Identifying Trees

I spent a fantastic morning in early September with members of the British Naturalists Association (Central and North Essex Branch)in the woods at Little Baddow, learning to identify trees.

This is something I'd wanted to be better at for some long while, but its not always so easy to be ferreting about in a book looking things up while you're out and about, especially with active little boys around .. better to be playing and having fun! So to have the opportunity of someone more experienced taking the time to actually show me how to recognise a range of the more common trees was a great treat.

I'm sure I won't remember a lot of what I saw, but even if a few trees stick each time then I will be getting there .. and I'll definitely go again next year, as it was such a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours with lovely people in beautiful peaceful surroundings. The things I was most pleased to have seen were the Wild Service Tree, which is apparently quite rare, and the seed pods of Hornbeam which are beautiful .. I would have had no idea what they were beforehand. I can now also distinguish between a Sycamore and a Field Maple! It was also interesting to see healthy young elm trees growing .. I had not realised that they are not affected by Dutch Elm disease until they reach the height of about 10 feet.

I find writing things out helps me to remember (partly why I blog!) but also I am finding that its important when I have been shown things to go straight out again within a few days to look for the trees or plants again, while the new knowledge is fresh. And, later that week, I was lucky enough to stumble across a beautiful area of trees at Wivenhoe Park on the University of Essex campus. This gave me the chance to test my knowledge and take some pictures to reinforce what I had learnt.

Learning about different types of Oak trees.. on the Pendunculate Oak, acorns have stems but leaves don't, as seen here. With Sessile Oaks it is the other way around (am on the hunt but haven't found one yet).

And here is Alder, my favourite tree from the whole experience. Completely new to me, I remembered we were told it liked/could happily tolerate the wet, and here at Wivenhoe were alder trees growing right at the edge of a lake. Its got a nice distinctively-shaped leaf for the novice spotter and, best of all, its cones stay on the tree right the year round giving you another means to identify it.

As we went round I collected a leaf from each tree and wrote its name in biro on the back as a reference (sacrilege, I know, but for the greater good!). Then when I got home I was able to press and keep the leaves in an album. I had scribbled little notes of what were told onto the back of the handout, and I copied these out alongside.

Wild Autumn

Hope everyone is loving autumn .. I'm enjoying watching the colour changes and feeling the way the air is different now, too.

The garden is now completely wild, seedheads and overgrown creepers, vines and roses all competing in the wind and wet weather overnight but then still smiling brightly in the daytime sunshine.

Still picking yellow Ildi tomatoes from the hanging baskets and using handfuls of some unexpectedly lush sorrel from the veg patch. Blackbirds darting in and out of the all the overgrowth, feasting. The spiders who have been spinning their glorious webs amongst it all now looking fat and rather fine.

Me and the little'un had a jolly jaunt round our local nature reserve, the Lozenge, today to see what was happening there .. golden leaves, abundant berries, teasel heads ...

plumptious rosehips

colourful guelder rose















.. and also a magical sprouting of fungi!

Anglo-Saxon Herbs

Yesterday, a treat .. an overdue trip to West Stow Anglo-Saxon village while it was inhabited by seventh century Anglo-Saxon re-enactors, the Centingas. I haven't been for ages and was so excited to be visiting, especially to be taking my young son with me for the first time.

The first thing we saw on our visit was a new 'farm' area, designed to showcase some of the plants grown for food by the early Anglo-Saxon settlers at the village. I was so pleased to see the Wild Carrot I had been learning about growing here!

And then, bliss and joy, a great big medicinal herb bed .. brilliantly jumbled and tumbled but full of familiar friends, including the Mugwort I had just been learning about, too! What was great was that it was growing right alongside large amounts of Wormwood so I could clearly compare them and see the difference - wormwood's foliage is silvery all over, while mugwort's leaves have dark green tops but are silvery underneath.

Tansy

Wormwood and Saint John's Wort

Yarrow

Wild Herbs

Amazing, amazing experience at the weekend... a 'Wild Herbs for Food and Medicine' walk with no less than Roger Tabor, chairman of British Naturalists Association and former chairman of the Herb Society, who just happens to live in Brightlingsea! Couldn't believe my luck when I saw a poster up in a shop window in the High Street.. the walk was across the countryside and down to the saltmarsh at the tip of Flag Creek out the back of where I live. Down at the very tip of the creek we tasted Marsh Samphire and Sea Purslane and also saw Sea Beet, Sea Aster and Sea Lavender.

Apart from scribbling down a few notes on cooking Sea Purslane, I failed spectacularly to take any notes or photographs during the walk. I just wanted to be in the moment and give it all my fullest attention.. such opportunities do not come along every day of the week!

But the very next morning I went out on my own for a little countryside ramble near home while it was all fresh in my mind to see if I could find any of the new plants I'd been introduced to..

Mugwort

Can't believe this great Anglo-Saxon favourite is just growing everywhere around and I never knew it!

Wild Carrot

Can you see the purple-ish dot in the middle of the flower-head? This is in imitation of an insect feeding, which encourages other insects to land.

It folds up into this distinctive 'birds nest' shape when it forms its seeds.

Woody Nightshade















None of these pictures would win any prizes, but you get the idea! Very inspiring and feel greatly encouraged about going out and about and learning more plants.

Campaign for Bees

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to spread the word about Friends of the Earth's campaign to help save our bees.. just click here to go and sign a petition to government calling for a ban on the most harmful pesticides to bees, a complete ban on pesticides for bee pollinated crops (with help for farmers) and an urgent call to stop the use of pesticides in parks, to safeguard both our bees and our children's health.

Many thanks for joining in, if you have a minute!

__________

While we're on bees, I just wanted to share two amazing things I found out .. first is that you can help bees by putting some water out in the garden. The second is that they can't see red .. check out this brilliant post on Plantlife which shows how bees see things. I love learning this stuff!

Squashes

So you may have noticed that its been very quiet on the vegetable front this year. Hmmmm.

All I can say is, it wasn't for lack of early effort on my part. But our slimy friends, encouraged by the immense and prolonged wet, flourished and rampaged .. and ate everything. And I mean, everything. Except for things in the onion family - my chives, leeks and spring onions have never looked better!

Even young tomato plants were eaten, albeit not as enthusiastically, but when the munchers had munched everything else they nibbled the tops out of the baby tomato plants as they hardened off. Hmmmm.

My sister has an allotment in south London/Kent border and she got about 75% of everything eaten and she used organic slug pellets AND a nemotode. And I saw an article about the weather conditions creating the perfect breeding conditions for a voracious non-native giant slug on the rampage (can't remember where ... think on Soil Association website somewhere).

So at least its not just me!

Anyhow, I tell you all this because then you will understand the great pleasure and satisfaction I have derived from my one vegetable success this year!

Its a summer squash which can be picked young to eat as a ball courgette or left to grow into large summer squashes. What can I tell you.. its tasty, its good-looking and it withstood everything that it had to contend with!

My other courgette and squash plants were just annihilated as soon as they were exposed. With a couple, I waited until they were enormous.. really big leaves and well-formed plants.. I put one out to harden off under a bell cloche and everything. But as soon as I took its lid off its fate was sealed.

This summer squash was planted in a very tall chimney type pot to give it plenty of room to get its roots in.

When I planted out I put in two garden canes at diagonal corners and then covered with a giant polythene bag which I pegged in place to the canes and the lip of the container. And left as long as I could as protection against the elements while the plant hardened off. But it was by no means slug or snail-proof! If you look at the photos carefully you can see that the stems are covered in some fairly lethal prickles .. this possibly helped!

Well, there you go. This versatile new plant has made a life-long friend in me! So I've positioned it alongside the wooden wine crates of leeks to form a discreet curtain in front of my ENTIRELY EMPTY vegetable patch(!!) and give the illusion of lushness and plenty at this harvest time of the year.

And you know what ... I'm thinking of turning that veg bed over to herbs next year (I'm out of room in the herb garden) and just sticking to containers for veg.

Hmmmm.