Title: Nature Notes -  Alder Gall Mite (Eriophyes spp)

Alder trees can be host to the alder gall mite which produces these wart-like structures on the leaves. The galls are spherical and little more than 2 mm in diameter. Each wart has a narrow opening on the underside of the leaf through which the mite will leave when fully grown in the autumn. The mite spends the winter in an alder cone or in the bark of the tree and then, when the leaves appear in spring,… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Annual Meadow-grass (Poa annua)

Annual meadow-grass has to be the most common grass species of ground that is frequently disturbed and can be found almost anywhere! It is one of those 'conflict' species that people plant where they want it (lawns, putting greens, football pitches, fodder crop) and try to get rid of where they do not want it. You can buy annual meadow-grass seed and, almost along side it in the garden centre, a herbicide that… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella)

This is a common blue damselfly but is not THE common blue damselfly! There is a tiny difference between the common blue and the azure damselfly and closer inspection of the first segment of the abdomen will reveal that this is the azure damselfly rather than the common blue. Why? It has a black tumbler shape on this segment whereas the common blue damselfly has a wine glass!

There are other… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Barren Brome (Anisantha sterilis)

The classic and rather lovely falling tassels of oat-like flowers makes barren brome one of the more distinctive grasses of our hedgerows and roadsides.  It is quite common and readily occurs in suitable habitat flowering from May until July. The leaves are long and narrow, are a bluish/green colour and hairy whereas the main stem of the plant is smooth.

As well as being called barren brome it is… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Barren Strawberry (Potentilla sterilis)

There are two common strawberry plants that can be seen in the wild, the wild strawberry which actually produces ripe fruit and the barren strawberry in which the fruit does not ripen; indeed the fruit does not appear! Fortunately that is not the only difference but they can still be bit of a challenge to tell apart.

They flower at slightly different times with the barren strawberry coming out… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Batman Hoverfly:  Myathropa florea  

If you can, try and take a close look at the pattern on the thorax of this hoverfly, Myathropa florea; my book describes it as being like the Batman logo and when I looked again after reading that I could clearly see it! As a result there should be no mistaking this species when nectaring on a late summer plant.

The larvae of Myathropa florea are known as the rat-tailed maggot! They are… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera)

As summer arrives so do the bulk of the orchids and chalky downlands start to reveal their best kept secrets of the winter months. Although an exotic looking species the bee orchid is fairly common on our chalk grassland, both by the sea and more inland but,as there is only chalk influence in our geology to extreme east of our area around Lincome and Weston, they are scarce here.

This flower is called the… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum)

Black nightshade is one of those plants that were once very common in our fields but now less so as modern agricultural methods reduce the 'weeds' that grow amongst crops. If the flower appears familiar it is because it is closely related to the potato and tomato. Black nightshade produces black berries and that is, presumably, where it gets its name as no other part of the plant is black although the stems… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Black Spleenwort (Asplenium adiantum-nigrum)

Not many plants can survive on the limited nutrients and moisture afforded by cracks in rock faces or stone walls but many ferns can, usually the sub-family of spleenworts. The black spleenwort is certainly one of them. In fact it only grows on rocks and walls, mainly in the west of England.

You might ask "Why 'black' spleenwort, it looks green to me?". The base of the stipe (that is the… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Bloody nosed beetle (Timarcha tenebricosa)

The bloody nosed beetle is out and about on the cliffs of the Dorset coast from quite early in the spring right through until late in the autumn. They can often be seen plodding slowly across footpaths on their way from one side to the other. 

The bloody nosed beetle cannot fly and has a rather slow walk so it is prone to attack from avian predators but it has a novel way of dealing with… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) 

What can be more English than a bluebell wood? If I was on a desert island and could have one picture to remind me of home then it would have to be of a carpet of bluebells spreading across a woodland floor under tall oak trees. I know I am not alone as visiting bluebell woods seems to be an obsession with people. 

The bluebell is primarily a species of lowland England and they are quite… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum)

I guess that of all the fern family bracken is the one that we could all name quite readily. Bracken seems to grow just about anywhere and everywhere. It is not only the most common fern in Devon, it is the most common fern in Britain and indeed, in the whole world! Yes, we are all familiar with bracken.

Not only is it diverse in its choice of habitat growing on heathland, moorland, open woods, unploughed… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Broad Buckler Fern (Dryopteris dilatata)

Ferns take some getting used to and even after several years of trying I am till struggling to sort them out! I always find a good strategy with any form of plant or creature is to try and get to know the common species in any taxa as they are, of course, the most likely ones you will encounter in the field. This gives you a benchmark and then you can take a closer look if you encounter something you… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Broad-leaved Dock (Rumex obtusifolius)

When it comes to weeds of cultivation I guess there are few so widespread and vigorous as broad-leaved dock. It is the most sturdy and imposing of the dock family with stout stems, large leaves and elongated flower spikes; it is quite easily recognised as being different to its cousins.

Broad-leaved dock can be found on disturbed or bare ground anywhere including farm fields, spoil heaps,… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Bumblebee Hoverfly (Volucella bombylans) 

This hoverfly has a truly remarkable resemblance to a bumblebee and there is a good reason for it; they lay their eggs in bumblebees nests and to achieve this without being attacked by the bees the adult fly disguises itself as a bee! This is not a parasitic species, however, the hoverfly's larvae feed on debris in the bottom of the nest.

Volucella bombylans comes in three forms. One looks… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Bush Vetch (Vicia sepium) 

Bush vetch is a member of the pea family and is a climbing plant using tendrils to cling to its host. It is not bush vetch because it forms a bush but because it is found in bushes where it grows up using the bush for support.

Amongst vetches with the classic pea flower bush vetch is fairly distinctive because the flowers are larger than most and tend to form in clusters a bit like a clover.  Each… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Butchers-broom (Ruscus aculeatus)

Butcher's-broom; a curious name for a curious plant! Butcher's-broom is an evergreen plant of dry woodland areas in southern England and is not uncommon. It loves shade, is slow growing and is considered to be an indicator of ancient woodlands.

What appear to be its leaves are actually flat stems, the plant has no leaves. These flattened stems are quite tough and have a very prickly end to them which… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Charlock (Sinapis arvensis)

We are used to seeing fields of yellow these days, yellow with the blossoms of oil-seed rape grown for the manufacture of cooking oil and butter substitutes. We may think of this as a modern phenomenon but years ago fields were yellow with the flowers of charlock, also known as wild mustard. Charlock was not grown as a crop, however, as its leaves and seeds are poisonous if consumed in any quantity. Charlock is a… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Cleavers (Galium aparine)

There cannot be a hedgerow that does not have cleavers amongst its wayside flowers. It is widespread in Britain, across Europe and in to Asia. It has colonised the Americas and Australasia and in the USA it is designated an obnoxious weed!

I called it a wayside flower but the flowers are very small and many people may not even realise it has a bloom. It is better known as a vigorous green herbaceous plant that… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Common chickweed is surely our most common agricultural weed? It grows on rich soils where there are bare patches and that can include flower beds in your garden! Where it grows it usually forms large clusters of sprawling, prostrate, bright green plants with small white flowers. 

There are five species of chickweed, whilst this is the most common it pays to just take a second look to make sure… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Couch Grass (Elymus repens)

I was tempted to start by saying that the common couch grass must be the most common grass species but on reflection that might not be a fair assessment. Indeed, just how do you decide what our most common grass species is and what appears to be a simple question becomes more complex the more I think about it! As always the issue comes down to habitat, specialisation and adaptability. 

Couch… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Dog-violet (Viola riviniana)

Every spring the dog-violets appear and it is easy to dismiss them all as just 'dog-violets'. There are, however, four species that appear although the pale and heath violets are early summer rather than early spring. The most common and earliest flowering are the common dog-violet and the early (or wood) dog-violet and telling them apart can be a bit tricky.

The early dog-violet certainly comes out… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica)

You cannot go far in August without seeing this brilliant golden daisy, the common fleabane. It likes clay or damp soils and so you find it mainly along hedgerows and roadsides where there are ditches but it occurs just about anywhere the soil is heavy. It is also very successful in spreading and so, where it occurs, there is usually a lot of it.

As you might guess from its common name this plant… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Froghopper (Philaenus spumarius) 

I have no doubt that if you have a garden and if there are some shrubs in that garden then you will have seen these frothy, foaming clusters of bubbles on them in the mornings in late spring and early summer. We commonly know them as cuckoo-spit as they start to appear not long after the cuckoo returns to our shores and starts to sing.

This phenomenon has nothing to do with the cuckoo of… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Hempnettle (Galeopsis tetrahit)

Hempnettles are stout, untidy plants with large trumpet, shaped flowers. My reference book shows four species of British hempnettles with the red hempnettle and the large flowered hempnettle not found in Devon so if you find a hempnettle here you have a choice of two, the bifid hempnettle and the common hempnettle .  The latter two are very similar but the common hempnettle is much more common and… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris)

What a lovely flower the common mallow is! Simple but beautiful, everything that wild flowers bring us in a simple package; who needs gardens full of specially bred plants when the natural world has already produced such wonders.

All the five frequently found species of mallow have, in general, similar five petalled mauve flowers and yet each is quite distinctive.  The common mallow is more purple… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Mouse-ear (Cerastium fontanum)

One thing at least is true about the name of this plant, the common mouse-ear; it is common! Debating which is the most common plant species is futile as it could never be established but if one were to try then surely common mouse-ear would be one of the main contenders. Being so common it is rarely given a second glance which is a shame.

Mouse-ears are members of the caryophyllaceae family which… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Poppy (Papaver rhoeas)

I remember, many years ago when I was a child, corn fields that turned red in mid-summer with hundreds and hundreds of blood-red common poppy flowers. It was an awesome sight. The poppy thrives in disturbed ground and so farm fields were ideal for them. Along with corncockle and corn marigold, both now incredibly rare, poppies were one of most common and most distinctive weeds of cultivation. 

Sadly,… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosa)

One of the more common plants on grassland where the ground is undisturbed is common sorrel. When one looks at the flower heads which are loose spikes of individual reddish brown flowers it is immediately obvious that this is a member of the dock family - most docks bear the name rumex. 

Flowering from May until July the flower heads are visible long after this when bearing the seeds. Common sorrel… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)

This flower is an orchid, the leaves are spotted and it is widespread so I suppose common spotted orchid is an appropriate name for it. I cannot help thinking, though, that calling something as lovely as this 'common' rather devalues it. This is by far the most frequently encountered orchid. It can be found growing in woods, on chalk grassland, on the heath, on the sea cliffs and in other scrubby… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common Stork's-bill (Erodium cicutarium)

Common stork's-bill is a member of the popular family of garden flowers, the geraniums. This group of flowers has one obvious thing in common, when the petals are over and fall the central pistil stands pointed like the long bill of storks and cranes. The larger members of the family are called crane's-bills and the smaller ones stork's-bills; common stork's-bill is a small, sprawling little geranium… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum) 

The common carder bee is the most common British carder bee. Unlike a rolling stone it gathers moss! it uses this to cover its nest, hence the term carder or gatherer. Nests can be quite large with over a hundred workers.

This bee is almost totally ginger brown but it has dark hairs on the abdomen which distinguish it from similar, but rarer, species.

This is a very common bee in gardens… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Compact Rush (Juncus conglomeratus)

I found out about soft rush several years ago and for a long time I thought these rushes with a more compact flower heads were soft rush just coming in to flower. How wrong I was as I eventually discovered they are a separate species called compact rush. It just goes to show that one should not rush into snap decision in nature identification but it is something I do all too often!

In my defence,… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris)

The umbelliferae (or carrot) family of plants present many difficulties for the casual observer, even those with some basic botanical knowledge. As always, my advice for what it is worth, is to try get to know them one at a time and the most common ones first. That way you know when you are looking at something different.  

One of the ways of separating them is by order of flowering, cow… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Creeping Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans)

One look at the creeping cinquefoil flower and leaves is sufficient to identify it as a member of the rose family. The flower has five petals that form an open rose-like circle and the leaves five triangular segments with toothed edges similar to the dog-rose and other rose family members. With five lobed leaves it is easy to see how it became called cinquefoil, cinque being French for five of course… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense)

The creeping thistle is probably our most common thistle species. It grows almost anywhere on scrub, grassland and roadsides with a preference for open ground so it also likes arable land and pasture and there it can become a serious weed.

The creeping thistle is not the most attractive of flowers. It has small pale purple flowers that emerge in clusters at the top of the stems. The leaves are untidy… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Curled Dock (Rumex crispus) 

Docks can be troublesome weeds of cultivation and curled dock along with its close cousin broad-leaved dock are as guilty as any! Both are very common and can spread over quite large areas if unchecked. The two also hybridise and they happily live together.

Telling curled and broad-leaved dock apart is relatively easy just by the leaved. Curled dock has narrow leaves that, yes, 'curl' up around the… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Cypress-leaved moss  (Hypnum cupressiforme) 

Cypress-leaved moss is one of the most widespread and common of our mosses and, if you want to get to know mosses (even a little bit!) it pays to get to know this one well so that you can then recognise whether what you are looking at is something different.

The cupressiforme part of the name gives us a clue to identification; formed like a cypress tree leaf. That is all well and… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Dandelion (Taraxacum agg.)

You can probably find a dandelion in flower at just about any time of year but it is March when they seem to burst upon us in great numbers and to many, along with daisies, are an absolute pest making a mess of our lawns, verges, parks, churchyards and open grassy places! Dandelions, however, are a vitally important flower as they form the basic food source for many of our early emerging insects. Find a patch of… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Danish scurvy-grass (Cochlearia danica)

Scurvy-grass will be well known by name, if not by sight, as we all learn about Nelson, the history of the Navy, tots of rum and the dreaded scurvy when we are at junior school, it is part of our heritage! Scurvy was associated with sailors in the 16th to 18th centuries who spent long periods at sea without enough vitamin C in their diet and so frequently perished from the condition. It was believed… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Dove's-foot Cranesbill (Geranium molle)

Dovesfoot cranesbill is quite a common plant but is probably often overlooked because it is a low, sprawling plant that grows in short turf and is rather trodden under foot. It has attractive pale pink flowers which are less than quarter of an inch or so across. Each of the five petals is deeply lobed which can make it appear that it has ten petals. It is a member of the geranium family so the flowers… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Downy Birch (Betula pubescens)

Not every tree with silvery bark is a silver birch; that is something I did not realise until, one day, a friend pointed out they were frequently downy birch; it came as quite a surprise! Obviously I wanted to know how to tell the difference.

There are small differences between them but they still remain a challenge to me. Firstly downy birch has a much smoother bark than silver birch. On silver birch the… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Early Forget-me-not (Myosotis ramosissima)

I suppose the early forget-me-not  is not really a weed of cultivation, it is a small plant that manages to survive in dry, barren places and that includes pavements and gutters; it grows quite readily on roadsides. It can also be found on rocks and walls near the sea.

It is a small plant, probably due to lack of nutrition from the hostile environments it grows in and also to its… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Enchanter's Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana)

Walk through any broad-leaf woodland in mid to late summer and in dark, shady places there is a pretty good chance you will encounter the sparkling white, sometimes pinkish, flowers of enchanter's nightshade.  They are small flowers that grow in spikes but, although small, they do seem to have a sparkle about them in otherwise dark surroundings. The plant also has a curious smell and whilst not… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Fairy-ring Longhorn Beetle (Pseudovadonia livida)

Have you ever seen a ring of toadstools on grass in the autumn? Commonly known as fairy rings they are formed by the fruiting body of the champignon fungus. The main part of the fungus is at work in the ground dissolving vegetable matter but what has that to do with this beetle?

I love to look closely at bramble flowers in summer, you never know quite what you might find and this chance… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Fat-hen (Chenopodium album) 

Anyone who has been for a walk in the countryside and crossed farm land will have seen fat-hen but many will not have given it a second glance, if they noticed it in the first place. Fat-hen is one of the most common weeds of cultivation and yet one of the most nondescript. It has little to attract attention or single it out from other plants.

It is quite variable in appearance and can grow anything up… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

Field bindweed can be a little deceiving in that the flowers can be pure white, pure pink or a combination of the two! It can be told from the hedge bindweed and large bindweed primarily because it has a smaller flower and tends to be prostrate on the ground rather than entwined in hedges. Sea bindweed has flowers of similar size and colour but sea bindweed grows on dunes and shingle by the sea; field… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Field Forget-me-not (Myosotis arvensis)

Field Forget-me-not  is the most common of the four species found on dry, cultivated soils or areas of otherwise thin soils and restricted vegetation such as bare patches by footpaths in woods. The small bluish grey flowers are smaller than those of wood forget-me-not and changing forget-me-not has pale yellow flowers. Early forget-me-not is much smaller than 'field' and flowers from March until… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Field Madder  (Sherardia arvensis) 

Many of our weeds of cultivation tend to be low growing, sprawling and often quite small. I guess this enabled them to survive during harvesting when this was done in traditional ways, that is with manual labour rather than the extensive mechanisation now employed. Field madder is a species that fits this description well.

Field madder is a member of the bedstraw family and has the clusters… read more

Title: Nature Notes -  Field Pansy (Viola arvensis)

Our most common wild pansy is not the wild pansy itself but the field pansy. The field pansy in its natural state is a delightful small creamy coloured flower but it does hybridise with the wild pansy which is purple or mauve and so sometimes the appearance can vary and, as always with hybridisation, can be quite misleading to a casual observer like me. The pansy is, of course, a familiar garden flower and… read more