Field Woodrush

Back in the 1980s the Guardian newspaper ran a sort of a sort of comic strip soap opera drawn by the cartoonist, Posy Simmonds. It was about the lives of the Weber family who lived in a village in the rural Home Counties (all Jemimas and Agas, gymkhanas and Justins). One strip in the series began with the line, “spring has sprung and Luzula campestris flourishes her chestnut blossoms”. That line has always stuck in my mind – if only for its wilful obscurity!
Actually, though, the Field Woodrush, Luzula campestris is small and insignificant, rather than ‘obscure’; it is, in fact, very common in the spring time and can be found in short grass everywhere.
It is common enough to have acquired some vernacular names – including ‘Good Friday Grass’ and ‘Sweep’s Brooms’. The former name alludes to the fact that its flowers usually appear around Easter-time. In some parts of the country the appearance of these tiny flowers signified to farmers that it was time to put over-wintering cattle out to pasture.
Field Woodrush is a member of the Rush family (Juncaceae) and, although it looks a bit like one, it is not a grass – as the ‘Good Friday Grass’ name implies. One of the characteristics of Field Woodrush, and other Woodrushes, is the long white hairs which fringe the leaves (you can see these in the photograph above).
I must now make a confession. For many years I thought that the generic name, ‘Luzula’ was pronounced ‘Loo-zoola’. This pronunciation had a sort of African quality about it – indeed I could imagine Tarzan having a pet cheetah called ‘Loo-zoola’ (“Ah Loo-zoola, you have made a good kill! We will dine well on raw antelope tonight!"). Unfortunately, I have recently discovered that the correct pronunciation is, ‘Luz-yoola’. Frankly, I find this pronunciation a bit disappointing – the only thing that it conjures up, for me, is nothing more exciting than a brand of Romanian washing powder!

Dave Bishop, April 2009

Hilda Broady's Journal: A Glimpse of the Mersey Valley 50 Years Ago

Mrs Broady next visited her 'plot', in Barlow Wood, on the 1st April 1959. This is the entry in her journal:

A sunny spring day, with a light breeze blowing, encouraged me to visit the plot.

The main tree is now covered in buds. It is a Sycamore, Acer Pseudoplatanus. On one side of the trunk Pleurococcus* is growing. There is a fungal growth on the apparently dead tree.

A ladybird and a number of ants were found today; the ants were around the roots of the tree, and the ladybird was found on the grass.

A few clumps of bluebells were identified (Scilla Nonscripta**), also lesser celandine (Ranunculus Ficaria). As the lesser celandine was in flower a specimen was taken.

Editor's Notes:

* 'Pleurococcus' is a type of green alga, often found on tree trunks.

** The scientific name of the Bluebell has been changed at least twice since 1959 - it is currently Hyacinthoides non-scriptus.

Butterbur - A Female Flower Spike

You may have been wondering what a Butterbur female flower spike looks like(?). Well, I found this rather fine specimen on the river bank, at Stretford, yesterday and thought I'd post a photograph.

These particular flowers have probably already been fertilised as the local male flower spikes are already turning brown and are fading (suggesting that they have shed their pollen). In the next few weeks the female spike will elongate into a 'tassel' and produce seeds to be dispersed on the wind.

Dave Bishop, March 2009

Butterbur

A plant which is appearing and coming into flower now, in late March, is the Butterbur (Petasites hybridus). Although it is fairly closely related to Coltsfoot (see my article dated 19th March 2009) it is an altogether stranger affair. There is something a bit fungoid about it and, indeed Geoffrey Grigson (1) reports that that an old Dorset name for it is ‘Early Mushroom’ – and it’s not hard to see why. It is particularly common on the river banks and some of the few (relatively) undisturbed areas that we have left.
Butterbur, like Holly (see my article dated 26th February 2009), is dioecious, that is male and female flowers occur on different plants. The squatter, pinker male plants tend to turn brown and shrivel once they have shed their pollen whilst the taller, more open female flower-spikes tend to elongate into ‘tassels’ once they have been fertilised and begin to bear seed. The top picture shows three male flower spikes whilst the bottom picture shows a group of female plants whose flowers have recently been fertilised. I have observed, over the years, that males and females tend to form separate colonies. A few years ago, near to the towpath of the Bridgewater Canal, there used to be a colony of male plants right next to a colony of female plants. I used to picture them as a group of nervous teenagers eyeing each other across a dance floor. Unfortunately, this site is now overgrown with brambles and the Butterbur is gone.
Once the business of reproduction is over, both sexes produce huge, rhubarb-like leaves (which I will discuss in a later article).
It is a curious fact that while Butterbur is quite common in many parts of the UK, female plants tend to be less so. As Professor Clive Stace (2) puts it: “male plant frequent throughout most of [the] B[ritish] I[sles]; female plant frequent in N[orth] & C[entral] E[ngland], very sporadic elsewhere.”
Fifty years ago, in a classic book on British wild flowers (3), John Gilmour and Max Walters discussed this distribution; they wrote:
“Professor Valentine has shown ... that the male plant of this species occurs quite commonly throughout the British Isles, but the female plant has a curiously restricted distribution, chiefly in the north-west of England – it is, for example, quite common around Manchester. Within this main area the female plants apparently produce abundant seed which in tests has germinated freely to give both male and female plants in the progeny. Valentine suggests that the restriction of the female must be due to some climatic factor which does not operate in the same way on the more adaptable males. He also suggests that some of the wide distribution of the male plant may be due to its having been planted to provide early nectar for bees.”
I am not aware of any more recent work on this question – but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been carried out (any information gratefully received).
Nevertheless, Butterbur is not only a curious and interesting plant but it is also, as the above passage suggests, of great local significance. It is a very characteristic of the Mersey Valley and is, I would also suggest, a key element of our local biodiversity.

Dave Bishop, March 2009
References:

1. ‘The Englishman’s Flora’ by Geoffrey Grigson, Paladin 1975 (first pub. 1958)

2. ‘New Flora of the British Isles’ by Clive Stace, Cambridge University Press, 1991

3. ‘Wild Flowers’ by John Gilmour and Max Walters, Collins, 1959

Ted Brooks: Local Bird Photographer

Last week I was walking near Sale Water Park and met a man photographing the herons on Broad Ees Dole. Seeing that he was using a rather nice digital SLR and a long lens, and me being a complete camera 'geek', I stopped to have a chat and to compare cameras. He introduced himself as Ted Brooks and told me that he lives in Chorlton. I asked him how he got interested in bird photography and he said:

"I am a member of Chorlton Golf Club and in 2003 I was made captain. After a very good year I found that I was getting very tired when playing golf. It was confirmed that I was diabetic so I decided to have a holiday in Kenya and it took off from there. As for photography, I have been interested and was semi-pro since the mid 1950s up to 1966 when I moved from London to Manchester."

I then told him about FoCM and this blog and mentioned that I thought that we didn't have enough pictures of birds and he very generously offered to send me some. I have posted Ted's beautiful pictures on the Picasa web album attached to the blog. To see these pictures go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/friendsofchorltonmeadows/birds

I am particularly pleased to be able to post some pictures of the kingfishers which are such a feature of Chorlton Brook and elsewhere: they are our very own 'living jewels' and never fail to delight everyone who sees them. I have long dreamed of taking such pictures myself - but Ted has beaten me to it!

Dave Bishop, March 2009

Snakes in the Valley: South Manchester Reptiles survey

It feels like spring has well and truly sprung into life this week with bumble bees fizzing around, more flowers emerging and the arrival of summer migrant birds such as the chiff chaff, but one question that some of the Friends are mulling over is are there any snakes or lizards in The Mersey Valley?

The answer is, we don’t know, and no one, we think, has previously carried out a survey to try and find out. In light of this, throughout the spring and early summer, a few of us have decided to carry out a survey which we hope will go some of the way to answering the question.

The UK only has 6 native reptiles, and we can say with a degree of certainty that if we are extremely lucky we might find 1 or 2 species in the Mersey Valley. Why? Because the others are either extremely rare and localized, like the smooth snake, or have very specific habitat requirements, like the sand lizard. Species that we might find are common lizard (Lacerta vivipara), slow worm (Anguis fragilis) and grass snake (Natrix natrix). For more detailed pictures and descriptions of all native reptiles visit: http://www.herpetofauna.co.uk/identification.htm

All reptiles are cold blooded, a characteristic in finding them we hope to exploit! They need to get enough warmth and energy into their bodies to move and go looking for food. The common lizard, for example, likes to bathe on sunny banks. Therefore, to maximise our chances of having positive surveys, we will be placing pieces artificial refugia on certain habitats. In other words, pieces of corrugated tin and tiles of carpet will be dotted around the meadows and a few other selected sites in the valley. Reptiles use these objects to either hide under, or to bask on so they can warm up enough to become active. Another element in successfully surveying for reptiles is the weather. It’s no good looking on a sunny, warm day because they will be active and unlikely to be seen, similarly on cool, wet days they will be hiding away conserving energy. The perfect weather is broken cloud and not too warm, whether that be early in the morning in the summer, or the middle of a spring day. On these days reptiles have to spend much more time basking, and the pieces of tin and carpet are places where we might find them doing just that.

Any findings will of course be posted onto the blog, but if you want more information about amphibians and reptiles then there are some useful links below, including a link to the recently formed Amphibian and Reptile Group of South Manchester.

If you, or anyone you know, has any sightings of reptiles in and around the Mersey Valley area, please let us know – any such data will of great use to our survey.

Richard Gardner

Amphibian and Reptile Group of South Manchester
http://argsouthmanchester.blogspot.com/

Amphibian and Reptile Group of South Lancashire
http://www.argsl.org.uk/

The Herpetological Conservation Trust
http://www.herpconstrust.org.uk/

Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK
http://www.arg-uk.org.uk/

Coltsfoot

I spotted my first Coltsfoot flowers of the year today. They were at Hardy Farm on a patch of land adjacent to the river and near to Jackson’s Boat Bridge. Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) is an early (but, as we have seen, by no means the earliest) spring flower. It is a member of the botanical family Asteraceae and is, hence, related to Daisies and Dandelions. It is a plant of rough grassland and waste places.

The 17th Century herbalist, John Gerard wrote an excellent description of Coltsfoot in his ‘Herbal’ (1636):

Tussilago or Fole-foot hath many white and long creeping roots, somewhat fat; from which rise up naked stalkes (in the beginning of March and Aprill) about a spanne long, bearing at the top yellow floures, which change into down and are caried away with the winde: when the stalke and seed is perished, there appeare springing out of the earth many broad leaves, greene above, and next the ground of a white hoarie or grayish colour, fashioned like an Horse foot; for which cause it was called Fole-foot and Horse-hoofe: seldome or never shall you find leaves and floures at once, but the flours are past before the leaves come out of the ground ...

Gerard also described “The Vertues” (i.e. the medicinal uses) of Coltsfoot:

A decoction made of the greene leaves and roots, or else a syrup thereof, is good for the cough that proceedeth of a thin rheume.
The green leaves of Fole-foot pound with hony, do cure and heale inflammations.
The fume of the dried leaves taken through a funnell or tunnell, burned upon coles, effectually helpeth those that are troubled with shortnesse of breath, and fetch their wind thicke and often.
Being taken in a manner as they taketh Tobaco, it mightily prevaileth against the diseases aforesaid.

Long before Gerard’s day Coltsfoot had been used in cough remedies and, generally, for diseases of the bronchial tract. The first part of the scientific name, Tussilago, is from tussis – the Latin word for cough. I also believe that the second part of the name, farfara is onomatopoeic – that is it is supposed to represent the sound of someone coughing.
It is still possible to buy ‘Coltsfoot Rock’ as a cough remedy in the UK, but in Central Europe, where they take their herbal remedies very seriously, it is often present in cough syrups. A few years ago I was on holiday in Slovenia (once the northernmost republic of Yugoslavia, but now an independent country). I had had a chest infection and had been left with a persistent cough which was spoiling my holiday. Eventually, I went to a local pharmacist who sold me a bottle of sticky, brown cough medicine. I couldn’t read most of the label (which, of course, was in Slovenian) but I could read the scientific names of the plants (i.e. plant extracts) that it contained; these included Primula veris (Cowslips) and Tussilago farfara. This concoction worked just fine and the cough went away.
I don’t know if anyone these days actually smokes dried Coltsfoot leaves as a remedy for asthma; it seems unlikely – but you never know!

Dave Bishop, March 2009