Monthly Archives: June 2014

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Flaming June

Large Red Damselfly
Large Red Damselfly

After all the rainy weather  (I even found a large toadstool – in June: The Blusher, Amanita rubescens), today was suddenly hot, at least it seemed so while digging brambles out of the ramp meadow, raking up the scythed Cow Parsley in the full sun, pitchforking it into a barrow and carting it off to a deadhedge. It was a satisfying conservation job, one of those where you can see what you have done, and it looks a lot better after than before. The area is supposed to be a meadow; we successfully suppressed the overgrowth of brambles two years ago, leading to a burst of rather nice Garlic Mustard and its attendant Orange Tip butterflies last year: and a second wave of Cow Parsley that must have seeded itself really well, because it suddenly covered the area this year. Now that it’s all cut, we may hope that grasses and smaller herbs may get going: some Ground Elder at least has begun the process.

In the pond and on the vegetation for a way around it, including atop the hump, Large Red Damselflies are soaking up the sunshine, and flying in cop, egglaying – the females dip the rear half of their very long abdomens in the water to reach an aquatic plant such as Myriophyllum on which they place the eggs.

The butterfly transect was again quiet, but graced by the first Cinnabar Moth of the year: there is a fair bit of Ragwort coming up, and this adult must be newly hatched out of a pupa, presumably at ground level or below as the plants are annual.

Sure enough, after I had finished the transect, the first Holly Blue butterfly of the year, beautifully fresh and new, skipped its bright quick flight just in front of the hut.

Natural History, Nature Reserves

Grasses at Gunnersbury Triangle

With the light changing all the time in a showery airstream (and the Met. Office seemingly unable to get the forecast right for the last several days, wrong every time to my surprise), things looked hopeless for butterflies (just a Speckled Wood or two) and insects (a few leaf beetles, hoverflies and bees).

So we picked up a field guide and a couple of identification sheets, and went out to see what grasses we could find between three of us.

Perennial Ryegrass
Perennial Ryegrass

Ryegrass is a tough grass useful in lawns. Its neatly alternating spikelets make it easy to identify.

Cocksfoot grass
Cocksfoot grass

Cocksfoot is a taller grass with a head  that somewhat resembles the shape of a bird’s foot with its chunky branching spikelets to left, centre and right .

Soft Brome grass
Soft Brome grass

Soft Brome is as its name suggests soft to the touch; its spikelets like most Bromes are compactly plump and rounded, they form a pattern of green and white stripes, and they have awns (little barley-like spines). It’s quite distinctive once you’ve seen it.

Barren Brome grass
Barren Brome grass

Barren Brome looks very different: perhaps its name comes from the way it appears to have nothing much in its seed-heads, which are thin, triangular and very spiky; the plant is altogether long and thin and dark purplish-brown.

Yorkshire Fog
Yorkshire Fog

Yorkshire Fog, a beautiful name for a lovely soft plant, is thick and tall with broad soft leaves and a remarkably thick, soft seedhead. It’s one of those plants you can recognise twenty yards off once you know it.

The reserve has some False Oat-grass which in theory we should be pulling out – it seem unlikely given the way it’s tightly integrated with the rest of the grasses and herbs, so it’s probably here to stay.

There seem to be several Fescue grasses in the thin strip of acid grassland along the line of the old railway – the clinker that the sleepers rested on consisted of chunky angular chips of hard acid rock from somewhere far from London. One is Sheep’s Fescue: there may be Red Fescue, and there is something that looks like one of the taller Fescues too.

Rough Meadowgrass
Rough Meadowgrass

The Meadowgrasses have a typical light open panicle for their seedhead, giving a rather delicate appearance with their slim stems. I carefully checked which kind this one was; it has a pointed ligule where the leaf joins the stem, and is gently rough with little hairs, so it’s the Rough Meadowgrass.

Rough Meadowgrass
Rough Meadowgrass

In the woods near the path there are tufts of a broad-leaved grass that tolerates shade: it’s the Wood Melick.  Finally, there’s one conspicuous grasslike plant that enjoys the wetter places here: the Pendulous Sedge. It’s a bit invasive but so handsome that I always admire it.

Pendulous Sedge
Pendulous Sedge