‘Week 7’ Roundup : 6th May
I dived into my emails on Saturday morning and alighted immediately on an incoming message with the subject title “BOOM!!” It was from Linda. Two days before, on the 30th, she had emailed with a photo of her first – our first – Black Bryony, Tamus communis. I suggested, in reply, that all she needed now was White Bryony, Bryonia dioica, to complete the set. I imagined this would be unlikely so early in the week, and besides, I had my own plans for White Bryony; last year there had been a great sprawling, clambering – and early-flowering – patch of it in a riverside tangle at Roughmoor, so that was where I’d be heading. This would be one of the easier plants, I fancied, in the week ahead – just a matter of getting the timing right, really.
But the next day, May Day, Linda took a stroll out to Nynehead, where – expletives deleted – she stumbled upon the first flowering Bryonia of the year. In VC6 this would be called a squeak; in VC5, evidently, it’s now to be known as a BOOM. Attached to her email there were three photos: one of the plant, a close-up of the flowers, and one of a woman with a Cheshire cat grin, standing beside a hedge. The subject title, the message and the photos said it all, really, revealing both the plant and the pleasure, plain as day, in black and white – black one day, white the next… The complete set, damn it!
Black Bryony has had quite a week. Along with its white namesake (no relation – one’s a monocot, the other’s a dicot),it was on our list of potential Week 7 first-flowerers. But whereas our first flowering dates (FFDs) for most species have tended to span several weeks – varying according to microclimate, aspect, altitude, distance from the sea, etc. – the onset of flowering of Black Bryonyhas shown a remarkable synchronicity across the county. Following Linda’s trail-blazer on 30th April, Val (Glastonbury), Ro (Honibere) and I (Orchard Wood) all reported it for the first time on May Day, followed by Liz (Wedmore) and Chris (Wiveliscombe) on the 2nd – and then Helena and Jim (Paulton) on the 3rd, who took a seven-mile hike to Chewton Wood and saw “nothing from the Week 7 list until we were almost home when … we finally found Tamus.” So it’s a fair bet that others will start seeing it in the next few days. Note that the earliest flowers tend to be on the lowest (least conspicuous) axillary racemes, while the upper, more visible, racemes are still tightly in bud.
To put these FFDs for Black Bryony into context, in twelve years of recording first flowerings my earliest date for it was 29th April, in 2011, while the latest was 2nd June, in 2013. For the Taunton area, the 2008-17 decadal average FFD for Black Bryony was 18th May; Walter Watson’s, from almost a hundred years ago, and similarly based mainly on observations around Taunton, was 2nd June. By any measure, then, for Black Bryony the spring of 2020 is proving to be an especially early one…
… Which is hardly surprising, given the weather we’ve been having. The long, warm, dry spell has been only briefly punctuated by cooler, damper conditions. We had a taste of these during Week 7, with fronts bringing cloud and rain on Thursday, Sunday and Tuesday, and with temperatures for the most part well down on previous weeks. One evening we even lit the fire. The rain was badly needed and, despite the cooler temperatures, has probably helped to further accelerate spring rather than slow it down.
Before we tackle the rest of this week’s hit-list, let’s quickly highlight a few other happenings in the natural world…
- It’s been another good week for butterflies: holly blues are still in abundance, while I had my first Small Heaths, Grizzled and Dingy Skippers on the 4th at Thurlbear. Georgina reported her first ‘dingy’ on the same day, at Ubley Warren, but her first ‘grizzly’ was much earlier, on 19th April – same date as in 2019, apparently. Has anyone had a Common Blue yet?
- And what about dragonflies? My first Beautiful Demoiselle, Calopteryx virgo, was on the 2nd, beside the river Tone at Obridge. No damsels, although surely others are seeing them by now?
- If you’re on the Levels you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about, but in Taunton this year we appear to have at least four singing Cetti’s Warblers – one each at Hankridge, Obridge, Longrun and Roughmoor.
- Last week’s Swifts vanished, so we had to endure several days of empty skies, until the 4th when there was a sudden arrival of new birds – and these turned out to be our birds! From midday onwards screamers were circling high overhead, while later in the afternoon some of the birds began hurtling about at rooftop height …
- And then one of them peeled away from the rest of the group, suddenly dipping and dropping, then curving round and up for a first, hurried ‘fly-past’ of its nest-site. It’s hard enough to comprehend the length of the journey this bird must have been on since it was last here, yet harder still to appreciate the precision of its return; back from Africa, somewhere south of the Sahara, to the familiar, slightly warped fascia board on the gable-end of 16, Gordon Road, TA1 3AU.
This week, the seventh since the start of ‘lockdown’, produced the largest batch of first-flowerings yet: more than 160 records and about 100 species, shared between 18 recorders. We saw 16 of the 20 species on our target list. Here they all are, as usual in roughly alphabetical order, with a few ‘extras’ getting a mention along the way…
‘A’. At last, we’ve ‘ticked’ Black-grass, Alopecurus myosuroides. I’d begun to think we’d never get it. Ro was the first, at Lilstock, on the 4th, followed by Andrew in Highbridge and me in Trull, both on the 5th. The Trull plants were growing along an arable margin with new-flowering Black-bindweed, Fallopia convolvulus. Two days earlier, on the 3rd, Andrew also had Horse-radish, Armoracia rusticana, on Wick Lane, near Brent Knoll.
‘B’. White Bryony, Bryonia dioica. As a footnote to Linda’s record, my phone ‘pinged’ a few minutes ago and it was an incoming WhatsApp photo of a White Bryony flower, from Helena in Paulton. Which means we have now had two records for it this week, neither of them mine.
‘C’. This week’s sedges have included a very early Pale Sedge, Carex pallescens, recorded by Chris at Langford Heathfield on 30th April, and several records of False Fox-sedge, Carex otrubae, including Linda in Wellington on the 1st, Liz near Wedmore on the 2nd, and Ro at Lilstock on the 4th. Remote Sedge, Carex remota, is now widely flowering in the south of the county, with records this week from Wellington, Langford Heathfield, Taunton, Thurlbear and Orchard Wood. Dogwood, Cornus sanguineus, has been slow to blossom, but Ro saw it at Lilstock on the 4th, while I had it the next day at Trull. We’ve also notched up two of this week’s target ‘C’s. Smooth Hawk’s-beard, Crepis capillaris, was seen by Alastair in Minehead on 24th April (so actually in Week 6), while Dee had it in Clevedon on the 30th. Crested Dog’s-tail, Cynosurus cristatus, was coming into flower on a road verge in Taunton this morning. But perhaps the most exciting – and certainly the most photogenic – ‘C’ of the week was Chris’s record of first-flowering Meadow Thistle, Cirsium dissectum, at Langford Heathfield. This isn’t a species I routinely record, so I’m not sure whether this is especially early or not – but Walter Watson would have been flabbergasted: his FFD for it was 12th June!
‘H’. In Week 6, Hilary visited Purn Hill where, on 23rd April, she recorded not only Common Rockrose, Helianthemum nummularium, but also White Rockrose, H. apenninum, and the hybrid between the two, H. x sulphureum. Andrew also saw Common Rockrose in Week 6, at Cross Quarry on the 25th, while in Week 7 Ellen had it at East Harptree on the 1st, and Anne at Broadmead Quarry on the 3rd. It isn’t flowering yet at Thurlbear.
‘L’ to ‘P’. Just the one record for Rough Hawkbit, Leontodon hispidus, Helena seeing it in the churchyard in Midsomer Norton this afternoon (6th). ‘L’ of the week, though, should probably go to Andrew for his first-flowering Pale Flax, Linum bienne,at Uphill on the 2nd. (The only ‘L’ I could produce was Rye-grass, Lolium perenne, in the back garden on the 2nd.) Water-cress, Nasturtium officinale, was spotted by Liz on the 2nd. The first record for flowering Corn Poppy, Papaver rhoeas, was also on the 2nd, as Gill pushed her bike up the hill coming out of Nunney. I had it this morning, in less desirable surroundings, on a road verge in Taunton. But ‘P’ of the week, although not on our list, must surely be Greater Butterfly-orchid, Platanthera chlorantha, recorded at Thurlbear Quarrylands (me) and Ivythorn Hill (Fiona Davis), both on the 4th – an exceptionally early first date. My decadal average FFD for Greater Butterfly-orchid is 28th May, while Watson’s first date for it was 4th June.
‘R’. The first bramble to come into flower is usually Dewberry, Rubus caesius. Watson’s dates were 5th May for Dewberry and 21st June for Rubus fruticosus agg. While the latter is now flowering much earlier than that, FFDs for Dewberry have hardly changed at all. Anyway, we’ve had both during the week: the first R. caesiusrecords were from Orchard Wood on the 1st, Roughmoor on the 3rd and Lilstock on the 4th (Ro), while the sole R. fruticosusrecord was from Station Road, Brent Knoll, on the 3rd (Andrew). Early-flowering ‘fruticosus’, at least in Taunton, tends to be the alien – and delicious – ‘Himalayan Giant’, R. armeniacus, which should start blooming within the next week. Elm-leaved Bramble, Rubus ulmifolius, usually follows about a fortnight after the ‘Giant’…
We had three ‘S’s on the list, and we found them all! Annual Pearlwort, Sagina apetala/filicaulis, was recorded in pavement cracks in Taunton on the 4th and Midsomer Norton on the 6th. White Stonecrop, Sedum album, was flowering on a road verge in Taunton, again on the 4th, and in Burnham-on-Sea on the 5th. Chris had what seemed to be the first record of White Campion, Silene latifolia, at Runnington (near Wellington), on 30th April, followed by Andrew’s at Berrow, beside the churchyard, on the 4th. Then Alastair, in an email this afternoon, listed it with several other species as having been in flower at Dunster beach on 26th April (Week 6); but then another email, close on its tail, was to say he’d just remembered that White Campion was already flowering there several weeks earlier, on 27th March (Week 2) – and he attached a photo to prove it! That’s a very early record for it, but there’s no doubting its veracity. Another ‘S’ of note, by the way, was an early Bittersweet, Solanum dulcamara, recorded by Liz near Wedmore on the 2nd.
‘T’ is for Tamus. Nothing to add on that one. But a brief nod here to Goat’s-beard, Tragopogon pratensis, which several of you have reported for the first time this week, including Liz in Wedmore, Val in Glastonbury, Ro at Lilstock, and Andrew at Lympsham. It should probably have been one of our Week 7 targets. Another ‘T’, White Clover, Trifolium repens, is now popping up all over the county, from Nynehead and Lilstock in the south and west to Midsomer Norton in the far north.
And finally, ‘V’. This week’s ‘V’ is Heath Speedwell, Veronica officinalis, which was flowering nicely at Thurlbear Quarrylands on the 4th.
Amongst the other more interesting FFDs this week: Bugloss, Lycopsis arvensis, at Dunster beach on 26th April (Alastair) and Wellington on 4th May (Linda); Downy Oat-grass, Avenula pubescens at Berrow on the 4th (Andrew); a second Rough Chervil, Chaerophyllum temulum, this time on Cotlake Hill, near Trull, on 30th April; Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, at Hurlstone on the 2nd (Alastair); Common Spike-rush, Eleocharis palustris, near Wedmore on the 2nd (Liz); Smooth Tare, Ervum tetraspermum (= Vicia tetrasperma), at Nettlecombe on the 6th (Pat);Tall Ramping-fumitory, Fumaria bastardii, at Lilstock on the 2nd (Ro), plus White R-f, F. capreolata, at Wedmore, also on the 2nd (Liz); Small-flowered Crane’s-bill, Geranium pusillum, in the churchyard at Berrow on the 4th (Andrew); Common Water-crowfoot, Ranunculus aquatilis, near Wedmore on the 2nd (Liz), and its coastal counterpart Brackish Water-crowfoot, Ranunculus baudotii, at Dunster beach on 26th April (Alastair); second records of Yellow Rattle, Rhinanthus minor, from Chewton Mendip on the 1st (Ellen), and Wild Clary, Salvia verbenaca, in and around Ro’s garden at Lilstock on the 3rd; Common Figwort, Scrophularia nodosa, at Greenaleigh on the 1st (Alastair);Sea Campion, Silene uniflora, at Blackmoor, Mendip, on the 4th (Georgina);Bog Stitchwort, Stellaria alsine, on Croydon Hill, also on the 4th (Alastair); and Field Pansy, Viola arvensis, at Nynehead on the 1st (Linda).
Oh yes, and one more ‘first’ this week, from Ellen: “The first forage harvester heard howling on the hill beyond the village … [which] always marks the transition from spring to summer for me.”
Many thanks, as usual, for your records, and apologies if I’ve inadvertently omitted anything of particular interest. You’ve brightened up my week no end.
Simon