Tag Archives: Yellow Rattle

Love of Nature, Natural History, Wildlife

Dolomites 2025

3 August 2025 Ian Alexander

Here are some of the natural history delights of the Dolomites. I’ve avoided duplicating species from my earlier Dolomites post. To see the images at full size, open them in a new tab or window.

Narrow-bordered 5-spot Burnet Moth, on Scabious

Orange-backed Tachinid fly, presumably mimicking a bee

Red Pine Longhorn beetle. The adults take nectar; the larvae feed on rotting wood.

Purple Broomrape, Trodena. The plant has no leaves, relying entirely for its food on parasitising its host plant, Yarrow.

Pale di San Martino mountains, alpine meadows, mixed coniferous forest of Spruce, Fir, Larch, and Pine

Pollinator at work: a bee with full pollen baskets on its legs, probably a *Halictus* mining bee, on Knapweed (cf Halictus scabiosae, which does nectar on Knapweed as well as on Scabious, and has stripes of three colours on its abdomen)

Black-striped Longhorn Beetle, on Seguier’s Pink

Nest of Paper Wasp (Polistes). Workers are on guard; others tend the larvae. The outer row of cells always remains unused. Unlike common wasps, the nest is made in the open, attached to a herbaceous stem as here, and it never gets much larger than this. Some of the cells are sealed, with domed ends and pupae inside.

Nine-spotted Moth taking nectar on Knapweed. Like the Burnet moths, its bold coloration is aposematic; it may also be a wasp mimic with the bold yellow stripe on its abdomen. Below it is a heart-spotted flower longhorn beetle, *Stictoleptura cordigera*.

False Hellebore (Veratrum), in the Liliales (like lilies) not the Asparagales (like the orchids that it resembles)

Cow-wheat is a hemiparasite, lives in a mutualistic relationship with the wood ant, and is the host plant of the Heath Fritillary.

Yellow Rattle, a key plant in grassland as it parasitises tall grasses, weakening them and allowing many shorter flowers to flourish in alpine meadows.

Gypsy moth caterpillar parasitised by Braconid wasps. They have eaten the inside of the caterpillar and have pupated alongside its body. The caterpillar has later slipped down away from the pupae.

Handsomely lichened twig. The leafy Parmelia-type lichens have large rounded apothecia which release spores of the lichen fungus. The reddish area on the left is a discouraged patch of lichen; many lichens are used to create vegetable dyes in reds, oranges, and yellows.

Queen of Spain Fritillary on Viper’s Bugloss

Squinancywort. It was formerly used to treat ‘quinsy’, an abscess behind the tonsils.

An impressively big patch of Dog Lichen (Peltigera canina) covering a tree-stump

Local-scale commercial forestry. Trees are removed in small strips, not clear-felled, respecting the ecology of the forest.

Local-scale commercial forestry. The harvested trees are of different species and sizes.

Other sightings

Among other interesting finds (including species recorded in my earlier posting), I am pretty sure I heard the call of the Nutcracker, a small crow of forested mountains. A Black Redstart perched obligingly on a fence post, twitching its red tail. A surprised Stag, early one morning, bounded away uphill from a forest track: there were generally few signs of deer, though plenty of cattle and some horses grazing in the alpine meadows and forest clearings. A Hummingbird Hawkmoth hovered over the flowerbed near the house one morning, gathering nectar. Male Common Blue butterflies showed off their dazzling coloration of caerulean blue, but there were no Idas Blue butterflies, which I saw last time (at another time of year). Seen again like last time was the handsomely red/black striped bee parasite beetle Trichodes apiarius, plenty of Scotch Argus, one Chalkhill Blue, countless Marbled Whites, and plenty of Brimstones and Clouded Yellows, and one or two Speckled Woods. Common Heath moths were, well, common; they may not exactly be day-flying, but they’re readily disturbed in long grass.

We enjoyed seeing some familiar plants, too: Meadowsweet, never common in these hills, sticking strictly to very damp meadowland; the small yellow 4-petalled Tormentil, the delicate yellow Rock-rose, and the aromatic Wild Thyme, as much at home in the English uplands as here. Less familiar were the umbellifers (Apiaceae) Sweet Cicely and Broad-leaved Sermountain. Wild flowers that we saw that share the distinction of being also in our London garden include Eyebright and Self-Heal. Among the less usual ferns were Polypody and Wall Rue Spleenwort.

Reflections

It is hard not to compare the species richness of the flourishing alpine meadows and forests with that of Britain’s uplands. In Britain, sheep prevent trees from taking hold, and graze so severely that few flowers can grow. Farm subsidies and agricultural policy since the war have favoured production at the expense of wildlife; over 97% of Britain’s wildflower meadows, permanent pastures, have been ploughed up. Some of the ploughing was to enable reseeding with an “improved” grass mix, sometimes with clover. The result was invariably an impoverished agro-ecosystem, with far fewer species of grasses and flowers, far fewer insects, and degraded soil with fewer earthworms.

In some places, such as the chalk grassland near Beachy Head, the land was returned to pasture soon after the war with its urgent need for food. There is still, over 50 years later, a sharp contrast between the ploughed pasture land and the undamaged chalk grassland: the ploughed land has not recovered in that time.

It is no surprise that Britain’s bird, insect, and flower populations have collapsed. When hedges have been grubbed up and large fields carefully cultivated, after a while the farmer has a clean crop without flower “weeds” or insect “pests”, even without using herbicides or insecticides: there is no place for them to grow, no food for the insects to eat.

The only wild species that can survive in such a regime are efficient and troublesome weeds, like grasses too similar to cereal crops to be possible to spray; or genuinely pestlike insects, such as “cabbage white” butterflies, that can breed rapidly, fly or be blown long distances, and quickly destroy fields of Brussels sprouts if a farmer is unwary. All the more attractive and beneficial organisms are long gone.

See also Wildlife of the Dolomites (the animals and plants arranged into groups)

Nature Reserves

Iridescent Dragonflies, Dazzling Orchids at London Wetland Centre

14 June 2023 Ian Alexander

The whole of the wetland was sparkling with Emperor Dragonflies patrolling the pools: a few females laid eggs by Water-Lilies, the males occasionally chasing prey, or a rival. The margins were full of Azure Damselflies, nearly all males: I saw one pair in wheel formation.

The marshy areas bristled with Southern Marsh Orchids

Several Red-Eyed Damselfly males displayed on lily-pads, chasing off rivals; occasionally an Azure came by too. Over one or two of the smaller pools, a Hairy Dragonfly patrolled; one of them had an aerial tussle with a similarly-sized red dragonfly, I think a Common Darter.

Overhead, quite a few Sand Martins caught insects over the water (well, the Wetland Centre does sport West London’s only Sand Martin bank, an artificial river cliff), along with a few Swifts, and I think exactly one Swallow … it feels as if something terrible has happened to these populations. They have to migrate across the Sahel, the Sahara, the Mediterranean, and numerous populations of hungry village boys and keen shooters, so it’s something of a miracle there are any left: and that’s not even speaking about climate change.

Blue and yellow Vetches bringing colour to the tall grassland, with tendrils everywhere

A couple of Common Terns, presumably those breeding on the Wetland Centre’s lake islands, made their bright and cheery waterbird calls as they wheeled about, searching for glimpses of tiny fish to dive in and catch.

There were only a few butterflies about – a Red Admiral, a Holly Blue, a couple of Speckled Wood, some Whites, a female Brimstone. For me, the bees and pollinators looked well down on normal, too. Amidst the warmth of the day, the beauty, the peace, and the brilliant colours, it is a sombre tale of decline.

Natural History

Spring in Somerset

26 May 2023 Ian Alexander

Mayfly by the River Avon, of the kind known to fly fishermen as the Drake Mackerel. This one has its serial number painted on its abdomen!

Silk Tents of Ermine Moth Caterpillars, in a hedge near Iford

Ermine Moth caterpillars in their silk tent. Both the caterpillars and the adult are white with black spots, like the magnificent robes of “ermine” (Stoat pelts) worn by Lords (and Monarchs at their Coronations).

A sea of Wild Garlic in coppice woods near Iford

Crosswort, near Iford; a handsome plant in the Bedstraw family

Yellow Rattle near Imber, on Chalk Grassland, playing its usual role of weakening the tall grasses — it’s parasitic — and so allowing the beautiful and varied flowers including Orchids space and light to grow.

Natural History

A Walk in Aston Rowant

4 July 2022 Ian Alexander

Dark Green Fritillary … in Motion … come on, you take the camera, and see if you can get a better shot of one … they’re very flighty. But you can certainly see the green underwing coloration, with big rounded white spots, in the third photo. The High Brown Fritillary is very similar but vanishingly rare…. mind you, this species could well be called the High Velocity Fritillary, so there.

Rattling a Yellow Rattle – yes, really, play the video and listen! The plant is important in flowery meadows, as it parasitises the tougher and taller grasses, weakening them and letting in the smaller and prettier wild flowers. An old farmers’ name for it is accordingly “Poverty”: guess they preferred money to beauty and diversity in them there days.

A gloriously shiny and iridescent green leaf beetle, *Cryptocephalus hypochaeridis*, on Hawkweed

Love of Nature, Natural History

Therfield Heath, Royston – surviving chalk grassland in East Anglia

19 June 2018 Ian Alexander

On Therfield Heath SSSI (Royston Hill) with Yellow Rattle, with the plains of Cambridgeshire behind

Much of East Anglia is flat, and very low-lying, indeed parts of the Fens are basically at sea level. But there are some hills, and even a Chalk escarpment. It’s pretty low, but still affords a fine view northwards across the plains. The nearly complete “failure of a major escarpment” is the result of the Ice Ages – the ice sheet, maybe a mile thick, ground interminably over the hills and plains, reducing most of the chalk to rock flour with flints, creating the sticky Boulder Clay that carpets much of eastern England. But at Royston, a delightful range of low hills survives, and has somehow survived the plough and the developers.

The grass of Therfield Heath (Royston Hill) is thinned by the parasitic Yellow Rattle (Orobanchaceae, the Broomrape family of parasitic plants): it helpfully weakens the grass, allowing in many other flowers, so it’s a bit of a Keystone Species, one on which the health of the ecosystem depends.

A colourful assemblage: Yellow Rattle – Red Clover – Birdsfoot Trefoil

The plants let in by the weakening of the grass include a colourful and increasingly rare assemblage, which includes Kidney Vetch, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Rockrose, Thyme, Wild Mignonette and many others.

Rockrose and Thyme, attractive plants of Chalk Grassland

The flowers in turn support butterflies including Marbled White, Meadow Brown, and Small Heath. Half-a-dozen Skylarks were singing all around; one got up pretty close to us for a brief song-flight, quickly followed by several of his neighbours. A Swift dashed overhead. All these once-familiar and widespread species are becoming rather special, a measure of the ecological disaster that has spread not just across England but across Europe and, really, the whole world.

Therfield Heath landscape with Elder-Hawthorn bush

Perforate St John’s Wort with interesting small pollinators

It’s interesting to see a pattern in the distribution of plants. I last saw Dropwort on Helsington Barrows, a limestone hill at the southern edge of the Lake District (not a place with much limestone, given the area’s ancient volcanic rocks and slates). Here it’s on a very different form of limestone, chalk, but if the soil is alkaline and supports open grassland, that’s fine with Dropwort. It’s a plant with a beautiful foamy white cluster of flowers on a rather isolated stalk rising from the grassland. The attractive foaminess is reminiscent of Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria, and indeed Dropwort is in the same genus: it’s Filipendula vulgaris, though it could hardly be called common these days.

Gardening, Natural History

Pipits and Peregrines at Portland Bill!

3 June 2016 Ian Alexander

Thrift, Birdsfoot Trefoil on Isle of Portland

We had a fine airy walk in brilliant sunshine, cooled by a stiff northerly breeze, around the tip of the Isle of Portland. Underfoot was fine maritime turf and massive Portland limestone, dotted with tufts of pink Thrift and yellow Birdsfoot Trefoil. The sea sparkled blue and silver around a wooden sailing ship with four triangular sails. A pair of Gannets flew effortlessly down the wind, tilting their long black-tipped wings.

To the south, the fearsome tide-race splashed ominously as if some Odyssean sea-monster (Charybdis and its whirlpool?) lurked beneath: the tide there runs faster than a yacht can sail, one way and then the other. Jonathan Raban describes it wonderfully in his book Coasting, the feeling of rising alarm and then, going for it, being shot like a cork from a champagne bottle through the swirling water.

A Rock Pipit, its beak full of insect grubs, called urgently as we strayed too close to its nest. A Razorbill, improbably proportioned like a fat impresario in black tie and tails, flapped by on small rapid triangular wings.

Oedemera nobilis, the thick-kneed flower beetle

We saw few insects – some bumble bees, some handsome Thick-kneed Flower Beetles glowing iridescent green on buttercups, later on one male perched on a pebble on Chesil Beach

The best flower of the day was probably the Yellow Rattle, an odd-shaped parrot-beaked yellow flower with spiky leaves. It’s a member of the Figwort family (like the Eyebright, whose growth habit is similar though smaller), and a hemiparasite of grasses: an important plant, as it weakens the grasses, keeping them low and allowing in a wealth of other flowers. It was once common in our meadows and permanent pastures, but fertilizers and ploughing have destroyed over 95% of these, and Yellow Rattle and the rest of our grassland flowers are now all desperately uncommon.

Overhead, two Peregrine Falcons slid through the air, circling without visible effort. A pair of Ravens came by. Standing at the top of the western cliffs, Fulmars flew out from their cliff nests, circling on stiff wings.

A little patch of Scarlet Pimpernel by a gate again reminded me of how this once common weed of cultivation (and sand dunes – presumably it was pre-adapted to disturbed ground) has declined.

We left Portland and drove down the hill to the Chesil Beach, struck as everyone is by the enormous shingle bar that stretches miles from Abbotsbury to the Isle of Portland, forming a bar with the Fleet lagoon behind it.

A few handsome Sea Kale plants clung to the lower part of the landward side of the shingle, including this one on the edge of the car park. It is the ancestor of the domestic cabbage in all its varieties, from Broccoli to Brussels Sprouts, Kale to Cauliflower. It is itself (obviously) edible, though as a now-scarce maritime plant one wouldn’t want to pick any of it at all often.

Nearby, the ancestor of another valuable food plant, the Sea Beet, origin of Sugar Beet, purple Beetroot, and Spinach Beet. The wild plant too is edible, though the leaves are small, thick, and leathery!

ObsessedByNature