Creeping buttercup

Creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) is the buttercup variety that you do not want to get in your garden! It sends out runners in all directions that, every few inches, establish new plants and make it difficult for plants such as grass to get a foothold. Unless you are able to get every scrap of creeping buttercup removed, your lawn can quite easily be ruined.

On farmland the effect can be even worse because cattle will avoid it when grazing – it is unpleasant to the taste – and take the grass instead. This only leaves more room for the creeping buttercup to spread into. If the land is ploughed, the buttercup plants can easily regenerate many times over from the pieces that the plough has cut up.

The plant can be short or tall, depending on soil conditions. It can therefore be a ground-hugger, only two inches (five centimetres) high, or grow up to 20 inches (50 centimetres) in height. The hairy leaves, on long stalks, have three lobes with the central one being much larger than the other two. The yellow flowers, which are single or in clusters, can be seen from May to September.

© John Welford

Bladder campion

Bladder campion (Silene vulgaris) is found in most parts of the British Isles but is rarer the further north one goes. It grows both on cultivated and on waste land.

It throws up erect, usually hairless, stems to a maximum height of 36 inches (90 centimetres). The leaves, which grow in pairs, are bluish-green and waxy. They are edible and were formerly used as a vegetable because of their similarity in smell (if not taste) to fresh garden peas.

The flowers appear from May to August. The petals are white and deeply lobed, the sepals joining together to form an inflated balloon-like tube that is the “bladder” of the plant’s name. The flowers can be male, female or bisexual. In the latter case the sexes mature at different times. The flowers emit a clove-like scent, but only in the evenings.

The shape of the flowers has evolved to force insects to go deep inside the flower to extract nectar. Clearly this increases the chance that the insect will collect or deposit pollen. However, some bumble bees have devised a method of cheating the bladder campion, which is to bite a hole in the base of the flower where the nectar is stored. Clearly this does the plant no good at all so it is just as well that bumble bees are not the only pollinators!

© John Welford

Shepherd's purse

Shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) is a persistent weed that is found across much of the world as well as Great Britain. It grows on wasteland and also in gardens and on farmland.

It grows to 18 inches (45 centimetres) in height and also sprawls across the ground. The stems can be either branched or unbranched. The lower leaves, which form a rosette, are dull green in colour and are lobed to a greater or lesser extent. The upper leaves clasp the stem.

The small white flowers, which can appear at any time of the year, form in clusters at the tip of the stem.

The seed-pods have a distinctive heart shape, or a triangle with a notch at the top. This is the feature that gave the plant its name, because it was noted centuries ago that shepherds took their lunch into the fields in a pouch that was just this shape, slung from a belt. The resemblance to a coin purse is reinforced by the fact that, when ripe, the seeds will spill out of the pod if it is touched, just like coins from a purse.

An alternative name is “mother’s heart”, because of a trick that children would play on each other. An unwitting child would be asked to pick the ripe heart-shaped pods from a shepherd’s purse plant and, when the inevitable happened, would be told that he or she had just broken his or her mother’s heart!

Although insects do visit shepherd’s purse flowers, many plants self-pollinate. This leads to local inbreeding and variations in the appearance of the plant as between different colonies.

© John Welford

Butterfly fish

Butterfly fish belong to the Chaetontidae family. They are around four to ten inches long and inhabit coral reefs in shallow tropical seas.

All species of butterfly fish are brightly coloured, have deep bodies and a series of spines in front of both the dorsal and anal fins. These fins curve round the body to meet the tail fin.

Another feature that distinguishes butterfly fish is the pronounced snout, although the size of it varies between species, depending on particular feeding habits. For example, the clown butterfly fish from the tropical Pacific has a relatively short snout whereas that of the forcipiger butterfly fishes is very long.

The mouth parts of the various species also display differences that relate to snout length. Some have pointed long snouts with tiny mouths and protruding teeth that are used to nip off coral polyps, whereas the long-nosed butterfly fish (Forcipiger longirostris) uses its much longer snout to probe gaps in the coral to find burrowing crustaceans and worms.

© John Welford

Sea sandwort

Sea sandwort (Honkenya peploides) is found all round the coast of Great Britain, especially on sandy beaches above the high water mark, where it helps in the creation of sand dunes.

It has fleshy bright green leaves and creeping stems. It grows to a maximum height of ten inches but may only be two inches high when fully grown. It has both flowering and non-flowering stems, with the small white flowers appearing between May and September. Male and female flowers do not grow on the same plant.

Sea sandwort has a strong root system that helps it stay in place when the wind blows. It acts as a windbreak in that the sand builds up on the windward side, which could be the beginning of a dune. Should the plant be buried in sand, it will send up new shoots to reach the light with the old shoots dying back.

© John Welford

The penguin prostitutes

The story about penguins falling over backwards as they watch a plane flying overhead and keep watching until they overbalance, has been going the rounds for some time, although it may just be an “outdoor urban myth”. However, a few years ago a wildlife expert from Australia reported another reason why penguins, particularly female ones, might be found in unfortunate positions.

Adelie penguins on the coast of Antarctica build their nests from small stones, which are therefore highly prized at breeding time in the enormous colonies that these birds create. Theft of stones is common, but some enterprising females have hit on a new way of getting hold of a supply.

On the fringes of the colony, the young males who have not yet found a mate are doubtless sexually frustrated, but they have the advantage of ready access to large numbers of stones from outside the colony. They therefore collect piles of the best stones, with which they buy sexual favours from the breeding females who visit them with the sole purpose of getting hold of a stone. The going rate appears to be one good stone per shag.

In this trade, everyone's a winner. Except perhaps for the male penguin back at the nest who might be wondering (a) why the missus is looking so VERY pleased with herself when she gets back with a stone, (b) why she has taken so long getting it, and (c) why she keeps complaining about a headache when he suggests that they have an early night.

© John Welford

Black mustard

Is mustard a wild flower? It counts as one if it has spread beyond the confines of cultivated crops, and that is certainly the case in parts of the United Kingdom where it grows as a wayside weed.

The black mustard plant (Brassica nigra) grows upright to a maximum height of 36 inches. The stems are thick and hairy towards the base but much thinner and hairless higher up. The large leaves grow on stalks, close to the ground, and the flower stems shoot much higher. The flowers grow in clusters, each having four yellow petals that are twice the length of the green sepals. Flowering begins in May. As the lower flowers die off they leave long seed-pods hugging the stem.

The name “black” refers to the round seeds that are dark brown to black on the outside but, when crushed, produce the familiar yellow powder that is used for making table mustard.

The use of mustard as a condiment only began in the 13^th century in France, with the ground-up seeds being mixed with partly fermented grape juice, known as “must”, to produce “moût-ardent” which translates as “burning must”. This became contracted in French to “moutarde” and “mustard” in English.

Fields of black mustard used to be a common sight in England, particularly East Anglia, but most commercially produced mustard powder is now derived from rape, to which the black mustard plant is related. The familiar sight of yellow fields during summertime is almost entirely due to the growing of rape, which has many uses other than making hot dogs taste spicier!

Mustard also has medicinal uses, as anyone with a stinking cold will know if they have tried soaking their feet in a mustard bath. It is also effective as a poultice for relieving chest ailments and muscular pains.

© John Welford