High Summer around

It’s an irony of the modern botanical world, that in order to see a colourful diversity of chalkland wildflowers, you need to go to areas of former industry: chalk quarries, especially if they’re managed as nature reserves like Kiplingcotes Chalk Pit near . Grazed from winter to spring by Hebridean sheep, the turf is short and dry and these flowers can flourish without thuggish competition. From June to September the quarry is full of colour and buzzing with insects and butterflies. Probably at its best in July, a stroll along the bottom of the quarry and up to the slope above will never disappoint.

At the western end of the quarry where the soil is damper and more neutral, there’s a colony of Wild Pansies, (Viola tricolor), and on the chalkier slopes beneath the Hawthorn a few of the fragrant, drooping Musk Thistles. As you mover eastwards towards the thinner, chalkier soils, the calcicoles (chalk-dwellers) take over.

Above: Wild Pansy with Marmalade hoverfly

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Top: Clustered Bellflower (Campanula glomerata) ; bottom: Centaury (Centaurium erythraea)

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Above: Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare)

Below: Red Hemp- nettle (Galeopsis angustifolia)

Page 4 : Basil Thyme (Acinos arvensis)

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Red Hemp-nettle and Basil Thyme are rarities here. These, like many of the plants in the quarry, are members of the Lamiaceae family, known as the Mint, Sage or Deadnettle family. This family is often aromatic, has medicinal and culinary uses, and is always attractive to insects.

Pyramidal Orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) grow here and Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) on page 5 helps to keep down the grasses as it’s a hemiparasite, deriving part of its nourishment from their roots.

The rather weird-looking Yellow Wort (Blackstonia perfoliata) on page 5 (bottom) is another calcicole that loves the drier, sunnier quarry bottom, but only opens its flowers up to around midday.

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Above: two plants of the Toadflax genus (Linaria) grow here. The one on the right is the Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris), quite showy and much commoner than the more retiring and chalk-loving Pale Toadflax (Linaria repens) on the left.

Below: a Marbled White shares a Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) with a Marmalade Hoverfly. The Chalk Pit is one of the few places in our area you should see plenty of Marbled Whites.

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Above: a Peacock butterfly shows its underwings as it nectars on a Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis) on the Hudson Way.

Left: it’s unsurprising that field mice, birds and other predators are startled by the ‘eyes’ flashing when the Peacock opens its wings.

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Beverley Beck is somewhere you might have to look a bit harder to find the less showy, but no less interesting plants of our waterways, best in high summer. The Wormwood below (Artemisia absinthium) is a solitary plant under the overpass, although its relative the Common Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is widespread.

Wormwood is the source of absinthe and is more aromatic than its humbler cousin Mugwort, but both have been used medicinally for centuries. Mugwort was one of the Saxons’ Nine Sacred Herbs, and may have got its name from being used to flavour beer. Both plants are used in Chinese medicine. A 14-spot ladybird is here munching is way through aphids on this Wormwood branch, although apparently both plants are good moth repellants.

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You need to look in the water for two of the more interesting flowering plants of the Beck. Above are the flowers of Arrowhead (Sagittaria sagittifolia)), while on the left Unbranched Bur- weed (Sparganium emersum) is much less common than the Branched Burweed that clogs up many of the smaller field drains and the Barmston Drain.

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Above: A bumble bee feasts on the nectar of Marsh Woundwort (Stachys palustris), a paler, prettier and less stinky species than the ubiquitous Hedge Woundwort.

Left: Gypsywort (Lycopus europaeus), an easily missed plant of the water’s edge, which produces a black dye.

Page 11: Red Admirals patrol the trees lining the Beck in July and a Comma perches on a leaf.

Page 12: Wild Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum) attracts insects (top) and a Pike lurks under Water Lily leaves (Bottom)

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Blue-tailed Damselfies patrol the reedbeds. Left is a male, below a female.

Above: Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) in evening light.

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There are still some interesting plants to be seen on Beverley Westwood in late July. Below is the Stemless Thistle (Cirsium acaule), now a chalk-loving rarity here. On the edge of the Limekiln Pits is the largest population in East . It’s also known as the Picnic Thistle, as it’s so easily missed and, as I can testify, painful to land on.

This is the Yellow Pimpernel (Lysimachia nemorum), one of the few woodland plants that flowers in late summer. There’s a small colony in the middle of Burton Bushes where the light penetrates the trees in what was once a clearing. This was used for promenading in Georgian times, someone was paid to ‘sweep the walks’ and there may have been a Romano British enclosure here much earlier, according to English Heritage. You can still see the ditches if you fight your way through the holly.

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Finally, there were early fungi to be seen in July in Burton Bushes, after the heavy rains. Left is Glistening Inkcap (Coprinellus micaceus) and below Shaggy Parasols (Chlorophyllum rhacodes).

Page 15: a large bracket fungus (probably Ganoderma applanatum) sheds its spores on a large oak, and some oyster fungi are springing up on a recently felled trunk.

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A Hornet emerges from below a fallen log, probably having foraged for beetles. Fearsome as it looks, this is probably a male, which doesn’t sting. Having done its job fertilising the queen it will be at a loose end, until it dies off in the autumn. Only the queen will survive to hibernate over winter before laying her eggs in the spring.

Helen Kitson August 2020

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