Bristol by nature

28/4/08 – MONTY BOTANY 12.

2008-04-30T01:19:00.000-07:00

In deference to Des Bowring, a record of my observations made in Montpelier on 28th April will appear on http://www.wildmonty.co.uk/ Includes Guelder Rose, very probable Tuberous Comfrey, Himalayan Honeysuckle, Cuckoo Flower, Spotted Medick, Hairy Tare and more.

28/4/08 – RUNNING WILD ON CRANBROOK ROAD

2008-04-30T01:17:00.000-07:00

Coldharbour Rd:
What I took to be Oxalis corniculata (red-purple leaves, as per the plants in my parent’s garden in South-east London), one in flower, in crack between wall and pavement (w-pc) outside No. 113 (shop). Half a dozen Bristol records at the time of publication of the Flora of the Bristol Region.

Cranbrook Rd:
- White-flowered Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) (w-pc) by wall of 110 Cairns Rd. I have previously recorded white-flowered specimens in the Westbury Park area, on Redland Green and the Metford Rd allotments.
- 75%+ of lawn at No. 160 covered by Mouse-Ear Hawkweed, which spreads by leafy runners.
- Lemon Balm (w-pc) No. 144.
- New shoots of Gypsywort (Lycopus europaeus) - which ought to be by a stream – so may be thought of as putting the ‘brook’ back into Cranbrook, were starting to emerge from the base and a couple of feet up the tall wall below Nos 107/109. A broad band of damp from water seepage was noted on the pavement, indicating a fair amount of water in the soil behind. Perhaps this is what keeps it going. It flowered OK last year.
- Geranium rotundifolium at base of street tree outside No. 112.
- Row of Alexanders behind wall No. 110.
- Holm Oak seedling No. 102.
- Refurbished Church, junction Cranbrook Rd. and Kersteman Rd, Bulbous Buttercup in flower.
- 1 x Erigeron karvinskianus (w-pc) by No. 72
- 1 x Opium Poppy seedling (w-pc) outside No. 30, ditto No. 4.
- Pellitory-of-the-wall Nos. 20 and 22.

26/4/08: PALMATE NEWTS AND SLOW WORMS

2008-04-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

A sunny afternoon of weeding round my Rockroses on one of my Metford Road allotments.

Jeremy said he had seen a newt in his small pond (a pre-formed black plastic job no more than 6 square feet in surface area and a bit over 18” deep) when thinning out the pondweed, so I had a look. There were three Palmate Newts, two males and one gravid female (see quick ID guide at http://www.herpetofauna.co.uk/palmate_newt.htm). I first recorded the species in two other ponds on the site a couple of years ago. I must admit to being slightly disappointed, as I keep hoping to find some Common (=Smooth) Newts to add to the tally here. There had been a lot of frog tadpoles in this pond, but only one could now be seen. The Newts may have taken their toll, and there could be dragonfly nymphs present. A Damselfly nymph was seen climbing up a submerged stem.

There were adult Slow Worms under covering material on three of my compost heaps, in one case a male and a female (these tend to have dark, blackish, flanks) under a piece of corrugated iron, even though this had by now been in shade for some time. The greatest number I’ve seen together on one of my heaps is twelve.

A pristine Speckled Wood butterfly put in an appearance. A small species of blue butterfly whizzed by and, given the height, flight pattern and other factors this was almost certainly a Holly Blue. April/May and July/August are peak periods for it in the Bristol area, with Holly the spring larval food-plant and ivy in the autumn, though other species are sometimes used.

At one point a Gull flew over very low, making a rather distressed, pre-historic-sounding noise and with its neck rather crooked. For a moment I could imagine being back in the Jurassic with a Pterosaur gliding overhead.

24/4/08: PLAYING THE TURF ACCOUNTANT / MINING BEES

2008-04-24T23:58:00.000-07:00

OK, so there are times when keeping turf short is a good idea. Another fairly modern development with a good native flora in un-fenced front garden lawns that I like to keep an account of, is that bounded by White Tree Road, Fallodon Way and Northumbria Drive in Henleaze.

There’s a lot of Parsley Piert in Wildcroft Road. A patch of Thyme-leaved Speedwell was noticed in one garden, with a spike showing one of the small but attractive whitish flowers with blue-violet veining on the upper petal. This is a somewhat inconspicuous species that I’ve often found around the margins of mown grass in various city parks. There’s quite a lot in the one on nearby Fallodon Way.

There were a couple of shoots of Hoary Cress and some Black Medick in a Fallodon Way grass verge.

An extensive display of Ground Ivy in flower brightened a lawn in Remenham Park. Several gardens here have Spotted Medick, with a more or less prominent black ‘V’ in the centre of each leaflet, and toothed stipules, in their front lawns. The yellow flowers are small and few, and were seen on one plant where its shoots were spreading out across the pavement.
The displays will soon be enlivened by the likes of Field Madder, Cut-leaved Cranesbill and Bird’s-foot Trefoil.

Mining Bees, first spotted last year, were back in residence in a strip of dry bare earth at the foot of a white wall on White Tree Road, behind which is a tall conifer hedge. It’s necessary to stand back a little so that they feel secure enough to move in, land and disappear down their neat circular-entranced holes.

24/4/08: A GENETICS ‘ICON’ INCHES FROM YOUR FEET

2008-04-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

KNOW YOUR THALE CRESS

Having returned to wildlife recording after a long break, it’s good to familiarise oneself with new species, even if they are ‘as common as muck’.

One such in recent weeks has been Thale Cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), frequently seen growing in the small gap between garden walls and the pavement. Locations have included the top of Chapel Green Lane, Coldharbour Road opposite the ‘Cambridge Arms’ and Henleaze Road opposite the end of Fallodon Way.

Once you know what you’re looking at it becomes immediately distinguishable from the superficially similar Shepherd’s Purse, having cylindrical (not heart-shaped) fruits on thin stalks, and near-leafless flowering stems.

This unprepossessing plant is a popular 'model' for studies in plant biology and genetics. Its genome is one of the smallest in plants, and was the first plant genome to be sequenced.

BARREN STRAWBERRY

Another addition to my all-time list is Potentilla sterilis, spotted a couple of weeks ago in flower in short turf and between paving slabs at the corner of Brean Down Avenue in Henleaze. The Flora of the Bristol Region map shows the greatest density of records as being from the south and west of Bristol, with relatively few from within the city boundary.

22/4/08: MEXICAN FLEABANE MAKING A MOVE

2008-04-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of having horticulture as a hobby is that escaped ‘aliens’ can often be recognised (along with an ability to tell the difference between ‘weed’ seedlings and those of desirable ornamentals).

Several plants of Mexican Fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), a narrow-leaved, narrow-rayed daisy, were noticed along Worrall Road and in Sutherland Place, upper Clifton. There was a large clump in flower outside a disused door on a side-track off the latter.

When the Flora of the Bristol Region was published in 2000 there were only 8 records, and none within the city boundary.

I think it will become very frequent quite quickly.

One of its more prominent haunts is on the steps over the road from the Council House that lead down to Frogmore Street. It’s also in cracks in the pavement around a café on Henleaze Road.

21/4/08 – IT’S AN ISLAND LIFE FOR ‘UNCOMMON’ SCURVY GRASS

2008-04-22T01:12:00.000-07:00

In a garden at the junction of Halsbury Road and Kellaway Avenue, a male Chaffinch was alternately calling and pecking half-heartedly at Rowan tree flower buds.

A small Stinking Hellebore seedling was noted growing by a small drain cover at the top end of Hill View in Henleaze. Elsewhere down the road the grass verges contained a fairly basic flora, including Self Heal and, on bare patches outside one house, Lesser Swine Cress. There was also some Slender Speedwell (Veronica filiformis) here and there. They’d just been cut, but like suburban grass verges up and down the country would benefit from a lighter touch with the mower/strimmer, so as to let the flowers have their head. The White Clover alone would provide a valuable extra food resource for our hard-pressed bee populations.

A Gorse, one of my favourite native plants, was in flower in the front garden of No. 53 Hill View. To my mind the overall balance of the plant, including the amount of yellow flower to green of the spiny leaves, is more pleasing to the eye than in the couple of the ornamental, exotic, yellow pea-flowered shrubs grown in this part of town.

A narrow alleyway cuts through onto Pyecroft Avenue. Front lawns with finer grasses always attract my attention. The one on the first corner contained Germander Speedwell, Spotted Medick, probable Lesser Trefoil, Cut-leaved Cranes-bill, Self Heal, Lesser Celandine and Common Cats-ear. Five gardens at the Henleaze Road end had significant swathes of Parsley Piert where the unfenced lawns abutted the pavement. These contrasted with several lawns that were monocultures of coarser grass.

Between Wyecliffe Road and Henleaze Road a grass area under trees contained a large number of Germander Speedwell Plants. There were a couple of beheaded Cow Parsley and a clump of Sorrel.

The traffic island in Henleaze Road, opposite the park, and just south of the Pyecroft Avenue junction yielded two Weld seedlings, approximately 90 Buck’s-horn Plantain on some bare soil (the largest agglomeration I’ve yet found in Bristol) and, growing amongst the projections of one of those sets of pre-formed ‘cobbles’ designed to keep pedestrians off, around 14 plants of Danish Scurvy Grass. This is my first record of this species anywhere. The Flora of the Bristol Region describes it as uncommon, with 7 records within the City boundary, local along the Avon coast, but more frequent inland, including along the margins and central reservation of the M5, spreading along trunk roads. It has fleshy ivy-shaped leaves and small pale lilac flowers in terminal clusters.

12/4/08 – SPARROWS LIKE HEDGES

2008-04-22T01:11:00.000-07:00

There was a Song Thrush on Redland Green this afternoon.

As usual, House Sparrows were chirruping from the tightly clipped evergreens in a front garden of Greendale Road. In fact front garden hedges are where I normally see House Sparrows. It seems to me that the obnoxious practice of concreting over front gardens for (even more) car-parking is likely to be a contributory factor in the serious decline of House Sparrow numbers.

7/4/08 – A COUNTRY LANE NEAR KELLAWAY AVENUE, AND THREE FOXES

2008-04-22T01:10:00.000-07:00

The large patch of Field Madder in the lawn at 53 Kellaway Avenue is still flowering strongly.

A long pathway between a sports ground and allotments, running parallel to Kellaway Avenue, has the feel of a country lane about it. Near the inconspicuous alley leading to it from Kings Drive are some English Elm suckers, now with fresh new leaves.

A plant of an ‘escaped’ Spotted Deadnettle (Lamium maculatum) was noted under the large willow on the left. It was accompanied by the related White Deadnettles and Hedge Woundwort.

Tall hedges flank the lane either side, with some Prunus in flower. Bramble, nettles, Cow Parsley, Traveller’s Joy (Clematis vitalba), Garlic Mustard, Lesser Celandine and Cuckoo Pint added to the rural feel at this time.

As dusk began to fall a crescent moon, and dark rain clouds with a thin orange sky below made a fine sight.

An adult fox was seen at the junction of Longleat Close and St. Margaret’s Drive. A second was running along Owen Grove, too busy with its nose to the ground to realise I was there. A third was seen crossing the Henleaze Road end of Fallodon Way.

A horrible orange glare from completely undirected lights around the by now closed Henleaze Junior School, and the lit-up powered roll-over advertising hoarding recently erected on the North View side of Waitrose, touched raw nerves on two of my bigger bugbears – light pollution and energy profligacy. Come on people, it’s 2008, you know the score …...

4/4/08 – SOME INTERESTING GRASS VERGES

2008-04-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

I’d not looked at the fairly wide grass verges in Cairns Road, Redland, outside of Cairns Court, in daylight hours before. They were quite species rich, with the usual things like White Clover, Daisies, Creeping Buttercup and Ribwort Plantain, but also Lesser Trefoil, Black Medick, Field Madder, Common Cats-ear, Mouse-ear Hawkweed and a fair amount of Parsley Piert mixed in with Common Whitlow Grass.

3/4/08 – A PEACOCK AND FIGHTING BLACKBIRDS

2008-04-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

A Peacock butterfly was disturbed from a Choisya shrub in Devonshire Road this sunny afternoon. Two blackbirds were so engrossed in chasing each other round my front garden that at one point they came within two feet of me on the ground.

1/4/08 - COVERING THE ANGLES IN WESTBURY PARK

2008-04-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

This evening there was an Angle Shades moth in the bathroom.

30/3/08 - RAILWAYS, RECORDERS, RUE-LEAVED SAXIFRAGE

2008-04-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

Coming back from London today I saw my first definite Red Kite a quarter of a mile east of Cholsey station and another probable just east of Didcot. This highlights the fact that a certain amount of recording can be done even at 125 mph, and that locations away from stations can be pinned down fairly accurately using the line-side mileposts – or more accurately quarter mile posts. Those on the Great Western line are yellow and mark quarter miles with either spots or some other symbol. So we have 93, 93 above *, 93 above **, 93 above ***, then 94 and so on. In this case the distances are from Paddington. Unfortunately they aren’t marked on OS maps, or you could quickly convert them to a grid reference.

I am particularly interested in heathland vegetation, and at this time of year Gorse and Broom can easily be identified at high speed. But so can things like wild Primroses and Marsh Marigold. At slower speeds around stations less flambouyant things can be recognised. There was a Brimstone at Chippenham station, and there’s a stand of at least 18 Stinking Hellebores just west of the old goods shed at Bath.

Once back in Bristol I walked across the centre of town to attend the excellent BRERC Recorder’s get-together at the Wills Memorial Building, then onward to Westbury Park.

A recent newspaper article had flagged up the decline of Coltsfoot and Scarlet Pimpernel. The former was in flower in the open-air car park behind the Empire and Commonwealth Museum at the old station (as was Alexanders and Common Whitlow Grass) and on the ‘triangle’ around Portwall Lane. The latter was growing around the base of a tree near the WMB, along with a Weld seedling and Lesser Swine Cress.

Wishing to check something around St. Michael-on-the-Mount, I headed home up St. Michaels Hill. There was a swathe of the very small Common Whitlow Grass (actually a member of the Cabbage family) in flower in the cobbles all the way up the raised pathway that is on the left as you ascend the hill. At the top, on the other side, some Oxford Ragwort was in flower.

The most interesting find was of the small Rue-leaved Saxifrage (Saxifraga tridactylites), a species I’d not seen before. The leaves are distinct, being narrowly three-lobed, with a long thin section below the branching point. One was spotted in flower between the pavement and the brick wall surrounding the slightly incongruous ‘modern’ development bounded by Paul St., Little Paul St. and Myrtle Rd., near the bus stop on St. Michaels Hill. There were 7 more round the corner in Paul Street, also in the narrow crack between the brick wall and pavement. The Flora of the Bristol Region describes this species as ‘uncommon’, with between 7 and 9 records (you can’t tell from the small size of the maps which side of the gorge two of them were from) within the Bristol City boundary.