For much of this past week, I've been spending lots of time in the field by day and basically chilling with me ol' mate The Ghost of an evening. Hence my blogging is now several days behind. Today has been put aside as a blogging day whilst Ghostie is out trying to trap more Marsh Tits in the New Forest, though we did nip out to check out some Maidenhair Fern Adiantum capillus-veneris this morning - there's a decent colony growing on the stairwell to a crypt at a nearby church. It was all very spooky, I expect Ghostie felt right at home. So, taking it back a few days...
On Sunday 23rd Jan, we hit North Hampshire on a mission to mop up a number of plants that we very rarely bump into. Well, Ghostie could bump into them pretty much whenever he likes, but if I wanted to see them this year - which I did - it was now or never. We hit the road.
First on the agenda was a lifer for both of us, White Comfrey growing in a village verge. Or drain, as it turned out.
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| White Comfrey - Symphytum orientale |
This keyed very easily. For starters the leaves lack the bristly, scratchy hairs found on other comfreys, having a nice, soft, downy texture instead. The leaf bases were a little variable but were mostly somewhat cordate, again unlike most other comfreys. The leaf blade is quite small and the stem is unwinged. Were it flowering, there would be white flowers, but as this is January...
Next plant twitch was on the outskirts of Church Crookham, pretty soon we were pulling up in a carpark where the very air smelled of dogshit. Great, my fave kind of place. Treading carefully, we headed down a track alongside a conifer plantation and very soon found a sprawling patch of low-growing bamboo. To be fair, we already knew what it was, but keyed it through anyway. Happily we came to the same identification as had the BSBI vice county recorder.
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| Hairy Bamboo Sasaella ramosa intemixed with brambles on the edge of a conifer plantation |
I've become badly bogged down trying to key bamboos in the past and have avoided attempting to ID them ever since, but the new edition of Poland's Veg Key worked like an absolute dream and we keyed this particular bamboo through easily and quickly. It really is a marvellous book. Key features are blade width of less than 3cm and a rounded culm to place us in the right section of the bamboo key. Then it's just a matter of deciding whether it's patch or clump-forming, whether the culms are more or less than 1.2metres in length and whether the leaves are hairy on the upperside or not. Within a mere six couplets we safely arrived at Hairy Bamboo, beautifully simple. On our way back to the shit-infested carparking area, I noticed a clump of Italian Lords & Ladies, the first I've seen since October 2020, which was the last time I visited England.
Next on the hitlist was another lifer for both of us, Algerian Ivy. To be fair, the site itself was trickier to find than the plant. We did a quick tour up some private roadways, complete with CCTV cameras and a road barrier (it was raised at the time) before re-orientating and coming at it from a different angle. Eventually we were at the correct site and within about two minutes Ghostie gave a whistle to call me back to the plant I'd just blundered past.
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| Note my copy of Stace 4 resting on the fence in the third image down! |
Clearly this is one big ass ivy! Again, we knew what it was before we arrived, but we always key these things through anyway. Why? Well, first of all it's just good practice, how else are you going to learn? And secondly, there's always a chance that the original finder has misidentified it. Typically we key plants through using Stace 4 and Poland's Veg Key, both of which I lump around everywhere we go. We also always have Ghostie's copy of the Collins Wild Flower Guide which nicely complements Stace and Poland thanks to the beautiful illustrations, plus it has its own keys, though it doesn't deal with more than a few of the alien species which abound in this part of the world. It doesn't have this ivy, or the bamboos, for instance.
This was Algerian Ivy Hedera algeriensis which differs from the even larger Persian Ivy in the leaf shape and glossiness. Even through a x20 handlens I couldn't discern the hairs on the underside of the leaf (though they were visible at 40x under the microscope afterwards) and again these differ between the two species. This patch was scrambling over Common Ivy Hedera helix low down in the leaf litter. I'd walked past it because I was looking at the tree trunks and not at the ground, duh! You can see the smaller leaves of the Common Ivy in a couple of the pics above.
As we cut across country to another part of North Hampshire, we found ourselves driving through the town of Alton. Now, to set the scene, I've been banging on at poor Ghostie that I was determined to find Water Bent, a relatively recent arrival into Britain which has consolidated and expanded it's range massively in the last three or four years. It was growing in Ghostie's local high street until recently, then the council came along and sprayed the footpaths, bastards... Pretty much ever since my arrival at his house, I've been looking at pavement grasses and asking "is that Water Bent? So is that Water Bent? What about that, is that Water Bent?" By now he'd gotten to the point of showing me Annual Meadow-grass and telling me that it was Water Bent in an effort to shut me up. So, as we were sat at a road junction awaiting a break in the traffic, you can probably imagine his thoughts when I suddenly screamed, "Stop! Stop! That's Water Bent! Right there look, that's Water Bent!!!" Happily, he pulled into a nearby layby allowing me to rush back around the corner to confirm my find. And was it actually Water Bent this time? Well...
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| Water Bent Polypogon viridis - at last! |
Our next destination was a spot we'd previously visited in February 2020, which was the last time I stayed with Ghostie. Back then we were chasing lifers, today we were chasing the very same plants, but as yearticks. And yes, I know that seems pointless and ridiculous, but we are both hoping to see 1000 species of wild plants this year and these were 'bankers', we hoped. Anyway, I hadn't encountered any of the target plants at this site since last seeing them two years ago, so it would be a useful refresher to see them again. Numbers game or not, I was particularly looking forward to seeing the Caucasian Stonecrop again, mostly because I couldn't recall exactly what it looked like! But first, a very minor detour into an overgrown layby. Ghostie looked smug and didn't leave the car, why had he brought me here? I started scanning the plants. It didn't take me long to find an unexpected tree
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| Stag's-horn Sumach Rhus typhina - what on earth is that doing here? |
I suspect Ghostie was a little surprised that I recognised this tree straight away. I know I certainly was! I did mention that there was a second sumach in Britain, but he said it's only in Kent and this was Stag's-horn Sumach (turns out there are actually two more sumachs, one restricted to a site in Kent and the other to a site in Kent with a second site in South Wales). In the uppermost of the three images above you can see numerous clumps of Stinking Hellebore. Taking a closer look it was apparent that they were heavily mined by Phytomyza hellebori, a species of agromyzid fly that mines various hellebore species.
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| Mines of Phytomyza helleborus on Stinking Hellebore Helleborus foetidus |
A quick skirmish through the gutters revealed a few nice 'weeds' for the year, including Parsley-piert, Ivy-leaved Speedwell and Himalayan Giant Bramble, situated between beer cans, dumped rubble and the odd condom and face mask
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| Ivy-leaved Speedwell Veronica hederifolia - a real rarity on Skye, certainly I've never seen it there |
We then headed to the site of various plants we wanted to see for our yearlists. It may have been two years since we were last here, but everything was just as we left it last time
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| Caucasian Stonecrop Phedimus spurius - smaller than I remembered and distinctly matt green |
Along the same track we found Forsythia Forsythia x intermedia, Chinese Barberry Berberis julianae and Green Alkanet Pentaglottis sempervirens, all escaped from gardens and hence countable.
Job done, we next headed across to Shortheath Common, one of Ghostie's sites back in his wardening days. As such, he had a bit of insider gen regards a few desirable plants. Well, two of them are decidedly undesirable from a conservation point of view, but from our listing perspective, we definitely wanted to see them. We visited the Juneberry Amelanchier lamarckii tree in the woods, apparently it is runnning amok on a nearby common, dipped on the Confused Bridewort due to the fact someone has built a playground on top of it, and had great fun carefully splooshing through a boggy area in which we found mountains of Cranberry Vaccinium oxycoccos. Shortheath Common has the largest population of Cranberry in the south of England, we must have seen hundreds of plants.
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| Cranberry Vaccinium oxycoccos |
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| The tiny leaves of Bird's-foot Ornithopus perpusillus |
A little further onwards and we emerged on the side of a road near some large gardens. We were met with a dense wall of bamboo, towering high over our heads. Oh wow! Still flushed with our success with the Hairy Bamboo earlier that day, we entered the thicket and ran it through the keys.
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| No sign of panda or tiger, but we did find Bamboo Aphids! |
Once again, Poland's Veg Key worked like a dream and we very quickly and conclusively came to an identification. This is a quick run down of the key couplets: Leaves over 3cm wide, main culms round >> section A (there are four sections in all). Then; leaves not variegated, 3/4 glaucous below >> two options: leaves 5-9cm wide, shiny bright green above, rarely hairy beneath, culms 2-3 metres tall and 5-10mm diameter OR leaves 2-5cm wide, shiny dark green above, sparsely hairy, culms 2.5-5 metres tall and 10-20mm diameter. And it's that simple! Ours fitted the latter option perfectly, Arrow Bamboo Pseudosasa japonica and a lifer for both of us. Checking the BSBI maps that evening, we could see that it's already been recorded from that square, just as confirmatory back up.
We'd done a fair bit of travelling between sites today, though this gave us Water Bent (and thank fook for that, says Ghostie) but I'd encountered five new plants and reacquainted myself with several others for the first time in a couple of years. A successful day and bamboo has proven to be eminently possible to key to species. Far easier to key than most of its smaller cousins, in fact.
I can't pretend that this is a song I'd ordinarily listen to (or from a film I'm ever likely to see again now that I'm no longer six years old) but....
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