Plant Detective

I deduce these are actually plastic leaves. Public Domain image.

 Sometimes people send me and Dave photos of mystery plants hoping we'll be able to identify them. Today's email from a student was marked "With High Importance" which made me inwardly groan a little bit. But actually I relish the challenge so I set about looking for clues.

It made me think of the importance of you recording good information in your Field Notebook - out in the field. Some things are really useful to note, and if you forget to, not only might you lose marks, but you're making your life difficult when it comes to identifying your specimens later.

It's a very good thing to take a photo of your specimen in situ - I would feel smug if I ever remembered to do such a thing on one of my lunchtime strolls (I haven't). But it can be hard to capture the habitat with a mere snap. Today's student's blurry plant might have been from the Mint Family (Lamiaceae) - I could just about make out a square furry stem amongst its opposite leaves. But to know whether it was in a damp habitat or a dry one would have been useful - I could have ruled out a number of possible species.  So it's really good if you can describe the habitat in your notebook - what other plants are around? Is it amongst rocks, or in a meadow, or next to a stream, or on the seashore? That would have helped me a lot, and could help you.

Plant with scale (insects, that is). Sorry. CC Gilles San Martin.

 The other thing that irritated me about the photos could have usefully been included was some indication of scale: just putting a pencil or foot in shot gives you a clue to the size of the leaves or other features.

Not always relevant (but sometimes very important) is your sense of smell. Plant-squeezing is one of my go-to clue-finding methods. A mint would be immediately obvious but many plants and flowers smell distinctive. So do some mushrooms (e.g. the ever memorable descriptions of  'wet washing' and 'crab' for certain Russulas). Even some insects exude strong smells which you might later find mentioned in an i-d book.

With "ordinary" plants my first stop is their flowers, and then to look at the shape of the leaves and the pattern they attach to the stem. I read this interesting article by Catherine Stewart describing her own process of identifying mystery plants. But with your own group you'll soon begin to realise their good early diagnostic features. Maybe that'll be behaviour for spiders (is it running across the ground or sitting in a web), or pinnateness for ferns, or general proportions for a snail, or type of fruiting body for a lichen.

This Oil beetle's kinky antennae are a clue to its species. But as with my own photo, there's not enough detail to be sure. CC0 image.

You'll be bringing your specimens home so don't have to worry to much about taking a super clear photo with every detail. Good photos and notes are even more important if you can't. The other week my sister and I found some amazing Oil beetles while out for a walk. I insisted she take some photos so we could report the sighting (there is a dedicated website you know), but I'd forgotten what the beetles' most important features were - so it turned out when I got home that the very bit of the beetle that needed to be in focus was the bit that was blurry. Well, you live and learn.

So when you're out and about collecting, really do take your notebook and note down some clues. Are those lichens only happy on the top of the wall? Are those snails anywhere else but on the tree trunks? Is that grass suspiciously present where dogs wee? (that'll be Wall barley then). Am I repeatedly seeing this seaweed at the same point up the beach? Observations. Think like a detective. You won't remember all this stuff unless you write it down. And the people marking your notebook will love to see it. Every year I read their plaintive calls for field notebooks written actually in the field. They will be desperate to give you some extra marks.

Wall barley (Hordeum murinum) in typically unsalubrious location. CC Stefan Iefnaer.

Gratifyingly, today's Student-with-mystery-plants has just emailed to call me a "bloody miracle worker" for my identifications (let's just hope I'm right).

Using Vernier calipers

You might recognise the contraption above as my self-designed Limpet Height Measurers from your first year trip to Dartmoor (patent still pending). But I also often thrust them upon people who are collecting snails, spiders, beetles and so on, because trying to measure these creatures can be a lot easier with Vernier callipers than grappling with a ruler. Sometimes that's because rulers don't easily fit in petri dishes, or because 3D objects don't easily sit against a ruler, or just because it saves you holding something small and fiddly while trying to squint at a tiny scale at the same time.

The distances between the red arrows above are all the same, though mostly you'll probably be using the bottom left gap (for snail width or spider body length for example). Most of the time you probably won't need the precision of the Vernier scale at all - millimeters being good enough for most things of this nature, but here's a quick reminder of the whole process.

Being a proper scientist you'll be working in mm or cm not inches, so use the scale on the lower side of the calipers. You want to read your distance off against the line above the O (some people get confused and want to read where the gap of the jaws ends).

So this is somewhere between 1.7 and 1.8cm (17 and 18mm), would you agree? That might be good enough for your purposes (if the question in your key is 'Over 15mm or Under 15mm, for example).

But if you did want to know how many bit-ths of a millimeter it was, you must now forget the main scale and scrutinise the 0, 1, 2, 3 etc Vernier scale.

You ask yourself, which of the lines in that scale matches up in a straight line with one of the lines above it? I would say all the ones at either end are quite askew, but the best choice is at 5 and a half - yes?

So that means after our aforemeasured 17mm, there is 0.55 more of a millimeter, making 17.55mm in total.

That would be a bit over the top for most things, but with some groups you might get a key that requires you to know the measurement to the nearest 0.5 of a millimeter (for example, the descriptions of sedges that I was looking at yesterday talk about the leaves being 1.5-2 mm wide, or the fruits being 3.5 to 5mm long).

 There are of course digital Vernier calipers these days, but I ask you, Where is the Fun in That? You wouldn't know if they were lying to you or not. Likewise their batteries are apt to die at the most inopportune moment (and they are always some obscure size of watch battery that you haven't got). It probably seems strange for a technician to be a Luddite (maybe I need to speak to a therapist). But I maintain this is borne of bitter experience: simplicity is often better. Besides, you will learn a skill which you can take satisfaction in. Here endeth the sermon. If you'd like to borrow some calipers do come and ask. I might even lend you the digital ones if you want.

CC image by Lookang

(If you want to know how a Vernier scale works, and who wouldn't, you could do worse than reading this anonymous blogger's website.  Mr Vernier himself was a French mathematician that lived c.1600.)

Sedge enthusiasm

Flea sedge (Carex pulicaris) - do those look like fleas? ew. CC Kristian Peters.

 Campus is deserted and it feels slightly pointless telling you this when you're not here. But on my lunchtime wanderings I found two lovely sedges today which I'm eager to share. My walk took me along the little drainage ditch near the tall student residence blocks. It turned out to be wider than I thought and I got a shoeful of water. Facilities have let swathes of grasses and emergent plants grow along it and it feels rather nice and wild.

These are common species but I hope you will agree, lovely. This is Carex otrubae, False fox sedge.

FFS with its sticky-out long bracts. CC Stefan.lefnaer

 It has very three-angled stems in typical sedge style. All the male and female flowers are together, so the chunky spikelets (the groups of flowers) all look the same.

CC BY-NC-SA Rhiannon

Here you can see the utricles (the nutlike fruits) in closeup - in this species they're greeny-brown.

But for something a little more striking you want the other Carex I found - Common sedge, or Carex nigra. 

CC BY-NC-SA Rhiannon. You too can borrow this super microscope camera.

If the super stripey utricles on this don't convert you to the cult of sedges, then nothing will. (I won't be offended, honestly, but what's not to like). There's another species called Carnation sedge which is said to have tempting-sounding fat 'chocolate and lime' fruits. But I think these nice flattened green and black fruits are even better.

The arrangement of the flowers is different in this species - the fluffier male flowers are all in a bunch and the top, and there are several all-female utricled inflorescences below.

CC image by Matti Vertala

I also found a 'Spike rush' (Eleocharis - they were everywhere, I had no idea) and a Rush. You need to be able to visit a variety of soils and habitats, but I think Sedges and friends would make a very nice if unusual collection. It's not one of the usual choices so I'd send Katy a message first if you choose it.

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.

Keep Off The Grass

Phleum grasses are distinctive for their ROCK horns. CC Matt Lavin and AJC1.

 This is a funny time of year in my job. Most students have disappeared and I have time to do some of the interesting things that fall by the wayside during term-time. But it takes adjustment to get used to the freedom, and I actually find the campus a bit depressing when it's so quiet. So instead of sitting at my desk eating seaweed (my latest exotic find in the SU shop) I have been trying to maintain liveliness by going for a walk at lunchtime.

I took a plastic bag today for collecting things. Taxonomic collection rule number 1: Always have your bag or pot. I saw lots of grasses. They're probably responsible for all this sneezing going on at the moment so I considered it revenge to pick them. This is a great time of year for a grass collection since they're in flower - you certainly don't want to do yourself in by trying to identify them without their flowers.

Taxonomic collection rule number 2: Ignore everybody else. I was standing motionless staring into a big bed of wildflowers, looking for grasses. A student walked near me singing to himself - then he clocked me and presumably felt embarrassed for himself, and also maybe bemused for me because I looked quite strange standing there clutching my plastic bag of vegetation. "All right?" (he had to repeat this as I usually expect my strange aspect to deter communication). "Yes, I'm all right? Are you all right?" "Yes." It made me laugh anyway. So definitely don't worry about looking weird. If anybody's actually paying attention they'll probably be too awkward to ask you what you're doing anyway.

Old skool botanising, same as it ever was. CC Wellcome Images.

So get this - I found 16 species of grasses (Poaceae family) just wandering round campus. I was surprised there were so many. Imagine the marvellousness of your collection if you started grasses now, and went to different habitats and collected even more. It would have the potential to be truly marvellous wouldn't it. Well, I would be impressed at least.

I brought my haul back to the lab and was pleasantly surprised at how many I knew. Maybe this knowledge has been seeping into me slowly over the years. You see, there is hope even with apparently off-putting groups like grasses. Like anything, if you get to know the common species, you'll naturally begin to spot when something's odd and different.

And if you're in a particular habitat, there will be a certain range of species you're likely to find, which helps with identification too. I was on the MSc field trip last week to Steart Marshes, which has lots of developing salt marsh. I brought back two special salt marsh species from there (though there were more... collecting just wasn't on the top of my mind).

Botanists pressing plants in the field - yeah fine in Mexico where it doesn't rain :) CC Alan Harper.

I've pressed my finds and I'm hoping to mount them - but I'm in a good position because I already know what I'm looking at. If you've collected grasses you really want to identify them while they're still fresh, because their identification features include membranous ligules and leaf width - things that will unhelpfully shrivel when pressed. You can keep your finds in a plastic bag for a while in the fridge until you've sorted them out.

It would also be really useful to take photos or sketches of your plants in the field, as the "look" of grasses can be quite distinctive when they're en masse - sometimes they look much more shimmery or brightly coloured in the field, and that can help with identification.

If grasses take your fancy this fold-out guide is a good and cheap start. I have found Francis Rose's 'Grasses, Rushes and Ferns' the best book - it has detailed illustrations of the spikelets. The latter is super expensive, so do come and borrow one from me. It's too heavy really to carry around though, but I have had much success with Dominic Price's recent 'Field guide to grasses, sedges and rushes', which includes excellent identification Top Tips and lists for particular habitats - I'd recommend it very much.

Nice ligule. CC image by Harry Rose.

Anyway please do ask for for a bit of help if you wish, as it's useful to get some feedback from someone who knows a few species for sure.

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.

Encouragement for last minute collectors

A weird Peltigera (dog lichen) similar to some I found last weekend. CC Ryane Snow

 It's not quite the last minute. You still have a couple of weeks. I'm not being funny, it is entirely the case that you could yet achieve good things with this assignment. You just need to pick something that interests you, and make time to find some specimens, scribble about them in your notebook, identify them, display them, and write a little monograph about them. Not as easy as if you'd started a while back. But much more satisfying than trying to write a last minute essay. And easier to figure out what you have to do to get a good mark, by all accounts.

Today I helped a freshly minted lichenologist. She'd brought in a couple of species on a twig. We went for a little walk in the sunshine and quickly found a few more.

Recognising them is one thing, you might say, but identifying them is another. Ah, but the happy thing about lichens (and many other groups of organisms) is that certain species tend to be found in certain habitats. Before she arrived I took a bit of time to mug up the species on the FSC's Key to Lichens on Twigs. I was aghast to find that I didn't recognise half of them very well. I realised this is because I spend too much of my time breathing city air where most lichens aren't tough enough to live. I might be getting away with an air of knowledgeability because certain species keep turning up locally.

But this is a good thing - for you - because many of the species you find will be from a limited pool. Don't be put off by the overwhelming number that exist across the country.

Lecidella elaeochroma, one of today's haul. Note the black margins where the lichens fight for space. CC image Jymm.

In addition to the FSC key, you can use Nimis, Wolseley and Martellos's 'Key to common lichens on trees in England' (I've printed some off if you want to borrow a paper copy). It seemed to be quite user-friendly when we were using it this afternoon. It's a dichotomous key, which you might want to show markers you can use in addition to the parallel key on the FSC guide.

I always recommend Alan Silverside's lichen site for reliable pictures and descriptions, and you can also see photos on the British Lichens website.

You want to arrange your species so they're in taxonomic groups - you can check that with the database on the Natural History Museum website.

We have an amazing new Leica microscope with camera here, and I would very much like to make some useful guides to local common species to help students in future. I waved off the Madagascar field trippers today (with the 27 crates I'd packed... byeeee) so one can only hope for some downtime. Hah, unlikely. But I am more than happy to help any of you with your last minute taxonomic anguish. Please do come and see me.

Finally... Spring.

It's been busy here. I've been losing the plot a bit. But today is the Spring Equinox and this gives me hope.

Last weekend my sister and I got out in the drizzle to a woodland in Somerset. We were out looking for snails. Yes, we do this for fun in our spare time.

And we found many snails and their empty shells. Specifically, lots of Copse snail shells (Arianta arbustorum) and many live Door snails of some sort or other (very tall and pointy) climbing up and down the tree trunks. If you haven't started your collection yet, but you want to collect lots of different species and get a good mark - I think snails is a good choice.

Speckly shelled Copse snail CC image by Kristian Pikner

We also saw a lot of mosses and liverworts. I love mosses and liverworts (I might have mentioned this before). The keys are not easy. It's going to hurt your head a bit more than snails. But if you like staring down a microscope at the interesting and varied shapes of leaves, all bright green and lovely - then consider giving mosses a go. They're certainly easy enough to find, so you won't have to worry about having enough species to submit.

Plagiomnium undulatum. Reminiscent of miniature seaweed. In a wood. CC Bernd Haynold.

Another thing we saw much of was lichen. There were some excellent examples of Graphis scripta. It's supposed to look like writing. Presumably writing etched by tiny little tree elves or something. Lichen is around all year and it doesn't run away from you. If you fancy getting into something a bit weird, lichen could be for you.

Graphis scripta with its long 'lirellate' fruiting bodies. CC Ed Uebel.

There were also trees in the wood of course, and a rather unusual cross between pollarding and coppicing that produced so-called Stoggles. If you're collecting twigs, then if you find yourself in such a habitat, it'd be worth sketching and writing about in your notebook. I'm expecting delivery soon of a new winter twigs book by Bernd Schulz. It's supposed to be released in April so perhaps it'll even arrive before your hand-in date.

This may not be the world's most inspiring post. But the turn of the year is a sign that I will be getting back outside and recollecting my sanity, and that you now have the opportunity to get out there and practise your naturalist / taxonomic collector's skills. There's still time for you to produce something really good. Try to make it as good as you can and you will get a good mark (plus the satisfaction of learning something interesting). Onward and upward.

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.