Newsletter Cylchlythyr

THE FRIENDS OF TREBORTH BOTANIC GARDEN

CYFEILLION GARDD FOTANEG TREBORTH

NEWSLETTER CYLCHLYTHYR

Number / Rhif 59 May/Mai 2017

Fig. 1. Pots of Iris reticulata outside the Laboratory [p.6]

Fig. 2 A sink with Scilla sibirica Outside the Laboratory [p. 6]

COMMITTEE

Sarah Edgar ([email protected]) Chair Angela Thompson ([email protected]) Vice Chair, Membership Sec Cathy Dixon ([email protected]) Treasurer Natalie Chivers ([email protected]) Curator Rosie Kressman ([email protected] Horticulturist Dr John Gorham ([email protected]) Events Secretary Thomas (Tomos) Jones ([email protected]) Publicity Dr David Shaw ([email protected]) Committee Member Enid Griffith Committee Member Tom Cockbill ([email protected]) Committee Member Dr Ann Illsley ([email protected]) Committee Member Berta Rosen ([email protected]) Committee Member James Stroud ([email protected]) Committee Member Rosie Barratt ([email protected]) Committee Member Jen Towill ([email protected]) Committee Member Bethan Hughes Jones ([email protected]) Co-opted Christian Cairns ([email protected]) STAG representative (Chair) Jane Batchelor ([email protected]) STAG representative (Sec)

Newsletter Team

John Gorham email as above (layout, photos) Grace Gibson [email protected] (adverts, articles) Angela Thompson email as above (commissioning articles, planning, editing)

Cover Photos:

Front: A variety of bulbs in pots outside the laboratory [p. 6]

Back: Landscapes and Flora of Chile [p. 38]

Unless otherwise stated, all contributions to the newsletter are copyright of the author.

For more information about The Friends of Treborth Botanic Garden, please visit our website: http://www.treborthbotanicgarden.org/friends.htm or write to: The Secretary, Friends of Treborth Botanic Garden, Treborth, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2RQ, UK

Issue No. 59 May 2017

Contents

Chair’s Introduction, January 2017 3

News in Brief 4

Curator’s Report: January—April 2017 4

New Books for the Treborth Library 7

Bonfire/Composting Site 9

Catching the Bug 10

Eventful Adventures in Crete 11

Creative Writing– Poems and Prose 14

Galápagos and Costa Rica 16

Volunteer Profile: Marion Gash 19

Moonwort 20

Treborth Botanical Seminars 27

Ants in Our Plants 27

An Anglesey Garden—Spring and early Summer 29

Moth and Meteorological Records from Treborth Botanic Garden 35

The Flora of Chile 38

Himalayan Balsam—A Growing Menace 43

If possible, please access the online version of the Newsletter to save paper and printing costs, and tell Angela Thompson ([email protected]) that you do not require a printed copy.

Chair’s Introduction, May 2017

This newsletter contains some more of the poems and prose written by members of the Montage Writers Anglesey creative writing group. It is wonderful to see how Treborth has inspired these talented writers. Dan Brown, Nigel’s son, was also inspired by Treborth as a young boy, and was taken out by his father on local botanising trips. Here he learnt about moonwort and he writes about this little treasure. Nigel also has written for us - his observations of wildlife in his garden on Anglesey. An unwelcome plant in the countryside is Himalayan balsam, which can carpet damp areas in the late summer, as Julian Brandram reports.

We have several articles about developments at Treborth. Natalie Chivers reports on several of these and she includes some photographs of the many pots of bulbs there were planted up last year and are now providing a superb show. Pat Denne writes about the 30 years of moth and weather records that she has painstakingly entered on to a database – and appeals for someone to come forward to analyse them. Erle Randall tells you about an important but less public area of the Garden – the bonfire and compost site; this has been landscaped and now provides an essential service in dealing with the bulk of the waste vegetation we produce. There is also a report by Ann Illsley on a donation of books by Edyth Harrison, and an article by John Gorham on an intriguing little plant in the Tropical House. A new species was found in our wildlife pond, a saucer bug, and Matthew Hamer writes about this discovery. Treborth depends on the contribution of volunteers, and we like our readers to meet them through these pages: Marion Gash is profiled in this newsletter.

Tomos Jones came up with an interesting idea at the Committee last year. We have a wealth of academic expertise among our contacts, so why don’t we call on these experts to give a series of botanical seminars for students and members? Good idea we said, and Tomos volunteered to organise it – and he writes about the very successful start of this new venture. And finally we have several articles about far flung places: Shaun Russell writes about plants in Chile and Richard Birch has been botanising in Crete, and I report on my recent trip to Central America.

I hope you agree that yet again Angela has put together a fascinating collection of varied and interesting articles for this newsletter. From the responses we get after each newsletter is published, we know there is an appetite for thoughtful, knowledgeable and amusing writing about Treborth and the wider natural world. It was therefore with some sadness that I attended an event in March to mark the closure of another magazine, Natur Cymru – Nature in Wales. I know many of you were subscribers. This excellent magazine has been published four times a year since 2001, but could not continue after external funding sources

were withdrawn. While I acknowledge that public bodies are facing financial constraints, it is a great pity that a relatively small amount of money could not be found to keep Natur Cymru in publication.

Sarah Edgar

News in Brief

· Erratum

In the recent Newsletter No.58 Jan 2017, Fig 9 on page 25 was unfortunately incorrectly captioned: ‘Cattleya lodigesii’ should be 'Cattleya (Guarianthe) bowringiana'. Thanks go to Simon Retallick for pointing out the mistake.

· Donations

We should like to thank the following people who have kindly donated funds to the Friends: Joy Scott, Raj Jones, Greenwood Forest Park, Elizabeth McLelland, and Jane Smith and Brenda Haselgrove.

Angela Thompson

Curator’s Report, January – April 2017

As I sit writing my report, my peripheral vision is filled with the butter-yellow heads of the Narcissus flowering in the Welsh Fruit Orchard outside my office window. Spring has finally sprung and it is welcomed by the beautiful variety of spring flowering bulbs here at Treborth. All the hard work of the Friends over the winter months has paid off, and we have been treated to an explosion of flowers around the main buildings and across the lawns. I don’t think I can decide my favourite, although I am particularly drawn to the Eremurus × isabellinus 'Cleopatra' (foxtail lily). If you have these too then like ours the foliage is likely to just start peeping through the surface of the pot now, and soon they will produce tall spikes of burnt- orange flowers towards the end of May through June and July if the pot is placed in full sun.

So far this year we have been busy planning another spectacular herbaceous display - including sowing seeds and repotting for plant sales, courtyard pot preparations and tending to the Butterfly Border. We are continuing to develop the Chinese Garden, focussing on hardy medicinal ferns, peonies, and dwarf Rhododendrons as well as grasses and ground cover. The Friends and STAG have been hard at work clearing some of the rogue bamboo clumps from the woodland edge and meadow plots, and we plan to dig trenches around several of the clumps to restrict rhizomatous growth. The Long Borders have had a thorough prune and are now being colonised with some attractive ground cover as we develop a planting plan for the new open spaces. Our endemic Island flora bed shelter is now finished and Rosie is working with the Friends to establish a plant list encompassing the Canary Islands, Madagascar, St Helena and the Japanese Islands. We are also working closely with other botanic gardens, as plant material is not usually commercially accessible.

Our efforts continue with the GLASTIR work schedule, including widening the path down past the Bog Garden onto the Welsh Coast Path. This will allow us to drive our all-terrain vehicle in a loop around the site, making surveying and maintenance more efficient. Strimming and clearing invasives has been on the agenda for the Arboretum, in preparation for new planting and to display engraved labels that not only identify each specimen tree, but introduce visitors through a ‘time-line’ to show the changing tree-scape of Wales.

We are very fortunate to have been awarded three more internship opportunities in collaboration with the Bangor Employability Award. Sarah-Louise Ellis, Jemima Letts and Tom Morrissey who are Bangor University students, join the garden team to assist with the day-to-day gardening, as well as woodland management and working with GIS to create garden management maps. This is an excellent achievement of all who have been involved and I hope our students enjoy their time at the garden.

STAG continue their commitment and endurance here at the garden, with two brilliant work parties achieving seed sowing, tree planting, bamboo clearing, and giving the Grevillea juniperina x rosmarinifolia 'Canberra Gem' a good prune on the Rock Garden. Cuttings have been taken and we hope to plant the boundary of the Rhizotron with seedlings to establish an attractive hedge. STAG finished for their Easter break with a brilliant botanising trip to Aberffraw led by Nigel Brown. Among many, the highlights of the trip were viewing Mibora minima (Early Sand- grass - the world’s smallest grass, confined, as a native, to coastal dune systems in Wales) and Tulostoma brumale (Winter Stalkball - a rare stalked puffball found in autumn and winter among moss or short grass mainly on sandy, alkaline soil).

If you are able to visit the garden you will now see three new interpretation boards that have been erected; providing maps, pictures and information about the woodland, the Lucombe Oak and the Chinese Garden, the boards have been designed by local designer Atkins-Heneghan, funded by the Friends of Treborth and the Confucius Institute, and mark the beginning of improved interpretation throughout the Garden. These signs also compliment two new dog awareness boards that have been installed at either end of the Garden. With information about wildlife, forest school groups and gardening volunteers, these boards highlight the importance of keeping dogs on leads and picking up dog waste.

Continuing the information theme, we have been working on a new university-hosted Garden website. Historically, the Garden has had a one-page feature on the university website, but we have been working with the university IT department to create a 60-page site, with information on the history of the Garden, glasshouses, grounds, education, public outreach activity as well as the latest news and promoting forthcoming events. Please visit http://treborth.bangor.ac.uk

My next written work activity is preparing my presentation for the Plant Network Annual Conference at RBGE at the end of April, where I have been asked to speak about garden partnerships and how they inspire people. I have chosen the title of ‘Treborth Botanic Garden – the power of volunteers’. The PlantNetwork conference gathers an audience of garden directors, curators and garden managers alike; people who are interested in volunteer retention and recruitment strategies of other gardens. I will celebrate the foundation and history of the Friends of Treborth, the variety of roles you have here at the Garden and your relationship with the university and wider community, and, if I can, I will add the presentation to our newly established web pages, so look out for this in the coming months.

Happy gardening! Natalie Chivers

Natalie is also featured in the April issue of Gardens Illustrated in the ‘Garden Talent’ article - a short profile feature to promote horticultural talent.

New Books for the Treborth Library

We have recently had several books donated to us by Ms Edyth Harrison and I am describing some of them we have added to the Library collection, in the Garden section.

Place that Plant, by Frances Welland

This is a very well-illustrated book that guides one to a suitable position for that new plant or, alternatively, what to get to put in that space. The plants are described with photos and for all different situations in soil type and whether in full sun, shade, damp or dry. Well worth consulting if there is a problem place in your garden, or even better, if you are starting afresh in a bed or even a new garden. Full of good ideas.

Gardening in a Small Space, by Lance Hattatt

In the same series as the book above, this one concentrates on getting the right plant for the best effects. The author demonstrates how to make the best of a small area whether an old-fashioned cottage garden, a secluded garden, one with a water feature and more. This well-illustrated book gives ideas to gardeners they may not have even known were possible, for examples gooseberries grown as standards or trained onto a wall as a small climber or apple trees grown in pots.

The Gardening Year, by Lance Hattatt

This is the third book in this series, described as an 'essential book for what happens in your garden'. The author describes plants, including border annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees, for each month at the beginning of each monthly chapter and covers every situation from bog gardens to kitchen gardens and patio plants. This book is also richly illustrated.

Seasonal Pots and Planters, by Stephanie Donaldson

This book is subtitled 'Everything you need to know to Create Show- stopping Plantings for all Seasons'. The first part can be described as a 'How-To' and it then describes container plants for each season, carefully describing each step of preparing the container, whether it is for an annual show or a lengthier period and even goes into some topiary in pots. Again, well-illustrated.

New Container Style, by Adam Caplin

Subtitled 'Simple and Innovative ideas for Planting Recycled Pots', this really is as described, using shopping baskets to cans (including used drinks cans) via a commode! A well-illustrated book, the first chapter describes the joys that can be derived from junk. This author gives a fresh and imaginative twist to container gardening & gives plenty of ideas, as well as instructions for using these containers, from a plant and situation perspective. A lovely book to browse.

Plants for Shady Places, by Dorothee Wachter

This book and the following three are Aura Garden Guides, originally published in German and all translated by Andrew Shackleton. In this book, shade is treated as both a choice and a challenge. Suitable bulbs, shrubs, ferns etc are illustrated along with directions as to how, when and where to put them, with continuing cultivation and care, as well as describing their habit, final size and soil preferences. Usefully, the first third of the book gives design ideas and describes the different types of shade found in gardens.

Cottage Gardens, by Robert Sulzberger

As time moves on, so tastes change and this book describes the return to the 'more romantic' cottage gardens of yesteryear but with a modern slant. From describing the origins of the cottage garden, this book aims to obtain the most variation possible from a small space, intermingling flowers, vegetables and herbs, thus creating a mixture of colours and scents.

Rock Gardens, by Eva Richter

Giving a detailed guide to both building and designing a rock garden, this little book gives planting advice for all possible aspects and for all sizes of rock garden, including those featuring water interest. It also describes a less common form of rock garden: the dry-stone wall planted up.

Orchids: Practical Advice on Buying and Growing Indoors and Outdoors, by Jorn Pinske

The fourth book in this series is also well-illustrated. Starting with a historical guide, this small book goes on to buying the various species available, planting and maintenance, via troubleshooting for scale insects, mealy bug and suggestions as to why 'my orchid isn't flowering?'

Guide to the Wild Orchids of Great Britain and Ireland by David Lang

When published in 1989, it was the most up-to-date publication on UK orchids, explaining the structure, life-cycle and reproduction of orchids’ complex lives, plus details of classification. Each species is fully described, with photographs and / or line-drawings (not alongside the descriptions) together with a glossary of maps of their distribution. Ann Illsley

Bonfire/Composting Site

Those of you who use the path up through the woods from the Coastal Path at the Playing Field end of the Garden may have noticed new activity at the top. A long- awaited plan has finally come to fruition thanks to the FTBG Committee. This area had been used for bonfires for a number of years but had become a bit ofa dumping ground for awkward waste and rather an eyesore at one of the main entry points to the Garden (Figure 4).

As may be imagined this Garden produces a great deal of waste material, grass cuttings from the regular mowing of the lawns followed by large quantities from the annual cutting of the meadow plots, weeds from the various beds, shrub prunings and the inevitable dead wood from storm damage and disease. The glasshouses keep the supply coming all through the year. All this needs to be disposed of in an orderly manner. Woody material and persistent weed roots need to be separated from compostable residue. Because of the proximity of the sports ground there are restrictions on when we can have bonfires.

Five years ago, we built 3 bins in the Arboretum opposite the Southern Africa bed to take the lawn mowings and as much of the offtake from the meadow plots as we could fit in. These have been quite successful but composting nothing but green grass mowings produces a wet anoxic sludge which is not nice to handle and difficult to incorporate into the soil. We needed to mix the grass clippings with a proportion of coarser drier material. Up until now this has been composted in bins behind the Maize House. These have come to the end of their useful life. New bins were needed. Tom Cockbill's original scheme had included this area but the necessary money was not available. Now the Friends stepped in and agreed to finance it…

Clearance was the first task, and on the 2nd December 2016, a JCB and skips arrived (Figure 5). The bags of rotting material, stone and soil were quickly moved and the site was ready for reshaping. It is always nice to see a master of his machinery at work and Robin excavated the bank and rebuilt the bund on the other side with amazing dexterity. I couldn't help remembering that at one point we had considered doing the work by hand!

Now came the harder part. 15 holes had to be dug to take the 100x100mm posts. Jake and Tomos rallied round and we set to work with iron bars and spades. It turned out to be rather harder than planned as hidden under the turf bank lay a surprising quantity of broken brick which taxed the muscles and patience. We managed to keep more or less to the planned alignment until the very last hole where Jake discovered a large and immovable slab of sandstone. After 3 days of hard labour all posts were up. The final fixing of the rails was comparatively easy and by the 1st February we had 4 new large compost bins (Figure 6).

Thanks to all those involved.

Erle Randall

Catching the Bug…

On a recent Bangor University School of Biological Sciences first-year field trip to Treborth Botanical Garden, an interesting aquatic insect was caught whilst pond- dipping in the large pond. Bangor University Entomology Society was tipped off about the find which lead to a fantastic discovery. After hours of searching, a specimen of Ilyocoris cimicoides, or more commonly a Saucer Bug, was fished out and tentatively identified. Its ID was confirmed later by Brian Eversham, Bedfordshire Wildlife Trust’s Chief Executive, and it is indeed the first recording of this species in Gwynedd, an amazing find.

Closely related to shield bugs, this aquatic Heteropteran spends much of its life hiding in dense vegetation feeding on a large variety of insects using its piercing rostrum and sharp clawed forelegs. Multiple individuals were later found on the day, providing evidence that there is a population at Treborth which would have likely arrived at the pond by nocturnal walking or by flight from established populations elsewhere. Matt Hamer

Fig. 3. Saucer Bug Ilyocoris cimicoides (photo Matthew Woodard)

Eventful Adventures in Crete If asked whereabouts in the Mediterranean I would most like to spend a week botanising, I would probably say Crete in spring. It has a mere 1700 species of native flowering plant; considerably less than neighbouring Greece, which has the highest number of flowering plants than any other country in Europe (+/- 6700). But about 10% of the Cretan flora are endemic, and many of these are very showy.

Spring comes early in Crete: much of the coastal phrygana, with its wealth of orchids, is burned out by the end of March. In 1989, the road from Chania on the northwest coast of Crete, up the western side of the Lefka Ori (the ‘White Mountains’) to the Omalos plateaux, was a gravel track closed to traffic until mid-

April. The only way up was by motorbike; a hazardous journey through landslides and snowdrifts to see massed Crocus sieberi below the snowline, growing with the dainty sky-blue Chionodoxa cretica. Today it is a metalled road accessible throughout the year, with hostels on the plateaux itself and it is well worth a visit to see many of Crete’s special plants.

In April, when the tourist season starts, take the route from Rethimnon on the north coast, to Chora Sfaki on the south, along the eastern flank of the Lefka Ori. Scrubby hillsides above 1000m will still have many orchids, although the bee orchids will largely have finished, as will the endemic Iris unguicularis var cretensis, which is superior to the winter Iris of gardens, but much more difficult to flower. Look out for the exquisite Orchis papilionacea with its spike of large pink flowers (Figure 7), and there may be a few of the yellow-flowered Orchis pauciflora still in bloom (Figure 8). Here too, you will probably find the endemic Arum creticum. This is undoubtedly the best of the twenty or so species of arum. The lemon-yellow spathe is positively radiant, and unusually amongst a genus with a foetid stench, the flowers smell of lemons! It is eminently garden-worthy and incredibly hardy: the wintergreen leaves are immune to frost and it clumps up rapidly, almost to the point of weediness. All is forgiven, though, when the near-fluorescent spathes brighten the herbaceous border in April. It should be more widely grown.

Late April, above 2000m, the plateaux itself is still wintery. It will, however, be a breathtaking garden of Tulipa saxatilis. You can find this tulip – one of three species on Crete – in any catalogue, but frankly don’t bother. In cultivation it produces far more thick glossy leaves than flowers, and spreads by stolons that intermittently surface above the soil before looping down again, like some terrestrial Loch Ness Monster! In the wild, though, its soft lilac blooms with a yellow throat are dense-packed and breathtakingly beautiful (Figure 10).

In 2010, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted, stopping air traffic across Western Europe, and stranding me in Crete. I didn’t particularly mind: it was an opportunity to undertake the long and arduous hike from Anopoli, up the southern face of the White Mountain. This route was only passable on foot in 2010. It climbs through many climatic zones starting with olive groves (Olea europea), where in the more sympathetically managed orchards one might still find Tulipa orphanidae beneath the trees , and there will certainly be the endemic white -flowered Cyclamen creticum which is common throughout Crete. It is not in general cultivation, for it is, apparently, the most difficult of cyclamen to keep alive.

Further into the trail, the deciduous woodland gives way to scattered forest of Pinus brutia, and on the exposed slopes the gnarled Cupressus sempervirens. These trees are fantastically old: core sampling of the ravaged trunks indicates

many started life over 2000 years ago, when the Romans were nailing Jesus to the cross! Beneath them can be found another endemic arum, Arum idaeum, which ought to be in general cultivation, and the lush clumps of Paeonia clusii, the white Paeony of Crete. The satin goblets with their golden cluster of stamens area magnet for bees, which swarm in the centre of each flower. This glorious plant is amenable to cultivation, but like all single-flowered paeonies, the flowers are too fleeting to compensate for the lush foliage.

Above the tree line, the scenery is karstic and apparently lifeless. Look closely, though, and there is a rich alpine flora. A botanical journey through Crete would not be complete without locating the endemic Cretan alkanet, Anchusa caespitosa (Figure 9). This is a plant that almost falls into the category of mythical alpines. Its gentian-blue flowers are sessile, on a plant barely 2cm high. It is notoriously difficult in cultivation, owing to its long taproot, which extends deep into the limestone in search of water. It is rabidly intolerant of winter wet, and difficult to propagate other than by seed. Grown in a ‘long tom’ flowerpot, in a very gritty soil, it will flourish. I have grown it successfully outdoors in a raised bed, covered in a sheet of glass, but it looks far too lush, and produces too few flowers for this to be much of a boast.

I finish on a mystery. The grotesque Dragon Arum Dracunculus vulgaris is freely available in the trade and popular despite its noisome stench! It is not difficult to grow in a well-drained, sunny herbaceous border, and can be seen flowering by the pond in Treborth in early May. It occurs commonly throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including Crete (Figure 11). However, there is a form of this plant on Crete, which has a yellow spadix and a sweet, citrus aroma. I encountered it covering a hillside somewhere in western Crete. It is regarded as a subspecies, yet it cannot possibly cross-pollinate with the normal Dragon Arum, because the cues for pollinators are distinctly different. It is probably evolving as a distinct species. It is not in cultivation, and indeed barely described. I wish I could remember where it was!

Phew! And I have covered only one bit of Crete, and only in the spring. In autumn one might find an equally impressive flora of bulbs including the bizarre Biarum davisii. On that occasion, in 1992, there was an accident that made me miss my flight…

Richard Birch

Creative Writing– Poems and Prose

The following pieces were written by members of a self-organised local creative writing group on Anglesey, and have been inspired by a visit of the group to Treborth in 2016. If you would like more information about the group, please visit the website www.montagewritersanglesey.webeden.co.uk and click on the Copper Writers tab at the top. The first pieces appeared in the January 2017 issue of the newsletter. At least two of the group members are also Friends of Treborth.

Sarah Edgar, Chair of the Friends, is delighted with the contributions: ‘I think these are super. We have seen paintings, photographs, embroidery and weaving inspired by Treborth but not the written word (apart from Chris Howard’s poem on autumn leaves). Just shows what a special place it is.’

Treborth Haikus by Angela Gliddon (written at the "Writing and Mindfulness workshop" organised by Houman)

Fern frond standing tall collecting light beneath the trees survivor of ancient times

Slender tall birch tree swaying in the gentle wind old pines protect you

Apple on the ground discarded at a picnic forest creatures eat you now

It Has a Chinese Flavour To It by Brian Stephens

I was with a writing group wandering round Treborth Botanic Gardens, making notes about its beautiful plants. It was so varied in its display. There was something so British about the place; the smell that came from fresh cut grass, the blazing sun that decided to visit us on that particular day and the soft breeze that helped to cool us down.

Looking round, I spotted the Chinese Garden – a circle – which was still in its infancy, still under construction; just enough to get my imagination flowing. The circle consisted of Chinese specialties, for instance six simple benches. They were cut from the same piece of wood, and the legs and seat held together, by four huge screws - two in both legs and that was it. They made me wonder if such a seat could

hold Billy Bunter or anyone of similar proportions.

Next, to complete the circle, were miniature trees but fully grown, dwarfs – bonsai trees.

So the circle consisted of six white benches and six miniature trees. Inside, it was covered with crunching slate, brought down from a Chinese mountain. It felt strange but comfortable underfoot. I was making for the centre, which was round, to match the outer circle. In a small pool of water, floated, not black rotting leaves as I had thought at first, but white flower petals and pieces of bamboo.

The whole garden had a Chinese air although it was newly constructed and I determined to come back and see it again as it blossoms into that other ‘Land of the Dragon’.

School Outing to Treborth Botanic Gardens by Joy Mawby ( In this small observation, I cast no aspersions on any teachers or children. I was probably watching those involved during the lunch break or when all the work was done)

What should they be doing, what should they be learning, these hand-standing, somersaulting, fast-chattering, laughing children, in the buttercup field at Treborth Botanical Gardens?

What should they be doing, what should they be teaching, these sunglass-wearing, sunbathing, smiling, chatting teachers, sitting on a bench in the buttercup field at Treborth Botanical Gardens?

Perhaps socialising not science, happiness not horticulture, laughing not lessons are why they came here. Here to this special place - to Treborth Botanical Gardens On this sunny, summer afternoon.

Galápagos and Costa Rica

For years, we had been thinking about visiting the Galápagos Islands but had been concerned about the reports of environmental problems caused by tourist pressure. However, more recently we had heard that the situation was improving with more effective control of visitor numbers and activity and so we decided that we would finally realise our long-held ambition to see the unique Galápagos wildlife. It was also an opportunity to visit Costa Rica, with its rich biodiversity.

The Galápagos archipelago is a World Heritage Site and is managed as a national park by the Ecuadorean government. There are 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands and over 100 rocks and islets, which together comprise a land mass of 3000 sq miles, spread over about 17000 sq miles of ocean. They lie 600 miles off the coast of Ecua- dor, and the environment is influenced by three currents: the Humboldt Current coming up from the south and the Cromwell Current from the west are both cold currents, rich in nutrients, fish and marine invertebrates, bringing cold waters upwelling from the west; and the warmer Panama current comes in from the north. These currents have brought in species to populate the islands, and, as Charles Darwin discovered, many of these species evolved into endemics, living nowhere else on Earth. The islands are volcanic, with the older ones (3-5 million years) towards the east, and the younger ones (less than 1 million) to the west.

We spent a week on Galápagos, living on a boat with 14 other passengers and an excellent naturalist guide. Being on a small boat meant that we could motor to the smaller islands overnight, then we landed on the islands in an inflatable. Our guide explained to us the rules of the National Park, eg we must keep to the paths when walking on the islands, we must not get any closer to the wildlife than 2 metres, and we must not leave any litter or collect anything. All of our activities had to be pro- grammed and approved by the National Park authorities, so, when at one point we asked if we could have an extra snorkeling trip, she had to get permission before we could do so. As far as we could tell, this system minimised the impact of visitor pressure on the islands; we only occasionally saw other groups on the smaller islands and they were always a distance away from us.

The week certainly provided some of the best wildlife watching we have ever done. We saw almost all the iconic species: giant tortoises, green sea turtles, boobies, waved albatross, marine and land iguanas, Galápagos penguins, Darwin's finches and mockingbirds. Our first stop was to see the marine turtles mating in the shelter of mangroves on the north coast of Santa Cruz Island. We then motored up to the most north easterly island, Genovesa, where the lack of hawks mean that there are a multitude of other birds. We saw the three types of boobies, beautiful members of the

sulid (gannet and booby) family: blue footed (it really is a stunning colour), red footed (whose webbed feet also have prehensile claws to enable them to nest and perch in trees) and the endemic Nazca booby. The Nazcas were showing gannet-type court- ship behaviour and were nesting on the ground right by the path where we were walking, so it was very difficult to keep to the 2 metre rule!

Bird watching was easy for amateurs like us, as there was limited vegetation in the coastal zone where we did most of the walks, and of course the birds were mainly unafraid of humans. The species list is relatively small - 140 including vagrants. There are 52 species of land bird, and, of the residents, over half are endemics, most of which we saw in the one week. Every day we saw finches and noticed their differently shaped bills, as well as the varying plumage of the mockingbirds. We weren’t sure if we would see the Galápagos penguin; these live mainly in colder waters in the west, and we were visiting the eastern islands, but there was a small population that we saw on Bartolomé Island. This penguin is one of the smallest in the world and the most northerly. It is closely related to the Humboldt penguin and is thought to have arrived in the Galápagos when a few individuals were swept up the west coast of South Amer- ica. We did not expect to see the waved albatross either, as in January they disappear to sea after breeding on Espanola Island, but our guide spotted one sitting on a beach among nesting boobies (she was particularly pleased that the guide for another group that we had passed had not seen it!).

Apart from the sea turtles, the other reptiles are iguana, tortoises and lizards. The land iguanas were described by Charles Darwin as "ugly animals...from their low facial angle they have a singularly stupid appearance" and it is hard to disagree. We saw two males on Santa Cruz Island, both about four foot long, yellowish brown, glar- ing at each other having a stand-off, before one lumbered off, feeling it was not worth a fight, although from the broken spines on his neck, he had clearly had an altercation in the past. The marine iguana is also an endemic and varies in size and colour throughout the islands. The first ones we saw on Genovesa were small (about 18 inches) and black, but on Espanola they were much larger, up to 3 feet, and with star- tling colours of pink and blue. Giant tortoises were once common in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, but now only exist on the Galápagos and the Seychelles. There are 10 species on Galápagos, with two distinctive types of shell: the domed and the saddle back. The saddle back species evolved to eat cactus so have long necks and peaked shells to allow them to reach up to the higher vegetation.

There were plenty of opportunities for snorkeling in the clear waters and the fish life was abundant. For example, there were shoals of tiny fish, and larger king angelfish, blue and white with bright orange tails, and a few white tipped sharks gently swimming below us. Most exciting for me though, was my swim with a pair of young sea lions, who slithered off a nearby rock and came to find out what I was do-

ing, swimming around me and peering at me through my mask. We saw plenty of sea lions on the beaches as we landed for our walks, with the mothers keeping a lazy eye on their pups and an occasional bull beachmaster patrolling his harem.

There are certainly conservation issues in the Galápagos, which the national park cannot entirely control. More visitors mean more hotels, shops and bars, and the consequent issues of rubbish and pollution. We saw illegal fishing taking place, with waste fish being dumped overboard. Invasive species have appeared, such as alien geckos, feral goats and introduced food and garden plants. In 1998, a Special Law for Galápagos was enacted, which introduced a strict quarantine regime for incoming goods and vehicles. In some places, there is an uneasy truce between humans and wildlife; for example, on the inhabited islands such as Santa Cruz the sea lions come up on to the landing stages and have to be dissuaded from camping overnight in the backs of small boats by covering the boats with netting. We hope that legislation and improved biosecurity will ensure the continuing conservation of this very special place.

After the Galápagos, we went to Costa Rica. This was another wonderful area but completely different. The cloud forest of central Costa Rica was very different from the dry volcanic environment of Galápagos. Lush greenery and a much greater biodiversity surrounded us. From a limited range of very visible species (but many endemics) on Galápagos, we were now in one of the greatest biodiversity hotspots of the world - but with much more challenging wildlife watching! Costa Rica has over 800 bird species, more than the whole of Northern America, but most of them were high in the tree canopy. In the Monteverde Cloud Forest reserve, our guide was delighted to find for us the extraordinarily beautiful Resplendent Quetzal bird, with his long blue tail and red breast. On another guided night walk we had a close encounter with a yellow-kneed tarantula and some of the smallest frogs I have ever seen. How- ever, we were able to do some of our best bird watching from our hotels, where they had erected bird tables which attracted birds such as the brightly coloured tanagers, hummingbirds, blue mot mot and the national bird of Costa Rica, the clay coloured thrush (a rather dull looking bird but with a beautiful song).

We finished our holiday with a couple of days on the Nicoya Peninsula on the Pacific coast, at Punta Islita. As well as some welcome R&R we visited the Ara Project, a macaw conservation project run by Sam Williams, Sophie's brother. Their work is to conserve Costa Rica's two native macaws, the scarlet macaw and the great green macaw. Macaw numbers have been plummeting for many years, partly because of habitat loss and partly because of their popularity as pets; there are now less than 500 scarlet macaws in the Central Pacific, and less than 300 great green macaws. The Ara Project is breeding macaws of both species in captivity and then releasing them in the wild, and for both species the wild populations have been gradually increasing. Sam's

knowledge and enthusiasm is driving the project forwards and he has a team of moti- vated volunteers who are prepared to work long and hard in the dry heat to feed the birds, clean the aviaries and do recording and monitoring. Sam has designed a new type of aviary for the birds which makes feeding and cleaning much easier, and his partner Sarah is working with the local community to involve them in creating pictures and wooden models of macaws to sell in the project's small shop. We were delighted to meet up with Sam and Sarah and were very impressed with the work they are doing.

We only touched the surface of Costa Rica's delights and hope to visit again.

Sarah Edgar and Gerry Downing

Volunteer Profile: Marion Gash

Long ago, I studied botany at Bangor (in the same year as Nigel Brown, but with less talent). After a couple of years as a research assistant it became clear that a career using my degree was not on the cards, so I looked at other options springing from other interests. That is how I became a Dietitian. I worked for the NHS in Poole, Bristol and in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd on returning to north Wales.

I heard about volunteering at Treborth from great friend and sometime volunteer Judith Jenkins and now retired I was drawn back to the green houses by my fascination for plants in all their forms.

How did I come to study plants to start with? When I was eight our teacher handed out exercise books for us to stick wild flowers into over the summer. There was probably a prize for the best collection; I can’t remember who won but helping us (I have a twin sister) sparked my mother’s interest and identifying the flowers we found became part of our family holidays from then on.

I don’t have any special gardening skills – my garden is a jungle (another retirement project is to cultivate a little more of it). I am happy to do whatever needs doing at Treborth and learn a bit more horticulture on the way.

My favourite things about volunteering at Treborth are watching the seasons change in the Garden and greenhouses and enjoying the company of the Wednesday volunteers. Marion Gash

Moonwort

Looking back, I realise now that I was exploited as a child. My enthusiasm for nature was (and still is) boundless, and my energy similarly limitless. It was with great excitement that I’d join my father on his many field trips with students, or the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland (BSBI) meetings along the coast of Anglesey in search of plants. Being considerably closer to the ground, and having sharper eyes than most, gave me a distinct advantage, and I was frequently set the challenge of locating certain plants whilst Dad disseminated a seemingly endless supply of fascinating facts about the ecology of the habitats we were in. And what child can resist the challenge of finding something? It was always with great pride that I’d be able to return with the location of a Dune Helleborine Epipactis dunensis, Bee Orchid Ophrys apifera, or a microscopic Lesser Clubmoss Selaginella selaginoides, but one plant stood out as always posing the biggest challenge to locate - the Moonwort Botrychium lunaria.

Twenty-five years later, and with my eyes significantly further from the ground than most, the thrill of finding such an amazing little plant is still as strong as it was. Late spring is perfect for finding those tiny fronds slowly unfolding from the short-cropped turf to reveal a tiny bunch of ‘grapes’, as Dad called it. This tiny bunch of grapes are in fact the sporangia of the plant, and the fertile part of the leaf. It is this that gives it its scientific name Botrychium deriving from Botryo – the Latin for a bunch of grapes, thus Botrychium a little bunch of grapes. The fringe of the leaves is said to resemble a half-moon, and ‘wort’ for a plant of use, hence its English name. This tiny fern is ancient in its lineage - it lacks root hairs, instead surviving through a mycorrhizal association.

For something so small and seemingly insignificant it has remarkable worth placed on it. Alchemists and herbalists both desired its tiny leaves believing that it was capable of turning lead into gold, whilst it was believed that by moonlight, this plant was capable of opening locks and un-shoeing horses who trod upon it. Witches are even said to have collected this plant by moonlight for use in spells. Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century Herbalist, spoke highly of the plant stating:

“The Moon owns the herb. Moonwort is cold and drying more than adder’s tongue, and is therefore held to be more available for all wounds both inward and outward. The leaves boiled in red wine, and drank, stay the immoderate flux of women’s courses, and the whites. It also stays bleeding, vomiting, and other fluxes. It helps all blows and bruises, and to consolidate all fractures and dislocations. It is good for ruptures, but is chiefly used, by most with other herbs, to make oils or balsams to heal fresh or green wounds (as I said before) either inward or outward, for which it is excellently good.

Fig. 4. The bonfire site before redevelopment [p. 9]

Fig. 5. Work on the bonfire site [p. 9]

Fig. 6. The completed compost bins on the bonfire site [p.]

Fig. 7. Orchis papilionacea in Crete [p. 11]

Fig. 8. Yellow-flowered Orchis pauciflora [p. 11]

Fig. 9. Cretan alkanet, Anchusa caespitose [p. 11]

Fig. 10. Tulipa saxatile [p. 11]

Fig. 11. Dragon Arum Dracunculus vulgaris [p. 11]

Fig. 12. Marine Iguana in the Galapagos Islands [p. 16]

Fig. 13. The Ant Plant Myrmecodia beccarii [p. 27]

Fig. 14. Galapagos Penguin in the Galapagos Islands. [p. 16]

Fig. 15. Waved Albatross in the Galapagos islands. [p. 16]

Moonwort is a herb which (they say) will open locks, and unshoe such horses as tread upon it. This some laugh to scorn, and those no small fools neither; but country people, that I know, call it Unshoe the Horse. Besides I have heard commanders say, that on White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horse shoes, pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex’s horses, being there drawn up in a body, many of them being but newly shod, and no reason known, which caused much admiration: the herb described usually grows upon heaths.”

Figs 16 & 17. The sporangia (the little bunch of grapes) glow in the sunlight

Finding Moonwort often involves getting down on your hands and knees!

In the UK, Moonwort has declined having been lost from much of its former southern English range (as a result of pasture ‘improvements’ and scrub encroachment). It is still widespread in Scotland, northern England (though declining), and Wales where it can be found on sand dunes, quarries, and rock ledges, open woodland and even mountain tops up to 1065m on Ben Lawers, preferring well-drained soils. So next time you’re out in suitable habitat I challenge you to locate this brilliant little fern and enjoy it for its rich historical significance and its understated beauty. Dan Brown

(This article is reproduced here with the kind permission of Dan Brown, whose ecological consultancy produces a very interesting online magazine called ‘Biome’ at www.biomeecology.com/about-biome-magazine. We hope to include more pieces from Biome in future issues of the newsletter.)

Treborth Botanical Seminars

The Friends are proud to have establish the ‘Treborth Botanical Seminar’ series. These are to inspire an interest in botany within students and to offer learning opportunities for those who already have a passion for plants! The seminars are free, but donations to FTBG are welcome.

Our inaugural seminar, titled ‘Saving plants from extinction in Wales’ with the fantastic Nigel Brown, was hugely successful with approximately 120 in attendance – a full lecture theatre! The success continued with Barbara Jones’ seminar, focusing on plant conservation in the Welsh uplands. After having requests from Bangor University distance learning students, it has been decided that the seminars will be recorded on the Panopto system (when possible) and so widening the access to these fantastic learning opportunities. If any of the Friends wish to access the recordings, please email me on [email protected]. To date, the February seminar and the Len Beer lecture have been recorded.

By the time you read this, our next seminar will have taken place in April, given by John Ratcliffe entitled ‘Another fine mess you got me into; what can we learn from the history of nature conservation?’. It marked the last seminar of the academic year, and we have already planned a seminar for September to start the 2017/2018 year with continued success. My thanks go to Jen Towill for helping secure these fantastic speakers.

Tomos Jones

Ants in Our Plants

If you were born before 1960, you may remember the song ‘High Hopes’ by Doris Day (1948) or Frank Sinatra (1959). It featured an ant (unspecified species) trying to move a ‘rubber tree plant’ (presumably a potted Ficus elastica). In reality, interactions between ants and plants are varied and often complex.

Some plants (myrmecophytes) have evolved to provide food and/or shelter for ants in return for defence against herbivores. Examples are the bullhorn acacia (Acacia (Vachellia) cornigera) and the acacia ant (Pseudomyrmex ferruginea) in central America, and the whistling thorn tree (Acacia drepanolobum) and the ant Crematogaster mimosa in southern Africa. The ants live in the swollen bases of the thorns and benefit not only from the shelter these provide, but also from

sugars and other nutrients secreted from extra-floral nectaries at the base of the thorns. The interactions between ants, host plants and herbivores is, however, more complex than the simple explanation given above. Exclusion of large herbivores, such as giraffes, results in changes in plant growth and morphology, and in the species of ants associated with the acacias. Myrmecophytes seem to have evolved separately in several groups of plants, including a fern (Lecanopteris sinuosa), species of Myrmecodia and Hydnopytum (Rubiaceae), Inga and Acacia (Fabaceae), Cecropia (Urticaceae), Piper (Piperaceae) and Miconia (Melastomataceae). For recent reviews of plant/ant interactions, see Rico-Gray and Oliveria (2008), Gonzalez-Teuber et al. (2014) and Mayer et al. (2014).

So what has this to do with Treborth Botanic Garden? Some myrmecophytes of the genera Myrmecodia and Hydnopytum have swollen stems riddled with tunnels (domatia) where the ants live and breed. Their swollen appearance meant that they attracted the attention of succulent growers, and it was at the 2016 National Cactus and Succulent Show that I found plants of Myrmecodia beccarii for sale. This species comes from NW Australia where it grows epiphytically on Melaleuca trees and hosts golden ants (Iridomyrmex cordatus). The ants eat leaf- eating insects and secrete nutrients which are taken up by the plant. The flowers are white, tubular and 10 mm long and produce single seeds that are dispersed by the mistletoe bird (Dicaeum hirundinaceum). In an additional twist, the Apollo jewel butterfly (Hypochrysops apollo apollo) lays its eggs on the plant. These are cared for by the golden ants, whose eggs they resemble, and are taken inside the stems.

Our specimen of Myrmecodia beccarii (Figure 13) is in the Tropical House and has been flowering for several months. It even has a colony of tiny ants living in it, but whether these are golden ants or a European species I cannot tell. (Any ant experts out there?). It is one of those plants that provide a good talking point for visitors to the Garden, while also being an educational tool to explain plant/ animal interactions and the complexities of ecology.

References:

Gonzalez-Teuber M, Kaltenpoth, M and Boland, W. (2014) Mutualistic ants as an indirect defence against leaf pathogens. New Phytologist 202: 640–650.

Mayer, VE, Frederickson, ME, McKey, D and Blatrix, R. (2014) Current Issues in the Evolutionary Ecology of Ant-plant Symbioses. New Phytologist 202: 749-764.

Rico-Gray, V, Oliveria, PS. (2008) The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-plant Interactions (Interspecific Interactions). The University of Chicago Press. 320 pp., E-book edition.

John Gorham

An Anglesey Garden – Spring and early Summer

March 21st, Spring Equinox. Not that you’d notice that it’s in anyway different from the rest of the recent cloudy-dull days. The official start of spring today is altogether underwhelming meteorologically and biologically. It is simply another day in space-time. Yet sensors throughout the garden have registered something significant. For the first time in 6 months, daylight hours exceed darkness. Ina biological world dependent on the flux of electromagnetic radiation, that marks a crucial divide. Not only can plant-life realise the potential of positive net assimilation rates but light sensitive biological clocks are alerted to trigger chemical hormones that determine behavioural traits in all the inhabitants in our garden from moth pupae to song birds, celandines to fern fronds. The chemical transformations involved in our garden right now far eclipse the sun in variety and complexity.

Our ‘Phasian Birds’, a couple of constantly embattled cock pheasants, burst upon the scene, hurtling down the limestone bank on to the lawn. A moment to collect themselves and then they’re off, shadowing each other every step of the way, zig-zagging up the garden towards the bird feeders in search of spilt grain. The older male, Sir Lancelot, though lame by a previous close encounter with a feisty male conspecific, inflates his fabulous plumage with aplomb, a blast of burnished copper, metallic green, and hot red facial feather; it’s enough to make his rival wince and retreat.

Despite cloud and rain, dawn had been marked a few hours earlier by an ‘Adlestrop moment’ of pure natural harmony as a chorus of blackbird song welled up from every hedgerow and copse in all the land we can hear from our house. Indeed, the accompanying mist and humidity, veiling the performers and softening their song, only served to enhance the ethereal quality of the moment. How simple a name we attach to this best of songsters. How cold and stark its plumage appears to our eye. But, there is the charm, the simplicity of nature, liberated freely every morning at this most portentous time of year. And I could have wished time to stop at that moment and been happy.

Overnight conditions had served my light trap well, the calm and humid air facilitating the flow of pheromones and flight of moths. Scores of individuals of 15 species lined the egg boxes stacked inside. Gently removing the transparent collar, I examine each box in turn, noting species and numbers. Each morning brings a fresh collection of light-winged diversity. Patterns and colours to reflect all nature for that is what is required in a moth’s world where survival favours those that hide well.

Late March is Orthosia time in the ‘calendar according to moths’. This genus of noctuid moths inhabits every corner of the British Isles and in such numbers as might make every gardener in the land quake if it were not for the facts that without a moth trap you rarely see the adults and the hunger of their larvae is satisfied by wild plants, not horticultural (though in eastern North America, one species at least is regarded as a serious pest of fruit trees). The Victorians knew them much better than we care to do so and attributed them such memorable names – common quaker, powdered quaker, Hebrew character and clouded drab. Each a subtle combination of coloured scales arranged upon four impossibly thin, translucent membranes combining functionality and beauty – a flying canvas designed to complement the life and times of a most demanding society determined by degrees of crypsis.

The intraspecific variability of clouded drab is remarkable and seems to fly in the face of any unchanging, specific pattern and form. How can this be? Well why should it not be? – colour and patterning in moths are simply expressions of the disposition and intensity of pigments among a multitude of repeating units making up the outer layer of the wings and moderated in effect by the micro- physiognomy of the surface of the scales which causes diffraction and interference of light. The emergent patterning is potentially vastly variable and given the degree of resolution attainable (equivalent to the myriad of minute, individual points of colour in a Monet), it is no wonder that the end result is a complex image. It is likely that the genetic basis for the different intraspecific patterns that we seeis very slight and easily accepted within the genetic dynamics of clouded drab as a species. And it may be that the mean survival rate of the different pattern morphs is not significantly different either. The key factor in maintaining such diversity of form might lie in predator reaction to such diversity as opposed to uniformity. Variation in prey characteristics might cause confusion for predators such as birds which rely on relatively simplistic search images of their prey. Therefore, in the real world of the clouded drab, variation in pattern enhances survival and predation sets an upper limit on the numbers of each morph which escape the detection devices of blackbirds and others as search image formation is likely to be a function of prey encounter rate.

There is irony in the vernacular name, clouded drab, and there is truth and spiritual understanding in the genus name Orthosia which is derived from the Greek name for one of the Horai, goddesses of time and the seasons. This seems appropriate as the regular appearance of these modest moths each Spring Equinox marks for me a true seasonal progression.

The ground where I deploy my moth trap is marbled with gently variegated cordate leaves and here and there pale yellow goblets add more colour to this

mosaic. These are the leaves and flowers of lesser celandine, so numerous hereabouts that even the grasses are suppressed. When the clouds thin, the additional light lifts the flower stalks of the celandines and once the sun emerges each goblet expands to harness the extra radiation. So entrained with the sun are the floral dynamics of the celandine that each flower goblet tracks the sun and can be truly described as heliotropic. It seems likely that, by doing so, celandine maximises the input of electromagnetic radiation both entering and reflected within the parabolic reflector-shaped arrangement of its flower and that, as a result, the temperature within the flower is elevated. This in turn may offer a significantly warmer microhabitat for insects to forage and in so doing benefit pollination.

Along the nearby lane, celandines flourish in much more shaded conditions than our garden and exhibit tiny bulbils in the axils of their basal leaves, a feature lacking in the sun-bathed colony in our garden. Bulbils are of course tiny plantlets and represent a very direct way of vegetational propagation and dispersal. Interestingly, these bulbil-bearing plants also possess twice the number of chromosomes of their sunnier counterparts – in other words they are tetraploid. That’s quite a fundamental difference and reminds me of the innate cryptic variation so frequently associated with plant populations on a genetic scale rarely seen in animals. The plant kingdom is far more adventurous and robust than animal populations when it comes to genetic recombination and this has enormous consequence for evolutionary and environmental fitness and resilience.

The Spring Equinox is a time of great migrations, overland, by water and air, by day and by night. Toads emerge from the recesses of our new terrace wall shortly after dusk and crawl off in search of a point source of aquatic plant metabolism – a ditch dug centuries ago. Increasingly green-shored with each passing day, increasingly creative of the chemicals of life, the ditch becomes irresistible to the creatures born there. They crave the chemistry of their natal waters and with increasing temperatures their olfactory senses home in on the unique aroma of their ditch and its plant life.

Nocturnal migrations populate the heavens, and from mid-March we may wake to the fresh sound of chiffchaff, blackcap and other bird migrants newly arrived from Africa. Their journeys are stimulated by hormonal changes and directed by senses until recently beyond our ken. Time-modulated sun and star compasses linked into olfactory signals aid visual recognition of geographic features, often coastal. One additional sense has recently come to light, the ability of some species to ‘see’ the Earth’s magnetic field and thereby know their latitude. Such ‘superpowers’ are amazing enough but then consider that they are housed in brains weighing no more than a gram and would be useless without the ability to fly

thousands of kilometres within a few weeks over testing terrain including the deserts of Western Sahara, the fickle storminess of the western seaboard of Europe and several sea crossings. A chiffchaff weighs about 9 grams and expends roughly 1000Kj during migration, equivalent to the complete metabolism of over half its body weight. Such exercise relies on regular and reliable foraging en route regardless of political boundaries. No wonder then that chiffchaff song is something to celebrate as it announces its arrival. Many of these songsters are here today and gone tomorrow, migrating onwards within 12 hours of arrival. Willow warblers have a most refined and delicate song but rarely linger more than few hours in our garden – each individual excites us with the prospect of a breeding attempt but our hopes never materialise and a brief but virtuoso delivery of rippling, silvery notes and fleeting glimpse must suffice. But such short, sweet memories are the essence of spring - like bud burst, April’s cloud- clipped sunshine and the distant, arresting call of cuckoo echoing across the countryside. The brevity of these sights and sounds gives them even greater value.

Day by day, the apron of earth that skirts the largest ash in our garden has grown greener as the crinkly clumps of wild primulas bubble to the surface, interspersed with neat, fresh violet shoots. Now, they have all reached the point of reproduction and thousands of florets colour the bank in a dappled display of yellow and blue. Bees trundle by, alight clumsily on each blossom, stalks bend under their weight, pollen brushed aboard, then up and away to who knows where – each grain a robust pod of genes ready for action in a new quarter of the vernal landscape should chance permit.

All about the garden there is a deepening of herbage as shoots emerge, unfold and expand. Thalictrum leaves are slender stalked and delicately dissected. They emerge with a vulnerability which makes you stop and search for more, the darkened colouration of each leaflet adding to the sense of achievement when you find a new crown. Can they really be even shower-proof? Likewise, the finely cut leaf-blades of Anemone and Chaerophyllum. Anthocyanin pigment dominates the fresh foliage of many emergent plants – Paeonia red-raw with it but Chinese witch hazel softly tinged pink, the new leaves and shoots also spangled with minute crispy hairs, no doubt of some annoyance to would-be early grazers.

A fine day in April is one of the year’s true delights and the 20th dawns clear with all the promise of natural history treats to come. A gentle southerly drift delivers a complex mix of aromatic scents tickled from botanical sources over a rural corridor which stretches over the fields and woods of Anglesey to the hills and river valleys of northern Snowdonia, softly outlined in gentle early light, the peaks smudged with pink-purple diaphanous cloud. The signature of this airborne fancy is unique to time and place, and fleeting too, changing as the morning warms and the

air dries, till by lunch the light has flattened and the air dulled, the bird song dwindled. But there is then a warmth which has not been felt for 8 months. It envelopes the garden and the gardener.

Moving between emergent shoots and flowers, brushing their green skins, gently disturbing the warm earth above their sharp-scented roots, stopping repeatedly to savour the intimacy of nature, the gardener is at one with his subjects and leans into the sun as they do, inviting its far travelled rays to enter. Toil is a treat, and apres-toil too, as we relax early evening on our new, hard-won terrace and feel the stone re-use the day’s heat. Swallows suddenly twitter about the mill and three kilometres distant, an osprey circles up from the reservoir. Climbing higher we gain at first a hazy view of its long, angled wings, their deep beat, the outstretched head. To our surprise and delight the raptor moves closer, now gliding down from the high point of the thermal. Faster it moves, racing now across clear blue sky to the south west, closing in on the mill, till in a moment it is slipping through the early evening air above our heads, creating an image which will gladden our minds for years to come – osprey from our new terrace!

Three weeks later, over lunch in the mid-day sun, we are treated to red kite circling over Tregaian, an equally exciting terrace-based view – what reward for the hard, cold labours earlier this spring – the shovelling of rock and rubble, the prizing of stone, the awkward manipulation of boulder with boulder, the levelling of aggregate and sand, the heaving of slabs. Now our cottage boasts a ‘living’ room with priceless views of the natural world and I could sit within its compass all day and be happy and entertained.

These warm days are followed by balmy nights and moths a-plenty including packs of waved umber in May and hawk moths in June. The former is dazzling in design, sporting bold parallel lines which unhinge the perception of its overall form and cause confusion in the mind. When resting, waved umber becomes spent earth and twig. Eyed-hawk moth, poplar hawk and elephant hawk combine crypsis, and, at times of danger, eye-catching, action-diverting flashes of colour. They headline the catches in May and June when days commence with a cup of tea on the terrace and an hour spent enjoying the previous night’s haul of moths peaking with 335 macromoths of 64 species on 10 June plus 295 diamond backs, a micromoth all the way from Africa!

June brings several more surprises not least the finding of two unexpected orchids. Firstly, a single flowering shoot of pyramidal orchid pops up in thin sward on the upper lawn, its nearest neighbours, cowslips and primroses. Though abundant in coastal sand dunes and limestone quarries, it is generally uncommon inland on the island. Its dense-flowered inflorescence is the only pink component

of the sward and catches the eye now, where before, in bud, it merged imperceptibly with its light green congeners in the meadow. Even when in flower, frog orchid can slip by unnoticed, its modest, slender greenish-purple flowers of no great beauty, but to me, notable for their pollination intrigue and rarity. With only five known populations on the island the finding of a new colony on the roadside verge just yards from our garden is a thrill and a reminder that when so little natural grassland remains on Anglesey away from the direct coastline, roadside verges constitute an important reservoir of biodiversity. What a pity that they are increasingly pulverised by tractor traffic.

By mid-June there’s a crescendo of colour and life in our garden. Scores of young robins, tits, nuthatches, finches, sparrows and thrushes clamour for attention. Second brooders including blackbird and song thrush sing again. Spotted flycatcher hawks the ash copse’s canopy gaps for insects and swallows drift across the gathering culms of grasses in the fields still thankfully untouched by the silage machines. Eating out on the terrace now seems the norm and lasts till late, long enough and warm enough to allow the eye to settle and re-settle on a warm-red horizon, noting the transit of the sun as evening by evening it slips ever further north beyond our point of reference in the west, Holyhead Mountain. Time to spy the moon, crater by crater, catch the International Space Station and envy the experience of the fellow Briton inside, about to return to Earth with a unique vision.

A man in orbit is so much more aware of the passage of time and space as his reference points swing into view with speedy regularity. Here, on the planet’s surface, we enjoy the ride in sublime insensitivity to our speed in space with plenty of time it seems to enjoy the gently changing view, day by day, season by season. But Major Tim Peake and other astronauts will remind you that the motions of Earth are the stuff of life including our own. Recalling the clouded drab of the Equinox and watching a setting solstice sun, I also envy the ancient Greeks and their acknowledgement, understanding and fundamental respect for the passage of time. Little moth, whose appearance marks a moment in space-time we call spring and whose scientific name, Orthosia, commemorates a goddess of time and season synonymous with the prosperity that the ancients firmly believed came from nursing the Earth, yours is a message perhaps gardeners don’t need but others do.

Nigel Brown

Moth and Meteorological Records from Treborth Botanic Garden: an almost complete daily record from 1991, with a plea for their analysis

The TBG moth records began in June 1986, continuing on a daily basis until June 1987, then resuming from September 1991 until the present day (daily for over 25 years). A grand total of over 415,000 individuals from 399 species of macromoth have been recorded since 1986, plus 98 species of micromoth. Nigel Brown was the principal moth recorder while he was curator, with the help of his son Dan and a number of students; since Nigel retired in 2015, daily moth recording has been continued by a splendid team of moth-ers. For a variety of reasons there have been a few short breaks in this 25-year run of moth data; these were mainly due to brief absences of recording staff or breakage of equipment. But unfortunately, the paper records for the following months seem to have gone missing: January and February 1992, January to March 1996, and October to December 1999. We have hunted high and low for these missing data sheets, and still hope that they may yet turn up: please do let me know if you have any ideas about their whereabouts.

Daily meteorological records were started at Treborth in 1988: these met records include rainfall, wind direction and speed (estimated on the Beaufort scale), ambient temperature at 9am, and maximum and minimum temperatures for the preceding 24 hours. Hence the moth records can be compared with the range of daily met records from 1991 onwards. These moth and met data were recorded on paper, but all have now been entered onto spreadsheets, including monthly and yearly summaries as well as daily records. So, that opens up the rare opportunity to follow changes in moth population in relation to climate since 1991: there can be only a few such complete runs of moth and met data in the British Isles.

Amongst the moth records are a few that are relatively rare, being found only locally in Britain, including Ashworth’s Rustic, Barred Hook Tip, and Scarce Footman. At Treborth, some species have tended to increase over the years (such as Dingy Footman and August Thorn), while others have declined (including Pale Shouldered Brocade and Rustic Shoulder Moth). Are those trends associated with global warming, or due to changes in local conditions? Many other species (such as Large Yellow Underwing, Heart & Dart, Clouded Drab) have peak and trough years, but no clear trend. Are those changes related to climatic differences between years, or to some other factor?

To give one example, Large Yellow Underwings (LYU) are sometimes present in huge numbers at Treborth, with a total of 65,000 from 1991 to 2016, 560 of them being caught on the one night of 1st August 1995! Figure 18 shows the

wide fluctuation in numbers of LYU counted at Treborth from year to year. LYU normally fly during summer months, being recorded at Treborth from June to October, averaging 32 per year in June, increasing up to 677 in July, peaking at 1628 in August, decreasing to 172 in September, with an average of 5 stragglers per year recorded in October. In a few years, the very occasional LYU has been caught in May or November.

Figures 19 to 21 indicate the extent to which LYU numbers varied with climatic factors for the peak month of August. It appears that, from year to year, numbers in August tended to increase with the monthly mean of maximum temperature, while decreasing with total August rainfall, and decreasing with average wind strength. Obviously a more sophisticated analysis is needed, as these climatic factors are likely to be inter-related. The mean monthly minimum temperature appeared to have little or no influence on numbers of LYU during August (correlation coefficient 0.111)

So here is a plea to anyone interested in data analysis - these data are ready waiting for you on spreadsheets, and they are crying out to be analysed! There are endless project possibilities here at many levels (undergraduate, postgraduate, or interested amateur), looking at changes over time in the population as a whole, or in individual species. If you are interested, I would be very happy to introduce you to the data spreadsheets. Pat Denne

Fig 18. Total numbers of Large Yellow Underwings counted at Treborth in August per year. 36

Fig 19. Total numbers of Large Yellow Underwing counted in August compared with mean maximum temperature in August. Each point is an individual year. Correlation coefficient = 0.46

Fig 20. Total numbers of Large Yellow Underwing counted in August compared with the total rainfall in August. Each point is an individual year. Correlation coefficient = -0.41

Fig 21. Total numbers of Large Yellow Underwing counted in August compared with average wind strength in August. Each point is an individual year. Correlation coefficient = -0.35

The Flora of Chile

We often hear about how much the vast flora of China (31,000 species) has influenced the gardens of Britain (more than two thirds of our garden plants have origins in China) but we tend to hear less about the impact that Chile has had on our horticulture. Although there are fewer than 5,000 vascular plant species in the Chilean native flora, almost a thousand of them have found their way into British gardens. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, because Chile extends further south into cooler zones than South Africa, Australia or New Zealand, and so it has plenty of interesting plants that can withstand our cold, wet and windy weather in the UK.

The same cannot be said of the north of Chile, where the climate at 20 degrees of latitude south of the equator is hot and dry. Here in the Atacama Desert, saltgrass and succulents hold sway, including the tree-sized candelabra cacti - Browningia candelaris and Echinopsis atacamensis. Mesquite trees (Prosopis) and Pampas Grass (Cortaderia) grow on the plains and in dry washes,

and the Bromeliad Tillandsia occurs close to the coast where it gathers moisture from the fog of the cold Humboldt Current.

Further south (30° - 40° latitude) we move into the central zone of Chile, where the country’s famous winelands and the capital city of Santiago are situated. The northern part of this central zone is sub-tropical, with shrubby ‘mattoral’ vegetation typical of areas with a Mediterranean climate (winter rainfall). Equivalent vegetation elsewhere in the world includes the chaparral of California, the fynbos of South Africa, the mallee shrublands of Australia, the maquis of southern France and the macchia of Italy. Trees such as the Chilean Acorn (Cryptocarya alba) and the Soapbark (Quillaja saponaria) are typical of Central Chile, and the majestic Chilean Wine Palm (Jubaea chilensis) used to be common across the region (Figure 24). However, it has been over-exploited for its sap and is now protected in several small conservation areas in Chile, and in botanical gardens around the world. The tallest specimen under glass (17 m) is at Kew Gardens, and was planted from seed in 1846.

South of Santiago we enter the more temperate zone of the “Valdivian Forests”. This eco-region is classed as a global biodiversity hotspot because it contains more than half of Chile’s vascular plant species and has a high degree of endemism (50%). An iconic plant of this Valdivian region is the Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) which has been declared a protected “national monument” in Chile.

Other typical trees of the Valdivian forests include the ancient Gondwanaland taxa: Podocarpus, Fitzroya and the many species of Southern Beech Nothofagus, some of which have been used for ornamental and forestry purposes in the UK. Also from these forests come the Chilean Bamboos including the frost- tolerant Chusquea culeou and C. gigantea (syn. breviglumis) which we have growing at Treborth Botanic Garden. Another iconic species from the Valdivian zone that grows at Treborth, is Gunnera tinctoria, the “Giant Rhubarb”.

The “Chilean Guava” or Strawberry Myrtle (Ugni molinae) was imported from Chile to the UK by William Lobb in 1844. This plant is said to have been particularly favoured by Queen Victoria, and she had the jelly made from its fruits transported specially to her table from William’s orchards in Cornwall.

The understorey of the Chilean forests is the native habitat of most of the shrubs that have contributed so memorably to British Gardens. These include many Escallonias, the Chilean Firebush (Embothrium coccineum), Chilean Holly (Desfontainea spinosa), the Chilean Mitre Flower (Mitraria coccinea), the various Chilean Bellflowers (Lapageria rosea, Philesia magellanica etc) and the Chilean

Lantern Bush (Crinodendron hookerianum) which does well in our gardens in North Wales and adorns the Curator’s House at Treborth Botanic Garden. All of these, including the Hummingbird Fuchsia (Fuchsia magellanica), have brightly coloured, tubular flowers which have co-evolved with several hummingbird species that collect nectar and pollinate these plants at the same time.

Figure 22. Botanical print of the Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria araucana) in the book: “Plants of the Woods and Forests of Chile” published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh in 2015. The artist who created this print - Işik Güner - has worked not only in Chile, but also with the Bangor botanist Dr Sophie Williams at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in China. (Photo - S Russell)

Chile extends south to 56°, the same latitude as Edinburgh in the northern hemisphere, and it is the southern Beeches Nothofagus that now dominate the woodland canopy as far south as Cape Horn itself. Only five tree species survive the gales of the “roaring forties” and the “furious fifties” to retain a foothold in the southernmost region of Chilean Tierra del Fuego – Nothofagus pumilio, N. betuloides and N. antarctica, Maytenus magellanica (“Pickwood”) and Drimys winteri (“Winter’s Bark”).

As an undergraduate I remember studying Drimys as a prime example of an early angiosperm with primitive wood anatomy. I only discovered later that D. winteri is named after Captain John Wynter who accompanied Sir Francis Drake on

his world circumnavigation of 1577-80. Wynter went ashore at Cape Horn in search of plants with medicinal properties to administer to his ailing crew. Only centuries later was it confirmed that decoctions of Drimys bark do indeed contain vitamin C, which prevents against scurvy.

It is striking that, in these southernmost woodlands of the world (the “Magellanic sub-polar forests”) we still find bird species from the sub-tropical region further north. It is quite a shock therefore, to step from a windswept Patagonian beach with a colony of penguins and Antarctic albatrosses soaring overhead, into the protective calm of Nothofagus woodland with humming birds and small green parrots flitting about.

In the Cape Horn archipelago and in exposed situations at higher altitude, woody species may often only achieve “bonsai” proportions. For example, the protected lower Slopes of Hermit’s Island in the Cape Horn archipelago are densely clothed with gnarled and stunted stands of evergreen southern beech - Nothofagus betuloides. (Figure 31). At ground level they share space with ferns (Blechnum), burnets (Acaena), tussock grasses (Poa) and cushion plants (Azorella) whose spores and seeds are the sources of the floras of the sub-Antarctic islands, scattered downwind across the vast Southern Ocean. In these habitats it is the “lower plants” (mosses, liverworts and lichens) that come to dominate, and it is this group that I have studied in Chile for the past thirteen years. If we look at the distribution of these non-vascular plants across Chile, we see that they increase in diversity away from the tropics (Figure 23). This is the reverse of the biological ‘truism’ that biodiversity always increases towards the equator.

The group of scientists with whom I have been working in southern Chile, has recently (2016) secured a £10 million grant to build a modern research and training centre in the tiny town of Puerto Williams on the Beagle Channel. This is situated in the UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve and is so far from sources of air, water and soil pollution that it qualifies, according to some measures, asthe “cleanest place on Earth”. Bangor University is currently the only British institution partnering in the development of this new and globally significant environmental monitoring centre, which will provide research opportunities for our staff and students for many years to come. But getting there generally means travelling through the “long, thin country” of Chile, with its many scenic and floristic attractions to tempt us along the way. No wonder we have borrowed so liberally for our British gardens from the wonderfully diverse and beautiful flora of Chile.

For additional information on the flora of Chile, readers are encouraged to look back at the excellent botanical travelogue of John and Chris Gorham in

volumes 34, 35 and 36 of the Friends Newsletter (2009). And for those of you who would like to see more photos of the flora of Chile, Scott Zona of the Wertheim Conservatory at Florida International University has posted a wonderful set of images on the photo-sharing site Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottzona/ albums/72157625413696662/page1 Shaun Russell

Figure 23. Vascular versus non-vascular plant species diversity in the 12 administrative regions of Chile. From: R Rozzi, S Russell and co-authors (2008). Changing lenses to assess biodiversity: patterns of species richness in sub-Antarctic plants and implications for global conservation. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6 (3):131–137.

Himalayan Balsam, a Growing Menace!

At this time of year, an alien plant suddenly springs up in damp places and spreads like wild fire!

Himalayan balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, is a relative of busy Lizzie. It’s also called jumping jack, policeman's helmet and some unrepeatable names too! It is a fast growing annual, reaching about 4 feet or more in the space of a few months. Originally it was grown as a pretty garden plant but soon escaped and became a menace. My 1951 edition of the RHS Dictionary of Gardening says it was imported from India in 1839, and is “naturalised here and there in Britain”. Things have changed a lot since then! It now covers huge areas in many places.

It is prevalent in damp places and along streams and rivers. The ripe seeds are forcibly ejected when the plant is touched and can shoot several yards, rapidly spreading potential new plants. It dies completely in the winter and appears again as a mass of seedlings in early summer. I saw lots of seedlings popping up on a river bank on 27th March this year in Denbighshire. Because it grows so fast and the seeds germinate prolifically, it smothers all our native plants.

Unlike many other unwanted plants, it is very easy to remove. Just catch hold of the stem fairly low down and pull - it will come out completely. If you leave the roots in, it will grow again. Chop up or trample on the plant and that will kill it. Do not put it on the compost heap, or just leave it lying about - destroy it completely. Make sure you do this before the seeds have set, or you will be aiding in the distribution of new plants, an offence under The Wildlife and Countryside Act!

In 2015, I noticed patches of it growing along the lane where I live on Anglesey. I pulled them all out before the seeds set and trampled on them. In 2016 there was no recurrence, so let's hope I have got rid of it! This is a plant that we can all do something about. So learn to recognise it, tell your friends and neighbours and go and pull it out before it reaches epidemic proportions!

Julian Brandram

Fig. 24. Chilean Wine Palm (Jubaea chilensis) in La Campana National Park, 60km NW of Santiago.. (Photo - Scott Zona, Florida International University, Miami) [p. 38]

Fig. 25. Chilean Holly, Desfontainea Fig. 26. The Chilean Firebush, spinosa in Chile [p. 38] Embothrium coccineum. [p. 38]

Fig. 27. Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens Fig. 28. Flower of Himalayan Balsam [p. glandulifera (photo RHS/Advisory) [p. 43] 43]

Fig. 29.. Marion Gash tending plants outside the Conservatory [p. 19] 45

Fig. 30. Tillandsia landbeckii in the Atacama Desert of Chile. (Photo Gerhard Gudepöhl, Chile) [p. 38]

Fig. 31. The protected lower Slopes of Hermit’s Island in the Cape Horn archipelago. In the foreground is a small Winter’s Bark tree (Drimys winteri) and a clump of Racomitrium lanuginosum (“Woolly Fringe-moss”) which is native at Cape Horn and in the UK. (Photo – S Russell) [p. 38] 46