Seed dispersal part four. I mentioned that ants distribute the seeds of Cyclamen hederifolium. I suppose I should include humans as a sub-section of seed dispersal by symbiosis! I sowed Honesty (Lunaria annua) in pots several weeks ago and the first seedlings have appeared already. 

 Left to its owns devices the seeds of L. annua would drop to the ground as the distinctive coin-like seed pods dry out and split open.

 

 The pots contain a mixture of both the purple and white flowered forms of Honesty. They self-seed round and about the garden but I generally grow a few in pots as well. Annuals and biennials make useful gap fillers.

 

 Another photo taken in Green Park yesterday. The colours of autumn are plain to see but central London is something of a heat bubble and I would say a week or two behind the surrounding region. Daylight hours are the principal "on/off" switch where plants are concerned but temperature, rainfall and general climate have a considerable effect. 

 

Walking in Green Park this morning.

 

 Seed dispersal part three. Cyclamen hederifolium does things in a different order to many plants of this hemisphere. It flowers in early autumn, then goes into leaf over winter and loses the leaves in early summer. The exposed coums produce a plethora of seed pods which look rather like tiny coiled springs.   

 The seeds are too heavy to scatter very far but they have a sweet sugary coating which attracts ants who carry them away. Seed dispersal by symbiosis.

 

  Speaking of Comfrey [see last entry] there is a good harvest of it on the allotment which I put in a bucket to steep in water. Comfrey "tea" is said to be rich in nutrients which are released as the leaves break down. 

 This Comfrey is Symphytum officinale or perhaps Symphytum x uplandicum which is a cross between S. officinale and S. asperum.  I can't really tell the difference and Comfreys hybridize readily. The flowers are pinkish-purplish and appear in early summer.

 

 I think this is Dwarf Comfrey (Symphytum ibericum). Beth Chatto describes it as "impenetrable weed-cover" and Martin Crawford calls it "a fantastic ground cover". Certainly this patch on a nearby allotment is holding its own even against couch grass and continues to expand.

 

 This particular allotment seems to be abandoned and I took the liberty of teasing out a few root cuttings for my own allotment. Several sprigs I planted last year quickly formed a large clump -it spreads rapidly by rooting shoots.

 S. ibericum typically has yellow flowers in early spring and looks very much like Creeping Comfrey (S. grandiflorum). Having said that this form has red buds and white flowers that take on a blue tinge. The aforementioned Beth Chatto sells a variety called "Blaueglocken" which fits that description so perhaps that's what we have here.

 

 Seed dispersal part two. Needless to say many plants shed their seed by dropping the fruit straight to the ground. Hence Newton discovered gravity. There is a variation on that; some plants lean over first.

 Case in point the fruits of the Stinking Iris (Iris foetidissima) emerge from the pod as the stem withers. The stem begins to lean and they end up on the ground away from the main clump thus enlarging the potential distribution of the plant. NB I use the word fruit in the botanical sense i.e. the seed bearing structure of a flowering plant. The "fruits" of Stinking Iris are poisonous.

 

 Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is one of the first plants to announce the fiery tones of autumn. Native to the eastern side of the American continent from Canada to Guatemala it does considerably more than creep: it climbs and scrambles at a rate of knots. The leaves can linger on some deciduous plants for quite a while but P. quinquefolia drops them all in a day or two when the time comes.

 Seed dispersal part one. I'll post a few entries in the next week or two with some examples of different methods of seed dispersal. Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) is an annual which flowers in late summer. It enjoyed a brief popularity with Victorian gardeners but quickly jumped the fence to become a widespread weed/wildflower. 

 

 

  

 By this point in the year I. glandulifera has gone to seed. A closer inspection of the seed pods reveals why its rate of increase has been (literally) explosive. At a certain point the pods burst and the seeds are propelled away from the plant. It is said they can travel up to seven metres though I can't say I've put that to the test.

 

 I can't capture an image of the seeds in flight but squeezing the pod between thumb and forefinger shows the moment the seeds begin to pop. The pod spits them out as though a spring has suddenly been released. Furthermore Himalayan Balsam is a plant of stream sides and river banks; seeds sprayed into the water are taken by the current.   

 

 I noted recently that cardboard is excellent for suppressing unwanted vegetation and lasts for several months before biodegrading. So I was happy to accept the offer of a pile of boxes from a recent house move. Couch grass is pervasive on the allotments. It would need to be covered at least a year or two to get rid of it but hopefully the cardboard will knock it back a bit. And a good way to "draw" the layout of the paths. 

 Thinking back on the year in an autumnal sort of way. I posted this photograph on 1st. January with the caption "Time and tide, North Kent coast". Little did I know what the year had in store.

 

 I remember walking among the Wild Daffodils and Wood Anemones at Lesnes Abbey in mid-March. The implications of Covid and the proposed lockdown were just starting to sink in. And yet the springtide was glorious.

 

 Needless to say rural rambles were put on hold. But that did focus my attention on things closer to home. For example I saw a fine display of Wild Clary on Windmill Hill in Hitchin (my home town). I have walked over Windmill Hill many times in my life. Somehow I have never noticed these drifts of blue before!

 

 Likewise there were no field trips to the middle of nowhere. Instead I revisited some familiar landscapes like the Pegsdon Hills and Knocking Hoe where the Chilterns escarpment meets East Anglia. Familiar but always new.

 

 Nature and fine summer days were certainly a great consolation. Summer turns to autumn, autumn turns to winter, winter heralds spring. Time and tide.

 It's a work in progress. First compost bin stacked in sections. Next step- clear the undergrowth where it will be positioned.

 

 A project I started ages ago then didn't complete what with life getting in the way. Working my way through a pile of salvaged joists which I'm cutting into shorter lengths to make a compost bin for all the prunings and "green waste" etc. in my father's garden in Hertfordshire. Will post a photo of the finished product in due course. 

 The minimum size is about a metre square for the composting processes to work effectively. A wooden structure is always the best. Those plastic "Dalek" bins tend to be too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold and difficult to turn over. Or failing that the good old compost heap. Ah, a steaming pile on a cold winter's day- what could be better?

 

 Postscript  What the Americans call chainsaw carpentry albeit with a jigsaw. Some of the timbers are rotten but there will be enough for one bin, possibly two and some outdoor shelves.

 

 

 Got a delivery from Shipton Bulbs last week (above) which I'm in the process of planting up. They specialise in natives like Bluebells and Ramsons as well as a good range of other bulbs common and uncommon. They also have a selection of perennial wildflowers which they send out bare root.

 Their stock is cultivated on a smallholding in Wales and about as close as you can get to actual wild plants. Also it's freshly lifted from the ground which is important. Species like the aforementioned Bluebells and Ramsons for example do not store well because they do not like to dry out. 

 When purchased by the packet from garden centres such bulbs are likely to be dead rather than dormant. Likewise commercially cultivated perennial wildflowers are usually too tender whereas the ones from Shipton are tough as old boots.   

 The wildfire season in California and Oregon has been even more extreme this year than last year which was itself considered to be extreme. Fortunately I have not been in harm's way during my hikes in the region but I have seen something of the power of these infernos.

 The photograph above shows the mighty granite outcrops of Castle Crags as seen from the Pacific Crest Trail hiking out of Castella to Mount Eddy in 2018. The haze is smoke which hung heavy in the air from a fire burning forty or fifty miles to the north. It added to the effort of that day's walking- uphill all the way, the air is thinner at these alpine elevations and I could feel the smoke in my lungs.

 The previous year I hiked a section of the PCT where it skirts around Crater Lake in Oregon. I came upon a section of the forest that been decimated by fire a number of years ago. None the less nature was renewing itself from the ground up.

 

 Wildflowers were carpeting what was previously the forest floor. The tree canopy would have shaded out this kind of growth but the soil is a repository of seeds waiting to germinate when conditions allow. It's worth bearing in mind that this part of the world has a fire ecology. It has always burned and always will and the endemic species have adapted to this over millennia.

 

 Indeed the earliest inhabitants used controlled burning as a tool. Above is Big Meadow near Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada state line. That's the Tahoe Rim Trail going across it which I used to circumnavigate the Meiss Meadows Roadless Area in 2019. The Washoe Tribe lived round and about the lake before the continent was colonized and they were forced from their lands. They would set fire to the meadow periodically to encourage the regeneration of plants for food and medicine.

 Wildfires have become increasingly destructive for a number of reasons. One is that climate change is distorting the natural ecology of fire. Another is that so many people and settlements are in wildfire zones where once there would have been semi-migratory tribes. 

 Back in 2017 I visited Santa Rosa, an attractive town about an hour's drive from San Fransisco. Returning the following year it was shocking to be see whole neighbourhoods had been erased by the Tubbs Fire that burned across the Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties.

 On a similar note San Fransisco is a city I know well and it was disturbing to see the apocalyptic images of day turned to night by the smoke of huge conflagrations this year.

 Very pleasing the way these self-seeded Nasturtiums (Trapaeolum majus) have gone wild on the allotment. Nasturtiums are an annual and I sowed a packet or two of seed under the bean poles last year as a form of companion planting. The seed those plants shed has formed an ever increasing patch this year, and it's still growing.

 The first frosts will kill them off -the allotments are something of a frost pocket- but I notice there is already a copious amount of fresh seed under the foliage. I will gather some of it for elsewhere and leave the rest to germinate where it lies.   

 Memories of a summer's day. Some images of the wonderful Kingcombe Meadows in Dorset which I don't think I've published before. I was transported back to 2nd. July 2015 when I came across these photos whilst trawling through the archive.

 

 

 Some autumn colour in the front garden provided by plants of three different continents: an African Bush Daisy, a drift of Michaelmas Daisies aka Asters from North America and a clump of Sedum native to China and Korea. 

 Perhaps one day I will write a post about how their Latin names have all been changed to other Latin names in the process of reclassifying species by DNA testing. But today I think I'll just enjoy looking at them.