Peak Bluebell

This was the scene this afternoon in Hollingside wood, about a mile south of Durham city centre.

On a mild, still spring day the scent was intoxicating. The 17th. century herbalist John Gerard, who knew these flowers as the English Jacinthe or Hare-Bel, thought it 'a strong, sweet smell, somewhat stuffing the head.....'

In The Englishman's Flora (1958) Geoffrey Grigson lists almost 50 county or regional names for bluebell, that include adder's flower, blue bonnets, blue bottle,crow-bells,, cuckoo's stockings, fairy bells, goosey-gander, griggles, pride of the wood, rook's flower and ring o' bells ..... but the one I like best, from Kent, is snapgrass, said to be derived 'from the rubbing, clicking noise of the stalks when gathered'.

The bulbs were once harvested to make glue.

This is how John Gerard described them, in The Herbal or General History of Plants, published in 1633:

'.....the root is bulbous, full of a slimy glewish juyce, which will serve to set feathers upon arrows instead of glew or to paste books with.....'

Woodland walk along the river Tees that J.M.W.Turner trod 200 years ago

This is the view of the river Tees from Abbey bridge near Egglestone, on a tranquil spring day. When the snow melts in Upper Teesdale this becomes a raging torrent, roaring through the rocky gorge. 

The woodland on the steep banks of the river here is exceptionally beautiful in spring, carpeted with wild flowers. Last week wood anemones were the star of the show; next week the bluebells will take over.

Fallen trees are left to gently decay and often develop their own 'garden' of flowers as they rot - like this one with a flora of wood anemone, ramsons and herb Robert.

Last week the bluebells had just begun to flower but it will be early May before the tree leave canopy begins to close over them. The fully-grown trees are mostly sycamore and oak.

The path winds through a dense carpet of wood anemones, high above the river.

Wood speedwell Veronica montana

When we arrived there was still a chill in the air and dew on the leaves, so the wood anemone flowers were all nodding downwards ...

..... but by mid-morning, as the sun climbed higher in the sky, they turned to face it.

This wood anemone had purple leaves.

Some early wild cherry blossom, hanging over the river.

Wood sorrel, nestling against a moss-covered tree base. The leaves fold down at night, like triangular tents.

Beyond the woodland the path passes through pastures, with ground ivy Glechoma hederacea flowering in the shelter of a dry stone wall.

Last week the first influx of warblers arrived, with this willow warbler and blackcaps singing

Last time we passed this way the elms were just coming into flower. Today their clusters of seeds were well-formed.

A bee-fly, a parasite of mining bees, sunbathing in a clearing.

Crane-flies mating.

A comma butterfly soaking up the spring sunshine after a long hibernation.

In 1816 J.M.W. Turner must have walked this footpath and perhaps sat somewhere near here to sketched this scene, at the confluence of the river Greta and the river Tees, which he painted in 1818. I like to think that perhaps he sat under this ancient oak, which would have been more youthful then, to view the scene, which you can see in his painting by clicking here.

Bluebells and Globeflowers in Teesdale

Today's Guardian Country Diary is an account of a walk that follows the river Tees upstream, between Middleton-in-Teesdale and Bowlees.

















Along the route the footpath passes through some beautiful old meadows, with shallow fast-flowing shallow streams like this that flow down from the fells into the river in the bottom of the valley.

This is one of the umbellifers that's common in the old, flower-rich grassland: pignut Conopodium majus. There's archaeological evidence that its underground tubers were once an important food source during the Bronze Age and those who have tried them report that they taste like Brazil nuts although, given the poisonous nature of many umbellifers, this isn't something that anyone should try unless they are absolutely certain of the identification. Many of the plant poisonings that are reported, including fatal ones, are the result of mistaken identification of umbellifers - usually water dropwort species which also have roots that resemble carrots.

If you travel from sea level at the coast up into the Pennines you can walk back through the seasons in County Durham.  Because of the late spring and the altitude, there was a fine display of bluebells along the footpath (which is part of the Pennine Way), even though they had long since faded away at Hawthorn Dene on the coast, which we'd visited recently. 

The smell of the bluebells, confined between the dry stone walls early in the morning on a windless day, was glorious.

The steep banks of the Tees host fine displays of bluebells amongst the ferns, with...........

.... some fine specimens of early purple orchids amongst them.

Bluebells are most familiar as woodland plants but one of the features of the meadows here is that they are sometimes full of bluebells too - a reminder that this cultivated land was once woodland and that some of the fields here have not been ploughed in recent memory. Double-click this image for a larger one, which shows the bluebells more clearly.

Bird cherry is a tree with a predominantly northern distribution and this year its floral display has been magnificent. It's usually a small hedgerow tree and large, well proportioned specimens like these two are uncommon.

Bird cherry blossom complements Teesdale's white painted farms perfectly.

When the footpath descended to the edge of the Tees we found these globe flowers, known to earlier generations of Teesdale folk as 'double-dumplings' . They are much larger relatives of the buttercup, with incurved yellow petals and sepals, so that they resemble art deco lamps. These days they are mostly confined to the riverbank, but they used to be common in wetter areas in old unimproved meadows, growing alongside meadowsweet, ragged robin and melancholy thistle.

River Wear, Wolsingham

Today's Guardian Country Diary describes a walk along the River Wear at Wolsingham in Weardale. Even though the riverbank woods look bare at this time of year there's always plenty to see along this stretch of river .....

 ... like the exquisite filigree of cypress-leaved feather moss Thuidium tamariscinum. Many woodland mosses make a lot of fresh new growth during mild spells in winter, when more light can reach them through the leafless branches.

There are often some fine fungi along here too on all the decaying wood - like these velvet shanks.

When we had prolonged heavy rain in Weardale a couple of weeks ago and the river rose very rapidly and flooded its banks. It scoured away all the dead leaves but the dead sweet cicely flower stems - which are chest-high here in summer and smell of aniseed - remained rooted but were flattened by the water, leaving a contour map on he ground of the path of the current as it had swept around the tree trunks.

Above the high water mark of the flood there was still a thick layer of autumn's decaying leaves ...

...... with bluebell leaves already spearing through.

Closer to the river the retreating water had deposited a thick layer of silt, but the buried snowdrops that grow in profusion here early in the year had already forced there way up to the sunlight and started to bloom.

When the water level falls if leaves behind these dark, temporary pools amongst the alders on the edge of the river. Sometimes there are fish trapped and the local herons are well aware of this - there are always heron footprints around the edges. In the spring toads breed in the pools and then it's a race against time for the tadpoles to develop before the pools dry up.

This stretch of river always has resident dippers and at this time of year they sing a lot, establishing their territory. It's amazing how you can always hear their song above the sound of the river - its pitch must have evolved to penetrate the background noise of the water rushing over a stony riverbed.

The riverside woodlands are constantly raided by parties of long-tailed tits .....

nuthatches ......

..... and treecreepers, all looking for insects in tree bark crevices, while ........

...... this heron, evidently out of luck in the riverside pools, flapped away to try its luck on earthworms in the fields above the river.

A Cautionary Tale....

A few days ago I posted a picture of what I thought might be a rather rare rough poppy, found beside a pavement in Newcastle. I can now report that it (ahem) wasn’t. It was a bog-standard long-headed poppy. The foliage of the plant that I found was quite different from the surrounding poppies and as the flower had only just opened (and, to be honest, I didn’t look too closely at the time anyway) I couldn’t really be sure whether the seed capsule characteristics were correct. Smitten by doubt, I went back a couple of days later, after the capsule had begin to swell and – sure enough – it was a long-headed poppy Papaver dubium. Mercifully, Blogger had its nervous breakdown immediately after I posted the picture and when it recovered the incriminating post had vanished into cyber-ether.
What have I learned?

1. If you think you’ve found a rarity, it probably isn’t – however much you might like it to be (I knew that anyway, but......... maybe, jusy maybe.....).

2. Double-check, then check again – especially if the ID depends on floral or fruiting characters that are not fully developed.

3. Plants are treacherously variable when it comes to characters like leaf shape, so that two individuals of the same species can look remarkably dissimilar if they are growing under even slightly different conditions.

So, will I be more reticent about tentatively naming things in future? Highly unlikely. I just can’t imagine the day when I lose naive enthusiasm for finding out about anything in nature that seems to be even slightly out of the ordinary, even if I’m completely wrong in interpreting it. Being wrong is an integral element of the learning process. And fortunately organisations like the excellent Botanical Society of the British Isles has an oustanding network of excellent county recorders to exert quality control, filtering out miss-identifications by reckless chancers such as myself when it really matters.

Meanwhile, here are a few more examples of native flora growing in the heart of urban Newcastle, this time correctly identified (I think!).

Ribwort plantain, flourishing in flower beds beside the busy Byker Bank

A female plant of the thalloid liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, with cupules, gemmae and archegoniophores, growing on the wall of a roadside drain, Byker Bank

Broom flowering in a derelict building site beside Portland Road. The flowers have been tripped by bumblebees - these brownfield sites are excellent nesting sites for wild bees.

Bluebells, greater stitchwort and burnet rose on the derelict building site at Portland Road. It was the fabulous scent of the burnet rose that attracted my attention as I walked past.

Wall barley - doing 'exactly what it says in the tin' - at Stepney Bank

White campion flowering under the Byker railway viaduct