Reg’s Meadow - September 2007
A Meadow Under Your Seat
When you sit in the viewing area to watch the Valley of the Eagles demonstration over Reg’s Meadow, do you ever take the time to look underneath your seat? If you did, you might be quite surprised at what you would find growing there. While the main part of the meadow deservedly receives all the praise for its beauty, a meadow in miniature is secretly growing in this unexpected location.
Hundreds of feet tread on the area around the seats almost every day, trampling the grass and keeping it low. The area is occasionally strimmed when the vegetation starts to get too high and this combination of numerous feet and an occasional hard cut back has produced what we find there today. In the body of the meadow the more dominant plants, such as grasses and plantains, grow very tall, overpowering and crowding out the smaller, less competitive species. Some of these smaller species are found out there earlier in the year but they tend to disappear as the “bully boys” take over. We have noticed that they do not disappear altogether, but some of them seed themselves in the seating area and go on quietly growing there, where they don’t have to fight so hard for survival.
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Underseat Miniature Meadow |
Yarrow |
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Self-heal |
Black Medick |
Let’s look at a typical under-seat area. This one is over towards the left-hand end of the seating. In this small patch we find a surprisingly large number of familiar plants and even one or two species which we haven’t found out in the main meadow. Among the familiar plants we normally see in the meadow there’s Yarrow, Self-Heal, Black Medick, two kinds of Plantain, Ribwort and Hoary, White Clover and Marjoram. There was quite a lot of the dainty Common Mouse-ear in the main part of the meadow earlier in the year, which is now fairly hard to find among the taller species - also some quite noticeable patches of Cut-leaved Cranesbill. Both are found in our miniature meadow under the seats, along with another Cranesbill, Dove’s-foot, with more rounded, notched leaves.
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Ribwort Plantain |
Hoary Plantain |
White Clover |
Wild Marjoram |
Spear thistle also appears, which we haven’t found in the main meadow in 2007, except for one plant in the old pond.
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Common Mouse-ear |
Dove’s Foot Cranesbill |
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Cut-leaved Cranesbill |
Spear Thistle |
A number of what we often refer to as “those yellow things”, dandelion-like members of the Daisy family, are also in evidence. Most of these need careful close examination for positive identification, especially in this environment, where they tend to be smaller than usual as a result of repeated trampling or strimming – we’ll look at the “yellow things” in detail at a later date. Scarlet Pimpernel is growing happily under the seats but we haven’t found any out in the meadow this year. We have regularly found a tiny blue Forget-me-not in the seating area which we have not seen anywhere else in the meadow. And of course there’s the dear old Common Daisy, which never lets us down, even in winter, when nothing else is flowering!
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Scarlet Pimpernel |
Forget-me-not |
Common Daisy |
Some More Meadow Insects
This is an excellent time to look for meadow insects, especially on warm days, when it’s really buzzing out there! Here are a few new ones found this year.
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Cardinal Beetle |
In the undergrowth beyond the hides I found a beautiful scarlet beetle, one of the Cardinal Beetles, which is a name given to a group of brightly-coloured, flat-bodied beetles, many of which have irridescent wing cases and thorax. This one is Pyrochroa serraticornis, and is mostly found on flowers at the edges of woodland. It is around 20mm long, lives under the bark and feeds on other insects. It looks rather similar to the Lily Beetle, a garden pest which many of you may know, but that has a shorter, rounder body and dimples on its wing cases – our beetle is innocent of harming lily plants!
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A Pretty Fly |
This fly is as yet unidentified but is rather splendid when seen in close-up. In case you thought a fly was just a fly, think again. There is a very wide range of different shapes, colours, faces and all sorts of other characteristics. If anyone out there has experience of fly identification, we’d be pleased to hear from you!
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Longhorn Beetle |
The beetle pictured here is Leptura fulva (alternative name Corymbia fulva) and is a longhorn beetle, apparently found more often in central Europe and other parts of the world than in Britain. (Trying to find out more about this beetle on the Internet threw up mostly records in Dutch, though there was one reference to it being found on a nature reserve in Southampton Water). It has been present in the meadow in previous years and is there again in 2007.
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Cantharis rustica |
There are many Soldier Beetles out there, mostly the little orange ones seen particularly on white flowers such as Yarrow and Wild Carrot. Those are Rhagonycha fulva (see Meadow Muses August 2005). Another member of the same family, Cantharidae, is Cantharis rustica, a striking black and scarlet beetle which is often found on umbellifer flowers such as Hogweed, but seen here in the meadow on a Plantain stem. It is common and widespread in the UK and is carnivorous, feeding on other insects.
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Weevils |
Here are some very tiny insects, a group of weevils, running around all over a Plantain seed head. These are possibly Grain Weevils, Sitophilus granarius, which breed in stored grain and similar products and can become a serious pest in granaries. You need to get really close to see these little creatures and accurate identification depends on the differences between a large number of physical characteristics, including length of snout, position and shape of antennae, colour and markings. There are over 40,000 species of weevils in the world.
