A Butterfly Bank.....

Along the old disused mineral railway line between Garmondsway and Trimdon Grange, on the magnesian limestone in east Durham, there's a 200 metre south-facing stretch of embankment that's near perfect habitat for the the limestone flora and its associated butterflies.

When we visited last week the first generation of small coppers had just emerged. This one is sunning itself on one of last year's carline thistles - a very painful plant to kneel on when you are trying to take a photograph.

The bank is also an excellent site for the dingy skipper butterfly which, despite its derogatory name, is very attractive when it settles for long enough to be examined at close quarters. Chasing butterflies around on a hot day is frustrating and unproductive, and can only lead to extensive tramping of the flowers, so I just sat and waited for the butterflies to come to me. Dingy skippers like to sunbathe on patches of bare soil and sure enough a female settled right next to me, soon to be joined by a male, on her left here.

Once she recognised that she was being courted she cocked up her tail and opened her scent glands, releasing pheromones that are the butterfly equivalent of Chanel No. 5, to secure his undivided attention. Double click this and the above image for a large, clearer view.

This is the butterfly bank in question.

At the moment it's dominated by drifts of common hawkweed Hieracium vulgatum but some of the choicer limestone flowers are coming out, such as .....

..... common milkwort Polygala vulgaris , and ....

..... and spotted orchid, growing here amongst salad burnet.

Dead, but still looking good....

These carline thistles Carlina vulgaris flowered last summer but their papery seed heads survive the winter and still look decorative in spring. Photographed yesterday on the cliffs south of Seaham in Co.Durham, along with...

..... blackthorn coming into bloom ....

..... dog's mercury ......

.... some magnificent, coconut-scented gorse blossom ...

..... stinking hellebore Helleborus foetidus, almost certainly a garden escape .....

..... along with some irrepressible daffodils, struggling to flower through a tangle of last year's bramble stems

Everlasting

I hope I look this good after I've been dead for almost a year.

This is one of last summer's carline thistles Carlina vulgaris, growing up at Salter's Gate near Tow Law in County Durham. I usually associate this plant with coastal habitats, but here it grows on the embankment of part of the old Stockton and Darlington railway line that carried coal from the collieries of Crook to the ironworks furnaces at Consett.

I'm amazed that the flower head is so well preserved, taking into account that it would have been buried under a metre of snow for several weeks in January. Those grey, spiny bracts continue to open and close over the central disk of dead flowers, depending on the weather - on wet days they close. I have a copy of Flowers and Flower Lore, written by the Rev. Hilderic Friend and published in 1886, that mentions that continental carline thistle seed heads were once nailed above the door of houses as indicators of the state of the weather, much as people have used seaweed or the opening and closing of pine cones for the same purpose, with the thistle closing at the approach of humid weather preceding a downpour.

The author also gives an interesting derivation of the Latin generic name, Carlina, which is supposedly a Latinised version of Charlemagne. "The story goes", he writes," that when the Emperor was on one occasion engaged in a  war, a pestilence broke out amongst his army, which carried off a large number of his men. This so troubled Charlemagne that he prayed to God for help, and in answer to his prayers an angel appeared and shot with a cross-bow, telling the Emperor to mark the spot where the arrow fell. The plant which the arrow indicated [carline thistle] would, the angel said, prove the best of antidotes, and stay the raging of the plague."

Meanwhile, in my 1934 copy of Wild Flowers in Literature (I seem to have accumulated a lot of obscure plant-related books) author Vernon Rendall mentions that carline thistle acquired its name from the Scottish word for a witch - a carlin - as in Robert Burns poem Tam O'Shanter:

As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd, and curious,

   The mirth and fun grew fast and furious;

The Piper loud and louder blew,

   The dancers quick and quicker flew,

The reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,

   Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,

And coost her duddies to the wark,

   And linkit at it in her sark!

So there you have it .... is it named after an Emperor or a witch? Either way, it's a memorable plant - especially if you happen to sit on one when you're having a picnic...

An Industrial Legacy

Just south of Seaham on the Durham coast (see http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com/search/label/Durham%20Coastal%20Path) there’s a little bay called Hawthorn Hive, reached by a steep cliff path. The Magnesian limestone is constantly eroding here, creating small landslides that bring down the flora and fauna from the cliff tops to beach level. There it’s completely sheltered from the south-westerly winds that blow across the cliffs for most of the time, so the display of wild flowers and butterflies at the back of the beach is simply wonderful. Pictured here, from top to bottom, are carline thistle, yellow-wort and rest harrow. This is one of a number of delightful bays along this coast that were once used for dumping colliery waste, that are well on the way to being fully restored to their former glory, but ironically the narrow zone of biodiversity at the base of Hawthorn Hive’s cliff depends on past industrial pollution. Here coal dumping created a raised beach that stops the waves from reaching the base of the cliffs (bottom two photographs). With rising sea levels, once the sea finally sweeps away the last of the colliery waste (and it’s eroding quite rapidly now), the days of the present cliff base flora and fauna will be numbered. There’s a little more about this at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/06/seaham-coast-colliery-waste