Photograph your specimens through the microscope

I sometimes think of myself as a bit of a Luddite eschewing modern technology (a student laughed at me on a field trip last year for actually using a paper map... I like to think he was sorry when his phone ran out of battery). But when it works I do like it really.

Today I finally got a microscope camera to talk to a computer. I won't bore you with the details because the important thing is that it now works and you can now come and use it. Getting the lighting right seems to be a fine art but I'm getting there. You can zoom in to the important features of your specimens, snap a photo, and then print it out and stick it in your notebook. I used it to identify two freshwater snails and I was very pleased.

They both came from a local pond lined with stone blocks (which apparently used to be where the local gentry washed their carriages - who knows). It didn't look like a very promising environment - it's pretty stagnant with more mud than water! But this actually made it a different sort of habitat to the usual ponds we visit - and so it turned up a species I'd not seen before.

You can see this species is very tightly coiled. It's only about 6mm across, and has 5+ whorls.

But also, it's very thin through - only about 1mm. I managed to hold the shell so you can see its aperture (which is pretty round).

So with these relatively few facts and a look at Collins 'Lakes, Rivers, Streams and Ponds', I identified it as Anisus leucostoma -  the White-lipped ramshorn snail. It doesn't care if the pond it's in dries up a bit: it can resist drought by staying in the mud. There's a similar looking species (Anisus vortex) but it's found in running water (and has an oval aperture) - so can be safely discounted I reckon.

For freshwater and terrestrial species I very much like the drawn illustrations in Janus's 'The Young Specialist Looks at Molluscs' (overlook the daft title) - it shows the shells from different angles (you can get a secondhand copy for about £5, or you're welcome to look at mine). The names can be out of date but that's relatively easily sorted (I might make a list to share).

The other species (in fact the only other thing alive it seemed) was a dextral snail (meaning its aperture is on the right if you hold it upright towards you). You can see the aperture is huge compared to the rest of the shell - it's about 3/4 the height. There's a little dichotomous key to Lymnaea (pond snails) in 'LRSP' - if you follow that (and look at the angle at the top of the aperture) you'll conclude this species is Radix peregra, the romantically-named Wandering snail.

I'm sure with a bit more experience with the lighting (and a bit of fiddling with Photoshop) you could make your photos even clearer. These snails were wet and I probably should have dried them to help with reflections and focusing. But I hope this encourages you that tiny things can be photographed fairly clearly. (You can also have a go down the microscope with your phone, with a steady hand).

Also on the subject of snails, did you know that because their shells are so persistent, they're used by archaeologists and people interested in past climates to work out what environments used to be like? You can see here that freshwater snails have been grouped according to their taste in habitat, so if they're uncovered hundreds of years later you can infer what it must have been like where they were living. My Ramshorn snail is in the (quite rudely titled) 'slum' category. One man's slum is another man's perfectly adequate muddy pond, thankyou. Also, 'catholic' doesn't refer to the snails' religious beliefs, but that they have wide-ranging habitat tastes.

 from Brown (2001) with updated names

So if you're collecting snails - or anything - the moral of the story is to look in a variety of habitats, and then you will find a wider range of species.

Another option for fern-finders

From F G Heath's 'Fern Portfolio' (1885)

 I don't have enough self-discipline when it comes to buying books. I bought the aforementioned 'Arable Bryophytes' and I just found myself pressing the BUY button on a book about ferns. But this (as I like to justify to myself) is ok if I actually read and use them.

A book I bought a while back and admittedly haven't used enough is "The Vegetative Key to the British Flora" by John Poland and Eric Clement (2009). Vegetative implies plants with leaves but without flowers... and let's face it, if you can wait until something flowers, identifying it can be a lot more straightforward.

But today something in my mind twigged the book might contain plants that never flower - like ferns. Its key uses some features of ferns that Merryweather's book does not, like the number of vascular bundles you can see if you chop the stipe in half - they say it's 'often the quickest and most reliable shortcut to the identification of a genus.' I like quick and reliable shortcuts.

What's more, it includes a range of species that aren't native, like the Ostrich fern and the Kangaroo fern, which might conceivably turn up in more domesticated spots and confuse you (those aren't in Merryweather either, I don't think).

Submarginal hydathodes: they're little pores round the edge of the leaf, quite cute. CC image RBGE.

So if you're doing ferns, let me know and I can share the key with you, and we can have a look together if you like (to decrease danger of hyperventilating over some of the technical (though nice to pronounce) terminology like pinnatisect, clathrate scales and submarginal hydathodes).

Incidentally, I really like the illustrations in FG Heath's book (picture above) because they are generally clear and he shows both sides of the blades so the sori can be seen. It would be good if you could display your specimens the same way. He specifically says he wanted to show them life-size, so that's meant some artful curling-round of the stipes (another thing you could do). Admittedly he sometimes crams lots of species on one page (not advised) but that's probably because colour plates were and are expensive. You can splash out on one page per species.

The curious looking Moonwort. CC Jason Hollinger.

The Victorians loved their ferns - after this period it seems people went a bit mad on all the freaky varieties they found, and competitively grew these in their gardens. But I prefer your standard native ferns. Not only do they have that repeating visual thing that I love, but because of the dank mysterious places they usually grow, they often have a bit of a strange reputation. There are ones with great names like Moonwort (Botrychium lunare), Adder's-tongue (Ophioglossum spp.) and Spleenwort (Asplenium spp.)

Moonwort can unshoe horses. Well, apparently. Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century herbalist, said:

Moonwort is a herb which (they say) will open locks, and unshoe such horses as tread upon it: This some laugh to scorn, and those no small fools neither; but country people, that I know, call it Unshoe the Horse. Besides I have heard commanders say, that on White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horse shoes, pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses, being there drawn up in a body, many of them being but newly shod, and no reason known, which caused much admiration.

To be scientific I think some questioning of the standards of the farrier involved might have been appropriate. What a strange idea though. But kind of Romantic and weird. Perhaps the shapes of the leaves echo the shape of horseshoes (or a key?), and the unfurling frond above does look a bit tentacle-like and grabby.

"Back again?" "Yeah, I stood on some Moonwort." Painting by E R Smythe, 1899.

A tree identification app

My sister is a very loyal reader of this blog and frequently sends encouraging remarks. At least I know I'm not talking entirely to myself. She has found you an app for identifying trees, created by the Woodland Trust. I just had a little go on it and it allows you to search by features of twigs, buds, leaves, bark, flowers or fruits, or any combination (the latter can be rather helpful). It narrows down the options until there is one left, or a small number of species to check - it's basically like a dichotomous key and if you wrote down the options given, I think you could get away with using it as evidence for such in your notebook.

And because it allows you to use information about buds and bark, it should work for winter trees. It also gives interesting information about preferred habitats, uses, cultural symbolism, and 'threats' (like diseases and pests).

What's more it's free. It's certainly worth a go, and if you can't get a definitive answer (there aren't truly detailed pictures of the buds) it will probably help you narrow down your options to a few species which you could then check in a book. Winter trees are generally a bit more difficult than their summery leafy counterparts; it's kind of unavoidable I'm afraid, when they don't have leaves, or fruits, or flowers. But if you want to borrow these books to help you then you're most welcome.

Above is a leaf from a Wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis) - I found it on the field trip to Lower Woods last week. It's an unusual species which is generally only found in ancient woodlands, and the leaf is very distinctive. Its fruits are known as 'chequers' - which is where the name of the Prime Minister's country pad originates. The fruits have to be 'bletted' before they're edible (that basically means they have to be over-ripe and a bit rotten) - apparently they are sticky and taste a bit like tangy raisins.

The service-berry partakes of the quality of the Medlar, both in green and in ripe state. It is gathered in branches and put into or hung on a cleft stick of about a yard long which becomes a mass of berries. In this state the fruit is sold by the country people and then hung up in a garden to receive the damp air of night which causes it to undergo a kind of putrefactive fermentation and in this soft state it is eaten and has a more agreeable acid than Medlar.
From Henry Phillips' Pomarium Brittanicum (1822). 

They look like tiny apples when cut open - Atomic Shrimp's webpage tells you all about collecting eating them. He has lots of other interesting pages about foraging wild food.

CC image by Adrian S Pye.

Old and new technology

Something I made in enamel. Perhaps it shows some biological / technological crossover?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was an Art Student. Now you may know some and think theirs is an easy life, all that getting out of bed late and splashing paint about. But actually it's fraught with existential angst. Not only do you have to produce some work which is held up to some seemingly unknowable criteria of worthiness but you also have to examine the reasons why you're doing it. Such constant self-examination is not required from Science Students. I frequently found myself tied up in a paralysed knot, which now seems ridiculous. By the end, my recurring trains of thought had sort of coalesced into something about how we all use a lot of technology today but understand virtually nothing about how it really works. That we use it but we couldn't repair it and we've willingly let ourselves become sort of powerless and helpless (although someone tapping away on their new i-phone may not agree).

They do pay me for some sort of technical proficiency, and I like to know how things work and get very frustrated when modern technology works against me. You may call it control freakery. But everyone needs a bit of control in their life. It's stressful not to have any. Some people achieve this by keeping everything neat and tidy (visitors to my desk will see that's not my approach). But for me, part of the control is Knowing Things.

And so, finally, I reach my taxonomic-collection-related point. I like knowing what trees and plants and animals I'm looking at when I'm out and about in the world. I like to know the features that define them as different species and I like to know the cultural connections they sometimes have. For example, above are some little rolls of birch bark.

Would you believe it, but they're ten thousand years old - somebody in the British Mesolithic rolled them up and forgot about them. Birch is full of resins that make it a great firelighter so it's very likely these objects were precisely that. It's also possible that the resin was destined to be melted and used as a glue to stick tiny flint blades into arrowheads or something similar. But I just find it reassuring that come the technological apocalypse (subject of a hundred films) knowing birch has these properties could help me brew up a soothing cup of tea.

In the same case at the British Museum I saw this, a bracket fungus:

Likewise, it comes from the Mesolithic site at Star Carr in North Yorkshire, and likewise it's a species which is excellent for starting a fire. You use the layer above the pores, which can be fluffed up into a material that will take a tiny spark - the material seems to be known as amadou and Paul Kirtley explains here how to prepare it. You may have heard of Ötzi; he lived in the Alps about 5,300 years ago and his body became preserved in a glacier. He had some prepared amadou amongst his belongings.

So, this sort of thing - whilst rather peripheral to what you've been asked to do for the assignment - might lend an added layer of interest to your researches, and who knows, might enable you to survive in the event of global meltdown. I'm kidding, everything's going to be fine. But just in case. And perhaps if you do have any existential angst it can help to anchor you to reality.

CC Jason Hollinger; CC Martin Cooper; CC Doug Bowman; CC Jason Hollinger. 

While on the subject of bracket fungi, another repeating pattern in my career as Art Student was repeating patterns. This morning, looking at Student K's bracket fungi under the microscope, I was drawn to the different shapes of the pores in the different species. They're so tiny that they're really not obvious until they're magnified. And they can be diagnostic of the species you're trying to identify. So do feel free to bring your fungi in to examine microscopically (you can then put them in the freezer for the freeze-drier) - or you could also consider getting your own hand lens.

I love liverworts

I think myself very lucky to live in the country. Yes, it may have a few downsides (few places will deliver you a takeaway, it costs a fortune to get a taxi from town, and popping out for a loaf of bread requires an expedition) but the benefits to my mental well-being outweigh these things massively. I really appreciate having the natural world on my doorstep and being able to go for an impromptu walk to put things into perspective. If you're feeling aggravated about something, it gives you many other things to concentrate on, and you realise that neither you nor the sources of your stress are the centre of the universe.

I went for a walk yesterday. Naturally I took a pot (never be without your pot). I had mosses and liverworts in mind. There are lots of mosses that grow on the drystone walls around where I live, but I had a different habitat in mind: the stubble-filled fields. And I was delighted to find my quarry: a Riccia liverwort.

Just look at it, it's so sweet. Ok, so you're probably thinking I'm really losing the plot now. But see how small and delightfully formed it is. Who would even suspect such a strange and neatly branching plant growing in a field at all.

Lots of liverworts look a bit like mosses - they're called 'leafy liverworts'. But Riccia is a 'thallose liverwort' - it doesn't have leaves but a thallus (a flattish sheet of cells). You might be familiar with the thallose Marchantia if you've ever looked at liverworts before. But I appreciate that most people haven't looked at liverworts before and are barely (if at all) aware of their existence. Oh how they're missing out.

I have found a very good explanation of everything liverworty on the pages of the Australian National Botanic Gardens. They even mention Riccias on this page so you can read all about how they grow and reproduce. As you might suspect from their appearance in the field, they are experts at opportunistically growing on freshly exposed soil when conditions get a bit wetter.

Those ANBG pages are also an excellent introduction to the other bryophytes: mosses and hornworts (although of course their examples are largely antipodean). If liverworts are relatively unknown (to normal people) compared to mosses, then hornworts are super obscure. A couple of years ago I went on an FSC bryophytes course and we spent one afternoon literally crawling around a field (luckily we were well away from a road where anyone could see us) - and I was super chuffed to find a hornwort. There were also many Riccias which is why I thought to check my local field yesterday. In fact there's a whole book about Arable Bryophytes written by Ron Porley (I feel a purchase coming on).

If you're thinking of choosing mosses and liverworts (and I do recommend them if you like looking at the detail of lovely and tiny things) then a nice Riccia would be a good addition to your collection. Because they like to leap in when arable fields are cut, this is the ideal time of year to look. But there are many reasonably easily identified large mosses you can find in more urban areas too.

A pre-1850 Gould microscope (CC Wellcome Images)

A useful aside: Student K just popped in with her mushrooms and we viewed a couple through a dissecting microscope. Much oohing was heard over the super details revealed. Dave then showed us how our microscope camera can Bluetooth an image to your phone. You can also get a decent image by holding your phone over the eyepiece. So don't forget this as an option for illustrating your notebook - feel free to bring in your specimens of all kinds.

Your new skills can help make a difference

A lot of moths visiting a trap in Brunei, 1982. CC image Accassidy.

The other afternoon I was listening to Inside Science on Radio 4, and they had a piece about 'moth snowstorms'. That is, people were remembering when they would drive along in the countryside at night, and moths would be flying in from all angles into their headlights, and they'd have to start their windscreen wipers. It's certainly not something I've experienced in my lifetime. In fact it seems quite a mad idea, even though it must have been unremarkable not so long ago. Something that did ring a bell was motorcyclists saying they used to have to stop regularly and clean their visors of squashed flies. I can remember (in the 90s) saying to my dad that my friend's car was covered in gummy dead insects, and him complaining that it must have meant we were driving too fast. Some people suggest cars might be more aerodynamic these days, which might account for why gummy insects don't seem to be a problem. But that doesn't explain the visor thing - there'd still be insects on visors.

My point is, we seem to be losing insects, fast. Data from amateur entomologists' malaise traps suggest a loss of 75% in the last 25 years. I don't need to tell you that sounds pretty terrifying, when insects are a fundamental part of the food chain and pollinate a lot of plants (including our food plants). It was astoundingly refreshing to hear that the alleged environment minster, Michael Gove, has actually come round to the idea that neonicotinoid pesticides need stricter controls. One can only hope it's not shutting the door after the horse has bolted. You'd imagine spraying pesticides all over fields can't have helped matters, in addition to problems caused by other modern farming methods. So perhaps stopping spraying them might help restore some of the invertebrate populations.

A malaise trap. CC image Ceuthophilus. Nothing to do with uneasy-feeling malaise (though that may be for the insects), but actually invented by the Swedish Mr. Malaise in the 1930s.

Whilst this sounds like environmental doom and gloom (which yes, it probably is) - you have chosen this degree course so presumably want to try to make the world a better place. You can be part of the antidote to your own gloom. By developing your identification skills and submitting records to recording schemes and records centres, you can help make some difference. Your data can feed into a big picture which can persuade the powers that be to actually do something. This might not be a straightforward process because it involves politics. But having the scientific evidence has to be of critical importance, surely.

You might think "ah, what difference can I make? :( " But there really aren't that many people out there who have good identification skills. Particularly if you focus on something even slightly obscure. If you chose to go to a local habitat and record what you find, it's possible that nobody would have done that for ten, twenty years (or even ever). You might find something Really Interesting, and conceivably that could help get the site a modicum of protection one day. And even if you don't, it all becomes part of valuable data about today, and can be compared with what happens in future, and if records exist, with what was present in the past. (iRecord is an easy way to submit a record of anything you find, but if you prefer the support of a specialist scheme, the Biological Records Centre has a comprehensive list of contacts.)

Student A's lovely lichen find. CC image Jason Hollinger (California)

The other day, one of the third years popped in to see me. She chose lichens for her collection last year and got really into them. She'd been out lichen-hunting recently. When she got home and looked in her 'Dobson' guide, one of them seemed to be something unusual. The only species that seemed to match was a distinctive orange-grey lichen with little eyelashy spines around the fruiting bodies. But Dobson said it had only been seen in very few areas and was now thought extinct in this country. She had a tiny sample and we both squinted at it down the microscope. Nothing else seemed to match. I said I thought she should speak to David Hill, my esteemed lichen tutor from my course.

It turns out she was right with her identification and he was "super excited". Isn't that amazing! So this is proof that you too can find and report something excellent. She's brought something back from apparent extinction. I guess the poor lichen was never quite extinct in the first place (though it's evidently very rare) - but the point is, how many people are looking at lichens, and how many people have the skill to identify them? Not many. So your developing skills can make an impact. You can be one of an elite group that is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about lichens, beetles, mosses, or whatever it is that grabs you. We can only conserve things when we know they exist. You will be able to contribute to the body of knowledge of what's out there. Be encouraged.

There are links to over 200 recording schemes at the NBN Gateway.

Ethnobotanical Asteraceae: the versatile burdock

It was impressive to see the students on the rain-drenched field trip the other day retaining their sense of humour. One amused himself by giving another's hat a pom-pom style decoration using a burr - the flower head of a burdock. Burdock, as Asteraceae collectors may know, is Arctium minus, the lesser or common burdock.

CC image by Mike Pennington

If you're feeling childish you can throw these flower heads from some distance and they'll stick firmly and annoyingly on people's clothing. If you look closely at the spiny bracts you'll see why they stick so tenaciously:

CC image by El Grafo

One day in 1941, George De Mistral was walking his dog in the Swiss Alps (this was not unusual, he was Swiss) when his dog ran through some burdock and picked up lots of the burrs. Doubtless he may have sworn at the need to pick them all out from its fur, but being an engineer his brain started ticking. And the result of this encounter was the marvellous invention of Velcro. I'm sure you must own at least one thing that uses it. I hear it even comes in very handy on the space station, where it stops things floating around. Apparently the 'vel' part is for the 'velour' of the woolly side, and 'cro' for the hooks, like crochet.

Many seeds have evolved to be spiny and spikey, to catch onto passing animals and enable them to get dispersed much more widely than if they just fell off a plant. But burdock is slightly more cunnning than this because the seed is at the other end from the hook, and so the seed doesn't get inextricably tangled up - it can easily break free and drop to the ground when the hooked-on burr gets brushed about. I think that's the theory. I am going to find a burdock and test this out, as I might be confused. You can read a Serious Scientific Paper about burdocks and their hooks here if you're interested.

So if you're collecting Asteraceae, it's very much worth looking at the seeds and the seed heads - many are still around although it's getting decidedly wintery. In fact the stickiness of the burdock heads doesn't truly come into its own until they are very brown and dead-looking, because it's only then that they can fall apart and disperse the seeds.

CC image by the Neuchatel Herbarium

You can stick them down separately on your herbarium sheet, and perhaps draw a magnified version in your notebook. The whole seedhead might squash down nicely with lengthy pressing, as you can see from this sheet from the Neuchatel Herbarium Project.

Another interesting thing (to me at least, I have a number of strange interests it's true) is that the burrs of Lesser burdock feature in one of those strange British seasonal customs. You know, the sort of thing that wouldn't look out of place in The Wicker Man. Something with a large dose of eccentricity and more than a hint of paganism. Something completely incomprehensible to outsiders (and possibly to those taking part in it as well, but who cares). When we've got the Burry Man why do we need to Brexit?

The Burry Man. CC image by Oliver Benton

You can just see the Forth Bridge in the background - the ceremony takes place in South Queensferry in Scotland. I was reading a Victorian newspaper article describing it from the 1840s, and it was ostensibly to encourage the local fish shoals to reappear. The requirements include lots of burrs (11,000 according to Wikipedia) and two staves with flowers (as you can see).

Another Lesser burdock cultural connection is that strange-tasting concoction, Dandelion and Burdock. It's made from the plants' roots. Herbalists claim all sorts of things for it but I don't know if they've been scientifically substantiated. If it's not particularly good for you I can think of other things you might prefer the taste of. It's another eccentric British classic.

CC image by Diadoco

Species in hedges

Yesterday I went on a field trip to a Old Sneed / Sneyd Park, a bit of land in Bristol that's somehow managed to escape being built on, despite being surrounded by houses. It looked like this - except you have to imagine it raining. Relentlessly. All afternoon (until the exact moment we decided to leave).

CC image by George Evans

It was an interesting spot, having a strange combination of species. There were superb and massive old oak trees which must surely support all sorts of creatures - many invertebrates, birds and bats. But now and then you'd come across some invasive interloper: there was a huge stand of bamboo which made you feel like you'd wandered onto the set of 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'.

So the thought of native and non-native species was uppermost in my mind. There are a number of hedges on the site and Jim explained that a hedge in 'favourable condition' should have less than 10% non-native species in it. This among various other criteria of course, and you can download Defra's Hedgerow Survey Handbook for all the details.

The Handbook also requires surveyors to count the number of woody species growing in a hedge, along a 30m stretch. This allows you to make a stab at its age, which is pretty neat. This idea was developed by Max Hooper.  Using aerial photos he discovered (in the 1960s) that the country was losing 10,000 miles of hedgerow a year! and started to look at what effect this would have on wildlife. He worked out that 70% of the variation in trees and shrubs in a hedge was explained by its age, and that a hundred years for every species present was a good rule of thumb (i.e. five species in 30m would indicate 500 years, and so on).

Autumn hedgerow (CC image by David Anstiss). The colours of the leaves and twigs can help guide you to different species.

So if you are out collecting winter twigs for your collection, it's an interesting thing to bear in mind. You might not want to get out a tape measure, but if you notice a good variety of native trees and shrubs in wandering along a hedge, that probably indicates it's quite ancient. Having said that I know my landlord has recently planted an excellent hedge brimming with native species. But the plastic tree guards probably give that away.

Another thing I found interesting in the Hedgerow Survey Handbook is in appendix 10, which shows you how to estimate the age of different trees and shrubs according to the diameter of their trunks. It's easy to spot a veteran oak as it's noticeably enormous - but if you're looking at something that never gets so fat (a field maple for example) then it doesn't have to be so big to get into their 'potentially interesting' category. There's much fascinating information about veteran trees in Helen Read's English Nature publication  (and there are other free downloads from the Ancient Tree Forum also). They're fascinating in themselves but are also very valuable to other species: lichens, fungi, insects...

CC image by Stefan Czapski.(This field maple has been pollarded, which might alter its growth rate
 - it could be even older than its fatness suggests.)

Another interesting thing you can do is check an area on the historic maps at Edina Digimap (they thought it was hilarious to title them 'Ancient Roam'). They don't go back hugely far of course, but sometimes you can see the 1860s, which gives you an idea of how built up areas looked before houses appeared. (There's a huge trunk of an ash tree just near my house - it manages to cling on despite having no big branches - and it seems to get its very own tree symbol on the large scale 1880s map, which is nice.) Looking at the maps for the Sneyd Park area it's interesting to see that the pond was already there in the 1880s, and was extended around the turn of the century.

Anyway. I'm getting sidetracked. Winter is definitely coming and if you want to make a winter tree collection (with leafy clues still available to help you), your moment has surely arrived.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 'Hunters in the Snow' (from the Famous Paintings with Winter Trees series. These have alternate branching... that must narrow it down)

For your Christmas list*: a hand lens

(*Other popular religious and secular present-buying opportunities are available. Or just treat yourself.)

I've just been to Dartmoor with the new first years. Likely you went on this trip yourself and will be able to recall the amazing Wistman's Wood, an eldritch botanical wonderland dripping with lichens and mosses. I think it's one of my favourite places.

CC image by Alex Jane

Students are obliged to spend some time collecting data about un-botanical things like wind speed. But whenever possible I tried to lure them towards close examination of the weird and diverse species covering the trees and boulders. A few people looked like they got seriously hooked, which was very gratifying. And I think the secret to an appreciation of lichens and bryophytes is a simple thing: a hand lens.

I wish I could present one to everybody but it seems university bean-counters are not keen. I can always lend you one (quality and smeariness varies). But ultimately I would urge you to consider getting one yourself. It doesn't have to cost much and it will last you a lifetime. Plus you will always have it to hand if it just lives in your bag. And you won't have any slight squeamishness about holding it right up to your eye after a dozen other people have had it in their clammy hands. Seriously, it will open up a entire microscopic world that you cannot really predict. I'd say it makes Everything more interesting - the unsuspected detail of plants and invertebrates and all sorts. But in the short term it'll certainly make your collecting a more interesting experience and make it easier to identify what you're looking at.

Like I say a million times, 'Hold it right up to your eye'. CC image from the National Park Service.

But what to get? Magnification of x10 is fine for most things. You can get twin versions which have (say) a x10 at one end and a x15 at the other if you're feeling fancy. Another thing to consider is the diameter. My lens is about 15mm across. Larger diameters are recommended.  I thought I was quite happy with mine but now I'm starting to wonder if a larger diameter wouldn't be better - it transmits more light and makes things easier to see.

You do want something that's of good enough quality that it's not going to annoy you with its blurry pointlessness. You don't necessarily have to spend huge amounts though.

This Quicktest page shows you how different lenses vary in quality (which is quite eye-opening) and therefore in price. They have a large range for sale and they make it very clear what you're getting. There are also many other reliable places, like the local company Brunel Microscopes, or UKGE, or entomological suppliers like Watkins and Doncaster,

 This is the one I have at the moment, from Quicktest, which is about £30 with delivery. It has a slightly larger size than most, so lets in a bit more light, and seems super clear - I'm really pleased with it. But you don't have to go that mad - something about £15 can be pretty decent, judging by the advice linked to above. Cheaper ones are a good way in but they're necessarily blurrier and more likely to fall apart. I bought a load of half-decent ones for work last year, but they're extremely pocketable and disappear constantly. This is disappointing and makes me loathe to spend as much again - but then spending less is a false economy if the lenses are rubbish. So if you're even half keen it's a good reason to get your own and look after it - it should last a lifetime if you don't lose it!

I'd also recommend getting a lovely bright lanyard to attach to it. Then it's much easier to find if you put it down somewhere or it falls into the vegetation. There's a huge selection on Ebay, for example. If you wear your lens round your neck you will recognise and be recognised by other natural history buffs, like some sort of weird masonic tie / handshake. This is not necessarily a bad thing: you might meet someone knowledgeable and interesting. Nerdy, probably. But nerdy about something interesting.

Public domain image by Bill Gillette - girl on a fieldtrip in the Rockies, 1972

A useful thought I read recently - when you're using it, think of it as a keyhole. That is, you must put your eye right up to it to see through. Either bring the object you're looking at towards your eye, or (often more undignified but unavoidable) bring yourself close to the object. The latter is why you might see lichen enthusiasts sprawled across the landscape, bums in air, apparently pressing their faces against the rocks.

And finally, it's possible to integrate this low-tech highly-useful bit of equipment with modern technology: with a bit of practice you can take photos through it with your mobile phone. And those would be perfect stuck in your notebook.

(P.s. - What's more, a lens will repay you handsomely on the field trip to Tenerife, where there are many fascinating plants with strange adaptations to examine microscopically. I much recommend getting one in readiness for that).

He went as he would have wanted...

(possibly) ... but do try not to go the same way. Just a quick reminder to be sensible and engage your brain before scrambling over dangerous terrain in search of that excellent specimen, whatever it may be.

With permission from the 'Early Tourists in Wales' website.

"Underneath lie the remains of William Williams, upwards of twenty five years botanical guide at the Royal Victoria Hotel, who was killed by a fall from Clogwyn y Garnedd, June 15 1861, whilst pursuing his favourite vocation."

According to this article in the Pteridologist he was half-way up a cliff in search of a Woodsia alpina when his rope snapped. Also in that edition of the magazine there's someone bemoaning that they slipped 15 feet down a cliff, bouncing off boulders and cracking their camera on the way down: "needless to say the camera was in better shape afterwards than I was, and turned out to be rather better insured."

So please don't risk life and limb in your exploits. And preferably take a friend with you to guard against daft situations of all kinds.

Right, public information broadcast over. Back to it, taxonomic collection makers.

Beetle bait

Look at me, sitting here typing on my lunch break. You see the problem is all this stuff is too interesting. I could be jogging round the campus or reading the news or gossiping or something. But those things pale compared to excavating interesting plant / animal information from the internet. This is today's random find. It's from the Journal of Entomology and Natural History and is an idea for making pitfall traps for beetles.

Oh yes you may have done pitfall trapping before. But have you baited the traps with disgusting yet irresistible beetle-bait? I think not.

gravity-defying illustration from the article

The idea is that you put the stinky delicious things in a bottle, and you hang it above your ground-buried traps. That way the smell lures in creatures, but the traps are not contaminated by decaying goo. That way you don't have to scrape decaying goo off your specimens. If you even had any specimens left after larger creatures were drawn in by the smell and ate them. So this seems like a better idea. Have a look at the article for more detail.

The author, C R Turner, tried two recipes. One was made from melon, apple and banana left with sugar and baker's yeast in a sealed container for a week. Mmmm. That was apparently successful in attracting (amongst others):
Dorcus parallelipepedus (L.) - Lesser stag beetle
Carabus violaceus L. - Violet ground beetle
Carabus intricatus L. - Blue ground beetle
Serica brunnea (L.) - Brown chafer
and Trypodendron domesticum (L.) - Ambrosia beetle

The other was even more stinky, consisting of fish heads and chopped bones. But the beetles loved it and it pulled in:
Nicrophorus humator F. - Burying beetle
Nicrophorus vespilloides Herbst. - another Burying beetle
Thanatophilus rugosus LL. - another Burying beetle
Omosita depressa L., - another one
Geotrupes stercorosus (Scriba), - Earth boring dung beetle
Margarinotus cadaverinus (Hoffm.) - A clown beetle
and various others.

Pitfall traps are likely to catch beetles that have a quite active wandering-around lifestyle. But you can see how different bait attracted a different range of species. Some of them were really rather unusual, to the point where you might want to let them go, not despatch them. But it would be very good to know that you'd found them and where. Your local beetle recorder would be very interested.

To return to my previous typing about etymology, it's also rather interesting to see all the death-related words in the scientific names of the second group.

If you want to try pitfall trapping it's worth bearing in mind that the article suggests using ethylene glycol. But that's poisonous to birds and mammals and doubtless frogs and newts. And you wouldn't want to kill any of those. So you could just try using a little bit of water with a tiny bit of washing up liquid (the latter to break the surface tension). That'll probably be sufficient to capture and kill the beetles, and if you check the pitfall traps often, you can hoik out your specimens and put them in a pot with some invertebrate preservative. Or as you'll probably want to pin them, you might not want them wet in the first place. So it's not a bad option to avoid the liquid altogether, and just check the traps daily to pick out what you've caught (but they may eat each other first. If they haven't eaten each other, you can free any creatures you're not interested in). You could pop in a bit of leaf litter for somewhere to hide. And for a fancier trap you can have a grid over the top that stops large things getting in. There are many options. But whatever you choose, remember to collect all the cups at the end of your trapping, so they don't kill things indefinitely in a decidedly anti-conservation fashion. I'll let you decide what to do with your stinky trap bait.

The rather lovely Nicrophorus vespilloides. CC image Evanherk.

 Nicrophorus beetles are interesting despite their unsavory corpse-eating behaviour - they are a rare example of insects that show parental care. You can read all about it (along with humorous illustration) on Wikipedia (although once your interest is piqued there seem to be quite a few research papers discussing it).

Autumnal fungi finds

I've just come back from the field trip to Dartmoor. There were many mushrooms. While the students were slaving over their quadrats on Hay Tor in horizontal drizzle, I interrupted proceedings to show them some of the strange fungi growing there. The most marvellous was a Parrot wax-cap (Hygrocybe psittacina):

CC image by Gljivarsko Drustovo Nis (photostream has many amazing fungi photos)

It was very like the one in the photo, with a stipe changing from orange to green, a green and very slimy cap, and superbly contrasting yellow gills.

Wax caps like grassland that hasn't been (so-called) "improved" - they prefer ancient pasture that hasn't been artificially fertilised or ploughed up. You can download Plantlife's wax cap / grassland fungi guide , and this has a scoring system for the different species. You might like to use this system on a grassland that you visit, and report in your field notebook. The higher the score, the more conservation value of the habitat.

Also whilst noodling about on the internet in search of fungi-related things, I found this Danish website: Mycokey MMI. It's a rather fun way of trying to identify your mushroom - I particularly liked the way you can choose the colours and the gill shapes that match. I don't know how closely our fungal flora matches Denmark's. And I don't know how well it would respond to half-eaten slightly sad specimens. But it could be worth a go, it might certainly get you to the right family so you can pick up a British book and have a look in there.

CC image by Andrea Westmoreland

Another species someone brought in for freeze drying today was a Bird's nest fungus (Cyathus sp.) which are hilarious little groups of shaggy cups with "eggs" in. The eggs are spore-containing structures called 'peridioles'. I liked them a lot. When rain hits the cups, the peridioles ping out and stick to neighbouring Things. Then gradually they release their spores. The reproductive cycle is actually a bit more complicated than that (as these things often are), if you're interested.

P.S. I have now scanned the dichotomous keys in my Marcel Bon mushrooms book, so if you'd like a pdf of them do ask (in a strictly sharing-something-out-of-print-for-mycological-enlightenment way, not a blatant ripping-off-of-copyright way, of course). You will remember that showing your abilities with a dichotomous key is one way to pick up marks, and most fungi books don't have such a thing.

Terminology and etymology

I am looking for quiet things to do today, having been laid low with a germ all weekend and being required to find energy for the Dartmoor trip tomorrow. I thought you might like some encouragement about all the new terminology you may find yourself learning in your taxonomic-collecting quest.

I actually quite enjoy it. It's only when you start looking closely and afresh at beetles or ferns or whatever, that you see that they have all these Specific Bits. And it's the difference in form of these bits that allows you to distinguish one species from another. You may already have specialised language you use in some other realm which allows you to communicate with others with the same interest - perhaps about engines or knitting or rock climbing or whatever. So this is just another version of that - you're developing a new vocabulary you'll share with like-minded people and which will enable you to communicate clearly and specifically.

using Miika Silfverberg's CC fern photo

Earlier this year I was very, very lucky and was shown round the Botanical Gardens in Havana by one of its leading employees. My Spanish is shamefully non-existent (luckily his English was better). But our successful communication hinged on a shared vocabulary of botanical terminology. The scientific names of plants are of course international, but so (pretty much) are the botanical names of their constituent parts. So he could point out all the exotic and wonderful plants and their strange seed pods and so on, and I did much geeky botanical squealing of delight. It was very interesting. So doing this assignment could stand you in similar good stead when you go off globe-trotting.

Anyway. Whichever key you end up using it'll probably have a diagram of a generalised example of your chosen plant or animal, along with a glossary of the terms used, and when you start using the key you'll be referring to that quite a bit.

The terms aren't plucked out of the air of course; they're generally derived from relevant words in Latin, Greek and perhaps Arabic.

For example, take the fern in the picture above. The whole above-ground part is called a frond (meaning a leafy twig, in Latin - the way you might use 'frond' in everyday language). The 'laminar' means a very thin plate, and 'stipe' means stalk. The parts of the blade mean sensible though more specific things too - 'rachis' is Greek for spine (and it runs down the centre of the blade giving it support) and 'pinna' is Latin for feather, echoing the way a feather is divided up. The midrib of the pinna is a 'costa': it means rib in Latin (it's not like the Spanish 'coast' of Costa Coffee... but I'm guessing there's a connection somewhere). If you fancy looking into more botanical terms this is pretty good, and for derivations of entomological words you could look at this; and I've found this one which has quite a few names for fungi and lichens (yes they're dusty archaic tomes but etymology fortunately doesn't often change). This recent book is good for botanical names.

A crab on its back (1888)  painted by Vincent Van Gogh.

I remember seeing this painting in the flesh and being really blown away by it (it doesn't reproduce on the internet so well but that's not a bad thing). I hope Mr Van Gogh wouldn't mind his excellent observational skills being commandeered to show the parts of a crab's cheliped. You're going to have to invoke your own skills to figure out what's referred to by the keys you use. I'm sure the person marking your work would also appreciate some nice clear diagrams to illustrate your understanding.

Should you wish to know - cheliped comes from the Greek for claw (chele) and Latin for foot (pedis). Dactylus derives from the Greek for 'finger'; propodus = fore foot; carpus = Latin for 'wrist' (think carpal tunnel syndrome); and merus derives from the Greek for a body part, a thigh. Finally, coxa is the Latin for hip.

I think it's interesting to find out the derivation of the names, and sometimes it can make them stick in your head.

For aspiring coleopterists

From Janson's British Beetles

After the frustrations of yesterdays spiders I found myself longing for the soothing world of beetles. A beetle on a pin is much easier to spin round to different angles for close inspection, than a spider lounging in a dish of alcohol.

As with a few of the other collection options, you might wish that you'd been able to get out in the summer to find beetles. But although many species are most active then, you'll also be able to find specimens over the winter and into the early spring. Instead of looking on flowers, you'll have to think of other habitats.

Darwin, as I mentioned before, was a keen beetle fan. Here you can read that he was always searching for new collecting methods. He wrote:

"I was very successful in collecting and inventing two new methods; I employed a labourer to scrape during the winter, moss off old trees and place it in a large bag, and likewise to collect the rubbish at the bottom of the barges in which reeds are brought from the fens, and thus I got some very rare species."

 You might not have your own labourer to help you, but you could certainly try shaking moss over a tray. I fear fen barges with reeds might be a thing of the past, but any pile of vegetation should be worth a look.  Similarly vintage advice suggests

"In the winter, very many beetles can be obtained by cutting isolated tufts of grass, pulling moss, etc., and shaking them over brown paper; the proceeds need not be examined on the spot, but can be taken home in a bag and carefully investigated indoors at leisure. In this way, by a judicious selection of likely-looking spots, a few hours' work out of doors will often furnish occupation for several evenings.

In the autumn, examining fungi and puff-balls, and sweeping among dead leaves under trees are very productive; and later still, the leaves (especially the black, damp, bottom layers) may be sifted or shaken over the brown paper with great results. 

Lycoperdina bovistae is found in association with Lycoperdon puffballs. ('Lycoperdon' means wolf fart. It really does).  PD image.

 On the sea-shore, heaps of decaying seaweed harbour many species, and dead fish or birds become capital traps; but a "keeper's tree" in a wood, with dead vermin nailed to it, is the luckiest thing to find.

Many species come to the running sap of the stumps of felled trees, and a great number haunt the wet burrows of the Goat Moth in the solid wood, whilst ants' nests, both in woods, tree trunks, and sandy places, produce an enormous number both of specimens and species, many of them being very rare.

Tapping rotten twigs and sticks, and shaking the damp bottom layers of grass and rubbish heaps and hay-stacks, will produce many species in profusion."

Naturally I am not suggesting that you go out and decimate the landscape and destroy all its trees, fungi and ants nests. And you might not feel like poking about in decaying animals. But the options are there (given you have permission to collect from the owner of the land and you're not taking something protected, natch). A couple of years ago a student submitted an excellent beetle collection, many specimens of which had come from dead wood. If you can look in different habitats you will find different species, so be hopeful and imaginative.

Interesting shape 'galleries' eaten by a larval Scolytinae beetle. CC Bernard Dupont