November 2017

My apologies for rattling on about spiders again, but it does seem to have been a particularly good year for our eight-legged friends.  (Of course they are friends, they keep the fly population under control.)  We recently came home to find a garden spider (the one with the white cross on its back) apparently floating in mid-air.  It was, on closer inspection, in the centre of its web, but it was still way above the hedge and surrounding shrubs.  This spider, clearly dissatisfied with the diet obtainable by building a web between shrubs, had climbed the telegraph pole and suspended its web from the telephone wire.  This is as good a demonstration of spider planning and intelligence I’ve ever seen.

Garden Spider

I recently had a trip out to Aberdaron in North Wales where I was struck by the variety of wildflowers still in flower in mid-October.  The trees were starting to lose their leaves there but there was plenty of clover and knapweed in flower.  One particular species stood out - Common Fumitory.  There are only a handful of species of fumitory found in the UK and they are in a very small sub-family called fumariaceae.  I was quite surprised to find that fumariaceae is a sub-family of the poppy family, mainly because of the huge difference in the shape of the flowers.  Apparently they got the name fumitory from the smoke-like appearance of the plant with its grey-green leaves.  It is a certainly a very delicate plant with its fern-like leaves, though I would have called the leaves bright green.  An alternative name for the plant is earth smoke, though to appreciate the smokiness, perhaps you need to get up early when there is dew about and maybe squint a bit. The scientific name for common fumitory is fumaria officinalis.  Plants with officinalis in the name were normally used as herbs or medicines and fumitory is still used by herbalists to treat skin blemishes and conjunctivitis.  Interestingly common fumitory is a source of fumaric acid, which is something human skin produces when exposed to sunlight.  It is also a food additive, often shown in the ingredients list as an acidity regulator and has the E-number E297.  And if you have a taste for salt and vinegar crisps, then the vinegary flavour probably comes from fumaric acid.

Common Fumitory

One consequence of the late flowers is that the insects that depend on nectar are still about and we saw several red admiral butterflies.  This species used to be a migratory species.  Eggs were laid in Southern Europe or North Africa and several generations worked their way northward, arriving in the UK in late spring.  As the weather gets colder in autumn, they then fly south to over-winter and start the cycle again.  But now, with milder winters, there is less pressure to return south and so we now find that some red admirals hibernate here and together with the migrating population swell the total population in the UK.  A sister species of the red admiral is the painted lady which also migrates northwards from Africa and the mystery there was that nobody saw them flying back southwards.  It wasn’t until 2009 that investigations of insects using new radar techniques discovered that they do fly south but at altitudes of over 1000 metres (about 3,300 feet in old money).  The migration(at speeds of up to 30mph in favourable winds) involves a round trip of more than 9,000 miles and six generations of hungry caterpillars. 

Red Admiral

This is a much longer migration than the better known migration of monarch butterflies from Mexico to Canada.  So next time you see a red admiral or a painted lady you can marvel not just at their beauty, but also at just what a tough creature it really is.

Painted Lady