Hey, Did Everything Just Taste Purple For A Second?

We've been on orchid watch for some weeks now, at a particular grass verge along an main road that we drive down regularly. The patch in question is next to a woodland owned by Dorset Wildlife Trust   and so we can thank them for this particularly beautiful little patch.

The orchid in question is an Early Purple Orchid, (Orchis mascula) which, as well as sounding great in Scottish, is one of those plants that I strongly suspect was named on a Friday afternoon. ("It sprouts early and it's purple. That's good enough, isn't it? Right, let's get to the pub.") To photograph it without accidentally destroying any more more orchids involved walking down the main road, then finding a gap in the traffic to crouch down to take the pic. These are just some of the risks I am prepared to take to to write this blog.

And, having risked certain death on a main road, we may as well nip in for a poke around the woods, with it's carpet of bluebells and wood anemone, plus a fallen oak tree that seemed far too good timber to waste on beetles! Kudos all round to the DWT. If you want to have a look yourself, it's called Ashley Wood and is near Tarrant Keynestone: 

http://www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/Ashley_Wood_Nature_Reserve.html

So Why Do They Call It Rhodo Bashing?

Trees Diseases That Sound Like Metal Bands

Ash Dieback
(black metal shoe-gaze from Poland)

Bleeding Canker
(classic Norwegian Black Metal)

Acute Oak Decline
(obscure but critically acclaimed progressive metal side project of a collection of New Wave Of American Metal superstars)

Massaria
(Slovakian epic/folk metal)

Sudden Branch Failure
(death metal 3 piece from Doncaster)

Oak Processionary Moth
(doom metal)

Ash Borer
(BMSG from California https://ashborer.bandcamp.com )

Source: www.forestry.gov.uk > pestsanddiseases

www.woodlandstrust.org.uk

Rhodendrons And Me

Ah, rhododendrons.

"There is a place for rhododendrons", as I said to a gardener friend who was showing off a poly tunnel full of them, all ready for planting, "And it's called Nepal".

If they were pretty then I might actually like them. I mean, at least himalayan balsam has a lovely purple flower and smells nice. But no, they're just a drab olive green over a bare brown soil, kept bare by a combination of them shading out the light and poisoning the ground for anything else that might try to grow there. The sods.

Anyway, rhodos and me go back a long way, from playing in rhodo-infested woodland as a kid - pretending we were in 'nam - to carving tunnels through them as an adult. This was the magnum opus of a friend of mine who, over the course of at least a decade, carved out a labyrinth of tunnels with hand tools in a few acres of rhododendron forest in the Purbecks. This was a quite serious piece of work, apparently the largest labyrinth in Europe although kept secret to a select few for obvious reasons. During the summer there would be parties in there, where we would carry crates of beer and cider across the adjoining heath and get hammered around a campfire in the traditional west country manner. The very last time I went, a few of us were leaving early (about midnight) and, as the sounds of the party died away behind us, we could clearly hear our friend's band playing at a completely separate party in an adjoining field. Naturally, we had to pay a visit...

At one point, the labyrinth, as it was known to those that knew, was under threat of development and expeditions were undertaken to scout for potential replacements. All you needed was some woods quite far from any buildings and infested with rhododendron and these were not hard to find. The usual deal was that we would all pile into someone's car, park somewhere nearby, walk to the woodlands and then hack our way around it with bill hooks and machetes. We were in the process of doing this when one of our number called out 'aaah... can we go back to the car now?' and emerged out of the brush with his finger bleeding at the knuckle and hanging off at a not very healthy angle. To my knowledge, that was the only injury that occurred in all these years of guerrilla gardening. Well, apart from a certain incident involving a lot of cider, a slightly worse-for-wear old punk and a billhook that I shall draw a veil over.

Roll on another decade and here I am, in those same woods, attacking those same rhodo bushes with a chainsaw. Our goal - or the forestry commission's goal at any rate - is complete eradication of rhodedendron, which involves myself and a few others chomping our way through the woods with chainsaws cutting it where ever it grows and allowing the ground layer of the woods to spring forth into full and rich abundance.

Great for biodiversity, not so great for a bunch of goths trying to build their own private party venue. Not that I'll imagine they'd be that upset, most of us grew up to be eco-warriors anyway.

Bring Me The (Soil) Horizon

We were doing a woodland survey today, as a college thing (I'm a student at the mo). As I'm sure you will be aware if you live in the UK, there's been a bit of a cold snap this week.

We did three quadrants (or squares), each of 100 square metres (10m x 10m), with two 1m square patches randomly chosen in each. The larger quadrants were chosen not entirely randomly but more by where there were the fewest trees to get in the way. Then there was the actually quite simple way of measuring out a perfect square via trigonometry or something, which was made considerably more difficult by the aforementioned trees, which managed to get in the way all the same. Then there was the fact that no one quite remembered how to do it but, after few false starts, we got our quadrant marked.

At least once during the measuring and the recording, there was a brief hail storm. Not entirely unusual for southern England in April but, still, not especially welcome. As the second was being measured out and recorded, I was sampling the soil, which is basically a posh way of getting your hands covered in mud. You stick an auger in to take out a soil sample, ideally all the way into the soil and not onto a root a few cms below the surface. Then you look at it, think 'yup, that's soil all right' then get you test for 'soil type'. This involves damping it and then rolling it between your fingers into a ball and then a sausage shape and then into a crescent. There's basically a whole load of shapes and the shape that your soil fails to make defines what it is. In this case (and pretty much as I'd guessed before I'd even touched the stuff) it was sandy clay loam - sort of brick red and unable to roll into anything beyond a short sausage.

By the time we'd tested soil pH (5), the second quadrant had been surveyed and the occasional hail had now turned into actual snow. The third quadrant was set up in a manner of minutes in this sleety snow and then surveyed with equal vigour. 'Bluebell', 'tick', 'brambles', 'tick', 'celandine', 'tick'. 'Coverage?'...'Uhhhhhhhhhh... 26-33%?', 'yeah, pretty much'.

Then, clipboards, marker poles and all the other gubbins were gathered up and carried at a canter to a nearby café, with thunder rolling round the blackening skies above us. In the dry, we compiled notes and thawed our hands out.

I have always been a little sceptical of nature surveys, largely for the scenes described above. Many may well be conducted with full scientific rigour and by experienced and dedicated professionals. Others, however....

A 'soft science', I think they call it. Or maybe just the most objective way of measuring a very complex system that anyone has yet managed to come up with.

On the plus side, the sleet washed the mud off my hands so, you know, all's well that ends well.

Snake's Head Fritillaries

On the same plant hunting expedition as the bluebells mentioned yesterday, I spotted these snake's head fritillaries, or Fritillaria melagris (See also the wild garlic, or ramsons, in the picture)

probably one of my favourite flowers of all. I'd like to a say favourite wildflower too but, being personally acquainted with the gardener who planted these, I can't claim these as wild. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen one growing 'properly' wild, or in a a situation where they haven't been deliberately introduced. 

I was also going to say about how the 'snake's head' part of their name comes from their chequered pattern, being like a chequerboard or possibly a dice but the ten minute search on google of anything to back up this claim proved fruitless and, ya know, I've got other things to do today apart from blog about flowers.

So yeah, getting to the point, fritillaries were once prolific on meadows across the country and growing happily up in Sweden and Siberia. Now rare, due to these meadows being 'improved' as pasture with nitrate fertilisers, which is great for grazing cattle and horses but not great at all for biodiversity.  Therefore, when you see them now, they've probably been reintroduced as a very pretty addition to a wild looking lawn.

More info (no, seriously, don't take my word for anything):

http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/plants-fungi/fritillaria-meleagris-snake’s-head-fritillary

https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/details?plantid=814

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/gardening/article-1259182/MONTY-DON-A-soggy-spring-drown-tulips-crocuses-daffodils-magnificent-snakeshead-fritillary-thrive-it.html

A Couple Of Mildly Interesting Things About Bluebells

Now it seems that spring has properly sprung and by golly hasn't everything bounced into life? Bluebells carpet the woods and, while I was wandering lonely as cloud through one of the aforementioned, I was delighted to chance upon an English bluebell. 

So what, I hear you say, aren't they one of the iconic sights of woodlands in the spring time? Well yes but they are now becoming a rare and endangered species and being rapidly wiped out by a hybrid species called the spanish bluebell.

To get all botanical for a moment, we have the english bluebell, or Hyacinthoides non-scripta, pictured below, with it's rather melancholic sideways lean. (Sorry about the rubbish picture btw). 

Then there's the Spanish bluebell, or Hyacynthoides hispanica, which is a much more big and blousey sort of flower, standing upright and really showing the 'hyacinth' in Hyacynthoides.

As with most invasive species, this was introduced as a garden plant and is currently rampaging through the countryside, cross breeding with our native bluebells and producing a hybrid called Hyacynthoides x massartiana.

And you may think 'yeah, and?' I mean, like a lot of people, I was not aware of the difference until it was pointed out to me a few years ago.

But the english bluebell, which as the name suggests, only grows in this country, is in fairly major danger of being wiped out. Some people are up in arms about this. And, certainly, the one pictured above is one of the first that I've seen this year, amongst the carpets of Spanish and hybrid bluebells.

But then, sad though this is, and worthy as the preservation of species is, it is fair to assume that a bumblebee does not give too much of a stuff whether the flower they are pollenating is of the H. non-scripta, the H. hispanica or the H. x massartiana variety. The hybridisation is a problem for english bluebells and various conservation groups but otherwise life in the forest carries on as before.

The carpet of bluebells on the forest floor is not going any where soon, so long as we carry on with the important job of retaining and maintaining these woodlands. But saying that, I will definitely miss the pretty little H. non-scripta with their sorrowful lean and their sweet aroma.

More info: http://www.plantlife.org.uk/about_us/faq/bluebells

http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/woodland-flowers/blue-flowers/bluebells/