LICHEN OF THE WEEK: Cladonia floerkeana

Also known as Redcoats, British Soldier and Devil's Matchstick.

This flamboyant lichen has a fondness for dead wood so rotting logs and fence posts are a good place to look for it. It also grows on well drained soils with lots of organic matter such as those found on heaths and moorland.

More information here.

Image by Ilja Knutman under Creative Commons licence.

WILD FLOWER OF THE WEEK: Old Man's Beard.

Have you noticed a road, path or lane become more hirsute recently? 

In the month of "Movember" its not just upper lips turning hairy: the fluffy seed heads of our native clematis adorn many a hedge at this time of year. John Gerard, the noted herbalist, loved this plant and gave it another common name: Traveller's-joy. Has it brightened a hedgerow near you?

For more about this plant and many others visit our website.

Nature Check: Where is Defra The Defender?

Posted by Nicola Hutchinson, Head of Conservation Programmes, England and Wales.

Wildlife and Countryside Link and its members, including Plantlife, today launched its third annual report on the Government's progress against its initial claim to be "the greenest government ever".

In previous years the score card had a distinctly "could do better" feel.  Unfortunately there have been few signs of improvement and indeed in some keys areas, such as the England biodiversity strategy, the situation needs urgent attention.

Biodiversity 2020 was launched as the Government's new wildlife strategy in 2011, yet two years on progress with taking real action is achingly slow.  Defra niftily handed responsibility for 'delivering the strategy' to Natural England and it showed in Lord de Mauley's speech at the Nature Check launch; Defra clearly sees itself at a distance from actual delivery as all the biodiversity progress mentioned was in the form of Agency action.  Yet despite the best efforts of Natural England & Co it is too often the case that the barrier to progress is down to a combination of Government departments, Government resources and Government policy.  So it begs the question what positive strides will Defra itself take in the near future to make a contribution to improving species, habitats and ecosystems?

Nature Check asks for strong leadership and this is where Defra must start.  The Government Department with environment in its title should be an environmental champion.  It should have conserving and enhancing wildlife and the environment as its core purpose. Its programmes and projects should lead by example and put increased wildlife at the heart.  It should draw red lines on environmental matters which will not be crossed (yes, even by you, Treasury).  It should not be an apology for wildlife and the environment.  It should be Defra The Defender.  Have you got what it takes?

Five "Fashionably Late" Wild Flowers

Posted by Dr Trevor Dines

There’s something extra special about flowers appearing in the autumn. It’s as if they’re challenging nature’s clock and you feel they deserve an extra cheer, putting on a final brave show before winter.

Some plants, like sea aster and western gorse, actually time their flowering for now, while others such as meadowsweet, dead-nettles and dandelions are just flagrant opportunists, getting in a quick flowering while the weather holds out. As well as providing a splash of autumn colour, they’re an essential source of nectar and pollen for bees, butterflies and other pollinators, a final feast before they tuck themselves up for the long winter hibernation.


Five late bloomers that prove they’re worth waiting for:


1. Devil’s-bit scabious

The beautiful purple pincushion-like flowers of the Devil’s-bit scabious can be found in damp meadows, heaths and old limestone grassland until October. This native wildflower gets its name from ancient times when its stunted appearance was believed to have been caused by the devil eating its roots!

More about this flower.


2. Meadowsweet 

The fluffy white flower heads of meadowsweet will often reappear after hay cut and bring an elegant touch of colour to meadows, ditches and riverbanks in autumn when its nectar is popular with butterflies, hoverflies and other insects. In the past, its sweet-smelling foliage was cut and strewn on floors to freshen the air.

More about this flower.


3. Sea aster

Aster is Greek for 'star' - certainly an apt name for this beauty, a wild flower that likes to arrive late with a burst of colour. Also known as 'Michaelmas daisies' most arrived from America. Our native aster - the sea aster - adds a splash of vibrant purple and yellow to our coasts in the autumn.

More about this flower.



4. Meadow saffron

A femme fatale of the wild flower world, as beautiful as it is deadly (meadow saffron contains the poison colchicine).  It flowers in autumn hence another name, Autumn crocus, although it’s not actually a crocus. It’s also known as Naked ladies as the flowers appear after its leaves have died away.

More about this flower.



5. Western gorse 

And this plant will certainly add a splash of colour to autumn, and a lot more! Legend has is that when gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion! Thankfully for all you romantics out there western gorse flowers from July-December and common gorse from December to June, so you can kiss your loved one all year round!

More about this flower.

So instead of the gold, orange and reds that often steal the limelight as trees put on magnificent displays, why not think pinks, purples, and even white? Celebrate the remarkable array of native wildflowers that bloom well into the autumn or even early winter.

A Bumper Year for Blackberries

Posted by Richard Moyse, Ranscombe Farm Reserve Manager

At Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm Reserve, the wood-edges and path-sides are fat with blackberries as the summer draws towards its close. The first fruits are already temptingly glossy and black, while behind them the mass of tight, green unripe berries suggests a bumper harvest yet to come.

It looks like it's going to be a great year for our favourite wild fruit. Perhaps it's just the pleasure of a classic British summer showing us everything through rose-tinted glasses, but I think not. The last year's dullness and wet may have made for poor flowering and fruit production, but it provided good growing conditions for a whole range of wild plants. As a result, when the good weather arrived, there was plenty of energy to put into making flowers.

Earlier in the year, Ranscombe's woodlands were a mass of living colour, as orchids and other flowers had a jamboree. That the brambles were also fit and vigorous was obvious in midsummer, as their prickly, arching stems romped across paths and tracks, making it necessary to be out with the strimmer much earlier than in most years. Brambles are nothing if not mobile: questing stems spread out from the centre of the plant, and, where the stem-tips touch the ground, they root to eventually form a tangled, impenetrable mass.

Impenetrable to us, that is, for the dense, thorny cover is a great place for nesting birds such as wrens and long-tailed tits, as well as for small mammals. Young trees, too, if not completely swamped, can grow up through the bramble patch, safely protected from the predations of deer.

The other key to the mobility of brambles is, of course, the thing we love most about them: blackberries. The sweet, juicy berries (more accurately, a blackberry isn't technically a berry, but an aggregrate of many small fruits called drupelets, each with a single seed) are eaten by blackbirds, thrushes and other birds, which unwittingly carry and eventually pop out the seeds some at distance from the parent plant. The droppings in badger latrine pits are often stained dark at this time of year, as the animals fill themselves with as many blackberries as they can find, and the fruit is also popular with foxes, voles, mice and dormice. Even insects like butterflies and wasps will come to damaged fruit to sip at the juices.

It's known that Neolithic people ate blackberries around 5000 years ago, so going blackberrying to make jam, or blackberry vinegar or (a personal favourite) blackberry and apple pie is continuing a tradition as old - if not older - than any other. Brambles are so widespread in countryside and town that they are available to almost anyone for the price of a pleasant hour and a few scratches. So why not grab a bag or plastic tub and head out to your nearest bramble patch and play a small part in an ancient association between people and an indomitable wild plant?