Asteraceae: a good choice for summer collectors

Ox-eye daisy in the University of Neufchatel herbarium.

 Student K came in for a bit of support with her Asteraceae collection yesterday. I brought in my 20th-century collection to show her. As you will find out one day, it is slightly shocking how time flies. However, my pressed plants were still looking ok despite their advanced age. I had 35 species, and do you know what, I got a 2:1 for it (at least, that's my recollection)! Either my university had quite a different mark scheme. Or else it's an example of so-called grade inflation :)

Prickly lettuce and its spines. CC image by Harry Rose.

 But don't you worry about that - I reckon you'll get a first if you turn in 35 species. Student K made a good dent on that number yesterday: we had an amble round the scruffy parts of campus and found 19. This is definitely the moment to go collecting Asteraceae. Grasses seem to have faded in all this heat, but the Asteraceae don't seem to care so much. I think my favourite was the slyly spiny Prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola). It's full of milky latex (a trait you'll know from Dandelions) and has skin-snagging prickles along the back vein of the leaves. Both things would be enough to put off potential nibblers (large and small).

Distinctive weirdness on Perennial sow thistle. CC TeunSpaans.

 My other favourite was Perennial sow thistle (Sonchus arvensis). It looks a bit like a dandelion to the uninitiated, but is much bigger and branchier, has nice leaves that clasp its stem, and most superbly it has weird blob-tipped glandular hairs (get out those hand lenses). I imagine they're to deter little insects.

Sea aster with its fleshy leaves. CC image Kristian Peters.

And remember, that although lots of species like tufty wasteground, if you expand your horizons you will find more species (and impress the markers). K lives near some saltmarsh: I suggested she might find Sea aster (Aster tripolium) there.

 Meanwhile there are other species that specialise on chalk grassland. I recently went to visit Student M on her marvellous placement looking after rare butterflies on a very steep calcareous grassland hill: she's noticed many lovely Asteraceae there including the Dwarf thistle (Cirsium acaule). I think I spotted the beautifully geometric Woolly thistle (Cirsium eriophorum) too.

Mmm so geometric. CC image Derek Harper

The picture at the top of the page shows a beautifully pressed Ox-eye daisy specimen in the University of Neufchatel herbarium - the sort of thing you could definitely emulate with your specimens. I think it's held onto the paper using this technique.

Now I have to go and squint at some mosses and lichens - first to identify them, and then to make something to help the new first years identify them as part of a new activity on Dartmoor. A nice job if it didn't require quite so much concentration in this heat. But do contact me if you'd like any help or advice about your botanical and entomological exploits. 

Summer encouragement for aspiring botanists

Bees, hoverflies and other pollinators love Asteraceae (this is yarrow). CC image by TJ Gehling.

This year Katy is nobly allowing Taxonomic Collectioning to begin over the summer. This is rather good, as for the super keen it will open a much wider range of collecting options - not least, the chance to get interested in botany. Admittedly ferns and moss and wintery twigs already count as botany - and I like those things for their freakiness. But for the aspiring ecologist, it's a chance to get out and study some Normal Plants.

Last week I spent a happy hour roaming the campus with Student M, in search of plants in the Asteraceae. We found twelve. Considering the slightly eclectic list of 'how many to collect' suggests 8, this sounds like a successful afternoon's work. Of course, there's more to a good mark than finding specimens. But it's a good start. Imagine how many you could find if you kept looking as the months tick on. Impressively many. A mark of 80% beckons, surely.

Smooth hawks-beard (Crepis capillaris). It's not a dandelion. CC image by Jason Hollinger.

Lots of the Asteraceae don't seem very fussy about where they live, so you can find many on neglected bits of urban ground quite easily. We found:
 Groundsel, Ox eye daisy, Daisy, Yarrow, Scentless mayweed, Mugwort, Marsh thistle, Dandelion, Cat's ear, Smooth hawks-beard, Smooth sow-thistle, and Prickly sow-thistle.

If you are a complete beginner then you might feel overwhelmed by the number of unknown plants out there - do you have to identify everything you come across just in case it's Asteraceae? I think No. There's an obvious place you can start. Many Asteraceae have daisy-like flowers, with a ring of flat petals (really flowers in themselves, florets) surrounding a disc of shorter, tube-shaped ones. That means that if you see anything daisy or thistle-like, it's probably going to be Asteraceae. Most have yellow or purple flowers. You can worry about the weirder ones later.

How florets are typically arranged in the Asteraceae (CC image by RoRo).

I suggest you get hold of Francis Rose's 'Wild Flower Key' - I can lend you a copy if you are feeling the pinch of student finances. The drawings are very clear and the book is laid out in families, so all the Asteraceae are together and easily compared.

Once you've got a few common species under your belt, you'll start getting your eye in and soon a weird process will happen where you'll begin to notice if something is new and different, even if previously all "dandelions" looked the same to you.

Sea asters. CC image by Ståle Prestøy

A next step is to scrutinise the descriptions of the other species in the book - when do they flower, and what habitat do they like? I've just been on a field trip to a saltmarsh in Somerset (Steart Marshes - very interesting and with lovely views of the nuclear power station) and Sea asters were just starting to flower. They have purple florets and strangely fleshy leaves - they're a common enough species but you'll have to go to the coast to find one. So if you feel you're not finding anything new, go to a different habitat or wait a while for new species to flower.

But if I've learnt anything from scrutinising last year's marks, it's that you must take your field notebook with you when you're botanising. Take some descriptions of the habitat, draw a few sketches, write down your thoughts about why you're there and why the plants are there. It's easy to forget - but points here can mean the difference between a good mark and an excellent one.

I've previously written more about collecting and preserving Asteraceae, but do feel free to contact me if you want any help. My best and simplest advice is to squash them between labelled sheets of newspaper under a pile of big books. Positioning them on the newspaper can be annoyingly tricky - you want to get all the features displayed somehow. But you have slight lea-way in the first day or two for rearrangement. I had been trying to use a field press but cannot get sufficient squashage for long-term drying.

An early specimen of the Asteraceae

Where I parked up at a petrol station last night, there was a huge array of these bright yellow flowers along the fence in front of me. I suppose most people might call them 'dandelions' if they even noticed them at all. But I was very chuffed to see them, because they're another sign of spring. They're Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara).

They look rather unusual because at this time of the year they don't have any big basal leaves (those have died off during the winter). So you just see these rather thick woolly shoots with their tiny reddish... well, perhaps 'leaves' pressed close up them, but they look more like the sepals protecting the back of the flowers. The flowers are typically Asteraceae-ish, with thin flat petals around the edge and many tiny florets in the centre.

Tussilago derives from 'to cough', in Latin. And you might recognise this plant from bottles of cough mixture - it's used in traditional remedies around the world. Culpeper's Herbal (from the 1650s) mentions it, and also calls it foals-foot, horse-hoof and bulls-foot. Perhaps that's to do with the vaguely hoofish shape of the leaves. Or perhaps it's supposed to grow where hoofy animals have trod, who knows.

from Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen

Another interesting Coltsfoot feature can be examined by seizing your handlens. In good light you will see tiny 'glandular trichomes' on the stem. These are like little hairs with a bulb on the end, and they produce chemicals that probably put off herbivores that would like to take advantage of the plant as an early spring snack. Other Asteraceae also feature trichomes.

If anyone started collecting this family last autumn, Coltsfoot would be a nice addition. The flowers' bright colour should draw your eye. It tends to like hedgerows and roadsides and disturbed habitats. Wherever there's one plant there'll generally be many, because it spreads by underground rhizomes.

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

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).

Autumn Asteraceae

This morning I accompanied a classful of students out to the fields between the university and the MoD. I felt rather ancient because wherever I looked I was thinking "Ah, I remember when it was fields all round here" - but actually, that wasn't so very long ago, and it is sad that every area of greenery between Bristol and the motorways seems to be getting filled with tarmac and unimaginative architecture. But at least the grand plan for the stadium seems to have been shelved, and so there is still habitat for many creatures and plants. We even saw a couple of deer leaping away.

I was pleased to find five decently flowering members of the Asteraceae, and these would make a good start to a collection. Apologies for the hasty photographs. You will be able to make your specimens look much better than this.

This one's Bristly ox-tongue (Picris echioides). It's got the most superb and strange bristles that come out from little blistery bases. It looks pretty mean and is reasonably painful to pick up. You'd imagine it deters all but the most determined herbivore. It has many other interesting features which you could examine under a handlens. I think my next post will be encouragement to buy a handlens. You can admire the red-striped strapshaped yellow petals, and the fuzzy pappuses that carry away the surprisingly orange seeds on the wind.

Not everyone likes it: this Manual Of Weeds (of 1919, I love old books) has "descriptions of all of the most pernicious and troublesome plants in the United States and Canada." Pernicious and troublesome probably means it's very good at clinging on in all sorts of places and is supremely well adapted to grow quickly and set seed successfully. It's libellous surely.

This one is Common fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica). 'Pulicaria' means to do with fleas (pulex is Latin for flea), and 'dysenterica' is because Linnaeus (who named the plant and about a million others - the binomial naming system is his invention) heard the plant was used to cure dysentery in Russian soldiers fighting in Persia. So there you go.

It's noticeably soft - the stem is covered in woolly hairs. They feel nice to me but they're probably there again to put off predators (perhaps tiny buggy predators rather than big mammalian ones).

I have other photos but as yet another work crisis is looming, I will just list them for now, and hopefully you will be inspired to go and find them yourself. Make sure you find one that's still in flower though, and not too sorry-looking.
Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense)
Common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea)
and Smooth sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus).

Also on the way back to the office I found plenty of Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) some Daisies Bellis perennis) and Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale). So that's eight species already! It's almost too easy (shhh).

So I'd say, if you want to collect something colourful and botanical, get out there now and have a look for some Asteraceae. Soon. They're very easy to preserve. They're quite easy to identify. And they have lots of interesting features that you can illustrate and talk about in your field notebook. The variation of fluffy pappuses, leaf shape, petal shape - there is much to investigate closely. It's an interesting family and there are lots of species out there.

Autumn Asteraceae

Yesterday, trying to make the most of the autumn sunshine, I took a stroll around campus to see what was about. It's not the most promising of environments what with all the tarmac and vigorously manicured greenery. You will be able to search in much more promising locations. However, I found a few things, and I thought it might encourage you. A number of species are quite happy on wasteground and tucked into the margins.

I am quite sure I looked a bit odd, as I was adopting the slow hesitant gait of the naturalist, with my eyes scanning the ground, stopping randomly now and again to swoop on something and stuff it in a pot or plastic bag. I tried to pretend passers by weren't there. A colleague spotted me and evidently thought I looked quite amusing. But you must learn to ignore the rest of the world because they don't really understand. You will soon learn that you get a little pulse of endorphins to the brain when you find something, and this starts to outweigh any embarrassment.

I was slightly surprised to find quite a few Asteraceae still in a half-decent condition. There may be others out there. I found some Bristly Oxtongue (Picris echioides). 'Echioides' (like 'echinoderm') means spiny. It has strange bristles all over the leaves that come out from little blisters.

CC image by Isidre Blanc

I also found Wall Lettuce (Mycelis muralis) with its rather reddish stems and leaves, and distinctive 90 degree branching of the flower heads. It's rather elegant for something that most people would dismiss as a weed.

CC image by  Mount Rainier National Park

Also lurking were the universally-recognised Daisy (Bellis perennis)

CC image by Quartl

and the very common, Common Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea).

CC image by Danny S.

I also found some Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris).

CC image by H. Zell.

I seem to sit in a lot of traffic at the moment, so have been doing a bit of roadside botany through the car window. So I can tell you that although it's quite late in the year, there are still examples of Scentless Mayweed (Tripleurospermum inodorum) about.

CC image by Thskyt.

Another reliable member of the Asteraceae at this time of year is Pineappleweed (Matricaria discoidea). I found it on a track near where I live recently - it seems to like such spots. It's supposed to smell of pineapple when you squash it. You'll have to tell me what you make of that; I would say it is faintly pineappley, but only in a rather artificial pineappley sort of way with a decidedly revolting undercurrent. Apparently you can eat the flowers but I would really rather not. They're rather unusual flowers for the Asteraceae as they only have the central tubular disc florets, and no surrounding strap-shaped ray florets.

CC image by Leslie Seaton.

Pineappleweed isn't a native to the UK but has been spreading across the country since it allegedly made a break from Kew Gardens in the 1870s.

So that's seven Asteraceae that are still around and easily collectable. If you're lucky and quick you might find some more from the family. You might find Mugwort, Dandelion, a Cat's-Ear, Tansy,  Perennial or Smooth Sow-thistle around at the moment perhaps. I saw some of these from the car, and also a late Ox-eye daisy. And appearing early in the spring will be Winter Heliotrope, Butterbur and Colt's-foot. That's seventeen hopefuls and there may be others. (*This weekend, the 6th Nov, I saw a lone flower of Creeping thistle, which seems very late but shows things are still about if you look).

If you are collecting this group, try to get specimens that have flowers and aren't too miserable-looking. You'll want to collect the stem down to the ground as lower leaves can be a different shape to upper ones. Make sure you press them as soon as possible after finding them. There's more information here, but the most minimalist approach is between newspaper under a big pile of books. Then they'll dry out beautifully and will keep until hand-in.

Asteraceae as an idea for a late collection

I walked round campus yesterday collecting grasses. There were many. I had a go at identifying some but perhaps due to being in recovery of some germ, I wasn't getting very far. Nevertheless, I feel that there must be enough species even without the annoyingly difficult ones, so that grasses could still make a good collection.

My other thought was that Asteraceae must also be possible. Not all of them have flowers at the moment though, which is annoying. But some Asteraceae are a lot more identifiable without flowers than some grasses are with them. So even those might be allowable in your collection so long as they had sufficient features to be identifiable (those features are what you'd want to explain in your notebook).

Pineapple mayweed (CC image by Krzysztof Ziarnek)

These are some species of Asteraceae I've seen recently:

Ragwort
Smooth sow-thistle
Ox-eye daisy
Daisy
Bristly ox-tongue
Dandelion
Spear thistle (I've seen no flowers)
Pineapple mayweed... allegedly smells of pineapple but it just smells peculiar to me
some sort of other mayweed / chamomile
Nipplewort
Lesser burdock (no flowers, but very distinctive leaves at the moment)
Groundsel
Rough hawkbit (with strange forked hairs)
Mouse-ear-hawkweed

That's 14 species and I'm sure there must be plenty more, as there are many things with yellow dandelion-like flowers about at the moment (they just require patience to investigate). You'll need a flower guide with good descriptions - I like Francis Rose's 'Wild Flower Key' and you're welcome to borrow a copy. There are keys in it to the Asteraceae - so if you showed how you'd used them to identify your plants, that would get you many marks.

Again, if you try to visit a range of habitats (for example, go to the seaside or a bit of limestone grassland), you'll be more likely to find a few more species.You can press them easily under some books, but make sure you change their newspaper and leave them long enough, so they dry out and don't go mouldy.

If you'd like some help, please do email me. 

A winter specimen for Asteraceae collectors

I ventured out into the gloom yesterday for a little walk and found lots of Petasites fragrans (Winter Heliotrope) in flower. I realised that for years I have been ignorantly calling this 'butterbur', but that species (Petasites hybridus) is much much bigger. You'll be able to collect the latter in the spring.

CC image by Phil Sellens

It seems a funny time to flower, but Winter Heliotrope compensates for this by having a strong vanilla-y scent. I suppose if you're one of the only flowers around and you advertise well, any nectar-hungry insects still out and about are going to find you. So perhaps it's a good, if rather alternative strategy.

However, for the poor Winter Heliotrope in the UK, it's apparently all in vain. I read that it's a garden escape and actually native to Southern Europe, and only in the wild here since the 1830s - and that (curiously) it is dioecious and only male plants exist in this country.

How, in that case, can it have spread through the country, as there can't be any seeds? Apparently the plant is a perennial and has rhizomes, and a tiny piece of detached rhizome can sprout to form new plants. So the species is said to have spread through the dumping of garden waste, and spreads along water courses by the adventurous floating of rhizomey bits. It likes damp places so this is ideal (mine were in a damp uncut meadow under a big tree... suspiciously near the back of someone's garden).

The leaves are distinctively kidney-shaped and you'll normally find many plants in the same spot, smothering the ground.

CC image by Rosser1954