Black Medick

I found this growing out of the top of a wall and realised I'd forgotten how to distinguish Black Medick, Medicago lupulina, from Hop Trefoil and Lesser Trefoil. The answer is that Black Medick is hairier, has spirally coiled black fruits, and the leaflets are mucronate. 
The word 'Medick' comes, according to Geoffrey Grigson, from herba Medica which means the Median or Persian herb. Strabo had it originating in the country of the Medes. Dioscorides' description shows that it was originally referring to M. sativa, or Lucerne, which was widely grown as a fodder plant in the Middle East. Lupulina derives from 'wolf-like', referring to its similarity to the hop or 'willow-wolf'.

House Spider

I'm not really keen on spiders; slightly phobic like so many people. It's annoying. I've been trying to overcome it by taking a more scientific interest. 
This is the common house-spider, Tegenaria domestica, which can grow to a considerable (and scary!) size. They are fast movers too. This one was posing nicely so I thought I'd snap it for the blog. It is a male I think: more elongated body and impressive pedipalps. The latter also contain a small chamber for storing semen prior to fertilising the female. 
I confess I didn't have the nerve to pick it up so encouraged it to get off my clothes by annoying it slightly.

Mugwort

This is a common plant growing on rough ground; I guess it would qualify for classification as a ruderal species. According to Grigson it has an ancient association with magic and medicine, known across Europe as the Mater Herbarum or Mother of Herbs. I would be hung in houses to ward off evil.
Other local names include St John's plant, Old Uncle Henry, Sailor's tobacco and, according to Wikipedia, Naughty Man.
It's Latin binomial is Artemisia vulgaris and Wormwood, A. absinthium, is in the same genus.
 

Sea Spurge

This is another plant from the Welsh littoral: Sea Spurge, Euphorbia paralias. As you can no doubt tell, these are two different plants. It is found above the high tide mark but below the dunes in these cases. Euphorbias have weird flowers with round or crescent-shaped 'glands'. (Unfortunately these aren't clear in the photo.) The inflorescence is an umbel although this isn't as obvious as in the carrot family. They also have acrid latex which is obvious when the stems are cut.

Common Heather or Ling

This is Common Heather or Ling, Calluna vulgaris, and is in flower at the moment on heaths and moors all over the UK and Ireland. It smells amazing - just like the honey the bees make from it. People sometimes get confused about our heath plants: bell heather, ling, cross-leaved heath and the rare ones such as Dorset, Cornish, Irish, Mackay's and St Dabeoc's. Ling is easy - the leaves are unlike any of the others.

Dwarf Gorse

To complete the gorse trilogy, this is Dwarf Gorse, Ulex minor, growing on the Ashdown Forest heath and flowering next to the flowerless gorse, U. europaeus. It does not smell of coconut either.

Large Yellow Underwing

Few more moths from 10th/11th August trapping. This one is a Large Yellow Underwing, Noctua pronuba. It's a female, the male's being darker. The two black dots near the tips of the forewings are useful identification features. 
Compare with N. orbona from back in July.

Common Cord-grass

 

 

This is a genuinely interesting grass. No really. It is the primogenitor of saltmarsh succession, invariably the only plant to grow until it has trapped sufficient sediment to raise the land out of the tidal range inhospitable to the rest. Here it has formed a small patch of saltmarsh in Swansea Bay and was the only thing growing apart from seaweed. 
It is also the best understood example of allopolyploidy: the creation of a new, fertile species from the hybridization of two species followed by chromosome doubling. Common cord-grass, Spartina anglica, has evolved from the sterile hybrid Townsend's cord-grass, S. xtownsendii. This is a hybrid of Small cord-grass, S. maritima, and Smooth cord-grass, S. alterniflora. So you get a lot of cord-grass for your buck with this tough little critter.
Smooth cord-grass was introduced from North America and the hybrid arose around Southampton in the mid nineteenth century. S. anglica was first noticed in 1892 and its vigour and sediment-trapping ability was soon recognised. Consequently it was widely planted around the coast as part of sea-defences and land-reclamation. It can grow seaward of every other perennial plant! 

Fox Moth

This little fella was crossing the road, one can only assume to get to the other side. It took a bit of sleuthing to identify, but it is an early instar of the Fox Moth, Macrothylacia rubi. It lives with remarkable views and plenty of food. After overwintering as a final instar it pupates around the end of March/April to emerge as the moth which flies until June.

Wild Parsnip

I feel a bit stupid for not taking a picture of the whole plant as it is a massive thing towering to around two metres. There were several of them spaced out in a glade amongst pines behind the beach at Burry Port on the north side of the Loughor estuary. They looked like a weird installation.
The book says they are strong smelling, so I crushed a bit to check. Later it warns you that the sap is highly irritant, causing a nasty rash on exposure to sunlight. I can't help thinking the warning should have come first.
It is Wild Parsnip, Pastinaca sativa. It is generally classified as the same species as the vegetable but a number of different subspecies are recognised.
The plant contains useful chemicals, including coumarins and psoralens. The latter absorb UV light and are used in suncreams.

Marram Grass

This is perhaps the most familiar plant of British dunes: Marram grass, Ammophila arenaria. It's extensive rhizomes stabilise the sand preventing drifting of the dunes. The plant was harvested in the past for various uses, including thatching and basket-making, but this led to dune movement and loss of arable land and villages, especially in Denmark. Laws were introduced in Scotland in the seventeenth century and Denmark in the eighteenth century to prevent its removal.
The genus name derives from the Greek ammos: sand, and philia: lover. It is an example of a xerophyte, able to tolerate drought through various adaptations that help reduce water loss: waxy covering; inrolled leaves with stomata on the internal surface only; stomata situated in small pits; hairs to slow air movement across the leaf surface.

Sea Holly

Sea Holly must be the most striking plant of the dunes? This magnificent specimen of Eryngium maritimum was growing at the back of the beach at the Llangenith end of Rhossili beach. It caught my eye when the sun came out, silvery blue ruffs around the spiky inflorescence.

Wood Sage

This is another plant from the Pembrokeshire coast which I was a little suprised to find growing amidst the gorse and heather: Wood Sage, Teucrium scorodonia. It has a great Latin binomial.

Chough

"Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax -Penwith -Cornwall -flying-8b" by Andrew - originally posted to Flickr as chough. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyrrhocorax_pyrrhocorax_-Penwith_-Cornwall_-flying-8b.jpg#/media/File:Pyrrhocorax_pyrrhocorax_-Penwith_-Cornwall_-flying-8b.jpg

My final catch-up post is of one of my favourite birds: the Chough, Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, the red-legged red-billed member of the crow family and one of our rarest. It is confined to coasts in Wales and Cornwall. It is the county bird of Cornwall but absent for around fifty years until it re-colonised in 2001. The Latin name refers to the ancient belief that it was drawn to and caused fires, although the means by which it initiated conflagrations was never clearly elucidated. It has broader more rectangular wings in proportion to its body when compared with the other crows, with long separate primary 'fingers' which are seen clearly in the photo. It's call is described by the inestimably Geoff Sample as "whizzing zings" which is a perfectly succinct summary.
 

Betony

Catching up on missed posts: this is Betony, Stachys officinalis, growing amidst the bell heather and western gorse beside the coastal path. 
The specific name indicates longstanding usage by the herbalists. The Romans thought it protected against sorcery and later it was used to thwart witchcraft.

Rock Sea-spurrey

This was a new one for me and it's taken a little while to find it in the books. Close up it has exquisite little flowers and is densely covered in glandular hairs. It was growing right on the coastal path at the base of one of the stone 'steps' put in by the National Trust team. 
It is Rock Sea-spurrey, Spergularia rupicola, a member of the Caryophyllaceae family (Chickweeds, Pinks and Campions).

Babington's Orache

This is, I'm pretty sure, Babington's orache, Atriplex glabriuscula, sprawling over the shingle at the back of a beautiful little cove between Newgale and Solva on the Pembrokeshire coast. To be certain one would need to check the bracteoles, but as you can see from the photos the flowers are only just appearing. It can be difficult to distinguish from Spear-leaved orache, Atriplex prostrata.

Rock Samphire

Another coastal plant growing on a headland near Caerfai Farm. This was taken late on our last day. That night a cold front blew in and changed things utterly: high winds and torrential rain.
This is Rock Samphire, Crithmum maritimum, which is an unusual member of the Umbellifer family in that it has fleshy stems and leaves, like cacti. It is confined, as the binomial suggests, to coastal locations. Oddly it isn't found between the very north of Scotland and Suffolk. 

Hare's-foot clover

I have been unable to connect to the interweb for the last few days on account of having been stuck in some fields near Crickhowell with a large number (around 20,000) other (mostly white, middle-class) people. The result of such large numbers in a rural location was overload of the local mobile network to the extent that data-services were suspended. 
Now I am at my parents' house in Swansea I do have access, albeit at unfeasibly slow connection speeds. In fact it has only been possible to load a page without it timing out by fiddling with various techological bits. (For anyone of a sufficiently geeky bent, the ping time was initially over 2000ms with a download speed of 0.04MB/s.)
Enough excuses; there is a lot of catching up to do, most of which will be done tomorrow as it's now already late. But for today I offer you this lovely little Trifolium, Hare's-foot clover, Trifolium arvense. It was growing by the quayside at Solva which, having read the books, is just where you'd expect it to be growing. The Trifoliums are rather charming members of the Fabaceae family, aka the 'legumes', aka peas, vetches and clovers. They all have funny nodules in their roots which contain bacteria that can 'fix' nitrogen, i.e. convert inorganic nitrogen to organic.

Bittersweet

Great looking flower and great common name: Bittersweet. It's also known as Woody Nightshade, revealing its close relationship with a deadly cousin. The Latin binomial reveals other relationships: Solanum dulcamara. It is in the same family as potatoes and tomatoes. Of the seven or so family members living in Great Britain this is the most widespread, often seen scrambling through brambles and hedgerows.

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