Nature in the Lot (notably the Bouriane)

Thursday, 5 February 2009

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.

Monday, 5 January 2009

The Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, French - Ficaire, Petite Chélidoine, Latin -- Ranunculus ficaria .

It is a common flower of the early spring yet last year I found them difficult to find. This year, it is in abundance. But then the weather has been particularly mild. Botanists classify it as a buttercup, but apart from the fact that the flowers are yellow, one might mistrust such a relationship. Normally buttercups are poisonous, but the young leaves of this plant can be eaten in a salad. The glossy thickish heart shaped leaves often marked with a dark central stripe or whitish blotches are not at all like those of the usual buttercups. Buttercups have five petals but this species has anything between eight to twelve. There are three sepals (not five) hiding underneath the petals. The flowers fold up at night and in low temperatures. A further botanical oddity is that the germinating seeds only have one seed leaf. These structural features all suggest that the plant in evolutionary terms is close to the ancestors of both the two branches of flowering plants – the dicotyledons and the monocotyledons – the latter includes grasses, onions and lilies-.

But the petals reveal the buttercup relation. They are very glossy. This is unusual among flowers and a feature possibly unique to buttercups. One recalls the childish game, as common in France as it once was in England, of ‘do you like butter?’ as a yellow light is reflected onto a child’s chin from a shiny flower held below. The pip like fruits, arranged in a spiral heap on each flower base are also characteristic of the buttercups.
Apart from that there is some mystery about its name. The French ficaire and the Latin ficaria are said to relate to the form of the roots looking like a bunch of figs (Latin ficus ). Not to me! The roots are a tiny bunch of elongated tubers. Some ancient herbalist claimed they looked like haemorrhoids or piles. From that thought comes the name of pilewort. The French even list it as ‘herbe aux hémorroides’ . The ancient herbalists followed the misleading ‘doctrine of signatures’ and by the similarity considered its use as a cure for that misfortune. But the name ‘Celandine’ and ‘Chélidoine’ is from the Greek meaning ‘swallow’. Further confusion comes from the same name being used for a quite unrelated plant – the Greater Celandine. The only reason for this name which descends to us seems utterly absurd: that is the Greeks (as Aristotle states it) had a myth that the birds, the swallows, fed one or the other (probably the other) of the plants to their nestlings to improve their eyesight.
If you see this flower search for tiny swellings or bulbils in the axils of the leaves. One subspecies has them, another does not. They readily fall off and create new plants. But its seeds are mostly infertile. . In my region I have so far only found the subspecies without these bulbils.

Thursday, 1 January 2009

The Fouine - Beech or Stone Marten

La Fouine or Hêtrière , Beech Marten - or Stone Marten- from the German Steinmarder,
Latin -Martes foina

This animal appeared on the steps to our courtyard, looking uncertain in its movements and even perhaps ill. It curled itself up and went to sleep. Later it ‘toddled’ down to the back door, laboriously negotiating the steps and then curled itself up on the coconut mat. From nose to tail tip it was about 60 cms. long – not a small beast.
Believing it to be in far from perfect condition we gave it some bread and milk, which it ignored. It slowly went away again with a lumbering gait. Then it found its way to the other side of the property. In the evening it was eating the fallen plums. The next morning we found numerous small scratched out holes beneath the walnut tree of much the same appearance as a rabbit might make. The creature had probably searched for insect grubs and beetles. No doubt any unwary mouse or shrew also fell prey. But the animal itself was asleep near the washing line and when disturbed bounded like a kitten. The animal is essentially nocturnal and I imagine that its apparent lethargy in the day, was because we had disturbed its slumbers!
Anecdotes like this of the behaviour of the fouine are not uncommon. It can be domesticated, rather like its close relative the polecat, which after some generations of domestication has become the ferret. It is claimed that the fouine can live up to 18 years. I could not possibly approach it to smell it, but it is said that it has a not unattractive smell, unlike the polecat which stinks. Another relative, the pine marten, is very similar to the fouine, distinguished chiefly by having a yellowish bib, rather than white, and rather more pointed ears. It is far more wary of humans.
Before we had our roof re-tiled, fouines could wake us with a great thumping in the attic. When fouines take up home around or in habitations, they can cause damage. Insulation and gaines can be chewed. Bits of car engines have been damaged. The creature may be found in the heart of towns as well as the countryside. It has the English name of Beech Martin, although it does not exist in Britain. Whenever the English name Beech marten was invented it copied another ancient French name of hêtrière (of the beech tree). It so happens that the original Latin word for the beech tree, a name which continued in use in southern France, i.e. fagus became faîne in denoting a wood of small beeches. This word became fouine and so the name of the animal originating from the Occitan also means the creature of the beech trees.

Friday, 12 December 2008

The American Pokeweed, le Raisin d’Amérique, Phytolacca americana

Whilst in these momentous times the thoughts of thinking people turn to America, in the French countryside everywhere, the botanist is reminded of North America. Over the years numerous plants have entered Europe from that continent. Ubiquitously, the American ‘horseweed’ otherwise called the Canadian fleabane is a gardener’s ever present pain. It is a plant without any merit. Others are striking and beautiful. Of these the Thorn Apple (Datura) and The Pokeweed absolutely demand your attention. The former with enormous dangling white trumpets, seeds itself in many fields of maize and farmyards. The latter, the Pokeweed, is far less common but even more dramatic. It can grow three metres (ten feet) high. The red stems up to four centimetres thick, leaves as large as spinach and long dangling racemes of purple black berries look threatening. On a woodland path a few kilometres from home I passed plant after plant. When I searched the French national database of plant records in my department (the Lot, 46), it was not recorded. In the 1930’s it was described as common in countries bordering the Mediterranean. Is this plant spreading, I ask? Probably yes. Most probably they have seeded originally from plants grown for ornament.
The descriptions of this plant are trailed with lists of its medicinal virtues. It has been used, and is still recommended by herbalists, to treat rheumatism, headaches, insect bites, skin diseases and even breast cancer. Investigations have shown that it could inhibit infection by viruses. As you might guess the plant contains toxins. The berries are eaten by birds and it is most likely that the spread of the plant is largely through this route with their droppings. The berries taste a little like elderberries though slightly more astringent. In the USA birds gorge themselves on the berries, but a friend told me that chickens can be poisoned by them and for that reason the plant is recommended to be ripped out in some districts in France. If so, what about our blackbirds and thrushes? At one time the Portuguese used the berries to enhance the colour of port wine; one must hope that is now a discontinued practice! The berry juice makes quite a good ink and it quite likely that the Declaration of Independence was written with it. In spite of the poisonous properties of the plant, the young leaves can be eaten like spinach. A Frenchman travelling in Louisiana in 1791 writes that leaves were a favourite diet of the creoles and negro slaves, though it was also eaten agreeably by the ‘whites’. It was necessary to throw away the first dark ‘bouillon’ water. I have tried this. The raw leaves are a little bitter, but after discarding the cooking water several times the cooked leaves have the taste of spinach.. The original tribes – the caraibes – called it ‘lanmayan’ though the word ‘poke’ comes from the Red Indian Algonquin name.
I remind myself that the new American President did not have ancestors who tasted this plant. He is not laden with the historical baggage of slave ancestors.

Sunday, 7 December 2008

Chestnut woods in Winter

In the Dead of Winter, Chataignier.

A bright day in December. Nothing moves. The trees are dying and falling to pieces. It is a picture of death. In it I read the passage of the centuries. The path was an ancient medieval road, which has witnessed the passing of villagers to market, rough bloody soldiers in the 100 years war, and throughout time the peasants struggling to their work. The particular species of moss at the bases of the trees shows me that the soil is acid and poor. Before the chestnut trees were growing here, it was probably a heathland, never farmed, but with difficulty grazed by goats and sheep. The chestnut trees were planted to produce food for the peasants.
The trees have been cut and recut throughout time (the process of coppicing), providing firewood and rejuvenating the trees to fruit more prolifically. A count of the tree rings on the smaller branches shows that the last cut was about ninety years ago, significantly at the time of the first great war, after which time the interest and the manpower waned. The original tree was probably planted two or three hundred years ago. Today no-one cares for the fruit or the logs or the timber. Coppicing probably would help to control the dreaded ‘blight’ which is causing the upper twigs and branches to die and probably has killed some trees. This same blight, originally from Asia, killed great forests of trees in North America and has been spreading in Europe since the 1930’s. The timber is useless. The huge cut trunk displays ring shaped splits in the outer sap wood, which the forester calls ring-shake. Any planks cut from such wood would fall apart like onion rings. The cause is probably more a reflection of the poor genetic nature of the trees than disease.
But also, as is obvious, the heart-wood has totally rotted to powder, leaving only the sapwood as a supporting ring. Even so, the tree may well have continued to live, had not the bank given way under its weight and the huge trunk fell across this pathway, still in use as for centuries by farmers going to their fields.
Nevertheless death and decay gives life. Woodpeckers nest in rotted holes. Their droppings add fertiliser to the rotting dust. Insects eat the rot. I search among this deep terreau which has a texture of potting compost for beetle larvae. One day maybe I will find the larva of an exceedingly rare black beetle, with a violet black colour which I know is found in such places, though to my knowledge it is usually found in similar cavities of rotting oaks . One day I may find Limoniscus violaceus. Ancient dying trees have their place in the scheme of things but their continuance is perhaps dependent on the hunters, who value the cover it gives to boar and deer. It is another phase of the landscape history.