Lady Bagots Drive

Sycamore Leafhopper, characteristic colour pattern of late instar nymphs

Yellow Pimpernel,

Woodruff, note forward pointing prickles on leaves

Access Trail

A nice walk down the section of the Access Trail from the Victoria Road lay-by, focusing mainly on insects. I saw quite a few Azure Damselflies along the sunnier parts of the trail.

This is a male Azure Damselfly, Coenagrion puella.

This next male with a dip in its abdomen, is munching away on an aphid. Nice view of the beerglass on S2.

And here is a closer-up view, interesting to see how the pronotum is angled upwards.

This next picture is a female, a common dark variation on the blue homochromic form. The colours on the top of the head and thorax seem fairly pale - recently hatched perhaps?

Down to Whetsted Gravel pits

As I got down to East Lock I paused to check for insects and particularly hoverflies at the wild-flower seed enhanced area just north of the lock. I had by now seen several Eristalis pertinax and here was my first Sphaerophoria female of the day, hovering about the Perforate St. John's Wort, Hypericum perforatum.

There was also this very nice hairy red beetle, which I feel should really be recognizable to someone if I had the gall to put this single side view on ispot !

While I was looking at the pictures of this Lesser Stitchwort, Stellaria minor, I noticed a tiny grub, possibly a Lepidopteran caterpillar (?) on the left-hand flower.

Crossing Poor's Meadow I saw that the farmer had started to cut the grass for hay, as is the tradition. The meadow is not particularly flower rich, but may contain some Dyers Greenweed on the southern wooded margin according to the BSBI visit report.

As well as keeping the field traditionally managed, the farmer has also, by accident or design, left the broken down old oak tree as a dead wood habitat.

After Poor's Meadow I crossed the wheat crop, which was ripening well, on the clay field which contains the Shepherds Needle Scandix pecten-veneris,

Moving on to the gravel pits themselves, there was a very nice patch of Hare's-foot Clover, Trifolium arvense, on the gravelly patch down at the southern end of the causeway across the west gravel pit. This plant is locally common in the Southeast of England, particularly at coastal sites and almost always on sandy soils. I am sure this particular patch has been here for several years, annually regenerating itself from the seed, which has effective dormancy mechanisms.

These are the woolly pink inflorescences that are the most obvious sign of the plant's presence - the leaves are fairly insignificant by comparison.

Here is a close-up of a single inflorescence - you can see the tiny whitish flowers in amongst the purple hairs of the calyces, each in turn fringed with a light pink fuzz, most easily seen in outline on the side of the inflorescence.

This is an older inflorescence in the centre, with the flowers browning from the base of the inflorescence upwards. On the left-hand inflorescence. a single white "pea-family" flower is absolutely fully open.

This may be a better close-up of a fading inflorescence specifically to show the hairs arising the calyx in the centre and the fuzz on the side of the inflorescence.

These are the narrow, grey, somewhat hairy (the hairs are adpressed) trifoliate leaves, with the two pointed reddish somewhat filiform stipules.

The plant keys out on the BSBI crib sheet for the genus, http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Trifolium_Crib.pdf. It is potentially a very important plant - it apparently contains a gene affecting tannin condensation that if successfully transferred into white clover could both increase yield and also reduce both bloat and methane emissions from cattle. This is due to be commercially available in about 2025, if it comes to market.

Another plant I found, in good numbers along the paths around the gravel pits, was the Common Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, in the pictures below possibly the cultivated variety cv. sativus. This variety, often used in wild flower seed mixes differs from the normal wild plant in having a hollow stem, being more generally yellow, and is also larger and more robust than the native wild form. When I cut the stem of this plant across it was clearly hollow, so my thinking is that it should be cv. sativus. I also checked the key species-characteristic feature, that the sepals were forward pointing, and not reflexed in the bud stage as in the Greater Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus pedunculatus.

In the picture below you can see the suffusion of orange in the petals at bud stage, the way the developing pod pushes the brown remnants of the corolla forward as the pod ripens and lengthens, and the generally forward pointing nature of the sepals.

I do keep on looking for the Greater Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus pedunculatus, but never seem to find it. This is known to be a similar robust plant which also has a hollow stem, but should be easily distinguished from corniculatus, whether sativus or not, by the reflexed sepals in the bud, no suffusions of red in the petals, and more than 5 (7) flowers in one inflorescence.

Another plant I was very glad to see today was the Common Centaury, Centaurium erythraea, which is only just starting its proper summer-long flowering season.  The flowers are a lovely pink, held on square stalks (both the pedicels and peduncles are square I think).

Part-way along the causeway I had come across a Long-Winged Conehead nymph, Conocephalus discolor, green with a dark stripe down its dorsum. I hadn't come across this insect before, and in its nymphal stages it is certainly a striking animal.

On the brambles in the hedge-line between the two western gravel pits there was what looked like an adult male (no oviposter) Dark Bush-Cricket, Pholidoptera grisoaptera, with its vestigial wings. I used this great site to try to compare the species. http://www.orthoptera.org.uk/account.aspx?ID=13 but I could not see the underside, which should have been yellow.





This is the first time I have seen the Azure Damselfly, Coenagrion puella, down here at Whetsted Gravel Pits - so I shall have to check the so-called "Common Blues" far more carefully in future. As this was also in the brambles by the big hedge between the gravel pits it may have come out of the small ditch there, as opposed to the Common Blues coming out of the main gravel pits themselves. I still believe the vast majority of the blue damsels seen on this site and around it to be the latter species.

For comparison, here is a Common Blue Damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum, seen earlier, slightly tangled in some silky fibres, sitting quite quietly on the top of a fencepost along the causeway.

One of the nastiest insects around is the Horse Fly or Cleg, Haemotopota (pluvialis perhaps) with its vicious bite. There was one on the causeway which I admired before I fully realised its identity.

Dene Park without a camera.

I popped up to the woods at Dene Park in the second half of the afternoon, and checked the Black Poplar in the car park and also the three Aspen trees at the junctions along the track for more Poplar Sawfly larvae and also (very hopefully) for the remnants of Hornet Moth pupae protruding from the trunk.

I was successful with finding the Sawfly larvae (Cladius [Trichiocampus] grandis), and there were at least four leaves on the Black Poplar with one to four tiny larvae chewing away at the windowpanes they had created.

I am not very hopeful that they will go to adulthood, as they are reputedly difficult to rear.  I wonder how they pupate - they are supposed to each form a chrysalis in a crack in the bark. I should at least go back to check for the "characteristic" egg scars on the petiole - they would be worth photographing! I didn't see any larvae on the Aspen leaves, but Andrew Halstead has apparently found them on Aspen at Wisley.

Note that other sawfly of the Nematus genus do attack Poplars, but in the more conventional Sawfly fashion, usually sitting on the edge of the leaves. The rarer insect I am dealing with here is sometimes called the Hairy Poplar Sawfly to help distinguish it from these other Nematus species.

I didn't find any Hornet Moth pupae, but it could have been very easy to miss them, as I have never seen them before. Of course, it may be that the insect I saw spent its larval stage elsewhere.

It was really nice to see the Lesser Spearwort  (Ranunculus flammula) flowering along the middle of the track on the far side of the "square", where the soil, and the shade, is heavier. Where it shares its ground with the Creeping Buttercup, Ranunculus repens, the difference in flower size, colour and shape is fairly obvious. I would describe the Lesser Spearwort as having smaller flowers of a slightly brighter and more acid shiny yellow, with the petals slightly more oval and more separated from each other, giving the flowers as a whole a finer and "classier" look. The sepals soon reflex, and fall early. The flower stem is said to be grooved, which I didn't pick up, but is a good character to separate even larger plants (var. major?) from R. lingua, the Greater Spearwort. In addition the flowers and the individual achenes are smaller, although there is some overlap. I also failed to notice a reputed reddish tinge to the stems, and to be honest I didn't believe this character, even when I went back to check the following day.

When I picked a shoot I hadn't realised that the plant as well as being toxic has an acrid sap that can easily damage skin! An alternative common name is apparently Banewort. It is understood to spread by runners, the stems rooting at the nodes, and that it can potentially form dense clumps,  but it has never seemed as aggressive as that to me. It has become naturalised in New Zealand.

The Bourne Valley to Malt Cottage

Walking down through the Green Lane Shaw, there were a fair number of hoverflies patrolling their territories. Most I thought were the Marmalade Hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, but this was a Myathropa florea that was buzzing loudly and had taken control of some leaves in a patch of sunlight.

This is Leucozona lucorum, a rather tatty specimen from the currently declining first generation.

Many of the herbaceous plants were suffering from the dryness of the soil and the heat, and were already flagging this early in the season. The Hawthorn fruit continue to swell into haws - it seems that the season is progressing very quickly indeed! There is one on the left that appears not to have been fertilised. The epidermis of the fruit is slightly hairy, at least at this stage.

Here you can see even more clearly the swelling inferior ovary, with its sparse hairs and the remains of the calyx and the other floral parts above it, apart from the petals which dropped off weeks ago.

Further along the walk the Norway Maple keys were also developing gorgeously:

The elms were starting to show the Elm Leaf Gall,

In the Green Lane, I found a moderate stand of Hedge Woundwort, Stachys sylvatica, at the Bourneside end of the shaw.

As I  moved out into the arable fields along the river, the Honeybees were working the flowering Forage Beans across the fields.

The Vetch I saw most today was in the Common Vetch aggregate, Vicia sativa. This plant looks like ssp. segetalis as in the BSBI plant crib, as it seemed more or less isophyllous, the tendrils are branched, with a clear slightly bi-coloured flower (standard somewhat paler than wings). There is more taxonomic information here http://archive.bsbi.org.uk/Wats12p1.pdf. This includes the suggestion that the calyx teeth should be shorter than the calyx tube, as here. It would be nice to check the pods and the seeds later, perhaps I should mark some typical plants so that I can go back to them in a few weeks.

This a close-up of the flower.





This ant looks yellowish, perhaps because the light is behind it. It had come down from the flower above.

This shows the dark patch generally seen on the stipules, and the hairs covering the plant.

This is the leaflets close up - its fascinating how the genes can apparently code for such a variety of leaf shapes! I wonder how long it would take a computer programmer to code for growth to produce the same results? Are the slightly spiky tips of the leaflets defensive or for some other purpose? The spikes are a bit longer in the currently cultivated form Vicia sativa ssp sativa.

Most of the Buttercups I saw today were Creeping Buttercup, Ranunculus repens. However there were patches of Meadow Buttercup, Ranunculus acris around, including at the edge of the crop in the field to the North of the bridge over the Bourne leading towards Barnes Place.

I think the beetles are flea beetles:

Many of this plant's flowers are already setting achenes, very similar to those of the Creeping Buttercup. Interesting pattern of light in these!

and this one shows the same pattern as well - air spaces around the seeds compared to double thickness wall edges perhaps? Or is it just that the seeds inside the fruit are themselves white? Anyway it's very pretty.

Here is Hedge Mustard, Sisymbium officinale, this one's buds just opening.

It was  nice to see some birds flitting around the hedgerows. The nicest I thought was this male Yellowhammer on the Eastern side of the reservoir b y Malt Cottage.

Even more heavily cropped, this Linnet: