The Beauty Of Brambles

I was out marshalling a push bike race last weekend. Bike racing has been a big thing for me for a good few years now and my now defunct previous blog, Gordo's World Of Zoom (http://zoom-gordo.blogspot.co.uk/?view=flipcard) was all about bikes and bike racing. Anyhoo, the act of marshalling a bike race involves standing on a corner or a road race circuit and stopping the traffic every time that the race comes through. This was about every 15 minutes on this particular circuit and so the rest of the time is spent chatting to the other marshals about the Tour de France and such, as well as appreciating the local wildlife.

The circuit was around the grounds of Lulworth castle and, with the grounds of the castle on one side of the road, on the other was the fairly nondescript hedge pictured above. The bindweed was in full flower and looking very pretty indeed and it occurred to me that, in this bit of hedge, there was bindweed, bramble and nettles. Add in ground elder (which was not far away) and you have pretty much everything that a gardener hates. They're all classic 'thug' plants, that will take over a garden given half a chance and against which you are fighting a constant war. And yet, in full flower and out in the countryside, would you not say that they look as beautiful as any formal garden?

Ok, so I may have some gardener friends that would argue that point. But still, some while ago I was investigating gardening for wildlife and read up on what sort of plants were best for wildlife. The results came back as brambles, nettles... basically, the best thing you could do for wild life in your garden is put your secateurs down, put the kettle on, put your feet up and let nature do the job for you.

This may be great for biodiversity but was less good for my future job prospects. But, joking aside, brambles are food for caterpillars of the green hairstreak, grizzled skipper and holly blue butterfly, while nettles are the same for the (deep breath) comma, small tortoiseshell, peacock, painted lady and red admiral.

There is an exhaustive list of larval food plants for butterflies on the UK Butterflies website http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/foodplants.php which is worth a read through just for the stupid names of both the plants and the insects (for example: common stork's-bill is a food plant of the brown argus).

Meanwhile, the Butterfly Conservation Trust - based about half a mile away from where these pictures were taken - has a handy guide to gardening for butterflies http://butterfly-conservation.org/11908/gardening.html. It even mentions buddleia, aka the butterfly bush, which is another bane of the gardener's life but I digress.