More on grasses (and some quizzes)

Upright brome (with its "camel's eyelashes") cheekily taken from DP's quiz below (in a spirit of promotion).

It's a strange thing but after repeated efforts at grasses over the years, it seems I've reached some sort of breakthrough and am starting to feel some sort of familiarity with them. I hope this pleasant sensation is something you will also feel when you've spent a bit of time on your taxonomic collection.

The video below stars the author of the excellent "Field Guide to Grasses, Sedges and Rushes", Dominic Price. He's very good at showing you the distinctive characteristics of the plants. The video concentrates on meadow species and I was pleased to recognise most of them (and have taken copious notes :).

His charity, the Species Recovery Trust, have devised some identification quizzes on Buzzfeed (usually the preserve of 'Pick eight noodle dishes and we'll tell you when you'll get married' type fodder).

This one is on grasses (I got 77% right and felt rather chuffed).

There's also one on sedges  (Only 57% but that wasn't a massive surprise - I need to go and find some sedges and get back into them. They are lovely with their little utricles, don't you know).

For people who are doing winter twigs - you'll be delighted there is one for those too. 
I only got 70% right but after all the work on your tree collection I'm sure you will do better than that. It's rather good because it has questions on whole tree shapes, twig features and also just buds.

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.

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.

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).

Autumnal tips for tree-hunters

This weekend I went on a very pleasant, if slightly muddy walk through some ancient woodland near where I live. If you're interested in nature, you have to tread a bit of a fine line when you go for a walk with Normal people. You can't stop for everything that looks intriguing, or your companion will constantly find themselves talking to the empty air twenty metres ahead. But if you're walking somewhere local that you can return to, you can file away particularly interesting spots into your brain. There were some very mossy spots on my walk that I might come back to.

Ulmus glabra (public domain image)

But the point I want to make to potential winter twig collectors, is that you don't have to wait until the leaves have fallen before you get your eye in. It's not cheating in my book, because it's expanding your ability to recognise trees generally. Plus, if you're looking for lots of different species to make your collection excellent, spotting more unusual things as early on as possible is sensible, as they may not be so obvious once their leaves have gone. And then at least you know whereabouts to look.

It was because there were still a few leaves about that I noticed some of the understorey shrubs looked a bit different. And they turned out to be Wych elm (Ulmus glabra), which I was rather chuffed about (it's one of those species I still have to get straight in my head). I found some English elm (U. procera) last year, and that was in a hedgerow (as one would expect), but this Wych elm was in a wood (also as predicted by the books). So that was nice (and the sort of thing you could write about in your field diary).

Wych elms, incidentally, aren't connected with witches. You might have heard of the ghastly unsolved murder "Who put Bella in the Witch Elm" but really they're just words that sound the same. Wych is an Old English word meaning 'pliant and bendy' and Welsh bows were traditionally made from wych elm (Giraldus Cambrensis mentions it in a description of his trip around Wales in the 1180s).

Anyway, before I diverge too far - that's my tip. Go for a walk along hedges and streams and in woods, and see which native species you can identify now. You might be able to collect some relevant fruits and seeds at the same time. The crazily neon spindle berries are looking great at the moment.

CC image by Derek Harper

Update: 25th September.
Jim, Emma (our new GIS specialist, whom you may meet soon) and I have just been wading through knee-high wet grass in the parkland by the big yellow house near the motorway. Not particularly for fun, but to put out some 'refugia' (tiles under which snakes, lizards and slow worms might like to hide) for students to monitor the local reptile population. While out there I spotted some ash seeds - they'd be a good addition to your ash twig.

They're called 'ash keys' because I guess they hang together in bunches like keys. The seed itself is at the top end, and the bottom is a slightly twisted thin wing. The wing presumably helps the seed flutter a bit further away before it starts to grow. Various species use such a device: perhaps it would be fun to also include winged seeds from field maple, sycamore, and elms (if you can find any at this time of year).

If you collect ash keys very early in the year and pickle them, they're supposed to be quite delicious. I suppose it depends how keen you are on pickled things. I keep forgetting to have a go, unlike the blogger of Country Skills for Modern Life.

The other things I brought back were some hawthorn fruits ('haws'). They're mostly seed with only a thin layer of fruit, so not that tempting unless you're a hungry bird. Though I have read that they make a better hedgerow gin than the traditional sloe gin (and that is something you can make at this time of year).

There are two native hawthorns in this country, the common one (Crataegus monogyna) and Midland hawthorn (C. laevigata). You can tell by the scientific name of Common hawthorn that it has one seed (mono-gyna). The Midland hawthorn has two. Kevin Widdowson has a good comparison here. I don't think I've ever knowingly seen a Midland hawthorn, as otherwise the two species look very similar. It's one of those things that would give me a nerdy buzz. They're not particularly common in this part of the world (see the distribution map on the NBN Gateway) but if you don't find any and are heading to other parts of the country at Christmas, you could keep your eye out.

2016/17 collections: trees in winter

The 'Trees In Winter' category produced the largest number of collections this year, as is often the case. But the marks vary hugely. To do well you have to spend time finding a wide range of species, taking good quality specimens, and preserving, presenting and labelling them neatly.  Plus recording your efforts in your notebook on identification, habitat and so on. That is - as for any other collection. It's not about going out and grabbing a bunch of twigs - it's not the best choice for a last minute collection, although it's something people do try.

But let us emulate these super collections, which were all given Firsts.

This shows something I feel bad I haven't really pushed before, and that is to include samples of bark, fruits, seeds and catkins - things other than twigs that help you identify the tree. But note that they have to be things that are present over winter. There's nothing that upsets a marker so much as seeing twigs that have already burst their buds.  This student has put two species on one page - they are from the same family, which allows for comparisons. Having said that, this was frowned on by the marker of another collection, so you'll have to make your own choice. You'll notice that the bark sample has been labelled separately (if you submitted catkins or fruits, I think they'd expect the same). This collection had 19 species and did well across all sections of the mark scheme, gaining 75%.

The markers like the specimens to be easily scrutinised, which means that mounting your twigs separately (rather than on a big board altogether) often wins marks. You can see how the twig above fills the space of the card well. It's nice and flat (it might have been pressed, or more than likely selected for its shape) and it's attached to the stiff supporting card in an attractive but secure fashion. It is large enough that it includes the important features that are diagnostic for its identification. The label is neat, it's typed, it includes lots of useful information. Plus, I imagine each label is in the same place on each card. It's no wonder this collection was praised for its professional presentation. Incidentally, it comprised 23 trees and 3 shrubs.

Collections of winter twigs can be quite bulky and the student above chose boxes to keep everything in order: this went down very well with the person who marked it. They were praised for the clarity of the display of their 19 specimens, and were given a first.

The following field book belongs to the middle collection above. It's excellent - it looks readable and inviting, and includes descriptions of the sites visited, details about the trees in situ, labelled diagrams with a scale, photos and maps (plus, one would imagine somewhere, proof of use of a key). You can see why the student was given a mark in the high 70s. 

On the right-hand page the student's highlighted some features of the tree's bark and overall shape.

 On these pages you can see a clear map of the site, plus their thought processes in trying to describe and identify the species.

This page is also interesting as it mentions the coppicing management of one of the sample sites. Plus, a few annotated colour photos are never going to detract from how a reader perceives your notebook...

Remember that the monograph has to be written succinctly, so it covers the whole taxonomic group that you've chosen, but also refers to the significance of the specimens you've collected within that.

Further thoughts on tree collections: bark

Last weekend it was only raining intermittently for a change, so it seemed the ideal opportunity for a local walk. We followed a valley, walking parallel to a road, a railway and a tributary of the Avon. It turned out to be a strange mix - partly very rural ( ancient very muddy sunken lanes, fields of sheep and lambs) and partly curiously industrial (an urbexer's dream, sadly I was somewhat of a coward without a torch). To get to the point, one of the trees by the stream drew huge attention to itself through its unusual and attractive bark, which was rather like this:

White poplar (Populus alba), CC image by MPF.

It made me reflect that bark would be a very good thing to illustrate in your notebook. It also could help you in your identification in cases of Complexity. At the time (in my ignorance) I thought this tree with its diamondy bark was clearly White poplar (Populus alba), but now I read that this species hybridises with Aspen (Populus tremula), to give 'Grey poplar' (Populus x canescens). So without records of proper observation in the field, I'm not really the wiser. I do know that Grey poplar likes river valleys and has lovely red catkins (as I remember this tree did) - so maybe the clues add up to that species instead.

You've possibly heard of Gustav Klimt (who painted 'The Kiss') - in addition to depicting scantily clad women he also seems to have been quite fond of trees. This is his 'Birkenwald' (Birch wood):

Painted 1903. Public Domain image

I think he captures the stripey paperiness of the birches very well (also I like the dead leaves). Ok so you don't have to take up oil painting, but a quick sketch of the bark in your notebook (highlighting its distinctive features and maybe even with a touch of colour) would go down very well in the eye of the person marking it. And beyond this pragmatic approach, it would no doubt broaden your learning and help you spot different species with which to up your specimen count.

More on winter tree identification (and oaks)

The Queen Elizabeth oak in W. Sussex. It's pretty big. CC image Pam Fray

I wonder if you've heard of Nominative Determinism... there's a fair bit of it around amongst the staff of the Environmental department actually. Or maybe that's just because lots of British surnames have nature-related themes, who knows. Anyway,  here's a downloadable key to winter trees that I found this morning, to supplement others I've suggested. It's been created by Leif Bersweden (nominative determinism) of the Species Recovery Trust.

I found it via Kevin Widowson's twitter feed which itself has lots of nice photos of winter twigs at the moment. The thought that led me there was about Oaks. I was on a field trip the other day and we went to a local nature reserve that looked at first like an unprepossessing park where people walk their dogs. But actually there were some superb and huge oak trees around its edge. Old oaks are grand and noble and twisty and pretty distinctive with their very blocky bark. But if their rugged outline's not enough, they do have quite an unusual arrangement of buds. As I looked up at the twigs silhouetted against the grey February sky I could easily see the buds were in clusters at the ends of the twigs.

I also found a superb resource from the EU Science Hub Forest project, The European Atlas of Forest Tree Species. It has lots of interesting information on the ecology, habitats and cultural importance of many species (i.e. things you might even want to mention in your notebook). Also, you can make some taxonomically-relevant comparisons - I was reading about goat willow (Salix capraea) and it compares the different soil moisture / light preferences etc. of different willows.

There are also pages about the two native oaks in the UK, the English oak (Quercus robur) and the Sessile oak (Quercus petraea). For some reason I've never been able to get all the names and features of the two species straight in my mind. So here is my attempt to. It sounds like they should be readily distinguishable even in winter when the usual things you'd check (the leaves and acorns) are not about.

Quercus robur (CC Sten)

Quercus petraea (CC Sten)

Quercus robur                                      Quercus petraea
aka English oak                                    aka Durmast oak ('mast'=acorns)
aka Pedunculate oak                             aka Sessile oak

buds are ovoid                                      buds are pointy
buds are hairless (although                  buds have long white hairs
  may have fringey edges)
buds are said to have less                     buds are said to have more
  than 20 scales                                       than 20 scales


'Pedunculate' and 'Sessile' are words meaning 'stalked' and 'stalkless' respectively. But my problem has always been to remember to what they refer.
Q. robur  has pedunculate (long stalked) acorns, but (confusingly to me) a short stalk to its leaves.
Q. petraea has sessile (stalkless) acorns, but a long stalk to its leaves.
You might think this is a bit of an academic point in the winter, but it's always worth a look in the leaf litter for clues.

It's also said that Q. robur has blunter-tipped acorns than Q. petraea. And I've read different colours for the descriptions of the twigs. But colour always seems a bit too subjective to me, especially if you've only got one specimen in front of you. It's more the sort of thing you get a 'feel' for as part of the overall character of the species, that you might notice once you've seen and examined quite a few trees.

Their outlines, due to their way of growing, can also differ - Q. robur supposedly spreading out with irregular twisting branches and the main trunk still large and visible in the crown, whereas Q. petraea is ideally more orderly with a straight main stem and straighter branches in sensible size order. Of course, their appearance will depend on not least where they're growing - on their own or amongst lots of trees in a forest. And their age. So I don't think it's entirely clear cut.

Quercus robur, being the arboreal symbol of England, is, unsurprisingly, found in the lowlands of England. Quercus petraea is native to the oak woods of Western Britain. So you should probably be on the look-out for both. Also, to confuse matters (as ever), the two are quite variable and can even hybridise, producing trees with intermediate characteristics. Thanks a lot, trees. People are determined to pigeonhole everything into separate categories. But you confound us.

Oak leaves and flowers (male catkins) emerge from the buds. CC image Kenraiz

Winter twigs with alternate buds

I cannot deny that my desk is crowded with things. I've been living with the rest of the twigs from this post in the hope that I would get around to showing you the ones with alternate buds. Here's Batch One. You can already see that some are thin and some are stouter, some have tiny buds and some have bigger, some are rounded and some are pointy... you get the idea. These are the sorts of things you can note in your notebook along with a little sketch, to show how you've gone about your identification.

This is the dainty one on the left:

I followed the dichotomous key in May and Panter's FSC guide. I like to write down notes from the couplets (this is the best idea) but even if you just put the sequence of numbers you follow, that will show to the person marking your work that you've used the key and thought about the process. Here that would be 1, 17, 23, 24, 25, 39, 43, 44, 51, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59. Which brings us to a choice between the Wych elm (Ulmus glabra) and English elm (Ulmus procera). I'm inclined to think it's an English elm although these would be less common. The buds are darker than the twigs, they're not offset from the leaf scar below them, and they're not covered in orange hairs as Wych elm's would be.  You can't help thinking you'd see some orange hairs if they were there.

Above some of the buds were some little sticky-out things, which at first I was inclined to think were some weird hibernating creature. But on reflection, I think they're the first signs of the flowers - with elms the flowers come out before the leaves and are strange pink things:

CC image by Rosser1954

English elm is an endemic, only found in Britain. Its distinctive tall shape can be seen in Constable's paintings (like the Haywain). But the trees were devastated by a fungal disease in the 1970s and there are only a handful of mature specimens left in the whole country. But mine (if I am right, and it is an English elm) was only a small thing in a hedge - that's where you would expect to find this species. I think it would be rather a nice one to include in your collection.

Here's the next one

I feel like this ought to be cherry. It's got the right shape buds (longer than wide, a bit pointy with lots of scales). It's supposed to have some buds in clusters, but I'm hoping that would be lower down the twig (ah you see the value of taking good notes in the field, in your field notebook. If I had done, I'd know either way). It's supposed to have 'distinctive horizontal marks' - and it is a bit splotchy. In my favour, although it doesn't sound a very convincing answer when you use 'May and Panter', the pictures in 'Price and Bersweden' are rather encouraging. So it's worth using both books (I still have some copies to borrow if you don't want to shell out). Also, there are many different hybrids and cultivars of cherry. So this might be a bird cherry. Or maybe it's a different sort.

Next up the distinctive plump buds of hazel with convenient confirmatory leaf. It's worth looking around for clues like leaves if there are any. I don't call it cheating. Just prune it off before submission :)

I've got plenty more - there are many more alternately-budded species than opposite-budded species to collect. I'll just show you my alder twig as it has such distinctive bulbous 'boxing glove' buds.

 It's another example where there's an added clue to help your identification. I always think of alders as having cone-like rounded catkins (that's an easy way to spot an alder). But the one above is a male catkin, not a female catkin. It'll go greeny yellow and expand out to release pollen. As with the elms, this will happen before any leaves appear. I would leave the catkins on your twig when you preserve it - I think they'd make a good addition.

Some trees to find with opposite buds

If I don't get my daily dose of sunlight at this time of year I start losing the will to live. So I went out for a walk on Sunday morning and combined it with some twig collecting - I was pleased by the number it was possible to find in a short period of time. Granted I do live in the countryside, so the ones I found were all British species and legitimate for your collection. I urge that if you're a beginner you start somewhere you'll find native species - hedgerows and woods. If you start in a park or garden, you'll immediately confuse yourself with exotic and cultivated plants that won't be in the book. And then you'll feel unnecessarily despondent.

There are still some leaves clinging onto the trees at the moment, and obviously these provide great confirmation of the species. But you will find that some common trees have very distinctive buds.

Aesculus hippocastanum (Horse chestnut)

You may recognise this from your childhood conker-collecting: the Horse chestnut (Aesculus hipposcastanum). It's more 'naturalised' than native, having only been brought to Britain in the last 500 years, but it will be fine in your collection. The buds are huge and very sticky and pretty unmistakable. They can be so sticky, they'll make a mess of your bag and your coat and everything they come into contact with. But less sticky when its cold perhaps. Perhaps the resin puts things off from nibbling them.

Horse chestnut belongs to the Order Sapindales and the Family Sapindaceae, so of the other trees in the British countryside, it's most closely related to the Field maple (Acer campestre) and the Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus). Hint: you could put those next to it in your collection.

Sycamore (top) and Field maple (below)

You'll notice all three species have buds which are opposite each other. This is less common than species with the buds sprouting alternately or spirally up the stem. Sycamore buds are noticeably green, and field maple buds are a bit fluffy at the edges.

Another really obvious one you'll soon learn is Ash (Fraxinus excelsor) with its black buds. They remind me of little pointy hooves... devilish little black hooves. But even without such imagination you can't mistake them - they're the only ones this distinctive colour.

Ash (Fraxinus excelsor)

Ash is another species with opposite buds. But it belongs to a completely different Family, and indeed a completely different Order: the Oleaceae in the Lamiales. There are related plants that might be found growing in Britain (olive, jasmine, lilac, privet) but none are native trees.

I found four more opposite-budded species:

click the photo to admire the twigs in close-up (and check out the lenticels)

You'll notice that their colours are quite different. If you decide on this group for your collection, I think it'll really open your eyes to the variation of the plants around you. At the moment it's probably quite easy to think 'oh, trees... I know what a tree looks like', but you might end up wondering if you'd had your eyes closed.

There's Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea - sanguinea = blood) at the top, with red stems that really show up on these dark days, and weird long fingery (antlery?) buds.

Next is Guelder-rose (Viburnum opulus) with rather bulbous shiny buds, and an angled stem. You are bound to see its bright red berries at the moment too.

Third down is one of my favourites, Spindle (Euonymus europaeus) with its distinctive green stem. It has the weirdest fruits which are a clashing pink coating around four bright orange seeds.

At the bottom is Elder (Sambucus nigra) which has scruffy tiny leaves instead of scaled buds. The twig has lots of lenticels. In the days when children left the house and before they became inextricably glued to smartphones, they would annoy people by hollowing out these stems and making peashooters. You might recognise its Latin name: today's Sambuca isn't made from elderberries, but there was obviously a liqueur that once was.

Elder and Guelder-rose are both in the family Adoxaceae (curiously, like the lovely ancient woodland indicator Moschatel) but Dogwood and Spindle are both quite unrelated to anything else you'd find in Britain (including each other).

So that's eight species already. I've got as many specimens again, but they have alternate buds. I'll do those in a different post.

General thoughts on collecting

Finnish entomologist Johan Sahlberg and his botanist wife Mimmi, just before they left on their honeymoon field-trip in 1873. Photograph by Antero Saalas.

 The Legal bit: Technically, you should only collect where you've been given permission by the landowner. Realistically, if you collect a sprig of grass from a roadside, no-one is likely to demand you are thrown in jail. But bear it in mind that under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, it is illegal to uproot any wild plant without permission from the landowner. 'Plant' includes algae, lichens, mosses, fungi and vascular plants. You don't need to uproot anything of course, just take parts of it. If you haven't got permission to be on someone land, you shoud confine yourself to public land and footpaths, or else you could get in trouble for trespassing, and that's before you've picked a thing. It doesn't hurt to be following the Countryside Code in general.

It is quite complicated in law, because there's no single law that covers such things. You do have some rights as a 'forager' which have built up around collecting plants for food. The British Mycological Society have some sensible advice regarding picking fungi but you'll find there's increasing worries about people collecting large amounts of mushrooms and then selling them to fancy restaurants (selling things on is not really in the spirit of traditional foraging).

Also, it is very tempting to want to go to a nature reserve to collect - after all, that's surely where all the nature is? Actually, you'll find you can collect a remarkable number of species from uncontroversial places. If you really do want to collect at a nature reserve, you should ask first. In my experience they may give permission - just contact the relevant Wildlife Trust (etc.) and explain you are doing a taxonomic collection for university and only want a specimen or two of common species. Reassure them that you will not be digging anything up, least of all their rare species. Always take the minimum amount of material necessary wherever you are.  

 There's more advice in the Wildflower Society code of conduct. You might also want to read the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland's code of conduct. It encouragingly says "Collecting small amounts of plant material for identification purposes, for private herbaria, for research or as voucher specimens is usually acceptable, except in the case of protected or Red List species. Indeed, collecting is often necessary if botanical expertise is to be developed."

 The Amateur Entomologists Society has similar advice concerning invertebrates. Although I feel pangs of guilt killing them, the main threat to species in this country is habitat loss. The code points out that "collecting should always be limited to the minimum necessary for the purpose intended, as well as by full compliance with legal requirements relating to particular sites and species."   

It is rather unlikely you'll come across rare species (the clue being in the name). Surprisingly, very few are specifically protected by law. Obviously, if you're in a reserve where one exists, you should make yourself aware of its appearance and avoid collecting any.

In short, use common sense and all will be well. Stick to public places and no-one will threaten you with a shotgun. Develop a casual demeanour and learn to shrug off the strange looks the public will doubtless throw you. Never be without a plastic bag or collecting pot. The latter is the best bit of advice I can give you :)

 

The Health and Safety bit: 

If you look at the course guidance on Blackboard, you will see that before going out collecting it requires you to send a risk assessment to Katy. This is not so onerous, as there is a generic version on Blackboard - you just need to go through it and remove anything irrelevant to your own situation, and perhaps add in anything extra. 

For example, you can delete any of the chemicals you won't be using for preservation. You've survived this long so presumably you are good at common sense - but here's a recap anyway-

Take someone with you (it's more fun, besides).
 Let someone know where you're going and when you ought to be back (a map and a phone are useful too).
Especially if you're like me, take a snack and something to drink so you don't pass out in a ditch.
Take your medicine with you if you suffer from some life-threatening illness (now I feel like I'm talking to my mother).
Take some sensible clothing and footwear with you (and now I am turning into my mother).

Fill in your details on the form - send a copy to Katy and keep a copy for yourself.
Then you can go forth and start collecting.