Magnificent Marsh Orchids.... or spotted orchids .... or hybrids?

Well, actually I'm not sure what these are, exactly. They were part of a swarm of hybrids between marsh orchids and common spotted orchids, growing beside the pond on Durham University's Mountjoy site. Whatever their precise identity, they are magnificent specimens. I have noticed that whenever these hybrid swarms occur you always get a few very robust, very floriferous specimens, probably displaying hybrid vigour, alongside many more that are much weaker plants.... and, quite often, a few albinos like the one on the left.

Shakin' all over ....

This summer I'd planned to finally get to grips with identifying grasses, but the soggy state of the countryside hasn't been conducive to spending a lot of time in waterlogged meadows. Still, there are a few grasses that are easy to identify from twenty paces and this is one such: quaking grass Briza media.

You can tell by the way it moves that it's quaking grass, because the slightest breath of wind sends a shiver through those spikelets of florets that are suspended on the finest of stem branches.

There are numerous local names for this species, including didder grass, rattle grass, pearl grass, shivering grass, trembling grass, doddering dickies, doddering dillies, cow quakes, and maiden's-hair but I rather like the name totter grass, which seems to encapsulate its state of permanent instability. The rather more romantic French name for the grass is 'amourettes', on account of those heart-shaped spikets.

If you find that you're standing next to totter, then the chances are that the soil beneath your feet is calcareous and if there's a lot of the species around then you're probably standing in old, unimproved grassland. This is an agricultural habitat that's in decline, thanks to ploughing and reseeding with high yielding forage grasses, so totter isn't as common as it once was. It's an easy and attractive species to grow in gardens though and if  you collect and sow a few ripe seeds in August you could have flowering plants by the following year. It looks good in dried flower arrangements in winter.

These are the spikelets that are aggregations of individual florets, each of which will produce a seed. You can just make out the dangling yellow stamens that shed pollen into the breeze and the feathery white stigmas that catch it - although individual plants are self-incompatible and won't set seed with their own pollen; they must be cross pollinated by another plant.

The Year of the Slug?

I hadn't really realised what an amazing summer this must be if you happen to be a slug, until we went out for a walk after heavy rain a couple of days ago. The footpath was covered with these slimy molluscs, but so too were the flower umbels of hogweed. Wet weather seems to encourage slugs to climb tall flower stems to feed on petals and pollen. Why do they bother, when there is so much food at ground level?

This rather colourful local variety of Arion ater, with an orange skirt, had climbed a dandelion stem to feed on the florets.

Meanwhile, the same rain storms have done serious damage to pollinating bees. This bumblebee was so saturated by rain that it was diffcult to decide what species it might be.