Thursday, November 22, 2012

Seven years and counting

The window box has now been doing its stuff for 7 years and 17 days.

Because the plastic is rapidly deteriorating, my friend Ralph Dellow made a wooden box for the whole thing to go in.  We decided not to put any wood preservative on this because of the effect it might have on the flora and fauna.

20121101 WBX (24)

As would be expected at this time of year,Wbx is going into its winter mode with the leaves on the sallows to the left turning yellow and falling.

In summer one, just one, of these sallow wands died quite suddenly with the leaves turning brown rapidly.  But now it has made a recovery of sorts with tufts of new leaves at the nodes all the way up the stem.

20121101 WBX sallow (26)

I wonder if some sort of boring insect got inside the wand.  I will investigate when I do the coppicing for this year.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Plant on moss: moss on plant

Yesterday, first day of spring, I had a careful inspection of Wbx. A curious thing was evident. The white clover that has been wandering about Wbx from its first year has taken up residence in the moss on top of the lump of sandstone and seems to have abandoned the ordinary soil altogether.

20120321 (11) Wbx rock & clover

At the other end one of the coppiced sallow stools (Salix cinerea) has accumulated a thatch of pointed spear-moss (Calliergonella cuspidata), first seen in the box in 2007. This moss is sometimes a major constituent , with creeping willow (Salix repens) of dune slack plant communities. Maybe the moss thinks Wbx is a sand dune.

20120321 (12) Wbx sallow & Caliergon