FALLING LEAVES

FALLING LEAVES

The recent chilly nights are making the trees turn colour. Sitting in the car as an ‘elf an safety back-up' for Tony as he did his monthly ‘kick sample’ in the River Seaton for the national Riverfly Survey to monitor water quality, my eye was caught by the steady trickle of leaves fluttering to the ground.

It took me back to the rainforests of northern Queensland where the deep silence was punctuated only by the whisper of the constant trickle of falling leaves and the occasional strident call of an unseen bird high up in the canopy.

Most of the huge variety of species of trees in a tropical rainforest are evergreen so the renewal of their leaves goes on all through the year. To a stranger, so many of the leaves look the same. Medium-sized, plain oval and leathery, they are invariably nibbled by caterpillars. Everything rushes upwards to such light as penetrates the canopy.  Scarcely a tree is without its burden of ferns growing in crevices in the bark. Vines wrap and cling to the tree trunks, sending long straight lianas hanging down like climbers’ abseil ropes.

Rainforest, northern Queensland.

 The forest floor has a thin scatter of dead leaves. But the subdued light means there isn’t much ground flora. There is a network of tree roots running over the surface, spreading far and wide from the buttress base of the forest giants.

 

Buttress of forest giant. Its main roots ran for 20 metres before disappearing below the surface.

 

 These narrow upright supports may be the height of a person but less than a couple of inches thick. Clearings made by a big fallen tree let the sunlight in, and give a chance for a great surge of plant growth, from herbaceous flowers to tree saplings. Butterflies take advantage of the sun and flit high among the leaves. It is a thrill to see the electric blue of a Ulysses or the narrow green, black and yellow wings of a Cairns Bird-wing. 

The inelegantly-named Egg Fly. Most of the big showy butterflies are too high up in the canopy for my little 'up and fire' camera to cope.

 

Fungi of all kinds grow in the leaf litter.

 

The fallen trunks are rapidly decayed by troops of fungi and we’ve had lucky views of Echidnas tearing at the rotting wood with their long claws and poking  their snout into the debris to lick up disturbed ants and other invertebrates with their long sticky tongues. These dumpy animals with stout brown and black spines are an Australian oddity, an egg-laying mammal!

 

Echidna. It is nearly the size of a badger but much smaller under all those stout spines.

 

Small Sweat Bees, always ready to settle and drink the perspiration off your skin in the hot sultry conditions, are an irritant, but at least they don’t bite or sting. Unlike the big pale red ants which process up into the trees, each carrying a piece of freshly-cut green leaf, to help construct their nest, as big as a rugby ball, slung up in a high branch.

Nest of tree ants. They bind the leaves together with silk threads woven by their larvae. I think with hindsight, the fragments of leaves they carry to the nest may be to feed the larvae.

 Bird calls of all kinds sound loud and clear, usually from individuals neck-breakingly high up in the canopy. The whip-crack sound of a Whip-bird is immediately followed by the two-note response from its mate. The melodious fluting song of a Pied Butcherbird or the abrupt cackle of a Blue-winged Kookaburra, are immediately recognizable. This latter big lizard-feeding kingfisher is the tropical brother of the much loved Laughing Kookaburra often seen and heard further south in the country.

Pied Butcherbird.

 

 

Blue-winged Kookaburra

 Given away by a pretty downward series of silvery notes, a tiny greenish Gerygone, one of the leaf warblers has a characteristic downward –tumbling flight among the leafy twigs, and flitting from truck to trunk, robins of the northern forests, including both Yellow-breasted and the jaunty Red-capped Robins, settle tantalizingly just round the corner of a tree trunk, to fly briefly to the ground to pick something up to eat.

Northern Logrunners or Chowchillas live up to their name. Brown birds the size of a Blackbird, they poke around in the shadows of rotting logs, giving fleeting glimpses.

 

Small birds can be seem in the clearings. Honeyeaters, a large group of Australian birds with long curved beaks enabling them to reach the nectar in flowers, can be challenging to identify as they flit among the foliage.

 A special group of ground-dwelling birds, the common Brush Turkey and more elusive Scrub Fowl, build great mounds of leaves which make a sort of warm compost heap in which they lay a large clutch, leaving the warmth of the rotting leaves to incubate the eggs. They are very vulnerable to marauding goannas which will dig them out. If they are lucky enough to escape these attentions they will take up to seven weeks to hatch, but then the chicks are immediately able to run around and feed themselves. 

 

Brush Turkey. We ate one freshly-killed on the road. They are reputed to be extremely tough. Ours wasn't, but it was full of sharp sinews.  

Scrub Fowl, difficult to spot especially for the camera, in the gloom of the forest.

Ever watchful, the Sand or Gould's Goanna is the second biggest Monitor Lizard in Australia. They will grow up to 6ft.long from nose to tail tip. We were bullied by this one at a bush camp which had got used to people and raided food quite boldly. This one had Kim and I leaping up onto a picnic table because of its aggressively swishing tail. Claw scrapes or even a bite from one of these animals are said to risk going poisonous because of their habit of eating carrion so may transmit blood-poisoning bacteria.

 

 

 

Tawny Frogmouth, a master of camouflage. This relative of the nightjar roosts, hidden on a tree-trunk by day. It flies at dusk with its wide beak open to catch flying moths, or will take other small creatures from the ground. Their insistent calls resonate through the night.

 

The cathedral-like hush  of the rainforest is home to swarming activity all around.

 

The sudden opening of the car door brought me out of my reverie with a jolt. Tony had come back with a bucket of sample water and a dripping net, and I was no longer in Queensland.......

 

Thanks to daughter Kim for using one or two pages from her field drawings (the Logrunner and the page with the Yellow Honeyeater.) They do better justice than our ageing slides.

WANDERING PLANTS

WANDERING PLANTS

The garden continues to throw up surprises. The other day an elegant mauve spike of an Autumn Crocus appeared at the base of the Japanese Cherry. I bought a pack of ten corms of this lovely crocus about twenty years ago and planted them at the foot of a Eucalyptus. They never really thrived, and they dwindled over the next few years, disappearing and forgotten 'till now! The cherry is some thirteen yards away  - I paced it - from that original planting.  I assume the culprit was a mouse, but it was a long time gap till its reappearance.

Autumn Crocus October 2020

 

 

Cyclamen hederifolium October 2020

Earlier, I had to keep a path blocked off because the Cyclamens I’d put in at the side of the path have encroached and  are in danger of being trampled. And meanwhile, a pure white one (the rest are pink) has come up among the ferns a couple of yards away. I understand that ants will move cyclamen seed, no doubt intending them for their nest, but dropping the odd one on the way.

 Ant watching. Over the years I have spent many hours on my knees in many countries, watching trails of ants of all kinds laboriously carrying trophies back to their nest. They wear visible tracks in the soil, radiating away from the nest hole in the ground. Often this hole is at the bottom of a crater, surrounded by a bank sometimes a couple of inches high, of soil or sand particles and other debris brought out of the nest. The ants vary; the lazy ones just drop their load at the entrance hole while the more civic-minded struggle to the top of the bank before discarding the rubbish. Rather mean, I have on one occasion, partly blocked their entrance with a bit of dry grass about an inch across. It was ignored and by-passed by the outgoing ants for some time before one  took the initiative and dragged it clear.

The incoming workers are mostly indefatigable in the face of obstacles which would defeat a human, struggling usually single-handed with loads often far larger, longer or heavier than themselves, attempting to scramble over obstructions far greater than themselves. They rarely seem to give up the struggle and abandon the load. Sometimes others will come to help but this often seems to be uncoordinated, with ants pushing and pulling in different directions before giving up and going to find their own cargo. The loads are usually plant seeds; sometimes a caterpillar or other insect and some do love cake crumbs donated by the audience! As the trails divide and branch as they get further from the nest it’s impossible to see how far the foragers will range but it is many yards.

 

 Busy highways. Ant trails to their nest in Western Australia. These tracks in the sand were about 3inches wide.

One kind of Australian ant makes a volcano-shaped entrance to their nest. We watched another sort, with their entrance hole flat on the ground, being flooded one day in the south of Australia. The ants swarmed out and formed rafts as they clung to each other, and floated away on the water. They appeared to have abandoned their brood still underground.

 

 We blame the squirrels for burying Hazel nuts before we get to them; our only share in the harvest is umpteen seedlings coming up all over the garden the following year. And Oaks. I read in an Oliver Rackham book once that Oaks rarely come up as seedlings within British oak woodland, but instead come up in the meadowland beyond the wood, no doubt buried by Jays and Squirrels. I remember though, that we have often seen plenty of oak seedlings coming up within oak woods in France! Some other factor must be in play.

Two stories about the spread of plants have passed into botanical folk-lore. The first is about Oxford Ragwort, a plant found growing on the rubbly lava slopes of Mt Etna and brought back to the Oxford Botanical Garden in the late 1700s. It was said to have ‘got on the train at Oxford and travelled through the country, getting off at the stations.’ Trains  came much later and I suppose its parachute seeds could have got whisked along in the draught made by passing trains. It can be seen in stony waste ground such as railway and road construction ballast. Shorter, more branched than Common Ragwort, it contains the same  toxic alkaloids as Common Ragwort and can be poisonous to stock if eaten in significant quantity.

Another story is that seeds of the promiscuous American Willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum) came to this country in the wheel-treads of American military lorries during the second world war. It has subsequently hybridized with several of our native Willowherbs , making a slightly tricky genus of rather  ‘weedy’ wildflowers  even more difficult to pin down to species-level. This story seems to be more romantic than factual as this plant was first identified in Leicester in 1894!

American Willowherb

Many plants have been brought into this country from all over the world by plant collectors, but mainly from the Far East and America. Most of them are well-behaved, tolerate or even enjoy our climate and enrich the huge variety of our ornamental gardens. Notable exceptions include Japanese Knotweed, Rhododendron ponticum, Himalayan Balsam and several pondweeds. These plants originally thought to enhance our gardens have escaped and through their aggressive and invasive habits threaten to overwhelm our natives.

Young Japanese Knotweed coming up in the spring.

Later in the year it will make impenetrable thickets with a thick mat of roots, smothering everything. The smallest fragment of root will survive to make more invasive growth.

It was introduced from the far east as an ornamental shrubbery plant with attractive flowers.

Another handsome but now unwelcome introduction, Himalayan Balsam. When ripe, the seed capsules pop open and catapault the seeds many yards. They are spongy and will float in water, spreading the plant far and wide along streams and river systems. It is an annual but will make very big robust growth in the one season.

Plants will spread between continents by other means. The struggling early settlers in Australia, faced with their starving cattle, imported hay from South Africa. This brought in the seeds of various ‘weeds’ such as Hottentot Fig or Pig Face which will make an impenetrable mat, suppressing less vigorous plants especially on the coast.

It seemed a good idea at the time when European Gorse and Blackberries were taken to Australia, the Gorse as a hedging plant and Blackberries for their berries, a taste of ‘home’. They rapidly became pests especially in the southern states of Australia and rigorous measures are taken in an effort to control them now. 

Australian wattles (Acacia species) are trees which will flourish in arid conditions; introduced from Australia to the Cape Province in South Africa for their timber and forage, their success has become overwhelming and they are now subject to strenuous efforts to eradicate them. 

Similarly apparently innocent plants were introduced from Britain to America in the 1800s: Garlic Mustard or Jack-by-the-Hedge was seen to be useful as a culinary and medicinal plant. A few years ago a friend sent me a cutting from a newspaper in Des Moines in Iowa, appealing for volunteers to help pull up Garlic Mustard from their public parks. It is now described as a noxious weed there. Similarly the handsome Purple Loosestrife, originally introduced as an ornamental plant, now clogs the waterways and is another certifiable alien!

We have the Romans to blame for bringing in that pernicious Ground Elder. They ate it. I’ve tried. It’s like eating linen!

The last ice age which ended some 12000 years ago was a great factor in the impoverishment of our native flora. Only plants growing in small pockets of land left in the grip of the Arctic climate survived. These true natives include Scots Pine.

As the ice melted and we were gradually cut off from the rest of Europe the natural re-colonization by plants moving northwards was arrested and led to a comparatively sparse flora our side of the Channel. It was an open invitation to new-comers, particularly arable weeds which came in with the early farmers whose culture diffused across Europe from the Middle East. Many of our plants which we now accept as natives, in fact date from after the last Ice Age. They are known as  Archaeophytes . Plants which were brought to this country after 1500 are called Neophytes.

 By far the most common methods of plant movements are due to strategies adopted by the plants themselves in order to spread .

 

The hooked seeds of Burdock will be carried on animals' fur.

 

More hooks, this time on  Cleavers or Sweethearts. Remember when the boys at  junior school threw them at you? If they stuck, you were their sweetheart! Another name is Goosegrass. Geese love the seeds and will neatly nibble them off the stem.

 

Many of the Daisy family have parachutes on their seeds. Children pretended to tell the time by counting the number of puffs it took to blow away all the seeds of the 'dandelion clock'. In the late spring the air can be full of the silky drifts of Willow seeds blowing away on the wind.

 Sycamore 'propellers'. Many trees have winged seeds to disperse them.

Hornbeam seed.

Lime seed and wing.

The wings or samaras on Wych Elm in spring.

Ash Keys. Will they become an unfamiliar sight as Ash Die-back takes a grip of parts of the countryside?

 

 Even the smaller seeds of Birch and pines have wings on the seeds when they are eventually released by the ripening and opening of catkins and cones.

 Seeds are born within edible berries, eaten, rendered fit for germination within the animal’s gut and then passed out in droppings. Mistletoe seeds have a sticky covering which birds will wipe off their beaks by rubbing them on the bark of trees, which sometimes has the effect of planting the seed in crevices.

There is a very heavy crop of berries this year. Hawthorn is popular with newly-arriving Redwings and Fieldfares from Scandinavia.

 

 

Ropes of poisonous Black Bryony berries drape the hedges in the autumn.

The fleshy pink covering of Yew berries. These colourful berries are also very popular with Redwings.All parts of the Yew are poisonous except for the fleshy 'aril' surrounding the seed.

The last of the berries. Ivy berries don't ripen till after Christmas, a welcome food for birds in the lean and hungry time of the year.

TOADSTOOLS : FACILITATORS & RECYCLERS.

Toadstools: Facilitators & Recyclers

Fly Agaric. This iconic toadstool appears in fairy stories and folklore throughout Europe.

    

Fungi are neither nether plants nor animals. They comprise a huge entirely separate kingdom of organisms which have a universal, usually hidden, influence on our lives.

Toadstools and mushrooms are rather interchangeable words, although ‘Mushrooms’ infer ‘Edible’ and ‘Toadstools ‘suggest ’Poisonous’. They are both names for the visible fruiting or sporing stage of a fungus. They can vary from the size of a pin-head to as large as a dinner plate.

Horse Mushroom (and this wasn't the biggest!)

 

  or a colony may fill a wheelbarrow.....

Grifolia gigantea. This did fill a friend's wheelbarrow!

 

 There are over 15,000 species of fungi but many can be tricky to identify and mistakes can be made; important when you are looking for edible ones! Every year,headlines are made when perhaps a whole family can be killed by eating one of the few deadly poisonous species such as the Death Cap. This is most often on the continent where eating toadstools is much more part of the culture, unlike us more conservative Brits.

Death Cap (Amanita phalloides)

 However, the very palatable Field Mushroom, Chantarelle and Cep or Penny Bun  are highly sought-after in Britain too.

Chantarelles.

 

Cep or Penny Bun (a Boletus)

 

Field Mushroom

The great majority of fungi are unpalatable rather than downright poisonous, but they can lead to upsets and a few species ARE DEADLY so be very cautious about foraging when you aren’t sure of your identification skills. Common misunderstandings are that edible mushrooms will peel easily, but so can some of the poisonous ones. And that the gills of an edible Field Mushroom are pink when young. Yes! But so are some of the poisonous ones!

Pictured below are a few examples of different types of sporing bodies of fungi.

Children delight in treading on Puffballs to send up a cloud of brown spores.

 

 

The rather uncommon Clathrus rubrum.

A fungus resembling organ pipes appeared in the greenhouse last year.

Orange-peel Fungus can appear in damp winter woodland.

 

Fungi are largely saprophytic, that is they live off dead organic material, and break down the structure to get access to the mineral constituents. Some are parasitic and will kill the host, for example some forms of Honey Fungus, the dread of gardeners, and some Bracket Fungi. 

Honey Fungus. This colony appeared on the roots of bushes up our lane for 30yards!

 

Large Bracket Fungi on a dead Beech tree. Did they kill it?

 

The visible part is but a fleeting appearance. The main part of a fungus is the Mycelium, the underground finely-branched root-equivalent which lives in the soil and may cover an extensive area. Some are claimed to be the largest single living individual  organism on earth!  The mycelium interacts closely with plant roots. This association is known as a Mycorrhizal Association and it is now realized that probably all plants have this partnership and indeed are unable to thrive without it.

The fine branches (Hyphae) of the mycelium make a huge surface area to absorb the products of the plant’s photosynthesis. The plant uses sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to produce sugars and oxygen, and the fungus takes some of this, and in turn produces minerals taken by the plant. Some fungi have hyphae which are closely bonded with the plant’s roots and in other cases actually penetrate the roots of for example, orchids.

 (James  Merryweather has written a very interesting article on this subject in the April 2020 issue of British Wildlife)

Fungi in other different groups  within their kingdom are also very important in different spheres.  These include the Yeasts, Rusts and Moulds. They have great medical significance, both as disease-causers such as Ringworm and other persistent skin disorders and lung disorders caused by a reaction to fungal spores. Rusts can decimate the yields of corn crops and of course Moulds are a source of Antibiotics.

 

 A mould Cristulariella depraedans caused this spotting on Sycamore. The more familiar 'tar spot' on Sycamore leaves is also a mould.

 Fungi also have a twofold importance in the food industry. Yeasts play a vital role in baking and brewing.  Blue Moulds are used to make the distinctive varieties of Blue Cheeses. On the other hand they can cause spoilage on a big scale when foodstuffs are kept too long or stored in unsatisfactory conditions. Dry and wet rot in buildings are fungal and the often noxious treatment of roof timbers, telegraph poles, fence posts etc are measures taken to slow down decay.

The primary decay or breakdown of organic matter by fungi is followed by a great number of invertebrates which live off the decaying matter and thus recycle it further into the vital humus content of soils. But this aspect of the web of life is another story.

Fungi and invertebrates are breaking down this great trunk over the years.