Category Archives: Natural Patterns

Love of Nature, Natural Patterns

Fall Colours in Kew Gardens!

Yes, you couldn’t make it up or improve it with Photoshop, the colours came out like this straight from the camera. The tree is a Red Maple, Acer rubrum, in fact the one planted in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Get that for October! Scilla madeirensis in Kew’s Alpine House. Guess you could translate that as the Madeira Squill if you wanted to.
The whole bush was this “absolutely fabulous” colour. Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’
Sunny colours in the Alpine House: Eschscholzia californica
The astounding copper-red of the Northern Pin Oak of New England, Quercus ellipsoidalis
And for a warm smile to last through the winter, how about these?
Love of Nature, Natural Patterns

A Local Lockdown Walk

A magnificent Stone Pine

Yes, I live within easy reach of Kew Gardens, and after weeks of grey winter and grim news, it was a lovely moment in the sunshine among the fabulous variety of Pine trees – dozens of species – in the arboretum.

The gloriously abstract painterly bark of the Lacebark Pine (Pinus bungeana). It’s more reminiscent of laurels or the London Plane than of the craggy bark of many Pine species. It’s a graceful tree, too.
The tightly packed structure of the cone of the Atlas Cedar, a magnificent and elegant tree from the Maghreb hills of Algeria and Morocco
Flowers in January! Yes, it’s a member of the Hamamelidaceae, the Witch-Hazel family, but not one of the usual suspects. This is the Persian Ironwood, Parrotia persica, from Iran and the Caucasus.

Natural History, Natural Patterns, Nature Reserves

Gunnersbury Triangle Bug Day – Purple Hairstreak, Rove Beetle

Purple Hairstreak found in pond (worth a look at full size, click and see)

Bug Day pond dipping – water level alarmingly low

(Prob. Southern) Hawker Dragonfly Nymphs, Pond Snails. We also saw plenty of Ramshorn Snails, a flatworm, a leech, small diving beetles, damselfly nymphs, water fleas, Greater Water Boatmen (Backswimmers), young newts (with 4 legs and gills) and more.

Identifying Birch Catkin Bugs

Cream-Spot Ladybird

Devil’s Coach Horse (Ocypus olens) – a Rove Beetle (Staphylinidae), splendidly fast and wriggly

The magnificent Fibonacci spirals of a Teasel flowerhead

Urban Green-Veined White on Buddleia

Young Entomologist at Work

Love of Nature, Natural Patterns, Nature Reserves

Warm Wet Winter Day at Wraysbury Lakes

Wet Blackened Rose Hips

The day was exceptionally warm after the chilly winter weather. The hedgerow plants dripped gently. I liked the colours and light on these blackened rose-hips, still somehow looking invitingly fruity.

The path too was covered in blackened leaves, wet and slippery. On the lake, half-a-dozen Goldeneye, a couple of Pochard, a few Teal, some Tufted Duck, a few Mallard. Apart from the ducks, a couple of Cormorants, two young and very white Great Crested Grebes. On the meadows, a Green Woodpecker, flocks of Goldfinches, scattered Redwing and Fieldfare, a flock of Carrion Crows.

Rutted grassy track