Hoverfly Eat with Forked Tongue ....

When I looked closely at this photo of the hoverfly Rhingia campestris feeding on a primrose I noticed that ....

..... when it withdrew its tongue the tip of the proboscis sometimes split into two, and then closed up again. I've noticed this before in nectar-feeding insects like bee-flies and suspect that it may be the insect's way of clearing blockages that occur in the capillary tube formed by the proboscis.

Primslips and Cowroses

The old railway line between Romaldkirk and Cotherstone in Teesdale is now a very attractive public footpath (with a convenient pub at either end) and this year there are spectacular displays of ....

...primroses Primula vulgaris in the woodland that has developed on the embankments and ....

... cowslips Primula veris  in the grass in the pastures and more open areas, and wherever these two habitats coincide there are ....

...... magnificent specimens of false oxlips, the natural hybrid between the two species. Every wild flower guide describes primroses and cowslips as separate, distinct species but no one told the plants, or the insects that cross pollinate them in spring. The hybrids tend to have the large individual flowers of primroses mounted on the tall stems of cowslips and are often very floriferous, displaying hybrid vigour. False oxlips have been grown in gardens since at least Elizabethan times and are the ancestors of the garden polyanthus, that has also received an injection of floral pigment genes from another European primrose species at some point in its history. Almost every false oxlip plant is subtly distinct because they can also backcross to either parent, so every conceivable intermediate form is there in the population. Along this railway line enbankment there's also just one ....

..... pink-flowered primrose, that must be the result of a cross with a cultivated Primula species. The bumblebee - slightly to the right and above centre in the picture - was busy disseminating this coloured variant's genes amongst the surronding plants in the population.

Alexanders

Alexanders Smyrnium olusatrum is the first of the large umbellifers to bloom and drifts of this naturalised garden escape - a native of continental Europe - are  currently in bloom on the banks of the river Tyne at Tynemouth. 


There was a time when it was cultivated as a vegetable, for its young shoots, leaves and stems that were blanched like celery. I've never met anyone who has actually eaten it but the smell of its flowers - described politely by Michael Proctor and Peter Yeo in The Pollination of Flowers (Collins New Naturalist) as resembling 'stale human dung' may go some way towards explaining why it's more popular with flies than with people. As long ago as 1776 Thomas Withering, in his Botanical Arrangement, wrote that "It was formerly cultivated in our gardens, but its place is now better supplied by celery" so it clearly fell out of favour as a garden vegetable a long time ago.