The end of 2022

 I have done a Boxing Day (26 November) tidy of the window box ready for the New Year.  I have coppiced back the sallow stems that died in the summer drought and taken away most of the dead leaves.  The holly is doing well and continues to look like the hybrid I. x altaclerensis, Highclere holly, with flat leaves and prickles round the edges.

To the left of the holly is a young 'wintrer green' plant of nipplewort, Lapsana communis, growing on  the now much decayed sallow log that has been in situ since this project began  This is a new record for WBX.  Other vascular plants include herb robert and tutsan, both of which are doing well.

A return to the window box

For a variety of reasons I have been neglecting the window box for a number of years, but now I am back encouraged by people asking me about the project.

I took the photo below a couple of days ago on 19 May.

Much has disappeared due to neglect - mainly lack of watering in dry weather - but several sallows are still alive and there are tutsan, herb-robert, goosegrass all doing well.  The holly in the foreground has also survived but the sallow log is in a very decayed state but much appreciated by woodlice - a sort of woodlouse castle..

There is quite a thick covering of dead leaves over the whole surface and I shall leave these.  I have also cut back (coppiced) the tutsan as it was rather overwhelming the right hand end of the window box.

Another sallow flowers

This time some male catkins on what I identify as goat willow (Salix caprea).

The sallows flower

Two of the self-sown sallows in WBX are carrying flowers (because if forgot, or omitted to coppice them last autumn).  I think this will do more good that harm, but I will try a rotational system in the future leaving some to grow up for two or three years before cutting back.

The female catkins in WBX below are, strictly, the grey willow (Salix cinerea).

Ten years and counting

4th November was the tenth anniversary of this window box wildlife project.  Generally speaking the box seems to have settled into a fairly stable state with many of the plants happily co-habiting.  And still there is no sign of falling fertility.

The picture above shows the top of the sallow log with its remarkable plant assemblage: various mosses, rushes (Juncus sp.), willowherb (Epilobium sp.), hairy tare, white clover, birch, hazel and yew.  I thought the latter had died, but it perked up in summer and produced some brownish new leaves (between the two clumps of rush).  Just off to the right is a leaf of ragwort.  There are several small plants of this, all relatively recent arrivals.

The picture above is of a berry of tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum), a plant that has been growing in the box for many years.  Most books say the berries are poisonous, but others that they are simply inedible: I suspect the latter is true as no evidence seems to be offered as to the nature of any toxicity.

The specific name of the plant androsaemum is from Classical Greek and means 'man's blood', andros aimon.  This is said to be because the berries, if squashed, produce a red, blood-like juice. They don't.  The named was coined by Dioscorides who was born in what is now Turkey, worked for the Roman army and wrote in Greek.  Perhaps he meant some other plant.

Another verbal curiosity is that as well as tutsan, the plant is known as 'park-leaves'.  Some books say, with impeccable logic, that this is because it grows in parks, but it is not especially prominent in this habitat.  I think a better conjecture, given in The Dictionary of Plant Lore, is that 'park' is a corruption of  Hypericum.  But why 'leaves' instead of  'leaf'?  There is possibly a clue in the Welsh term for the plant dail y beiblau meaning 'bible leaves' (because people used to use the pleasantly balsam scented leaves as page markers in their bibles).  Maybe park-leaves were used in the same way in England.

If anyone has noticed them, the yellow-orange spots on the park-leaves leaves are caused by the rust fungus Melampsora hypericorum, which seems to occur wherever the plant grows.

Fat caterpillar

Noticing that the taller sallow was looking a bit shredded with some sort of feeding damage, I quickly found the culprit was the fat caterpillar above.  It is a copper underwing, Amphipyra pyramidea.  It can be distinguished from its lookalike Svensson's copper underwing by the break in the white line on its side towards the front end (lower left in the picture) and the fact that it has a yellow rather than a red tip to its rear hump.

It is a new record for the window box and must have fed up very quickly as I have not noticed it until today.  The moth flies later in the year and the species overwinters as an egg, indicating that it must have survived in this condition in the window box for six or seven months.

Coppice time

In a brief spell of rather cold sunshine, I tackled the annual job of cutting back the sallows today.  Before and after pictures below.

There has been a surprising amount of growth on the sallows during the year and I continue to wonder where they get the nourishment from as no fertiliser is ever applied to the box.  I suppose it must come down in the rain and, to some extent, through the nitrogen fixing abilities of the clover and vetch.

The stick at the rear on the left is a two-year old wand which I have allowed to grow to about half a metre as a sort of cordon or pollard

With a bit of tidying up the top of the box looks quite presentable and very varied.

It does collect a lot of dead leaves in autumn though and I never know whether to leave them or tidy them away.  Perhaps I could put them into a neat leaf mould pile in some neglected corner.

Close encounter

Because, I suppose, of the recent wet weather the slugs and snails have been active everywhere.  The other day I spotted this tree slug (Limax maculatus) slithering slowly up a sallow wand.  Eventually it progressed onto a leaf already occupied by larvae of the sawfly Nematus pavidus.

The caterpillars kept flicking up their tails to discourage the slug, which quite quickly turned tail and headed into a less crowded area.

Summer variety

Many small things go on in the window box at this time of year and I can easily get overwhelmed with what needs to be worked out or dealt with.  Not that this couple of Sapromyza flies (Dipt: Lauxaniidae) would care about that:

One of the sallows has a fungal affliction that slightly distorts the leaves and there are yellowish patches of  ‘rust’ on the lower surface.  It is undoubtedly a micro-fungus, but I cannot pin it down to a particular species.

The colonies of Aphis gossypii on the tutsan are growing and the ants love the honeydew they secrete.  The abdomen of the ant on the right is gorged with it, but she is still drinking.  The black pods are of hairy tare.

I am still fascinated by the way the top of the small log is turning into a plateau of biodiversity.

One of the rush stalks has grown right through the blade of a leaf on the hazel (see below).  This means the leaf will not be blown away by autumn gales and its nutrients can go beck into the log top.

The chequered fruit-tree tortrix

The caterpillar I found in a rolled leave of tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum) on 30th June (see below) pupated and hatched into a moth recently.  It turned out to be a chequered fruit-tree tortrix (Pandemis corylana), a species whose larvae are usually found on trees, especially oaks.

Having photographed it, I took it back to the window box and let it go near the plants where I found its caterpillar.

Aphis gossypii

The blackflies depicted here on a shoot of tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum) have been identified by Bob Dransfield, the national aphid recorder as Aphis gossypii, the cotton or melon aphid.

This is a widespread pest in the tropics but not so frequently recorded in Britain.  It can easily be confused with two other aphid species, Aphis chloris and an unnamed Aphis.

Although they are a difficult group, much progress in the identification of British aphids can be made by using this web site: http://influentialpoints.com/Blog/How_to_identify_aphids_from_photos--the_basics.htm

A golden argent

Interesting name that – means a ‘golden silver’ – electrum maybe.

Anyway, I found this golden argent moth (Argyresthia goedartella) resting on a sallow leaf in the window box after a heavy rain shower (note raindrops in photo).

The larvae are found in birch catkins and there is a large birch tree nearby.

The first lacewing

This delicate insect exploring a sallow leaf on the window box is a green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea agg.  there are know to be several species in the aggregate, so it would be difficult to be more specific.

Among other things they eat aphids and we have some good colonies of this building up on the tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum)

A candy stripe spider

The picture below shows a female candy-stripe spider (Enoplognatha ovata sens. lat.).  This species is easily confused with its rarer relative Enoplognatha latimana – the two were only separated towards the end of the last century.  The spots on the abdomen are characteristic, but often there are red, or deep pink, stripes as well

E. ovata spends the winter in leaf litter and grass tussocks and comes up to low growing vegetation in spring and summer.  The females bind some leaves together with silk and guard an egg-sac within.

A common and widespread species in the British Isles.

Sawfly predator

Most years we get troupes of larvae of the sawfly Nematus pavidus eating the leaves of the goat willows (Salix caprea) in the window box (see entry on 21st September 2008).  There are usually two generations in spring and summer.

This year the spring generation performed as normal, turning many leaves to fretwork and some just to a midrib.  The second generation also started off well, but went into a decline a week or so ago.  Today I could only find one or two sickly individuals, but noticed the predatory mirid bug Heterotoma planicornis running about where the sawfly larvae had been.  They pierce their victims with the proboscis and suck the juices out.

Though not obvious from the photo this is a very distinctive insect with flattened second antennal segments and slender whitish ones beyond these.  This rather poor picture gives a better idea.

The bug is quite small, so maybe it had some help in eliminating the sawflies.

Early summer records

The window box continues to offer a home, or temporary shelter, to new arrivals.  I found a caterpillar that had neatly rolled a leaf of tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum).  This plant is a St John’s wort but there are several micromoths shelter in spun leaves at the tips of Hypericum shoots.  I think the most likely identity is that it is a large purple flat-body (Agonopterix liturosa), but it could be the tortrix Lathronympha strigana, both of which have larvae in spun Hypericum shoots, or one of the polyphagous micros.

Also, I can see no feeding damage on the tutsan leaves, so it might just be using this one for shelter.

On several of the sallow shoots there are colonies of aphids attended by our little brown ants.  I am pretty certain the aphids are the small willow aphid (Aphis farinosa) which favours goat willow (Salix caprea), which is the sallow mine are on.

Also today there was one tiny micromoth perched on a leaf.  It is a small or plain gold (Micropterix calthella), now right at the end of its season.

The scallop shell moth

One of the chrysalises from WBX I have overwintered hatched out today and was readily identifiable as a scallop shell moth (Rheumaptera undulata).

It was found last year as a caterpillar feeding on the sallow in WBX (see photo below).  It hid, or sheltered, under a loose tent most of the time and is distinctive not only from its colour and pattern but from the way in curls round like a question mark.

Not all that common in Sussex I think, but I’ll have to check.

After identification I let the moth go in the window box.  It flew straight off, unconcerned about its old territory.

Maybe a conifer.

                                                       

The seedling spotted the other day emerging from Sallow Log looks very much like a conifer.  Interesting that I now have two trees on top of this rather unpromising habitat, the other being the hazel.

The Window Box reserve in context

The window box that is the subject of this blog as seen from our sitting room window.  It is towards the top of the pane on the right against the shed wall.  Surprisingly tiny for so much going on.

More flowers

The white clover does not seem to be doing quite so well and it has left space for a plant of goosegrass (Galium aparine), first recorded in WBX a couple of years ago.

There was also another herb robert (Geranium robertianum) a white one this time (for the dark pink ‘normal’ variety see 22nd April).  The plants in WBX and about the garden produce either the dark pink flowers, or the white ones: I have never found pale pink intermediates.

While examining the new found hazel, I noticed what I thought was a small brown lacewing (just below the curve on the right and opposite the leaf stalk in the picture below).  On closer inspection it turned out to be the bud scale of something, blown off a tree in the recent strong winds no doubt.

I am still baffled as to how this baby hazel came to occupy its current position on top of the sallow log, but suspect the shoot must have thrust itself right up through the wood and the nut was probably buried under, or very near, the base of the log.