Tilting at Windmills

The recent outcry over the omission of the Green Party from pre-election debates prompted me to look more closely at the environmental policies of new-comers to the debating table, UKIP. It was rather like turning over a stone; the blind, wriggling creatures you discover are fascinating and repulsive in equal measure.

Take, for example, their attitude to trees. They are all for trees, are UKIP, which is great. They want to see England swathed in woodland once more, to the point of banning ‘the mass falling (sic) of trees in all forms’. Which is fine unless you want to manage one of those awkward non-woodland habitats, like heathland or chalk grassland. And what about coppicing?

And then there’s renewable energy. UKIP aren’t so keen on renewable energy. They hate wind farms, because ‘the rotating blades kill and maim countless of (sic) innocent birds…’ They also ‘emit grotesquely disturbing noise pollution which petrifies so many small animals’. The horror…

Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GreenMountainWindFarm_Fluvanna_2004.jpg

Solar farms are no better. Encouraged by the ‘obscene’ feed-in tariff incentive, they are effectively a ‘life sentence for the countryside’, scarring a landscape they describe as ‘the most breathtaking on mother Earth’ (clearly UKIP members don’t travel. Not ‘abroad’, anyway).

Whilst I love the British landscape dearly, even I admit that there are parts of it – the flat, agricultural lowlands, for instance – that can be a little, well, dull. There; I said it. But here I think the UKIP are mistaking green for Green. Vast rolling acres of high-intensity cereal agriculture may look verdant, especially if you spend most of your time in an urban environment, but in ecological terms they are close to deserts.

It's green. Green is good, right?

 Solar farms tend to be constructed on the poorest quality agricultural land; areas that require high (and therefore expensive) fertiliser input in order to scrape a financially viable crop from them. So leaving aside the point that we should be encouraging the use of solar power anyway, we are also talking about the conversion of land that is ecologically depauperate and requires a high input of agrichemicals into something that produces energy from sunlight. But the key point is that, with appropriate landscaping, such sites can become wildlife havens too.

The lack of disturbance and chemical input means that the area around solar panels is ideal for the sowing of low-maintenance seed mixes. In a landscape where nearly all the plant species remaining are wind-pollinated cereal crops, providing a long-flowering nectar source can have enormous benefits for pollinating insects.

A scar on the landscape?

FlowerScapes are excited to be working with the British Beekeepers’ Association and major solar energy providers Belectric on a number of sites across lowland England. These sites have been transformed from sterile green prairies into a blaze of nectar-rich colour. I’m sure UKIP will hate them, but the bees might disagree…

Ragwort - friend or foe?

Ragwort is a plant that provokes strong reactions amongst a certain group of people. We'll come back to that, though. First of all, ragwort is not a single, plant; it's a group of related species, all members of the genus Senecio. Common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) is a widespread plant of grassland, meadows and road verges throughout Britain. Its close relatives - hoary ragwort, Oxford ragwort, marsh ragwort and fen ragwort - are less common but very similar in appearance.

Hoverfly and cricket feeding on ragwort

Oxford ragwort is a non-native invasive species which was originally introduced to Britain from Sicily in the early 18th century. It found the clinker of railway tracks very similar to the volcanic slopes of its homeland, jumped the wall from Oxford University Botanic Garden and began to spread along railway lines. Fen ragwort, conversely, is native but extremely rare, being confined to a single ditch near Ely.

Pair of mating red soldier beetles

But let us return to the common ragwort and its problems. It has the unfortunate property of being poisonous to horses and other livestock, causing liver damage or death. Whilst they might avoid it as a living, green plant, once cut and dried as hay it becomes more likely to be ingested. This effect on the pampered mounts of the chattering classes has led to common ragwort being vilified and persecuted. It was listed on the 1959 Weeds Act (yes, there is a Weeds Act), which can require a landowner with ragwort on their property to take action to control it.

Bumble bee nectaring on the flowers of ragwort

 

Dr Karin Alton examining a range of pollinators on Ragwort

Which is a shame, because it's a really good pollinator plant. It flowers abundantly, it is visited by a wide range of insects, and it is even the host of a particular species of moth, the cinnabar, whose distinctive striped caterpillars are found nowhere else (I recently heard them referred to as ragworms, a word I am going to use from now on). And it really is only a problem where horses or other livestock are likely to graze. So let's leave the poor plant alone on road verges and waste ground, and long may it support its ragworms!

Burnet moth

 

Cinnabar moth caterpillar

All photos copyright: Karin Alton

God's Acre

An area of land, open to the public, protected from development, with a long history of management as, usually, grassland with scattered trees. 

Nature reserve? No – churchyard!  

 

Photo: Mark Patterson

Above shows one of the 7 lost cemeteries of  London, now no longer a working cemetery, but a local nature reserve, with grave stones overgrown with red valerian, giant squil, catchfly and ox-eye daisy.

 

St Wilfred's Church in Haywards Heath.

Many of our churchyards are havens for wildlife, having had the continuity of management that many nature reserves can only dream of. Many of them are incredibly old – ancient churchyard yew trees often pre-date the church itself, marking pre-Christian sites of worship – and they are often undisturbed, particularly if contemporary burials are taking place elsewhere. This long history of steady management means that species have time to colonise, and some churchyards support a high diversity of plants, insects and – on the gravestones – lichens. 

The rare Black headed cardinal beetle found by Mark Patterson at Tower Hamlets cemetery. A new species for London.

Churchyards do suffer, however, from the blight that afflicts many public spaces – over-tidiness. Especially in areas that are still actively visited by relatives, there is an expectation to see the grass mown short and the weeds eliminated. And that is fine, but as is so often the case, there is almost always space for a little wildness.

In the old, unvisited corners of churchyards, many more enlightened churchwardens allow the vegetation to grow up in the summer, effectively managing it as a meadow. Sometimes they do this in the face of criticism from their parishioners, but surely – in God’s acre – there is room for all creatures great and small?

The Humble Dandelion

Some plants are so ubiquitous that we almost lose sight of them; we certainly take them for granted. A classic example of this is the humble Dandelion. Recorded from virtually every square kilometre of the British Isles, the ‘dandelion’ is actually a group of 229 very similar micro-species, adapted to a wide range of habitats but all of them with the ability to spread far and wide by seed. 

Great spring forage for a variety of flower visitors. A honey bee enjoys the nectar produced by the dandelion.

Indeed, they have even abandoned sex, producing fertile seed spontaneously without the need for pollen. Having said that, they are still an excellent resource for pollinating insects, not least because they are in flower almost all year round. 

Hoverfly taking a rest on the bright flower head.

And when left unchecked, as any gardener knows, they flower in abundance.

Dandelion seed head

Being so widespread, the Dandelion has found a firm place in folklore and herbal medicine. Its role as a powerful diuretic is reflected in a range of earthy folk names; ‘pis-en-lit’ in French, for example. 

Dandelion 'clock'

Dandelion pollen

‘Dandelion’, though, comes from ‘dent de lion’ - lion’s tooth, referring to the jagged leaf margins. The scientific name, Taraxacum, comes from the Greek taraxos (disorder), and akos (remedy), reflecting the plant’s long history as a herbal medicine. Due to its diuretic action, it is widely used for kidney disorders, with all parts of the plant being used but especially the root.

The leaves can be eaten as a salad green, the root can be roasted as a substitute for coffee and wine can be made from the flowers. And let us not forget its role in that British classic, Dandelion and Burdock.

All photos copyright Karin Alton (except the last: Steve Alton)

Of Cuckoos and Fritillaries

One effect of the wet winter seems to have been a particularly good show of Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis). This member of the mustard family is common on damp grassland, including road verges, and is the food plant of the Orange-tip butterfly (Antocharis cardamines).

It takes its common name from the fact that it often flowers around the time the first cuckoo is heard, but shares the name with several other, unrelated, plants that flower around the same time. Scientific names were invented to avoid this kind of confusion.

Another, sadly much less common, plant of damp grassland is the Snake’s-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris). Although widely sold as a garden bulb, in the wild it is confined to a handful of wet meadows from Wiltshire and Oxfordshire to Suffolk. 

One of the classic localities is in the meadows of Magdalen College, Oxford, where it flowers in its thousands. Here it looks wonderful with a show of cowslips.

Photos: Steve and Karin Alton. Orange tip: Wikipedia

 

Blackthorn - the first spring blossom

Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is a large shrub or small tree, named for its black bark and abundant sharp spur shoots. Its spiny nature made it an obvious choice for stock-proof hedging, and it is widespread in hedges throughout the British Isles. 

It is one of the first shrubs to flower in the spring, beaten only by the introduced cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera). The two species are often confused; the flowers of blackthorn, however, are creamy white and produced before the leaves emerge.

The fruit is the sloe, a blue-black miniature plum with a white ‘bloom’ on the surface. Sloes are incredibly astringent, even after a few sharp frosts have mellowed them, and are best prepared with sugar, either as a jam or in a bottle of gin. A red wine can also be made from them. 

Blackthorn hybridises freely with a number of related species, including the cherry plum and the bullace (Prunus domestica ssp. institia). The resulting plants are all very similar, but often have leaves present when the flowers open.

Blackthorn and all it related species are good early spring forage plants for a number of insects including ladybirds, bees and hoverflies.

All photos copyright:  Karin Alton