30 Days Wild | Day 25 - burnet moths, purple pea pals and GIANT hogweed!

On day 25 of 30 Days Wild I once again went for a lunch break stroll. The opportunities for finding and photographing wildflowers along the canal near my office have been drastically curtailed since the verges were BRUTALLY STRIMMED a couple of days ago (I'm still upset about this), so I went elsewhere instead. There is a large fairly newly-built road (Aston Webb Boulevard) round the corner from where I work which leads towards Selly Oak, which has some nice scrubby grassland at the edges, especially between the road and the railway track, so I went to have a look at that. Firstly though I took a quick photo of this small cute fern which grows on the railway bridge. I'm not able to identify many ferns but this one is quite easy:

Wall-rue (Asplenium ruta-muraria).

Down along the roadside, there were loads of very fresh-looking burnet moths, I'd spotted a small swarm of them yesterday so had hoped they'd still be around! I'm not very good at identifiying moths, UK Moths says that Six-spot Burnet is the most common, these definitely look to me as though they have five spots though - maybe someone better versed in moths would care to comment?

Possible Five-Spot Burnet (Zygaena trifolii) moths?

They were on a rather washed-out looking Creeping Thistle (Cirsium arvense).

As well as the burnet moths, I also spotted on my walk a Burnet Companion moth, and Ringlet and Large Skipper butterflies. Not bad for a busy roadside!

I continued onwards and came across clouds of purple, for the most part courtesy of the pea family! Tufted Vetch and Hairy Tare were scrambling all over the place, and there were Garden Lupins galore, just passing their best now but still with a few nice flower spikes.

Purple pea pals.

Garden Lupins (Lupinus polyphyllus agg.) and Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca).

Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca). The bees love it!

Hairy Tare (Vicia hirsuta), a delicate vetch with tiny flowers!

Further on past all the purple, the view from the roadside opened out, looking across a very small valley towards the railway track which is built up on a tall embankment. Down in the valley was a monster! It looked like Cow Parsley but was about twice my height, it could only have been Giant Hogweed. It's difficult to get a sense of scale from the photos below but I can assure you that it was gigantic!

Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum).

Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum).

I love that I can find all this stuff only a minute's walk from my workplace :o)

Rowley Hills wildflower walk

On Saturday I headed over to the Rowley Hills once more for a wildflower walk organised by the Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust and led by local ecologist and botany expert Mike Poulton. There was a good number of attendees on the walk, keen to see some lovely wildflowers and hopefully some butterflies too. Although the weather forecast had been a bit grim, the rain didn't start until after the walk had finished, and the still, humid conditions were quite good for butterflies and day-flying moths!

The Rowley Hills looking grand in the June sunshine.

Mike explained a bit about the site's history; the Rowley Hills are former quarries, which were used as landfill once their working life had ended, and after that were capped with soil. They are now one of the largest expanses of unmanaged grassland in Birmingham and the Black Country. Although the landfill was capped several decades ago, the toxicity of the underlying soil has mostly prevented larger plants from becoming established, so succession has been kind of halted. However now the site is slowly being colonised by Hawthorn and Bramble scrub which is of some concern as although it is a valuable habitat in its own right (it was absolutely teeming with Whitethroats for example), it replaces the grassland which is inhabited by a different and more diverse range of species. Although the site is accessible to the public, the Rowley Hills has been divided into small land plots by its owner who is trying to sell them off, and as a result is in fragmented ownership. The Wildlife Trust has bought one of the plots, their Portway Hill reserve, and because they're not able to manage the whole site, are removing all the encroaching scrub in their plot to help preserve the grassland. Together with the Hawthorn scrub in other areas, this will help maintain a mosaic of different habitats to promote overall higher species diversity.

Here are some of the plants we found, hope I remembered all their names correctly!

Crested Dog's-tail (Cynosurus cristatus).

Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor). This is doing very well on the site - although it photosynthesises, it can also parasitise the roots of more competitive grass species, stealing their nutrients and reducing their vigour! In this way it helps engineer the ecosystem by preventing these grass species from taking over, thus maintaining the diversity of the plant community.

Lots of Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor).

Bush Vetch (Vicia sepium) with a Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum).

Ahem, I can't quite remember which Crane's-bill this was, I may have been distracted by trying to photograph a moth when Mike told us! I think it might be French Crane's-bill (Geranium endressii).

A weird mutated form of the Crane's-bill with curled petals.

Compact Rush (Juncus conglomeratus).

Smooth Rush (Juncus effusus).

Apparently one of the rarest plants in Birmingham and the Black Country, Tall Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella praealta).

Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella officinarum).

Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera). We were all dead chuffed to have found this, it was in pristine condition too!

Hare's-foot Clover (Trifolium arvense).

Thyme-leaved Sandwort (Arenaria serpyllifolia).

Lucerne (Medicago sativa).

Meadow Vetchling (Lathyrus pratensis).

And here are some of the butterflies and day-flying moths we spotted! As well as these, the ones I didn't manage to photograph were Green Hairstreak (yay finally!), Large Skipper, Small Heath, Peacock and Speckled Wood.

Common Blue butterfly female (Polyommatus icarus). Not quite sure how I managed to get this in focus, but I like it!

Mating Common Blue butterflies (Polyommatus icarus). Dead pleased to have seen this!

Caterpillar of Five-spot Burnet moth (Zygaena trifolii).

Latticed Heath moth (Chiasmia clathrata).

Burnet Companion moth (Euclidia glyphica).

Five-spot Burnet moth (Zygaena trifolii).