Wednesday, April 30, 2014

cuckoo pint


Lords and Ladies (aka cuckoo pint and other scurrilous names ) in flower. Almost all have the tip of the spadix eaten away. Wiki states that many small rodents appear to find the spadix particularly attractive and it is common to find examples of the plant with much of the spadix eaten away. The spadix has a distinctive, unpleasant smell, and manages to generate a lot of heat (up to 15 degrees C above ambient temperature) and it may be this that attracts mice etc.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Saturday, April 26, 2014

interior landscapes (moss Spot)


It looks like an oriental landscape of woods and rocky escarpments, in fact it is the small landscape of a moss covered wall

Thursday, April 17, 2014

keeping up with the longs

the first, rather tattered looking speckled wood of the year. These butterflies over winter as caterpillars or chrysalides, so this must be a newly hatched butterfly. It has certainly seen some rough times already.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

witches broom

witches broom is a common sight locally, and is the result of a fascinating and ill understood process whereby bacteria harness and corrupt the growth pattern of plant cells, see link. This occurs at a deep metabolic level and may help us to understand the way genes control growth and development... of such simple things are advances made.

chiffchaff


Small but very noisy, chiffchaffs are easy to detect on bare branches where they make their incessant and tuneless call, chiff chaff chiff chaff .