About this Blog

This blog reflects our twin interests in walking and natural history, especially botany.



"Ich wandle unter Blumen

Und blühe selber mit ..."

Heinrich Heine





Walking is important to us as a way of being in direct touch with the environment, experiencing species and habitats in their ecological and historical context. By walking between different flower sites we experience the character of the general countryside, getting to know as much where flowers are not as where they are. Walking allows for the serendipitous - chance encounters with animals, meetings with local people, unexpected species - which enrich the experience.

We set up this blog to share a variety of mainly day-long walks centred on "iconic" flower sites and locations of rare plants, where these are publicly accessible. The accounts include descriptions of the routes taken, key plants seen, other wildlife encountered, and anything of general environmental or historical interest. All the walks allow time for looking around (some flowers need searching for), photography etc, and usually include a half-way stop for refreshment at some suitable establishment. The walks are seasonal, depending on the flowering/fruiting times of different species, although one cannot hit the peak time for all species seen on one walk, and the best timings will vary from year to year. Lengths vary but the walks may be anything up to 12 miles or more, so an early start is recommended.



A certain knowledge of our flora is assumed, but those less familiar should be able to identify most of the plants mentioned with the help of one of the good field guides - Blamey, Fitter and Fitter Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland (A&C Black) or Francis Rose The Wild Flower Key (Warne) - although occasionally recourse may be needed to more technical tomes such as Clive Stace New Flora of the British Isles (Cambridge) or the specialist volumes published by BSBI (Botanical Society of the British Isles) on grasses, sedges, umbellifers etc.



While examining plants it is interesting to note the galls, leaf-mines and fungi (rusts etc) that are often specific to particular taxa. For galls we use Redfern and Shirley British Plant Galls, for leaf-mines http://www.ukflymines.co.uk/ (which also includes lepidopteran and other mines), and for fungi Ellis and Ellis Microfungi on Land Plants, although this is a technical tome rather than a field guide.

Our completed walk around the coast and borders of England is described on http://www.coastwalking.blogspot.co.uk/ and our current walk around the coast of Wales is on http://www.coastwalkwales.blogspot.co.uk/




Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Buckinghamshire: Hartwell House Park: Giant Butterbur

27 July 2011/ 14 March 2012        OS Explorer 181 Chiltern Hills North SP797126
Length: Ten minutes.

Hartwell House is owned by the National Trust and provides accommodation and meals.  The old parkland around it has a few old horse chestnuts and walnuts, but the distinctive feature is a patch of giant butterbur Petasites japonicus at the far end on the bridge over the lake north of the house.  This plant was sometimes introduced to old estates, along with Gunnera and other exotic species, but there seem to be few places where it survives today.  We examined the huge leaves on 27 July 2011, when the flowers had died away altogether.  The underside of some of the leaves had the orange rust-fungus Coleosporium tussilaginis, which occurs more commonly on coltsfoot.

Giant butterbur leaves

There was amphibious bistort Persicaria amphibia in the water and water figwort on the banks. 

Amphibious bistort

Water figwort

Alder trees Alnus glutinosa near the butterbur had the galls of two mites on their leaves, Eriophyes inangulis along the midrib and E.laevis on the blade itself.
 
Alder leaf with mite galls

Underneath many of the alder leaves was the rust-fungus Melampsoridium betulinum, which more normally occurs on birch, but has been recorded on alder in Scotland.  The rust causes pale raised patches on the upper side of the leaves.

Alder leaf with Melampsoridium betulinum (upper)

Alder leaf with Melampsoridium betulinum (lower)

The bridge, incidentally, constitutes the central arch of the former 18th century Kew Bridge over the Thames, removed to Hartwell when it was demolished.

We visited Hartwell again on 14 March 2012 to see the flowers of giant butterbur.  The transformation was incredible – the patch of huge leaves was entirely gone and breaking through the bare earth were tufts of white butterbur flowers subtended by very different small pale green oval leaves, each like a small cauliflower.  They were attractive, but the succeeding leaves make them impractical for all but the largest gardens and parks.

Giant butterbur in flower
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