Chalk Downland Flowers Spotter's Guide Part One: Purple Flowers

My own, completely arbitrary, guide to telling apart flowers of chalk downland. I'm going by colour first. Basically, chalk downland flowers are all going to be either purple or yellow and then there's a third category of flowers that are neither purple nor yellow. We may get round to yellow and neither purple nor yellow in good time. Maybe.

Just a quick reminder before we go on: chalk downland is generally poor, not very fertile soil and so for that reason suits the flowers listed below. (See http://punkrockecology.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/over-hills-and-far-away.html for a short description of chalk downland, or click on' chalk downland' in the labels box to the right).

Anyway, here we go:

Knapweed

Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) This is similar to a thistle. I was going to say it was a member of the thistle family but to be properly botanical, it's a member of the daisy family (Asteraceae), which is a pretty substantial family in itself. Knapweed, is part of the genus Centaurea or knapweeds and star thistles, which are thistle-like in appearance but lack actual thistles. Check out the unopened flowerhead to the left, which is very thistle-like in appearance.

A quick dichotomous identity test goes as follows:  does it look like a thistle? If yes, grab it with your bare hand. Does it hurt? If no, then it is part of the genus Centaurea. 

Finally, if it's big and purple then it's greater knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa). If it's smaller and purple then it's common knapweed (Centaurea nigra).  

Devil's Bit Scabious

Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis). Similar to knapweed in colour and globular shape but smaller and of a lighter purple, and blending delicately to a white centre. Also note the very prominent stamen's standing proud of the florets. (Translation: the tiny stalks sticking out of the flowers). The whole flower is made up of dozens of tiny little individual florets (pay attention to them, that'll be important with identifying the next flower).

It is part of the much smaller teasel family (Dipsacaceae), despite looking nothing like a teasel. The stem is long and spindly and slightly fuzzy.

According to the latest newsletter of the Dorset Wildlife Trust, the name 'devil's bit' comes from a tale that the devil was jealous of such a pretty flower so bit off it's root out of spite. Or something. Now, that sounds like a load of old cobblers to me: some story an old farm hand made up and told to a victorian flower collector over a few pints of cider. But that's none of my business.

Field Scabious

Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis). Very similar, in fact broadly identical, to devil's bit scabious. The species name is completely different but I've no idea why. It is similar in being a similar paste shade of purple and with the same prominent stamens but, instead of a hemispherical shape, it's flatter and has 'corners', like a four or five pointed star. These are all made up of little florets, like the devil's bit, but these flatten out towards the edges - tight, round and closely packed in the centre but larger and flatter towards the edge.

But don't take my word for it. Here's the always reliable Wikipedia, with a full run down of species classification and everything:

Greater knapweed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_scabiosa

Devil's Bit Scabious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succisa_pratensis
and http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/devils-bit-scabious

Field scabious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knautia_arvensis and http://www.plantlife.org.uk/wild_plants/plant_species/field_scabious

What a stamen is, in case you were wondering. Though I'm thinking that you really should have had birds and bees explained to you by now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamen https://www.amnh.org/learn/biodiversity_counts/ident_help/Parts_Plants/parts_of_flower.htm

TRIGGER WARNING (contains pictures of spiders)

Now I know some people that read this don't like spiders. My apologies, but these are particularly pretty and slightly exotic spiders, namely the wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi) which, as the name hints, is a recent visitor to these shores from the mediterreanian. 

These were all photographed at Bradbury Rings (iron age hill fort, managed by the National Trust as mentioned in the previous couple of posts). Paul, the ranger there, had fairly raved about the wasp spiders there and Elise, who I was busy ragwort pulling with, spotted one. I then spent a very long time kneeling in brambles, trying to persuade my ageing iPhone to focus on a spider's web and eventually got a pic that was in focus.

Here it is:

We spotted a few more of it's (actually her's, as the stripy ones are female) friends and relations around and about, in the 'rings' part of the hill fort, where it is relatively sheltered. By the end of the day it was getting a bit 'meh, there's another one'.

Anyway, I love the name 'wasp spider' - partly a name designed to breed nightmares, partly one of those "What does it look like? Uuuuuh... kinda waspy. Ok, wasp spider, that'll do" sort of species names.

More on wasp spiders: https://www.buglife.org.uk/bugs-and-habitats/wasp-spider

http://srs.britishspiders.org.uk/portal.php/p/Summary/s/Argiope+bruennichi

http://www.janvanduinen.nl/argiopebruennichi-engels.php

'Spiders' by System Of A Down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqZNMvIEHhs

Some More Random Pics of Insects.

Small Eggar Moth caterpillars 

Yellow Shell Moth

The Petrified Forest

Right next to the beautiful chalk downland meadow that I described yesterday is a yew forest, which remains one of the freakiest places I have ever been to. Seen from the other side of the valley, it looks much as a wood should do, but get inside and the place and it's a monochrome scene of bare ground and leafless branches. 

To me, it always brought to mind the seventh circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, written in the 1300s about a (hopefully fictional) walking tour through hell. One of the circle is called the 'wood of suicides', where the souls of those who commit suicide are transformed into a wood full of brittle, dead trees. 

Or possibly, the petrified forest on Skaro, the home planet of the Daleks, as explored by William Hartnell and friends in the first series of Dr Who.

What it really is, is a forest of yew trees, possibly dating back to the bronze age and definitely from at least the middle ages. Yew trees are evergreen, meaning that they never shed their leaves and evergreen woodland tends to be less biodiverse than broadleaf for just this reason. In broadleaf woodland, the trees shed their leaves in the autumn and regrow them in the spring, giving several months in which light will penetrate to the forest floor. This is why these woods have thick matts of bluebells and other flowers in March and April.

Evergreens do not do this and, while conifers are tall and thin, yews spread out  up and sideways and, in an established yew forest such as this, barely any light penetrates.

Without light, photosynthesis cannot happen and, without photosynthesis, barely anything else happens, so there is no matt of vegetation on the forest floor, just a thin layer of leaf litter and, below that, bare earth. This makes the topsoil very vulnerable to erosion, with only really the roots of the trees holding it in place.

Chalk soil is already free draining, and therefore not the most fertile (as described yesterday). So, altogether, the place is hardly the most fecund environment for new growth. 

That said, the place is not entirely dead of life. Where there is a break in the canopy, there will be a little oasis of green, while the outer edges are dotted with ash saplings and inch or so high. We saw a couple of badger setts and some deer, both of which probably appreciate the cover and the relative peace that the woods gives them, while the canopy was full of the twittering of birds and the floor covered in snail shells.

It just goes to show that nature will find a way and, just because you don't see anything, it doesn't mean that there is nothing there.

Some more info on these woods and other yew forests around the country: http://www.ancient-yew.org/mi.php/yews-at-sites-of-antiquity/104

The Seventh Circle Of Hell in Dante's Inferno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wood_of_the_Self-Murderers:_The_Harpies_and_the_Suicides

A Yew Forest that you're allowed to visit (and don't have to clamber over a barbed wire fence to get into) plus some more florid prose on yew trees:http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2000/oct/07/unitedkingdom

Dr Who episode  'The Dead Planet', first series December 1963:
https://vimeo.com/108169426

...and show notes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/daleks/detail.shtml

Over The Hills And Far Away

Another day, another nature photography expedition with the missus. This time to Hambledon Hill, an iron age hill fort near Blandford. 

This is classic calcareous grassland. Chalky soil, so alkaline, free draining and with a very thin soil layer. This makes it good wildflower habitat, as we can demonstrate:

This is Bird's Foot Trefoil. Also known as 'bacon and eggs' for some inexplicable reason. Although bird's foot trefoil is hardly the most obvious name either. Also 'granny's toenails', although I'm seriously wondering at this point whether whoever wrote my wildflower ident book was taking the mickey.

Read more: http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/birds-foot-trefoil

This is classic grassland. As mentioned above, due to the thin soil and chalk beneath, it's not very fertile. Basically, if you are grazing cattle and sheep on these hills, there is a limit to how much it can be grazed, as the grass will have to recover. It's all about how many animals you can have on how large a patch of land.
Then some time around the early twentieth century, artificial nitrate fertilisers were invented and suddenly, you could take a patch of thin soil such as this, plough it up and seed it with rye grass or something similar, fertilise it regularly and graze cattle much more intensively. This was called 'improved grassland' and was great for farmers, great for cheap lamb and beef but not so great for wildflowers.

The flowers and plants that had traditionally grown on this sort of soil had adapted to a marginal, very frugal, environment. So, if you then suddenly made that environment less marginal and invited an extremely virulent grass onto the scene, those marginal plants found themselves crowded out.

 

And so now we roll onto grassland restoration, which attempts to return these areas to their previous species-rich status. It mostly involves not fertilising the soil and maintaining grazing on the land but at a much less intense level. On this evidence, it seems to be working. 

Read more about calcareous grassland restoration HERE

Have a look yourself sometime if you're in the area. It's a beautiful place and has some fine views of the county. Reminds me of a song, in fact.

Games For May

Out with the dogs and the missus again, this time on the road running past Bradbury Rings. Bradbury  is an iron-age hill fort and, running past it is the main road between Wimborne and Blandford, which runs through an avenue of beech trees. It's a Dorset landmark and looks kinda like the road to King's Landing would if it was a 60mph A road.

The road, the avenue of trees and the broad grass verges are all National Trust owned and looked after by my old work colleague Paul. 

Here's the whole family in one shot. Mrs Zoom to the left, Maeve the Irish bog whippet in the foreground, Emerson the galgo or Spanish Greyhound ahead of Maeve and Mochi the Podenco on the right.

There's a lot of cow parsley about. Or Queen Anne's Lace if you want to be posh. Anthriscus sylvestnis if you want to be really posh.

Some Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis) and some cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis). And some grass, obvs.

Some hawk's beard, or possibly buttercups or - even posssiblyer - both.