Broadwater Warren

It is July already and it warm among the heaths, pines and bogs of Broadwater Warren near Tunbridge Wells.

One afternoon I found this pine tree embraced by a silver birch: a remarkable instance of a plant's tenacity. I suppose if the pine were felled, and the birch with it, the latter might send up coppice shoots and survive, while the pine would not.

Later I explored the peaty pools near Broadwater Bridge. Black and stagnant with bright green borders of sphagnum moss and areas of tussock sedge (the plant in the picture), they give a feel of what the Weald woodlands might have been like in the past.

Ants (Formica rufa) gathering sunshine

I was in Broadwater Forest, just south of Tunbridge Wells (and just in East Sussex) on a beautiful spring-like day earlier this week. One very striking feature was the huge wood ants (Formica rufa) nests that are common along most of the rides.

The warm sunshine had brought the ants out into the open but, instead of running allover the nest and everywhere else as they usually do, they were clustered tightly together in dark patches around the nest entrances. As they were not engaged in any food gathering activity, it would seem this behaviour was simply to warm themselves up before going back into the dark. Maybe they take a little heat indoors with them; maybe, like some humans, they enjoy sunbathing; or maybe they are unaware that the sunlight if February is likely to be of short duration.

John Pontin in his excellent book The Ants of Surrey (2005) says the insulation provided by the nests "retains the metabolic heat of the ants' activity", so perhaps they are gathering sunshine.

Maidenhair spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes)

Walking up Battle Road in Hastings the other day I came across a brick wall with many ferns in the mortar. There was the one above, maidenhair spleenwort, as well as hart's-tongue and black spleenwort.

Ferns like this are not all that common in walls beside busy roads in urban areas and I suspect there is something very fern-friendly in the mortar of this particular wall. Often it is that the cement is lime mortar rather than modern cement, but this wall does not really look old enough.

Anyway, long may they flourish.

A deer in sheep's clothing

In the fields of the Dudwell Valley east of Heathfield in East Sussex there are many fallow deer and, from time to time, they like to graze with the sheep.

This is classic Rudyard Kipling country of the High Weald opposite Pook's Hill where Puck resides.

Fungus or alga?

The blackberry-purple plant in the pictures above has completely defeated me. It was growing on a sheer 'cliff' of Purbeck limestone in a shady gill south of Burwash Common, East Sussex and had a texture and shape similar to a cup fungus. There were a few more higher up the bank where the limestone was covered in a very thin layer of moss, but I saw them nowhere else in the gill.

A mycologist friend has suggested they might be an alga rather than a fungus, but that is as far as I have got. If anyone can suggest what this might be, or who else I might ask, I would be very grateful

Veteran oak in the High Weald

As it is National Tree Week (22 November - 3 December), I thought I would post a picture of a wonderful ancient oak tree I came across a few days ago. It is deep in the countryside to the south of Burwash Weald, East Sussex and clearly has been pollarded long in the past. Despite the fact that its trunk is half missing and hollow it seems to be in robust health, though the more horizontal branches will be getting very heavy and will eventually fall.

It probably should be re-pollarded in stages, but this is a tricky course of action and it will be essential to get advice from experts in the management of ancient trees. The longer it survives, the more chance there will be for some of the invertebrates and lower plants associated with this kind of habitat to colonise the middle-aged oaks behind as they grow older.

Tree mallow hopper, Eupteryx melissae

Another discovery from my epic field trip to the suburbs of Bexhill-on-Sea. In an abandoned garden I found many large plants of tree mallow, Lavatera arborea. Their leaves were an unusual whitish green (see top picture), undoubtedly the effect of locust-like numbers of the plant hopper Eupteryx melissae that flew from the mallows in clouds evey time one of the plants was shaken.

This hopper, which also feeds on labiates, has not often been recorded in Sussex and,though I have frequently come across tree mallow, I have not seen the insect before.

People sometimes ask how I identify some of these more obscure insects. In a case like this where the species is clearly associated with a plant whose name I know I usually go to the Ecological Flora of the British Isles.

Under tree mallow there are only two options among the insects that enjoy eating this plant and one of them is a leaf hopper (Cicadellidae) called Eupteryx melissae. There are some pictures of this on the Internet and I get confirming details from the Royal Entomological Society's Handbook on the Cicadellidae.

Turnstones (Arenaria interpres) in Bexhill

I was watching a small flock of turnstones working their way over the shingle beach in a very urban part of Bexhill-on-Sea this afternoon.

I was surprised when they hopped up on to the promenade and wandered about like so many little town pigeons. Eventually they crossed to the wide strip of close-mown amenity grassland backing the promenade and were still busily feeding there when I left.

This small water-bird is generally widespread round the coast of Britain in winter.

Red cage fungus, Clathrus ruber

Walking down to the village shop in Sedlescombe, East Sussex today I was surprised to see a perfect fruiting body of a red cage fungus, Clathrus ruber.

It was growing among grass at the base of a hedge by a well trodden path close to the main road and it is the first time I have ever seen one.

Roughly the size of a tennis ball, this strange vegetable is a type of stinkhorn and does have a very bad smell to attract the flies that spread the spores found in the gooey black slime inside the lattice. From a distance it did not look like a living thing at all but more of a convoluted and twisted piece of plastic the product, maybe, of a 5 November bonfire.

The red cage is another one of these 'Mediterranean' species that are extending their range supposedly due to the warming of the climate and has followed very much the same route as the ivy bee, Colletes hederae, appearing first in the Channel Islands then later along the south coast and the West Country. I have not yet found any previous Sussex records, but I am sure there are a few and would be interested to hear from anyone if they know of any.

Horse chestnut leaf miner, Cameraria ohridella

Today I found a large horse chestnut in Oaklands Park, Sedlescombe, quite heavily infested by the fairly-new-to-Britain leaf mining moth Cameraria ohridella. I think this must already have been recorded in Sussex though I have not been able to find anything specific.

This species, which has been much in the news lately due to the damage it is doing to horse chestnut trees, was was first observed in Macedonia in the late 1970s and was described as a new species of the genus Cameraria in 1986. In 1989 it appeared unexpectedly in Austria and has since spread throughout central and eastern Europe. It was first found in the UK in Wimbledon in July 2002 and has since been recorded in many parts of south-east England.

Brown patches on horse chestnut leaves are also caused by the fungus Guignardia aesculi and these may be confused with mines of C. ohridella. However,the blotches caused by the fungus are often outlined by a conspicuous yellow band and do not appear translucent when held up to the light.

In the picture above the difference between the greyish white blotches of the leaf mines and the darker brown, yellow edged patches caused by the fungus can be clearly seen.

For more details on the moth and of the Forestry Commission survey of its spread follow this link.

Leocarpus fragilis in Flatropers Wood

Yesterday I led a walk around Flatropers and Bixley Woods looking for fungi and anything else we could find. Fungi were interesting but not quite as abundant as one might have expected after a warm and relatively wet late summer.

One organism that was new to me was the slime mould Leocarpus fragilis (a Myxomycte, not a fungus). A small patch on a dead Scot's pine needle stood out on the woodland floor due to its bright chrome yellow colour. I put it in a tube for later inspection and, when I had a closer look in the evening, it had turned from a yellow plasmodium (the slime stage) into the greyish brown, grape-like fruiting bodies shown above. Some remnants of the yellow plasmodium can still be seen.

Identification was relatively easy using The Myxomycetes of Britain and Ireland by Bruce Ing (Richmond Publising, 1999)

The day of the harlequin

Today on an amazingly warm October afternoon I found my first harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axiridis, on ivy blossom in Hastings. During the next five minutes I found several colour forms, each on a different ivy each in the same small area. The red and orange ones are the succinea form and the black one with red spots the spectabilis form.

This very successful and aggressive invertebrate has been spreading through North America and Europe and, more recently, Britain. They tend to get to the food first and are therefore out-eating other ladybirds. They can also reach nuisance proportions when they hibernate in houses.

For more details of the harlequin see this link.

Hornbeam fusion

I came across this wonderful tree (or trees) in Brede recently. It is a hornbeam, Carpinus betulus, once part of a hedging operation, maybe in the 19th century. Perhaps four shoots came up from the horizontal and survived survived to make today's silvery trunks.

The tree reminded me of Rodin's famous sculpture of the Burghers of Calais (plenty of pictures of that on the Web).

Larva of The Festoon, Apodia limacodes

The recent winds have blown some interesting caterpillars out of our local trees. Today one of the grandchildren brought in the one in the picture above, a Festoon Moth, Apodia limacodes - they always have this peculiar woodlouse shape.

Although this species is reasonably widespread in South East England, this is the first caterpillar I have seen. Sometimes known as Apodia avellana is on oak feeder associated with ancient woodland. It is a BAP species categorised as 'nationally scarce'(Notable/Nb) and one of only two British members of the family Limacodidae (the other is The Triangle, Heterogenea asella).