Riddlesdown Quarry, December 2015

The north end of the face of Riddlesdown quarry, 28 December 2015.

Last year there were sheep in Riddlesdown Quarry at the time of the year-end walk.  This time they were absent.  There is a tentative plan to bring back goats; they keep the birch saplings under control, which sheep do not.  But it is hard to bring goats in for health checks and the like.  Also, they would have to be moved elsewhere for the summer, so that orchids and other desirable flora would not be munched.

The fenced area above Riddlesdown quarry.  28 December 2015.

An area at the top of the quarry is fenced off, allowing interesting plants to grow.  The small green fence seen here is inside the main fence and is to protect the actual edge.  There's a path winding along the top and down near the far fence, curving back into the lower part of the quarry.

Cotoneasters in Riddlesdown quarry, 28 December 2015.

Much scrub has been cleared from inside the quarry, and more clearance is planned.  These Cotoneasters look pretty but spread too easily, and will be removed.  Contrastingly, there are some juniper seedlings at the top which are so slow-growing and tasty to sheep that they have to have individual protective fences around them.

The management team are quite aware that it is rather artificial to look at a piece of landscape at a particular time and say it should stay that way rather than be allowed to develop and change.  But this way, rare and interesting plants and insects are encouraged.  For example, this is one of the few sites in this part of the country where you can find Round-leaved Wintergreen and Small Blue butterflies.

Anthills and Junipers at the top of Riddlesdown Quarry.  28 December 2015.

This is the group on the way back out.  The anthills you see here belong to Yellow Meadow Ants, which are eaten by Green Woodpeckers.  You can just make out the small Junipers in the middle distance, where the group are walking past them.

I tend to take lots of closeups and not show the general appearance of whatever place I am at, but if I think I might make up a post for this blog I make more of an effort to get some views, as here.  But I still like closeups.  They reveal details you do not normally see.

Unripe Juniperus communis berries.  Riddlesdown quarry, 28 December 2015.

Here are some unripe berries I spotted on one of the Juniper bushes. 

Toys Hill, December

Ide Hill from the bottom of Scords Wood, December 2015.

Another walk around Toys Hill and Scords Wood, this time in December.  It was a beautiful sunny morning and this was the view from the bottom of the hillside.  English countryside with rolling hills, fields and woods.  It's almost the same outlook as the misty view in this post from Scords Wood in March 2012.  This shot with my EOS 5DS and 100mm lens collapses the distance and makes everything sharper, allowing for some slight haze still present in the air.  This looks like a lovely walk, and if my car had not been at  the top of the hill behind me I would have tried it!

A viewpoint is being cleared higher up Toys Hill, but there are still many young birches in the way, and it looks as though would be better in the afternoon, with the sun behind.

Viewpoint being re-cleared on Toys Hill, December 2015.

This time I also took a reflective and non-misty shot of the pond at the bottom, part of the waterworks that supplies the neighbouring Emmets Garden.

Toys Hill pond, December 2015

The sign just visible in the far corner explains how it works.

Sign explaining hydraulic ram pump, Toys Hill, December 2015.

The people who prepared this sign must have been at the front of the queue when the apostrophes and commas were handed out.  From the credit line, it also looks as though they had a couple of spare fonts.

The woods are wet and green, with bluebell leaves poking through the moss.  I came back with only one botanical photo:

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, Chrysoplenium oppositifolium.  Toys Hill, 23 December 2015.

Some Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, in early bud and looking very healthy,  near the hut below the pond that houses the pulse valve.

Mug Shots of Some Late Moths

December Moth, Poecilocampa populi.  Hayes, 9 December 2015.

Last year I saw none of the larger moths at all in my garden trap over the first half of the winter, but I have been a bit luckier this year.   This December Moth was in my trap well into its name month.  Previously I had only seen one specimen here, and that was a dead one that seems to have got itself trapped in my garage.  The showy comb-like antennae belong to the male.  Male moths often have more antenna surface, one way or another, to detect the female pheromones.

Red-green Carpet, Chloroclysta siterata.  Hayes, 10 October 2015.

This Red-green Carpet was one of the last of the summer moths, popping up late on.  It's very recognisable, with its strong colours and uptilted tail.  The goggly eyes are an illusion caused by the way the compound eye structure absorbs the camera's flash.  This species also turns up early in the year.  I had one back in May.

Feathered Thorn, Colotois pennaria.  Hayes, 14 November 2015.

In between those two, I had a couple of these splendid Feathered Thorns.  This, too, named for its antennae, is a male.

The December Moth was photographed sitting on one of the egg-boxes from my light trap.  The Red-Green Carpet was on the white painted door just behind the trap.  It looks smooth from a distance!  Quite a few species like the light but will not enter the trap, and instead rest on the paint and brickwork just behind it. The Feathered Thorn is on a piece of rotting wood.  I have a selection of types of bark and wood that I can get the moths to pose on.  However, when tapped onto a new surface, they will not often put their legs into a natural position.  They just leave them bent into any old configuration.

Kemsing Down, Winter 2015

Kemsing Down, 15 December 2015

The weather forecast was for an overcast day, so as I had not had much exercise recently I decided to go up the 600-foot hill of Kemsing Down.  It was grey and drizzling.  This is what the Met Office calls "overcast," it seems.  (I have not been able to find out when the Meterological Office became the "Met Office".  It's not a very descriptive new name, unless it now employs metists.)

Kemsing Down, part way up, 15 December 2015

It was like this only part way up.  From the top:

Kemsing Down from the top, 15 December 2015

Complete with a diagram showing what you can theoretically see.  There was no activity on the hill.  I didn't find the sheep until I was nearly back at the bottom again, by a different route, though I could see they had been up there by the droppings and by the wool caught on dead bramble stems.

It was very slippery and steep, so I recommend good walking shoes to anyone who wants to try this in wet weather.

Well, that was fun, but rather samey.  But I was very happy to find some Winter Aconite flowering in the churchyard, next to the car park on the way to the hill.

Winter Aconite, Eranthis hyemalis.  Kemsing churchyard, 15 December 2015.

Like all churchyard plants, you have to assume that it was planted here at some time, but this seems now to be spreading and thriving.  This plant is supposed to flower in winter.  There were other plants there which were flowering out of their usual season - Primrose, Oregon Grape, Mexican Orange - but those were all clearly cultivated plants.

Pond Wood

The pond in Pond Wood, Hawkwood Estate.  28 November 2015.

I was interested to see a small wood called Pond Wood on the Hawkwood Estate, which is attached to Petts Wood.  The map shows a path circling round inside the wood, probably to look at the pond, I thought.  So I had a walk round the estate and took that path.

There is another path along the edge of the wood, but this one does indeed go around the pond.  The weather had been wet and the path was steep and slippery, probably dangerously so. 

The pond in Pond Wood, Hawkwood Estate.  28 November 2015.

This shows where the pond empties into a stream that flows down into the Kyd Brook. 

Yes, this is a very short post, but I had a couple of nice iPhone shots of the pond!  I like reflections.

Knole Park, Nov 2015

Sika deer in their winter coat.  Kmole Park, November 2015.

Knole Park is full of deer; Fallows and Sika.  These three were by the side of a pond, a lovely spot that is not so easy to find unless you know it's there, because the pond is off the main path, is quite high up and is not overlooked.

I was confused by these because of their winter colouring, but luckily the experts on the iSpot site knew what was what.

It was a drizzly and overcast day.

Pond in Knole Park, November 2015.

I have shown this pond before - here is the same pond last year, on a much sunnier day.

I was hoping to find lots of waxcap fungi, as we did last year, but I only spotted two species.  But I did see a tree covered with fruting bodies of the Hoof Fungus, sometimes called Tinder Fungus, known to have been used as tinder 5,000 years ago.

Fomes fomentarius, Hoof Fungus, in Knole Park, November 2015.

I think this tree must be well known to fungus fans.  It's clearly visible from one of the main paths, and one fruiting body has been sawn off, presumably taken for study.  The one at the top left of this photo is also missing a chunk.

Somewhat less obvious was this small but pretty yellow fungus in the short grass.

Clavulinopsis corniculata, Meadow Coral.   Knole Park, November 2015.

The books say this Meadow Coral is common, but I do not actually see it very often.  The same is true of many other species!

I also checked out the western wall of the enclosed gardens, where two years ago there was a good display of ferns, polypodies and at least one Black Spleenwort.  But a year ago they looked unhealthy, and now they have all dried up and disappeared.  Shame! 

Petts Wood

Willett Memorial Sundial, Petts Wood.  October 2015.

Petts Wood is on the borderland between London and the countryside, where suburbia alternates with fields and woods.  Parts of the countryside in this sort of area are only there because they have been saved from development, and this is the case with Petts Wood and the Hawkwood Estate.  Petts Wood is also the name of a suburb just over a railway line.

There are two memorials in Petts Wood the wood.  One is this memorial sundial, which I wrote about four years ago.  Since then, Google Translate has improved.  The Latin inscription ""HORAS NON NUMERO NISI AESTIVAS" now comes out as "Summer hours are not numerically," which almost sounds like part of a real sentence.  There is a leaflet which gives it as "I only tell the summer hours," which is even closer.  Literally, it's more like "I don't tell the time unless it is summer."   It ought to add "And the sun is out," which it wasn't when I took this photo.

Edlmann memorial, Petts Wood.  November 2015

This is the other memorial, the Edlmann Memorial, commemorating the saving and donation of the woodland.  

The woods are full of pathways, mostly through trees and small screams.  There are a few patches of heath.

Heath in Petts Wood.  October 2015

They are at  a lower level than the surrounding woods because the topsoil and leaf litter has been scraped away to expose the natural gravelly underlayer.

This is the wood where we found many interesting fungi in October .. there are still some more fungus photos to come.  

Galerina species.  Petts Wood, 24 October 2015.

Mice and Voles

Wood Mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus.  Jubilee Country Park, 15 November 2015.

In mid-November, the Friends of Jubilee Country Park had a "small mammals" morning.  I wrote about one of these small mammal events back in February 2011.  This time, local expert Marcus Jordan and his assistant Steven Lofting did all the hard work. 

Marcus Jordan and Steven Lofting.

Here, they are getting ready to work their way around the traps that had been set the previous evening.  The box is to carry the emptied traps, and the big plastic bag is to empty the traps into.

When the traps are set, they contain some straw, some apple and carrot, some seeds and a few blowfly maggots, to cater for any of the variety of small animals that might be caught.  The maggots are in case of shrews, which need to eat very often or they will starve.  Shrews have a very fast metabolism and react badly to being handled, so they are let go straight away if they are found in a trap.

The whole contents of the trap are emptied into the big plastic bag.  This lets the trappers see and sort out what is in there.  In theory it is easy, but in practice the mice and voles are not keen on being sorted out, and this time two of them managed to be up a trapper's arm and away into the wood before they could be grasped.  They are very quick!

The idea is to corner them so that they can be lifted out by their scruffs, rather like kittens.

Contents of a small mammal trap, including a Wood Mouse.  Jubilee Country Park, 15 November 2015.

Wood Mouse being cornered and grasped.  Jubilee Country Park, 15 November 2015.

The creatures are then identified, sexed and weighed.  To weigh them, they are put into a small plastic bag, and the weight of the bag is subtracted from the figure shown on the scales.  The mouse at the top of this page has just been weighed. Then they are released, having suffered only indignity.

Bank Vole, Myodes glareolus.   Jubilee Country Park, 15 November 2015.

We found Wood Mice and this Bank Vole.  The tail is shorter than that of a Wood Mouse, though I didn't manage to capture the tip of it to demonstrate; and it has much smaller ears.  The vole has just been weighed, and unfortunately for it, the weighing bag by that time contained rather a lot of Wood Mouse urine.  They do tend to wee when alarmed.

Marcus and Steven thought at one point that we might have a Yellow-necked Mouse ..

But although it showed some yellow in the neck area, it was not a complete collar, so this was just a big healthy Wood Mouse.  A male, this time.

Wood Mouse, male.  Hedgerow near Thornton Wood, Jubilee Country Park, 15 November 2015.

(All photos taken with my EOS 5DS and 100mm macro lens, not using the flash so as not to alarm or blind the small mammals.)

Later addition: A mammals expert says it is not so easy to discount the possibility that this mouse might be a Yellow-neck, after all,  so it might be better to consider it an undetermined Apodemus species.

What Does a Fungus Look Like?

Daldinia concentrica, King Alfred's Cakes.  Petts Wood, 24 October 2015.

So, what does a fungus look like?  There is no simple answer.  I will start with some from Petts Wood, where the Orpington Field Club's fungus lovers had an outing this autumn.  These are not rare fungi.  You only have to look around, in the right places and at the right times.  It helps if you are with a group, because more pairs of eyes means more things are spotted, and it helps if you, or someone in the group, is familiar with fungi.

This first example, King Alfred's Cakes, grows almost exclusively on dead ash, and pops up along the whole length of fallen trunks and branches.  When young, the outside is this mid-brown colour.  Later, they turn black, like a cake that has been allowed to burn in the oven.  If you cut into them, they have a crisp texture and show this unusual concentric pattern.

Ascocoryne species,  Purple Jellydisc.  Petts Wood, 24 October 2015.

This one, Purple Jellydisc, prefers the cut faces of dead stumps.  It could be one of two species, impossible to tell apart without a microscope.

Bisporella citrina, Lemon Disco.  Petts Wood, 24 October 2015.

Lemon Disco is smaller, but usually easy to see on old dead wood because of its bright colour. 

Thelephora terretris, Earthfan.  Petts Wood, 24 October 2015.

And the Earth Fan grows on the ground.  This one was on the edge of a small patch of heath, where the soil was relatively clear of other growth.  The green shoots are heather, and you can see the dries remains of bracken, indicators of an acidic soil.

I'll show some more conventional fungus shapes later.

More Fallen Leaves

Rowan leaf-fall.  Hayes, 4 November 2015.

Here are a few more leaf-falls under particular types of  tree, following from the woodland photos a couple of posts back.  These were taken on a walk around my block.

The first is rowan, sometimes called mountain ash.  A small tree with clusters of white flowers followed by bright orange-red berries in the autumn, and a colourful leaf-fall.  This one is in a patch of grass opposite my house.

Ash leaf-fall.  Hayes, 4 November 2015.

 This is the full-scale ash, Fraxinus excelsior, the same species that is threatened by Ash Die-back Disease. 

Lime (Linden) leaf-fall.  Hayes, 4 November 2015.

These leaves belong to a lime tree; the linden, not the citrus tree.  This tree has fragrant flowers that can be made into a refreshing tea.

Horse-chestnut leaf-fall.  Hayes, 4 November 2015.

This horse-chestnut has not suffered too badly from the leaf-miner moth this year.  There are plenty of signs that the leaves have been attacked, but in some years the leaves are almost completely demolished by the end of Summer.

Sycamore leaf-fall.  Hayes, 4 November 2015.

And this sycamore only has a few leaves infected with the tar spot fungus.  Sycamore leaf-fall produces lots of yellows, but lacks the oranges and reds of the otherwise very similar Norway Maple.

All these trees, and several others too, have been used to line my local streets.  It's good to see a wide variety of species.

Streptocarpus Update

Streptocarpus species grown from seed.  Hayes, 3 November 2015.

This is an update to the post I made recently about the Streptocarpus species I grew from seed.  The one-leaved plant has now put out a little cluster of flowers.

Streptocarpus species grown from seed.  Hayes, 31 October 2015.

And there's another cluster on the way.  Quite pretty!

Stapelia Seedpod

Stapelia variegata seeds emerging from their pod on my windowsill, 31 October 2015.

Stapelia variegata is a South African plant that I have been growing on and off as a houseplant for decades.  It lives outside in a sunny spot all summer, then comes indoors to avoid frosts.

Last year it flowered.

Stapelia variegata in flower on my balcony, 13 August 2014.

The flower smells of rotting meat and is pollinated by carrion flies, so however pretty it may be, that's a good reason to grow it outdoors.

The, this year, it developed a seed pod.  The pod just sat there until the end of October, when it suddenly opened wide over the course of a day.  That's a full 14 months between flowering and spreading its seed, which seems unusually long to me.

This is the pod just splitting open:

Stapelia variegata seeds emerging from their pod on my windowsill, 31 October 2015.

(There is a bit of another plant in there on the left.)  And here's a closer look at the seeds with their pappus.

Stapelia variegata seeds emerging from their pod on my windowsill, 31 October 2015.

With those thin seeds, these little packages are light enough to fly in the slightest draught, and they would be all over my bedroom by now if they were not emerging straight into a spider's web, which you can see some strands of at the top of the first photo.

This plant has recently been moved to another genus, and you may see it called Orbea variegata.