The Bells! The Bells!

The largest and smallest species of Campanula in County Durham are flowering in Weardale now.

This is the giant bellflower Campanula latifolia, which graces old hedgerows and woodland edges, and .....

..... this is harebell Campanula rotundifolia, which is often seen at its best in short, dry grassland where its slender stems tremble in the slightest breeze.

It’s worth taking a close look at harebell flowers because they have a really neat fail-safe method of ensuring that they’re pollinated.

When the flower is still in bud the style, with a closed stigma at its tip, is surrounded by five stamens that begin to shed pollen. As the style - which is hairy on the outside- elongates inside the bud it forces its way through the tube of stamens surrounding it, sweeping the pollen from their surface. So when the flower opens it looks like this, and any insect forcing its way down to the bottom of the harebell bell will pick up pollen from the outside of the style. At this stage the flower is functionally male, dispensing pollen.

 Once the pollen is all gone the tip of the style splits into three lobes that curl back and now the flower has effectively become female, ready to receive pollen on one of those three stigma lobes from a visiting insect. But what if no pollen-laden insects turn up? No problem; those stigma lobes just keep curling back until they pick up any residual pollen that’s still left on the outside of the style, so the flower self-pollinates. 

Harebells are quite easy to grow from seed and if you do raise some you’ll see why their Latin name is Campanula rotundifolia, even though the plant has long, grass-like leaves: the leaves in the seedling rosette are indeed rotund.

St.John's Chapel, Weardale

It was only a little over a fortnight since we'd taken our regular circular walk around St.John's Chapel in Weardale but, when we visited again on Saturday, the intervening period of almost dawn-to-dusk sunshine had transformed the landscape. All the early summer flowers, like the wood cranesbill, had run to seed and perfect haymaking weather meant that all the meadows had been mown. 

Even though this was only July, it seemed as though the summer is slipping by and it felt, as they say around here, 'proper back-endish'.

Harebells and crested dog's tail grass beside Harthope burn

Marsh woundwort in flower beside a ditch at the bottom of Chapel Fell

The frothy blossom of meadowsweet, once used for flavouring mead (the name has nothing to do with meadows, it refers to mead).

Monkey flower Mimulus guttatus in the gravel beside the river Wear. Thirty years ago, when I first saw it on this spot, this alien plant from the western United States was much commoner along the river than it is now - it seems to have gone into decline.

Rushes flowering on the slopes of Chapel Fell. For much of the year these are dull plants but for a brief period, when they flower, they look very attractive in the sunlight (double-click for a clearer image)

Timothy Grass Phleum pratense, flowering in corners of meadows that the mower missed. Very similar to meadow foxtail Alopecurus pratensis, but that flowers in spring and this flowers in mid-summer.

A most heartening sight - one of twelve freshly emerged small tortoiseshells on creeping thistles, on the flanks of Chapel Fell. These butterflies seem to be doing very well around here this year - we had seven at once on the Inula flowers in our front garden this weekend.

Spot the fish: a trout, keeping station in the sunlit river below a waterfall, catching whatever the river delivers and only given away by its shadow - the fish's back is a very close match for the colour of the underlying rock.

Up on Chapel Fell the lapwings have finished nesting and are now forming flocks with their juveniles.

A Summer Saturday on the Durham Coast at Dawdon...

One of the finest specimens of a marsh orchid that I've seen in a long time.

Spotted orchids in great profusion.

Bird's foot trefoil, with plenty of common blue butterflies.

Bloody crane'sbill growing on the magnesian limestone cliffs

Ox-eye daisies swaying in the breeze.

Harebells just coming into flower.

Cliff-top shrubs full of whitethroats, and finally ..............

.......... a lark ascending - for a soundtrack, click here....

After the Deluge .....

It was what my granny used to call "a clearing-up" shower. 

The ferocity of the rain hammering on the car roof drowned out our conversation, the road was awash and the windscreen wipers struggled to cope with the deluge. We were forced to pull over and park. We contemplated turning around and heading for home. 

But, as is often the way with the trailing clouds in a band of rain passing overhead during a depression, the short, intensive downpour suddenly slackened ....... and then stopped. Within a few minutes the sound of bird calls was added to the sound of water trickling down drains. A break in the clouds appeared, then a small patch of blue sky, then sunshine. 

We got out and walked.

The air was still cold and the vegetation was festooned with raindrops.

A few butterflies, sheltering in the undergrowth, cautiously opened their wings.

Somehow this skipper had survived unscathed, even though raindrops still clung to the harebell where it had taken refuge.

Bumblebees began to return to operating temperature in the sun, but this one was still so chilled that all it could do was raise a leg in self-defence ...

... but the butterflies were soon feeding on the devil's bit scabious flowers again ...

... in competition with hoverflies ......

... all seeking nectar supplies to restore their energy levels.

Within half an hour the breeze had shaken most of the water from the leaves and this caterpillar returned to feeding on nettle foliage ...

... where a cranefly sunbathed ......

.... and finally the bumblebees got busy again on the bramble blossom, which is very late after this soggy summer. They'd better get busy.......... 

........... because autumn is just around the corner, and the thistles are already releasing clouds of thistledown.

Arranging any kind of outdoor event in the British summer can be a nightmare, but our fast-changing weather patterns provide naturalists with some of their most memorable moments.

All pictures taken along the disused railway line between Romaldkirk and Cotherstone in Teesdale, last Wednesday, 29th. August.

Harebells

According to the meteorologists summer will be here soon - two months overdue but better late than never - and it will arrive just in time for harebells to look their best.

These are very variable plants. Some, growing in poor soil or even in crevices in walls, can be short and wiry. Others, growing in longer grass on more fertile soils, can be two feet tall and much more robust and it's the latter that look so exquisite growing amongst grass inflorescences in summer, bending and swaying in the waves that the wind creates as it blows across a sea of grasses. 

These pictures were taken at Ryton Willows local nature reserve near Newburn, on the western edge of Newcastle, on a blustery day

Harebell flowers have quite a complicated pollination mechanism that ensures cross pollination. You can find pictures and explanations here.

Smardale Gill

Smardale Gill NNR in Cumbria is one of my favourite reserves, not just for the reserve itself but also for the walk to it. There are two usual ways in, either across country from Ravenstonedale, or via the narrow roads just south of Kirkby Stephen railway station. This time we took the latter route, along a single track road that's fringed with wild flowers, including this two foot-tall harebell which I think is the tallest I've ever seen.

 From this direction the footpath into the reserve follows the bed of a disused railway track through woodland and where the canopy opens out it forms a linear woodland glade that stretches for over a mile, fringed with flowers like this wild angelica.

The ripening stone brambles Rubus saxatilis were a reminder that summer is moving on.

Stone bramble berries look wet even when it's not raining.

A good crop of hazel nuts too.

The woodland glade footpath is also a great place to watch spotted flycatchers

Eventually the footpath opens out at the right-hand end of this fine old railway viaduct across Scandal Beck

At this point you can turn left off the footpath and walk through limestone grassland on the east side of the valley ...

.... the footpath you can see on the left here takes you all the way down to Ravenstonedale, below that big hill in the distant Howgills.

Alternatively you can walk across the viaduct, taking in the view to the north across the treetops of Smardale Gill wood (accessible only with a permit from the Cumbrian Wildlife Trust)

The footpath on the far side of the viaduct continues through some of the finest flowery limestone grassland imaginable, past these impressive old lime kilns...

There is a stark contrast between the plant species diversity along the old railway line and in the improved sheep pasture that you can see in the middle distance here, where very few plant species survive. The railway industry, by fencing off the limestone grassland, effectively saved it from a similar fate and the wonderful floral diversity along this part of the line owes its survival to the Victorian railway company that bought the land and built the lines.

Here's an example - a wonderful patch of betony, greater burnet and bedstraw (double-click for a bigger image).

The most impressive flowers, though, are the fragrant orchids - literally hundreds of them. The scent was intoxicating at mid-day - it must be amazing as dusk, when the fragrance is stronger.

This is Jacob's ladder Polemonium caeruleum - unlikely to be native here and almost certainly a garden escape, but lovely nevertheless

The far side of the valley looks like plain grassland from a distance, until you walk through it ...

 

... and find that it's full of limestone-loving wild flowers like this harebell, which makes it an idyllic spot for a picnic.

Field scabious .....

... and rock-rose

A spider had woven a coccoon into this flowering head of quaking grass.

This part of the reserve is probably best known for its butterflies, like these mating common blues ...

... and the much rarer Scotch argus, with its chocolate-brown and orange colour scheme. On a sunny day they are very active, so it's hot work photographing them...

... but this one, possibly newly emerged, was more accommodating.

Green fritillaries are the other notable breeding butterflies here and usually the best place to photograph them is on thistles, when they feed, but this one was indulging in some sunbathing.