The Wart Biter

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The French nature guides call it ‘verrucivore’. The locals just call it a ‘sauterelle’. It is a relatively common beast in the area where I live. In Britain it is rare and in France is said to be declining.

If you have ADSL internet connection, I suggest that you look at this site:--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi6KxpUF06o

It shows an intriguing short video by Dr. Simon Robinson, senior keeper at London Zoo, of the activity of this animal chewing away at a wart on his finger.

The beast which when placed near a wart on the skin actually seeks it out and chews it! It then in this instance regurgitated its stomach contents over the wound which caused Dr. Robinson considerable pain.

I suspect that the extraordinary activity of this creature was discovered by chance in Scandinavia, but did this knowledge anciently reach France? The French nature books have surely borrowed the French name from the Latin. Linnaeus, who gave the Latin name, was a Swede, and he would know of this folklore, and he named it ‘Decticus verrucivorous’ , which also means ‘wart-biter’. A French text states “It is usual to let the insect chew the wart and then burn the wart by deposing the stomach contents on it”. Have there been then dialect French names now lost to us?

What, one wonders, attracts the beast to a wart? What is in the gut contents to cause such pain?

The photo shows a female with its long ovipositor sitting on a vine leaf. She will lay eggs singly in the stony ground. After hatching, the young will take over a year to mature, attaining a size of up to 4 centimetres. Note the blocky pattern of black and white on the wings, and also note the very long antennae. Together these characteristics will distinguish the creature from other grasshoppers and crickets. [N.B. the French word ‘criquet’ indicates the grasshoppers which carry short antenna - Crickets with long antennae are ‘sauterelles’ in French.]

This animal is a relative of the Great Green Cricket, which is one of noisiest chirpers day and night. This one is equally loud but with a rhythm of notes of an increasing rapidity. These ‘chirps’ are produced in full sun only by a males as he moves his left wing which bears a toothed rib rapidly over the hind edge of the right wing.

There is no point in sounding off unless the female can hear! These insects have ears which are found on the front legs just below the front knees. But things are more complicated even than that. The ear structure is rather like an ear trumpet in form. The wide end is not on the leg but on the thorax under the side flap which extends down from the back. There is an opening on each side which leads into an ear tube which in an ever decreasing width leads down to the leg and ends up between two slits which are visible below the knee. The sound is by this means amplified when it gets there. Oscillating membranes vibrate to the sounds and nerve endings send messages to whichever part of the nervous system is programmed to respond.

Bimonthly Weather Report May-June 2010

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Summer arrived belatedly on the 22nd June.  The overnight temperatures were about five degrees on average below those of 2009.  In the middle of May the central heating was still in use.  Sleet fell on the 5th.  Rainfall was high in both months, with 67 and 157 mms respectively.  In 2009 the figures were 50 and 38 mms.  The first half of June was perhaps the wettest period we have had in 11 years.  The exceptional fall of 54 mm on the 9th was in more southern France exceeded by many times that with serious flooding and damage in the Var region.  But after the 22nd of June all was back to normality with no rain and finally considerable heat with the day temperatures approaching 30.
Natural History.  The numbers of the green eyed horsefly Philipomyia graeca seem to be very much less this year.  They fly into the house and get trapped on the windows.   The Hoopoe (an exotic brown/orange and black bird, with a delightful crest) seems more common.

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.