My mini-Malaise trap is still not being very successful and today caught nothing.  There are very few insects about, but I was pleased to a see a fine hoverfly, Rhingia rostrata, on my late-flowering knapweeds.

A birch bolete (Leccinum scabrum)

The appearance of a birch bolete by the western edge of the square metre was quite a surprise.  It was the largest of the fungi so far recorded and, as it is quite close to the birch tree on Thistle Moor, it would seem that it has had time to form a mycorrhizal association with the tree roots and produce a fruiting body.

The birch tree only appeared as a seedling in 2004 and is  now maybe four metres tall.  It has already been host to several microfungi, leafminers, sawfly larvae and other flora and fauna and is a good illustration of how one plant can support a whole community of biodiversity.

This in turn should boost the invertebrate count with beetles and flies associated with larger fungi of this kind.

Hoary willowherb flowers

Today the first flowers appeared on the hoary willowherb (Epilobium parviflorum) that arrived this spring.

One of my books says this is a plant "preferring damp places on limy soils" however, it is growing in a dry place on acid soil in the Metre.  It looks quite healthy, but is small for its species.

With broad-leaved, square-stemmed, American and rosebay, we now have four willowherbs in the project area and all are in flower.  I will have to look for hybrids as this is a very promiscuous genus.

White admiral butterfly, Limenitis camilla

The highlight of today was the appearance of a white admiral butterfly in Emthree.

I think there is one butterfly in the garden and I saw it first yesterday from the windows of our house as it flew round the back door.  Today I saw it again several times, mostly at bramble flowers.  Then, as I was heading to feed the tortoise, it rose up from Emthree and circled round briefly before soaring majestically over the hedge.

I was not able to get a photo, but the one above shows a rather worn example in a local wood nectaring on hemp agrimony.