Purple Toothwort

What is it ... purple under the poplars?


A mass of flowers amongst last year’s fallen leaves. It is the Purple Toothwort (Lathraea clandestina). A parasite living on the roots of poplar trees.















It is an underground plant, you see only flowers and, sometimes, the ends of branches coming above ground. Flower buds appear from between white scales.

Pine Processionary

Now the Pine processionaries (Thaumetopoea pytiocampa) get wanderlust. They leave the cotton candy, high up in a pine tree, where they have lived all winter, and descend to the wood floor, linked together, one after another.
 

Slowly the procession moves forward until it reaches a place where the earth is loose and warmed by the sun. There the caterpillars get together and dig in with rythmic movements, and start pupating underground.











Do you need to be an intelligent insect to show social behaviour like this? Not if you follow some simple rules of thumb. Like:

(1) When the days get longer and warmer, leave your nest and head for downwards.
(2) Cling to the tail of a colleague.
(3) If you can’t find a free tail, walk to a place where the earth smells better because it is warm and loose.
(4) If you cannot find a better smelling place, stop walking and start making rythmic lateral movements.
(5) If you discover a colleague that makes rythmic lateral movements, do the same, as close to him/her as you can, even if that means you have to release the tail you followed.
(6) If it gets dark (because you are covered with earth, or because the sun has set), stop moving.

No need to think, no need for a leader, no management problems...

Lesser Celandine

We need some spring ...


... and here's the Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria)!

Corn Salad

Today I found at the roadside enough of greens to fill a small salad bowl. It was Corn Salad (Valerianella locusta), the wild cousin of the Lamb Lettuce or Corn Salad you can buy in the supermarket. It is easy to find, the little rosettes of a very clear green grow in gardens and cultivated fields, where in autumn the grains germinate when it is getting colder. Only in winter you can eat the leaves, after the formation of flowers in spring they are tasteless.



Corn Salad belongs to the family of Valerianaceae which is characterized bij the forked branches. In the picture you see the resulting symmetry.

Lichens

The lichens below are alliances between two very different organisms, fungi and green algae. The fungus collects water and minerals for both, and the algae make high-energy nutritients via photosynthese. To stay alive the fungus needs algae, but the algae are very well able to live without a fungal partner. Lichens grow very slowly, that’s why you find them mostly in places where they don’t need to compete with other plants. Like here on a branch of a tree, or on a rock, where other plants just can’t survive. In the air or in the surface of a rock they find enough minerals to grow, and they can stay for months without any water; in dry conditions their biological activity stops temporarily.



Lichens are classified according to their forms. A classification according to the combination of fungal and algal partners should be more appropriate, but many lichens are not yet well described, and maybe there exist more combinations of fungi and algae as we know. In the picture left a fruticose lichen, and down and right a foliose one.







Fragments of lichen, small clusters of fungus and algae, are blown away and start growing wherever they find circumstances to settle. This is the most common way to reproduce for a lichen. The fungus as well as the alga also has a way to reproduce while exchanging genetic material. The new fungus growing from the fungal spores has to find an algal partner to form a new lichen.

Catkins

Temperatures are just above zero, but since last week the first Hazels (Corylus avellana) are in flower. The bushes got a light yellow hue, caused by hundreds of drooping male catkins, each several centimeters long.






















Today I found some female flowers too. Mostly they start flowering about two weeks after the male flowers, maybe to avoid fertilization with pollen from the same bush. But here the lapse was much shorter.


The female flowers are tiny, consisting of only millimetre-long sticky red pistils.

Common Dogwood

It’s the winter sun that gives the branches of the Common Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) their colour. A red pigment, anthocyanin, is formed under influence of light and cold. It protects the twigs against the harmful effects of sunlight.























Dogwood is very common among the scrubs in dry and calcareous areas. It makes patches of colour in a wintery landscape, as you see when you look with nearly closed eyes.