Bimonthly Weather report March -April 2010

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Winter dragged on.  The Cranes were late flying north.  Often one sees them around February 25th.  They fly in great V skeins cackling so that you hear them from a kilometre away.  We had two flights each of several formations on March 1st and then much later on March 14th.  The 1st cuckoo was heard on March 21st. The 1st Swallow on April 5th; Hoopoe April 9th; Oriole April 21st; and Nightingale April 18th.   
No nightingale has been heard near the house up to May 1st.  We had one last year.  The cuckoos have not been so apparent as previously.
 Butterflies - The scarce swallowtail seems early on 17th April; Orange-tips on the 5th April. 
The beautiful tree - Le Prunier de la St. Jean flowered fully on 23 March - It was on March 14th in 2009, and in 2008 was in full flower on February 19th.
The peach tree bloomed fully on 25th March, ten days later than in 2009.
The first Orchis morio (orchid) was seen on April 11th and the first daffodils on March 4th.


These two months have been very dry - April saw only 13 mm of rain.
The first half of March was cold and raw with  frosts on ten nights, one down to minus five.  The first real change to Spring did not arrive until mid April.
The first daffodils came into flower on March 4th. 

Bimonthly weather report January - February 2010

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The weather has been hard.  The first snowdrops showed white on the 23rd January, Not exceptionally late however in 2008 and 2009 they showed white on the 16th. No celandines have been seen, though they normally appear in February.    In 2008 the wild plum tree (prunier de la St Jean) was brilliantly in flower on the 17th February- this year no sign of flower during this season.  No birds sing until the 27th February when great tits do their sawing song.
Low overnight temperatures of minus 8 and minus seven are not exceptionally low, but the average temperatures were well below those of 2009.
At the end of February 27/28 a violent storm was experienced in West and North West France but the departement of the Lot escaped and we had hardly any rain and only a moderate wind.

The Wild Plants of France 4 - The Stinking Hellebore - Helleborus foetidus

French- Ellebore, Pied de Griffon, Herbe à Sétons

From the beginning of the year, the stinking hellebore has been flowering in the woods and waysides of the limestone districts of France. It is not recorded from Brittany or Les Landes in Aquitaine. In Britain it exists sporadically in some limestone districts (e.g. Gloucestershire) and is declining. It is the earliest of flowers, but overlooked because it is not colourful and the flowers are lost among the other green of the plants of the waysides. They stand tall but do not attract attention. Its relative, the green hellebore is even more rare. But both are scattered throughout most of France where the flora is undisturbed.

The common culture of the middle ages across Europe is echoed in common plant names. Through them one can trace this culture back even to the Romans and Greeks. The French name of ‘herbe à sétons’ is reflected in the dialect names in England of setterwort and also oxheal. A séton (from the Latin seta- a thread- is a thread or bandage passed under a bridge of skin, lifting it and helping to relieve a festering sore. When a cow or bullock had an infection in the throat, a length of the black root of hellebore was inserted into the loose skin flap, the dewlap, below the throat. The herbal medicine passed into the blood and stimulated the flow of the phlegm. The name ‘setterwort’ takes the veterinary use of séton, no doubt via the Norman-French as disseminated by the monks, combining it with the Anglos-Saxon wort –weed.

All hellebores are toxic plants, but have been in medical use since early times. Quantities of the roots of the green hellebore were taken to the London hospitals in the 18th century. The word ‘hellebore’ used for several unrelated plants is originally ancient Greek signifying ‘dangerous food’. The Christmas rose is another species of the same genus. All have divided leaves much in the form of a heavily splayed foot or otherwise a set of claws, which gives them the alternative names of Bearsfoot in England and Pied de Griffon in France.

They are related to buttercups. A species whose structure is halfway between the two is the kingcup which has yellow flowers, but also carries capsular fruits similar to those of the hellebores. The custom in Nature, which is more common than you might think, is that ants distribute the seeds. These carry a large white oily growth which ants like to eat. Ants pick up the seeds, eat the oil body and leave the seed at some distance. But not only do ants do this. It is written that snails and slugs also are attracted to the oil and they get the seed stuck to their slimy skin and so also carry the seeds away.

As they flower in the winter, one wonders how they get pollinated. But in the warm afternoons in winter there are some insects about. Though books say it is bees which drink at these flowers, my guess is that it is the flies which come for the copious nectar. The nectaries are huge. They are in origin modified petals which have lost all pretence to be colourful and are converted to these large green cups of nectar. They look like medieval drinking horns and are at least half the size of the stamens around which they are clustered. The insects which drink are either immune to the plant’s toxins or the nectar does not contain them! It is the green outer sepals which at first sight you might suppose are the petals. In the Christmas or Lenten Rose (Helleborus niger) the same sepals are coloured and look exactly like petals. In the stinking hellebore they each have a purple rim. These colours and the fusty pong of the flowers might well attract flies. The green colour would help the production of sugar in the pale winter sunshine, and the purple rim might absorb some warmth. By mid-January some flowers have already set their seed. One could wish for a more attractive plant as a harbinger of Spring than the stinking hellebore!

Weather Report for November to December 2009

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The dullest months of the year. In November there was little rain after the first week and no frosts at all. December was also very dry.
In December the minimum of the 5th and 6th were 11 degrees C and on the 22nd it was 10 degrees C. which were exceptional.
The relatively thin covering of snow (about 2 cms.) on the 19th December was early.
Natural history events were not exceptional. After the snow melted on the 22nd there was a large increase in the activity of the moles.
The catkins on the hazels lengthened noticeably.

The Wild Plants of France 3 - The snowdrop.

 French – La perce-neige. Latin Galanthus nivalis.

In 2001 a new drug, galantamine, was brought into use to relieve memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients. It is extracted from the bulbs of the snowdrop and its relatives. The Snowdrop has for some time been used as a herb in the Caucasus to aid the relief of paralysis particularly in those people struck down with poliomyelitis, the complaint which afflicted President Roosevelt. Until this very recent discovery to Western medicine, the snowdrop has not been considered to have any herbal value in the West. How many other chemical secrets lie unknown in our wild plants?

There are few plants which have not had some superstition, religious virtue or medical virtue attributed to them. In the middle ages, it was the beauty of this flower which gave it value. It flowers at the time of the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, when Christ was presented to the Temple, 40 days after his birth. This is Candlemas or Chandeleur, the 2nd February. In this picture by Hans Holbein, the virgin almost resembles a snowdrop as she holds the Christ-child.

The link between the Virgin and the new beginning of the year, if you will, the cleansing away of winter; of the soul; and the snowdrop, is rooted deep in the Christian tradition. In the USA it has become translated into ‘ground-hog day’ when the prairie settlers looked for the appearance of the ground-hogs. Who amongst us does not look for the first signs of Spring and is it not the snowdrops for which we look? On Candlemas day the statue of the Virgin was taken off the altar and the space strewn with ‘candlemas-bells’ - snowdrops. The reformation killed this practice. But around many churches and monasteries the snowdrops were encouraged to grow and are still there.

In Britain the flower is probably only native in the west, yet today it may be found, usually growing near houses and churches as far north as Scotland. In these northern areas it rarely forms seeds. The bees do not pollinate and the temperature is too cold for seeds to form. It likes damp places by streams and probably in Britain it is spread by the small bulbs being carried by water. In France it is a wild plant chiefly in the west and central areas, but the floras say it is found ‘here and there’ throughout the country. This ‘ça et là’ description also suggests to me that a good deal of its distribution is again due to its beauty and its introduction by monk and man. There is a steep and stony bank in the Lot (46) where the ground is carpeted with them, and I know of another on lower ground. Here and there is an isolated group on a roadside. Why, I ask, is it not more common.? Why are they not on the banks of every damp shady ditch?

My guess is that much of the French countryside has through the centuries been denuded by overgrazing and many flowers which ought to be common have been eaten out. What might eat the snowdrop? It would most likely be an animal that might grub out the bulbs. Could it be les sangliers, the wild boar! Or the domestic pig.

The flower is relatively simple, with six ‘petals’ [the botanists call them tepals.] The inner ones are short and are not like normal petals in that each is tipped with green. The ovary develops into a capsule, and the seeds, commonly enough formed in France, each carry a small oil rich body which is attractive to ants. The ants carry the seeds away and having eaten the oil, drop the seed. Each flower stalk is borne from the bulb between two leaves and on the flower stem just below the flower is a green bract or spathe, itself formed of two fused leaflets. The ovary lies beneath (not within) the flower. That fact and the existence of the spathe places it in the family of the Amaryllidaceae.

There are two botanical mysteries:- It grows through the snow when the temperature is often below zero; how does it avoid freezing? The growth itself generates a little warmth and the leaves have hardish points. Both features help! It is conceivable that the green tips to the petals helps the flowers to resist frost. The green chlorophyll will generate sugar and that acts as an antifreeze. The green spots are also where nectar is produced and when the weather is warm enough, bees will pollinate the flowers; rarely enough in the northern areas! The second question has so far no answer. How does it remain dormant through summer and autumn and how does it know when to start growing out of its freezing bed?

If you want to grow some snowdrops, dig them up immediately after flowering and transplant them when still in green leaf. But please leave the wild ones alone.

The Wild Plants of France 2.... Holly

Published in 'The French Paper' December 2009--- The Christmas Edition.

Holly …. Houx (French) …. Ilex aquifolium (Latin).

‘The Holly and the Ivy – when they are both full grown- of all the trees that are in the wood the Holly bears the Crown.’ Where began this traditional link between Holly and Christmas?

A long while ago I led a party of Germans from the Munich area through the Forest of Dean. One stopped and asked me ‘Vot is dat tree?’ Although surprised at what seemed to me to be a display of extraordinary ignorance, I replied ‘A holly tree’. ‘Vee have not this plant where vee live.’

Wow! I thought; Can this be true? As soon as possible I checked out the European distribution. He was right. The tree does not grow everywhere. Even in England, the county of Lincolnshire is not known to have hollies not originally planted by someone at some time. In France it is not recorded from the Cherbourg peninsula in Normandy (an oversight perhaps – can you confirm?). In the deep south it is fairly rare. In my area of the département of the Lot (46) I would not know where to find a genuine wild specimen. The home range of this plant is in Western Europe extending to Northern Germany and also to Austria – though not Munich! It is also here and there in the Mediterranean region and along the Northern coastlands of Spain.

With spiny thick skinned shiny leaves, you would suppose that it is adapted either to dry locations or cold conditions. Any evergreen leaf is capable of being a chemical factory for food production if conditions are favourable during the winter and they therefore have a head start in Spring over the deciduous leaves of other trees. It does not live in the coldest countries though it is reasonably resistant to frosts, so perhaps Spain is its real home of origin, back in the time when the Ice-Age glaciers first retreated northwards. The holly extended its range, following the warming conditions.

The custom of bringing berried holly into the house is said to go back to the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which became transformed into Christmas. The primeval and non-Christian reverence for this tree has been displayed in the Forest of Dean (my previous home area) to very recent times. At the Court of Verderers, still in existence, any oath was sworn over a spray of Holly.

The Christian association with holly started somewhere in Western Europe. Wherever it began, it is easy to see the symbolism to the Christian story. The red berries represent blood and the spiny leaves, the crown of thorns. But not all the leaves are spiny. The most strongly spiny leaves are those within reach of the hungry mouths of browsing animals. At the top of the tree their edges are smooth. An interesting adaptation, but how does the tree know how to grow the leaves in this manner? The most probable answer is that the tree would normally tend to grow fairly smooth leaves, but that when the branches are damaged, the new growth has smaller and more spiny leaves. So if you cut or chew the branches, then you get more spiny leaves.

The younger leaves are quite palatable to livestock. Farmers used to chop down the upper branches to feed their animals in the winter. The inner bark is rather mucilaginous. It was a country practice to strip this bark, boil it and let it ferment. It then became exceedingly sticky. This was used to trap birds – it was ‘birdlime’. The trapped birds could then be killed and eaten! You may recall the absurd words in Alice through the Looking Glass –

“I sometimes dig for buttered rolls

Or set limed twigs for crabs.”

The verse is meant to be ridiculous – but the lime was almost surely birdlime made from Holly bark. Its production was once a serious industry in the Lake District.

The red berries do not grow on all holly trees, because the vast majority of trees have either only male or female flowers! The small white flowers, which have just four petals, bloom in May. The bees love them. If you eat the berries, you can expect to have stomach cramps, diarrhoea or worse. Yet birds in winter appear to enjoy them. Where the thrush-like redwings migrate south and west in severe winters, they regale themselves on these. It is possible that the poisonous and bitter element of the berries becomes reduced as they age. You may notice that the berries of Holly or Ivy are hardly touched by the birds until mid winter. It would not be surprising that this is an adaptation which aids the dispersal of the pips inside.

There has evolved with the holly, as with so many native plants, its own particular range of fellow travellers, its parasites. The holly blue butterfly is such a species. This beautiful blue butterfly has a pale underside to the wings with scattered small dark spots. It lays its eggs amongst the flower buds of holly (and a few other woody plants) which the caterpillars then eat. But when the adults of these emerge in summer they then lay eggs on ivy – an unusual occurrence.

The dried leaves, used in an infusion are supposed to give relief from flu; it is perhaps as good as quinine in reducing a fever. I do not advocate this use, get a vaccination instead or go to bed!

Weather Report for September to October 2009

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 The weather records have a gap because the author had a gut infection on 9-11 - I do not suppose that any extreme islamist was responsible.  Both months were warm.  Evening wood fires were begun on the 10th October.  Unexpected and severe ground frosts arrived between the 15-19 October which killed the leaves (I hope no more) of the young Paulownia trees which I had planted.  Large Paulownias produce beautiful blue flowers and seem to be frost-secure.  But young plants need love and care.  The aubergines, remains of potatoes, and various annual flowers also hit the dust!
There was little rain except for the 18th September [25mm] and the 21st October [28mm].  The ground was hard and cracked. 
On the 15th and 16th October large skeins of cranes flew southwards.  At least 200 birds.  They make a great noise as the fly, constantly cackling to each other.
Fungi are very few. But towards the end of October considerable numbers of field mushrooms [Agaricus campestris] appeared. The French call them Rosés des Prés.  We ate some.  But still as November arrives, few other species are about. No ceps have been seen this year, nor any Trompettes de Mort.

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