Blue beetles on Artichokes - Hoplia coerulea.

Hoplia coerulea

It was an astonishing sight to see these brilliant blue jewels of beetles sitting on the leaves of Topinambour (the Jerusalem artichoke), in June.  A photo of a specimen does not reflect the incredible iridescence that comes with the sun shining on the surface structure of the beetle. For the colour is not within the substance of the surface but is formed by the refraction of the light as with a prism. In contrast the legs and underside shine like silver.
Several of these beetles were sitting immobile of the leaves. All were males. The females are apparently less often seen and are a muddy brown.  I read that in museum collections of this species there is only one female to every thousand males.  The males will sit on a leaf and hold themselves in almost a standing position on their hind legs.   The larvae live underground.  It is said that the female will climb from the ground to mate and then after a copulation of less than twenty seconds drop down again to re-enter the soil. [If the females are so rare, how does anyone know this?]  It is further claimed that the males do not attract the females  in any positive way.   Why then, one wonders, do the males  sit in such a strange  manner on the leaves, and why are they so brilliantly coloured?   Can there be any other reason than to attract the females?
It is classified with a subgroup of scarab beetles. . This species is found only in Southern France and Catalonia in Spain.

Bimonthly Weather Report May to June 2009 Gourdon Lot, France

Click to view Statistics.
May had mixed weather. Fires were necessary in mid May. Whilst we were on holiday in the Auvergne, the weather was poor in the Lot with considerable rainfall. June ended with heatwave (canicule in French) which extended into July.
By late June most birds seem to be silent, but the turtle doves coo in the woods and here and there the nuthatches belt out a wolf whistle.
I am astonished how fast the vegetables grow in the 'potager'. The pests are few. I picked three Colorado beetles from the potatoes, but there has been no damage. The cabbage white butterflies laid some eggs on the sprouting broccoli, but the caterpillars have been picked off by hand.
The green eyed horse flies (Philipomyia graeca) appeared on time from June third. They get trapped on the inside of the windows. All are females. Refer to an item in The French News past articles for more on this.

Bi-monthly Weather report Gourdon Lot, March April 2009

To view the statistics click here
It was very wet between 25-29 April with 75 mm falling. The cold and damp necessitated household fires to the last day of April.
Birds first heard on:-
Cranes migrating to NE 9 March [Feb 29 in 2008].
Cuckoo 15 March
Serin 22 March
Hoopoe 28 March
Swallow 29 March
Nightingale 22 April
First orchid flowers:-
Orchis morio 6 April
Serapias lingua 14 April.

Another parasitised spurge – The Cypress Spurge. Euphorbia cyparissias

Uromyces pisi-sativi
(infected plant on far left).

The Cypress spurge is common throughout France, but only occurs here and there in England and Scotland. It is a small plant with many crowded leaves which makes it look a little like a tiny cypress tree. Like the Wood Spurge it is also parasitised by a rust fungus. One photo here shows the normal flowers and the other shows a stem which is elongated and with yellow leaves. All these latter leaves are covered in pustules as in the infected wood spurge and the smell is richly perfumed though rather more sickly than that of the infected Wood Spurge.
There is a difference in the detailed biology. Rust fungi can have very complicated life cycles. That of the rust on Wood Spurge is simplified. It only has one host plant and the life cyucle therefore only occurs on that species. The spores are carried from one host to another by flies.
The rust on the Cypress spurge has two different host species and as in the life of many other rust fungi the two hosts can be very different. In this case the other host is frequently the garden pea. Other species related to the pea can also be infected. The fungus lives in the spurge during the winter and then flies or even bees carry the spores to some leguminous plants (like peas) in the summer. The life cycle continues on those plants carrying through a form of sexual recombination of chromosomes. Then a new form and generation of spores are carried to infect again the cypress spurge plants.

Wood Spurge - the Gardenia of the woods? (*Euphorbia amygdaloides*)

The Euphorbias, alias the spurges, include some of the most statuesque of garden plants. And in the natural woodlands the wood spurge commonly strikes a dramatic pose. Its large clusters of yellowish flowers formed not of petals but yellowish bracts are eye catching. Each plant stands up to eighty cen-timetres high. Each red stem has a perennial drapery of drooping large thick, deep-green leaves which tend to be purple on the underside. The young shoots with their small, still growing leaves usually flop to one side. A thick white latex oozes out from any broken stem. This latex is extremely acrid in taste and can burn the skin. It is hardly surprising that one does not usually see any damage caused by predators. The plant is common throughout France, but in Britain it becomes rare north of a line from the Mersey to the Wash.
Here and there in most springs I see stands of the plants with the topmost drooping growth replaced with clumps of broader pale yellow/green leaves standing straight. The photo compares the abnormal on the left (plus one fly) with the usual form on the right. You might imagine that the yellow form was just an aberration, a variation, but then you notice that groups of flies are settling on them. I have also seen a small yellow slug eating a yellow leaf. Unfortunately when I bring the camera close enough to get a picture the flies tend to fly off.
But pick a deformed stem and immediately there is a powerful and delightful scent. In contrast the ordinary dull green and purple leaves smell musty and earthy. The odour of the deformed leaves re-minds me of gardenias. It is unexpected. One must suppose that the flies and slug are attracted to the smell and are devouring the exudations from the leaves which produce it. But what causes the smell? I remember the experience from long ago of a similarly strong scent emanating from a fungus disease ( a ‘rust’ disease) on creeping thistle. Indeed, examination of the leaves under the microscope show that each yellow leaf bears hundreds of minute red fungal pustules. These each exude an aromatic liq-uid. This it is a ‘rust’ known as Endophyllum euphorbiae-sylvaticae, rarely found in Britain. It only lives on the wood spurge and no other species of spurge. It has contrived to change the shoots of the spurge into yellow scented ‘flower’ forms to attract the flies which would most surely carry the spores of the fungus to new plants. I also wonder if any other animals would eat these soft, yellow, scented leaves?

Bi-monthly Weather report, Gourdon, Departement du Lot, France, January 2009

To view statistics for January & February 2009 (click)
Both months were fairly mild. As usual December was colder with 5 cms of snow on Dec. 26th.
As is so often the case in early spring the days were bright with early ground frosts and the occasional day with quite warm afternoons.
First flowerings.
Snowdrop Jan 16th.
Daffodil Feb. 25th.
Celandine Feb. 26th.

The affair of the sap-sucking woodpeckers.

On page 51 of Oliver Rackham’s recent book ‘Woodlands’ he writes of the sap sucking habits of the American ‘sapsucker’ bird. Then he continues to describe the antics of the great spotted woodpecker in the same context. As Dr. Rackham is the leading scholar in landscape history his comments must be taken seriously. He says ‘it is curious that such a conspicuous activity was not noticed in bird or forestry books down the centuries’. Indeed it is so, if so. Rackham states that the activity has been noticed in Central Europe since the 1930’s. He did not observe it in England before the 1970’s.
What is the activity? The bird makes a series of small holes aligned horizontally on a tree trunk. The holes are about a centimetre wide and deep. The tree is healthy and sap exudes out of the holes which the bird then laps up with its rather long tongue. The birds may make many rows of such holes in a trunk. In young trees such as chestnut or lime the bark is often somewhat smooth and the holes are then very easy to see. I have seen them in the Forest of Dean but not here in southern France. Rackham states that the holes ‘ seem ’ to be caused by the bird. That suggests a note of caution. When I first saw these rows of holes in the Dean an RSPB colleague suggested it might be the work of nuthatches. They frequently jam acorns into cracks in bark in order to eat them. Could they make holes in smooth barked trees in order to do this? But a little research convinces me that the wood-pecker is indeed the artisan.
A friend, resident in Bishop’s Stortford, who is an excellent bird-watcher drew my attention to the note in Rackham’s work, with some comment of surprise since he had not seen the phenomenon and indeed as noted - it is not mentioned in the general English works on birds. But I have found reference to it on both Swiss and Belgian web sites. Also I read in my popular French bird guides that both the great spotted and the black woodpeckers feed on sève (i.e. sap), though it is not explained how. Is this a longstanding commonplace phenomenon on the continent? Is it a trick learnt by the birds just as milk bottle top opening was a trick acquired by tits and then passed on from bird to bird?
The great spotted species [ pic épeiche ] is amongst the commonest of our woodpeckers. I illustrate an immature bird. There are two others which look very similar, the middle spotted and the lesser spotted. The latter is very tiny, about the size of a chaffinch. The larger species is more the size of blackbird.