Yellow Staghorn

We saw so many species at Delamere that I couldn't possibly actually do an entry on each one -- partially because I'm not sure that any one person got a full species list.  I can, however, do entries on the ones I got good pictures of.  One of those species is Calocera viscosa, which has a few common names including yellow staghorn, staghorn jelly, jelly antler, yellow false coral and yellow tuning fork.  We were lucky enough to find a fantastic looking one:

Yeah.  I know!  This is one of the reasons I was so happy about yesterday's mushroom day.  I was going to write about how I was surprised that there wasn't a common name for it along the lines of "false fire" until I looked up the literal translation of the scientific name for it.  Calo refers to calor, which refers to heat, inflammation, glowing, fires of passion.  Cera literally just means wax and viscosa, well, viscosa refers to the fruiting body being viscid or greasy.  "Greasy fire wax" is how I prefer to think of it, especially as a bit more research also tells me that a taxonomist called Wallroth in 1833 decided to call it Calocera flammea, but the name didn't stick.  I agree with him though.

This beautiful fungus can get up to 10cm in height and is often found on dead conifer wood.  I believe this one was on a felled pine, though it was a bit past it in terms of identification.  If this fungus looks like it's growing from the floor, it's probably actually growing on dead coniferous roots under the soil.  It's a saprophyte, preferring really and truly dead trees and is present between June and December.  It's pretty common and widespread in Britain and Europe; I also found out that it's present in Canada and North America (at least in parts). It also has a white form, but that's a pretty rare find.

It's not poisonous, but being a jelly fungus means it's got an odd texture and from all accounts it's got a nondescript taste and odour.  It's another one of those that sounds like it falls into the "technically edible" category.  I recently read a book that used the term "edible, but not worthwhile", which sounds perfect for this species.  Personally, I'd rather just look at it in vague wonder and take some great pictures.

I still say that it looks like suspended pixie fires.  Yes, it's really that bright a colour.

Edit:  Ironically, during the writing of this post, a candle just burned a hole in the carpet.  /facepalm.

Mushroom day

Despite the starter motor in the car being knackered, I still went to Delamere for the fungi day today. There's a train station in walking distance, so I took that option. It was fantastic and totally worth it. I learned so much today, saw some fascinating things, got lots of pictures, and met some lovely people. It's safe to say that I'll be writing about some of the species I saw on this visit for the next several entries on this blog. Looking forward to getting it all onto a computer as posting from a phone totally shortens what you want to say. If you do ever visit Delamere, I recommend the cafe at the station that I'm currently sat in. It does ace tea and scones.

Hmph.

Sadly, there's no follow up on the traps from yesterday.  The (usually incredibly reliable) car wouldn't start this morning.  Here's hoping that the OH can sort it for tomorrow...

On the bright side, I really needed to do some business-type stuff.  So I did that instead.  The time hasn't been lost, at least, but I can't help but feel I've really missed out.  I was really looking forward to it too.

Oh well.  Keep on swimming...

It's a TRAP!

This afternoon I popped over to The Barn Countryside Centre in Manchester for a couple of hours.  This afternoon's activity with the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit was laying out traps for checking tomorrow.

Firstly we were introduced to two different traps -- Longmans (top), which I've already talked about before (and got a picture of this time!) and tube traps (bottom):

The Longmans and the tube traps both work on the same principle:  Open door with food.  Small mammal enters, hits a trip, which closes the door.  In the tube trap, this trip is the white bar at the top (the paddle at the bottom is the door).  Longman traps cost around £60, but tube traps cost around £20.  However, tube traps don't do so well in the wet as the door doesn't necessarily function properly because the plastic sticks, so it's all about when and where you're using them.

We took out 30 Longman traps and baited them with seed and dog food.  The dog food is added for your insectivorous types, i.e. shrews.  I have to admit to putting quite a large teaspoon in due to residual guilt of previous trappings.  We also added a tennis ball sized amount of bedding in the form of hay and dried grass.

We laid out three transects of 10, spaced at 5m intervals.  On our way out to lay the Longmans, we passed by some hedgehog tunnels that had been laid out.  Two of them had been pulled into the path and the sausages had been nicked, presumably by dogs.  Shame.

Tomorrow morning, we'll get to see what turns up!

Green Alkanet + Update

This week is turning out to be quite busy.  Not only did I do my day at Record this week, and I'm in work (and working outside of work too), but I've also got two mammal trapping days and a fungi day on Saturday.  Big week, so expect some updates later in the week and across the weekend.

Outside of that, on my days at work I often get to walk through a park.  I've seen a few interesting plants and things on my way in (I often plunder the hedge, if I'm honest) and snapped a few pictures.  Recently, I've noticed a wildflower called Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) on my way to and from the car.  It's a charismatic very green plant with very blue flowers that have a white centre.  The plant is also pretty hairy -- to the point where it can feel a bit like stinging nettles in some of the older specimens.  It's part of the borage family, which is fairly obvious once you know that plants in this family tend to have blue flowers and be hairy:

Look at that stem! 

Anyway...

It's scientific name has stuck in my head ever since I heard it; literally translated, it means "five-tongues always alive" (or five-tongues evergreen).  Green Alkanet has also confused me as a name, so I've decided to look into both of the names as well as the plant.

Apparently the "five-tongues" part refers to the five tongue-like petals.  The corolla does kinda look like five tongues, complete with that central groove you've got underneath... as long as you squint.  It's more about the shape than the colour in this case.  It's called "always alive" because it's an evergreen plant that keeps it's leaves over winter.  The scientific name is something of a descriptor, really.

As it turns out, the name "Green Alkanet" is also a descriptor.  In this case, the word "green" is referring to those evergreen tendencies.  Alkanet's an odd one though because it's a hand-me-down word.  Alkanet is a Middle English word which was a conversion of an Old Spanish word, alcaneta, which is a form of the Old Spanish word alcana.  Alcana comes from the Medieval Latin alchanna, which has been nicked from the original Arabic language, where it started of as al-ḥinnā’.  Al-ḥinnā’ literally means "the henna".  It's literally called evergreen henna because red dye can be extracted from it's roots.

That's why it was brought here.  It's an invasive plant from the continent, native to southwest France and, fairly obviously, the Iberian peninsula where Spain is a main feature.  Britain used to have a lot of monks that really liked having that red ecclesiastical cloth, so they imported the plant in order to create dye.  It's hard to say when this happened, but it's fair to say it was quite some time ago.  Green alkanet is considered naturalised as it's very common in hedgerows, though as you move north, there is much less of it.  I was surprised to find it near us because the land here is quite acidic and it's a calciphile.  Here's a better picture of the tongue shape from Wikipedia commons:

I still can't help but feel that after likely being here for over 1,000 years, it's part of the historic landscape, despite my usual loathing for many invasive species.  Having said that, it's not as destructive as other invasives like knotweed or rhodi, so that's definitely colouring my view.  But I shan't go into that here as that is a massive subject for discussion!