CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Dog's mercury and the perils of colloquial plant names

2026-03-16T15:07:00.000+00:00

Everyone looks forward to finding the first primroses, violets and bluebells blooming in spring, but the flowering of dog’s mercury Mercurialis perennis never gets a round of applause. But what it lacks in beauty, it makes up for with ecological gravitas and toxicity.

Dog’s mercury is common in woodlands almost everywhere and spreads via an underground rhizome, so large patches tend to be good indicators of very old woodlands and hedgerows. There are separate male and female plants, with the former being rather more common. This is a male plant, with stamens protruding from the tiny flowers.

Old colloquial plant names, like mercury, can lead to potentially dangerous confusion. The pot herb Good King Henry Chenopodium bonus-henricus also goes by the old name of English mercury and it is edible but dog’s mercury is most definitely poisonous. John Gerard, referring to it as French mercury in his herbal of 1597, seems to have confused the two, which may be why he wrote that it ‘cleanse and scour away the excrements and other filth contained in the guts. It serveth to purge the belly, being eaten or otherwise taken, voiding out of the belly not only the excrements, but also phlegm and choler.’

Rook

2026-03-09T15:45:00.000+00:00

An unexpected visitor to the garden bird feeder this week: a rook. They don’t appear in the garden very often, but when they do it’s usually in early spring, when they are looking for twigs to renovate nests.

Ffty years ago, when we first came to live in this small market town in the foothills of the North Pennines, on the edge of farmland, we used to have two large rookeries close-by, but as the town has grown, with new housing around its margins, they’ve shifted their nests further away. It’s a long-term pattern of behaviour that has been well documented in many places: rooks generally do not tolerate a lot of disturbance under their rookeries.

Peering up into a rookery on a windy spring day, at the swaying nests overhead, can be disorientating, unless you steady yourself by leaning against a tree trunk, feeling the transmitted power of the wind when the bole flexes against your back. Down below, earthbound, there is something Hitchcockian about those dark silhouettes wheeling overhead, with their broad wings, finger-like primaries and bony dagger beaks that prise insect grubs from grassroots.

The rooks ride the gusts, sometimes settling into what sounds like conversational cawing, often rising as a raucous flock for no obvious reason. A few bring twigs to repair nests, others seem to be here just to be sociable.

It seems strange to see these ungainly birds visiting the garden bird table because their pickaxe beaks seem ill-adapted for picking up sunflower and millet seeds, but they are birds with a very varied diet.

Come summer, after the harvest, when the breeding season is over, they’ll be pacing through local stubble fields, in the company jackdaws and crows, looking for wheat, barley and oat seed that the combine harvester dropped: nature’s gleaners at work.

A bit of a stink

2026-03-04T15:13:00.000+00:00

Stinking hellebore Helleborus foetidus, malodorous but a wonderful source of pollen and nectar for the first bees to emerge in spring, started flowering in the garden last week. Its nectar is secreted into nectaries formed from small tubular petals inside those green sepals, and only accessible to long-tongued bumblebees that must hang under the bell-shaped flower to reach it. The specialised nectaries are more easily visible on open-flowered hellebores like ….

…… this non-native Helleborus argutifolius, also flowering now. The petal/nectaries are the ring of dark green structures tucked in behind the stamens.

Hellebores, which are poisonous, have a somewhat gruesome history in folk medicine, as a vermifuge: “Where it killed not the patient, it would certainly kill the worms; but the worst of it is, it would sometimes kill both” noted Gilbert White in 1779, in The Natural History of Selborne.

Beatrix Potter, mycologist

2026-02-06T16:36:00.000+00:00

When I first became seriously interested in natural history, about 60 years ago, the Wayside and Woodland series of nature guides, published by Warne, were some of the best available, but too expensive for me - the affordable Observer’s books, by the same publisher, were the limit of my budget. Now there are glossier, better illustrated up-to-date guides but the old W & W series often turn up in secondhand bookshops and have a nostalgic charm. This one cost me 50p. in a charity shop and is particularly interesting because most of the illustrations are watercolours by Beatrix Potter, of Flopsy-bunny, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tiggywinkle children’s book fame.

Before she turned to writing children’s books Helen Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was a passionate mycologist who approached the study of fungi with a scientist’s meticulous curiosity and an artist’s sensibility, encouraged by Charles McIntosh, her local postman-naturalist who often supplied her with toadstool specimens to paint.

Her studies extended to culturing fungal spores in her kitchen and in 1896 she submitted a research paper, on the subject of velvet shank toadstools Flammulina volutipes (pictured below) to the Linnaean Society of London. At that time it didn’t admit women as members but her paper was read at a meeting and returned for revision but never resubmitted nor published.

She moved on to writing and illustrating some of the best-loved children’s stories, devoting the latter years of her life to sheep breeding and conserving the beloved Lake District landscape that was her home, but her mycological legacy lives on in her exquisite watercolours.

Attack of the parasitic jelly fungus

2026-02-03T21:10:00.002+00:00

This gloopy-looking stuff is Yellow brain fungus Tremella aurantia, growing on the dead branch of a tree along one of my favourite walks, in the Deerness valley, County Durham. It’s a jelly fungus with a rather sinister lifestyle, parasitising another common fungus, hairy curtain crust Stereum hirsutum, which you can just see, dying, on the underside of the branch.

The microscopically-fine hyphae of the parasite, invisible to the unaided human eye, creep through the decaying wood, find and clamp onto those of their host and eventually kill it. The damp, foggy weather we’ve had recently has been perfect for the growth of the gelatinous parasite.

There are two common species of Tremella in the British fungal flora - this one and Tremella mesenterica - which are virtually identical and can only be easily identified by the hosts they parasitise: T. mesenterica preys on another crust fungus called Peniophora, which often grows on gorse stems hereabouts.

And here, a little further down the dead branch bearing the yellow brain fungus, is some more hairy curtain crust, so there’s plenty more of its victim for it to feed on.

Tree sparrow courtship

2026-01-30T14:30:00.000+00:00

Excited male tree sparrow, displaying to a potential mate, in the garden earlier this week. Flitting around her, cocking his tail, trembling his drooping wings and singing for all he was worth. He senses that spring is not too far away now.

The Curse of the Black Spot

2026-01-27T21:05:00.001+00:00

The curse of the black spot! Tar spot fungus Rhytisma acerinum, that disfigures sycamore leaves in summer, continues to develop on its dead, decaying foliage in the leaf litter. The black spots become increasingly wrinkly as winter progress, then hundreds of asci - microscopically small flasks filled with needle-shaped spores - develop along the ridges. When spring arrives the spores are released into the air, just in time for them to infect a new crop of sycamore leaves, where they germinate and invade through the breathing pores (stomata) in the leaf surface.

Tar spot fungus is less common on urban sycamores that on trees in rural areas and it used to be thought that this was because the fungus was susceptible to sulphur dioxide in polluted city air. A more likely explanation could be that the fungus is less common on city sycamores because their fallen autumn leaves tend to be removed by councils from public places, so the annual cycle of reinfection from dead infected leaves is broken.

The long journey of the Weeping willow

2026-01-22T14:24:00.001+00:00

A weeping willow on the bank of the river Wear below Durham cathedral, glowing in early afternoon winter sunshine. An idyllic spot for a riverbank picnic in summer, watching the boats on the river.

The true weeping willow Salix babylonica, of willow pattern ceramics fame, came to England from China and was carried by traders along the Silk Road to Aleppo in Syria, from whence it was brought to England in 1730.

All the original introductions here were female trees and had to be propagated from cuttings, but these were not fully hardy in our climate and pure-line S. babylonica trees are now thought to be extinct here. Fortunately they hybridised easily with native willow species and have persisted as hybrids of unknown male parentage, although frequently-planted Salix x sepulcralis is thought to be a hybrid with white willow Salix alba. It came from a nursery in Berlin, sometime around 1888.

Willow species in general are notoriously prone to forming hybrids and can be hard to identify with certainty, without scrutinising bark, buds, leaves, flowers and general habit of the tree throughout the growing season.

Judging a book by its cover - and by its contents

2026-01-12T20:17:00.000+00:00

Edwardian publishers certainly knew how to produce exquisite book covers. I found this charming, gilded, art nouveau example in a second-hand bookshop a few years ago. I was beguiled by the cover, but even more enchanted by the contents.

The cover illustration, and others inside, was painted by artist/illustrator William Bennett Robinson (1870-1915).

The text is by Thomas W. Hoare, Teacher of Nature Study, about whom there seems to be very little information, although I did find one reference that suggests he might have died in 1939.

The book is an omnibus edition of seven books of practical nature study, in the Look About You series published from 1904 onwards. I’m guessing that this de lux edition, which must have been quite expensive, might have been published around 1914. The publisher, T.C. & E.C. Jack, was taken over by another Scottish publisher, Nelson, in 1915.

Here’s Hoare’s preface, setting out his intentions, using the study of nature close to home as a gateway to a broader education based on a child’s natural curiosity. It seems to have been intended as a structured guide to educating children at home.

Each of the seven books is composed of lessons in the form of a conversation between a family member and the children, sometimes with experiments they performed together, and at the end of every lesson there are four questions or tasks for the children to address. At the end of every book there are teachers’ notes, which strongly emphasise the need for kindness and compassion for animals and the need to exercise care and restraint in collecting and keeping living organisms.

Harvest time. The period illustrations capture a lost rural world, of farming with heavy horses and hard manual labour.

Aeronautics, before powered flight became commonplace. The book teaches scientific concepts like cloud formation, rising air currents and air density, by referencing familiar everyday phenomena, from condensed steam from boiling kettles to intrepid balloonists.

Colour plates for insect identification

Wild flowers, butterflies and moths

And when lessons are over, letting off steam by chucking snowballs at a snowman effigy of teacher.

And finally, something else about the Look-About-You series that distinguished them from contemporary early 20th.century outdoors natural history manuals that were mostly written for boys; this series was for the edification of sons and daughters.

You can download free digitised copies of some of the series from the Project Gutenberg website

Velvet shank

2026-01-07T20:57:00.000+00:00

Autumn is the main toadstool season but some hardy fungi produce theirs in the depths of winter, even during periods of frost and snow. This is velvet shanks Flammulina velutipes on the trunk of an old lime tree on the bank of the river Wear in Durham city. On mild, wet days the cap is smooth and shiny. The pale stem (stipe) darkens as it matures, developing a velvety texture.

Books say this species is edible when cooked. John Wright, the The River Cottage Mushroom Handbook described the flavour as ‘unusual ….. distinctly sweet and malty’ and the texture ‘pleasantly chewy’ but cautions against mistaking it for sulphur tuft (gastrointestinal devastation) or the funeral bell (the essential caution is implicit in the name). Velvet shank differs from both in having white spores.

A cowslip at Christmas

2025-12-26T17:31:00.000+00:00

These cowslips have been flowering in my garden since mid-December. This particular plant often flowers in late winter, but I can’t recall ever seeing cowslips in full bloom at Christmas. This unseasonal behaviour is likely a response climate disruption, to the plant recovering from summer drought and then producing rapid new growth in autumnal daylengths that would be similar to those that initiate flowering in spring. Since then, mild weather with few frosts and only one day of light snow have encouraged it to bloom.

Flavour of limes (Tilia species)

2025-12-05T17:21:00.001+00:00

Winds had stripped all the leaves from lime trees but this large-leaved lime Tilia platyphyllos in Wolsingham churchyard is still holding on to a few of its winged seeds. Unlike the small-leaved lime T. cordata and common lime T. x europaea, the seed capsules of this species have distinctive raised ridges.

Autumn leaf fall has exposed the architecture of this magnificent mature common lime in a field at Stanhope in Weardale.

Common lime, a natural hybrid between large-leaved and small leaved limes, frequently has large burrs on its trunk that sprout a chaotic forest of twigs; in this one the burr is mid-trunk and its twigs have formed a massive skirt of small branches that would sweep down to ground level if they hadn’t been browsed by sheep: so, in this case, more like a ballet dancer’s tutu than a skirt.

All that twiggy burr growth from burrs at the base of the trunk makes common lime easy to propagate cheaply from cuttings, so it's often planted as an amenity street tree - but then the burrs have to be trimmed at the end of every growing season - like these two examples in the image below.

A treecreeper visits

2025-11-24T17:19:00.000+00:00

Three o’clock on a freezing November afternoon. In a few minutes the sun will sink below the hedge and the garden will be plunged into deep shadow.

There’s something climbing up the trunk of the old crab apple tree, about fifteen feet from the window. At first it looks like it might be a field mouse, but it’s a small brown bird with claws like crampons and a long, slender, curved beak like surgical forceps: a tree creeper.

It’s searching every nook and cranny for insects and there are plenty of them - the tree has been infested with woolly aphids all summer and their nymphs are overwintering in bark crevices.

Biological pest control at its best.

Just time for a few quick pictures through the window as the bird climbs through the the last glimmer of sunlight on the crab apple trunk - and then it vanishes.

Half a minute of magical birdwatching, from the comfort of a settee.

Return of the milk thistle Silybum marianum

2025-11-17T11:34:00.002+00:00

You've got to love a plant whose Latin generic name is Silybum, more prosaically milk thistle Silybum marianum. I’d never seen it until seven years ago, when a friend asked me to identify ‘a triffid growing in some builders’ rubble in the corner of a field’.

It was impressive, with a height and spread of over a metre, with beautifully marbled leaves and a corona of spiny bracts around the flowers that was reminiscent of medieval weaponry.

I brought some seeds home and tried to germinate them, with no success, and must have chucked the contents of the pot onto the compost heap. Now, seven years later, this seedling appeared in the garden. Beautiful foliage, but I’ll be a little apprehensive about the plant when it reaches full size, next year. Meanwhile, the young plant has begun to flower, just before the first frosts of winter arrive. Definitely a plant to handle with care: milk thistle has spiny bracts around the flower heads that look as though they could cause serious pain.

The 'mouse' hiding in the fir cone

2025-11-01T21:38:00.000+00:00

This a Douglas fir Pseudotsuga menziesii cone, easily recognisable by the papery bracts, resembling the hind legs and tail of a mouse, above each scale. Native American folklore has it that mice climbed the trees and hid amongst the cone scales when fires swept across the forest floor.

The tree’s common name commemorates David Douglas, the Scottish botanist and plant collector who, in 1826, introduced it into cultivation here. Douglas led a colourful life before coming to an unfortunate end when he was gored to death by a bull in Hawaii, at the tragically young age of 35. The Latin specific name commemorates Archibald Menzies, another great Scottish plant collector who discovered the tree in 1792.

Douglas fir’s wind-dispersed, winged seeds are only about a centimetre long but grow into a giant tree in its native Pacific North West of America, where some are believed to have grown even taller than giant redwoods, reaching almost 400ft., before the finest specimens were felled for their exceptionally fine timber. Douglas firs planted in Britain grew very rapidly, with some now exceeding 200ft., making them amongst the tallest trees in the British Isles.

Willowfly Leuctra geniculata

2025-10-22T20:05:00.001+00:00

I found this little insect, about one centimetre long, on my car windscreen when I parked near Waskerley beck at Wolsingham in Weardale yesterday. I'm pretty sure its a willowfly Leuctra geniculata, a member of the family of needleflies within the order Plecoptera, the stoneflies.

Needleflies' name comes from the way they tend to fold their wings tightly around their abdomen, making the insect appear slender and pointed.

It's a common insect but an encouraging sign of good water quality in the beck - stoneflies' aquatic larval stages need clean, well oxygenated water and have a low tolerance of pollutants.

Some recent fungal finds

2025-10-17T13:02:00.000+00:00

After a summer drought, followed by a mild and wet September and early October, it's turning out to be a very good autumn for fungal forays.

Here are a few toadstools that I've encountered recently. I struggle a bit with identifying fungi and sometimes find that field guides are confusing, not least because most only show toadstools at the peak perfection of their development, so any found that are in early or late stages of growth or decay are harder to name with real confidence.

A birch bolete Leccinum scabrum, always associated with birch trees. An aging specimen in Durham University Botanic Garden, at the point where its convex cap begins to soften, flatten and then become concave.

An easy one - sulphur tuft Hypholoma fasciculare on a dead tree stump in Durham University Botanic Garden.

A perfect cluster of what I think are shaggy parasols Chlorophyllum (Macrolepiota) rhacodes in Durham University Botanic Garden. They’ll get taller, and their caps flatter, as they mature.

The true parasol mushroom is edible, said to be excellent, but apparently shaggy parasols can cause stomach upsets in some people. There’s a surprising number of smaller parasol-related species, collectively known as dapperlings, of variable edibility, including one - Lepiota brunneo-incarnata that’s deadly poisonous and contains the same toxin as death cap so, as with all toadstool eating, accurate identification is essential.

A sepia bolete Boletus porosporus has risen through last autumn’s dead beach leaves. under the hedge in my own garden. Isn’t that crazy-paving pattern of cracks on the cap wonderful? It’s one of the less common Boletus species and this is the first time I’ve seen it in the garden. Every year more toadstools appear here, perhaps because I rake all the autumn leaves into the beds and borders, where they decay and add humus to the soil, just as they do in woodland.

Found growing under an old yew in St. Brandon's churchyard, Brancepeth. I don't know what this beauty is and need to go back for a second look when the cap has expanded. There's a ring around the stipe and I suspect it's a species of agaric or maybe one of the parasols.

I think these may be young puffballs, possibly Lycoperdon perlatum, but I need to go back for another look when they've matured a bit. They are growing through a layer of stone chips surrounding a memorial.

Parasol Macrolepiota procera or more likely P. konradii in the grounds of the Bowes museum in Barnard Castle.

An older specimen of parasol Macrolepiota procera or P. konradii in the grounds of the Bowes museum in Barnard Castle. The chunky scales on the cap (see previous image) have flattened out as the cap expanded - the appearance of many toadstools changes as they age.

The very common lumpy bracket Trametes gibbosa on a decaying tree stump in the grounds of the Bowes museum, Barnard Castle. A long-lived bracket, often discoloured by a layer of green algae as it ages.

I think these may be shaggy scalycaps Pholiota squarrosa and common inkcaps Coprinopsis atramentaria sharing a decaying tree stump in the grounds of the Bowes museum, Barnard Castle.

Common inkcaps Coprinus comatus with their caps in the final stages of autodigestion, in the grounds of the Bowes museum, Barnard Castle. In another couple of days the only evidence of their existences will be an inky stain on the ground, loaded with spores.

Turkey tails Trametes (Coriolus) versicolor on a decaying alder stump at Low Barns Nature Reserve, Witton-le-Wear, County Durham

I suspect these small brown toadstools (above and below), growing in a recently mown grassy woodland ride at the Woodland Trust's Low Burnhall reserve, could be brown mottlegills aka mower's mushroom Paneolina foenisecii, a common species in mown grass, but there are many small brown toadstools that resemble these and I'm unsure about that ID. The second image, below, shows how the cap becomes flattened and wavy-edged as it matures.

I think all of these toadstools in these last four images are honey fungus Armillaria mellea, a very variable species. Those in the first three pictures were probably growing on the surface roots of a dead larch, which it had most likely killed. The final image, with full expanded caps with wavy edges that have become concave as they've matured, shows a much older cluster on the stump of a dead alder. All at Durham Wildlife Trust's Low Barns Nature Reserve.

A violet-ant mutually beneficial symbiosis

2025-10-11T16:01:00.000+00:00

Sweet violets Viola odorata produce two types of flower - the familiar scented kind that are amongst the first wild flowers to appear in spring and are pollinated by bumblebees, and a summer cleistogamous version that remains as a closed bud and self-pollinates without the intervention of insects. Insect pollination in early spring can be a chancy, hit-or-miss affair but, come what may, the cleistogamous flowers aways produce seeds in early autumn. This is a seed capsule of one such that I found in the garden, splitting open in three segments to release its seeds. Each seed has a small, white, oily attachment, an elaiosome, that ants find irresistible. They carry the seeds away so, if you grow violets in a garden, seedlings are likely to appear in unexpected places.

I’ve sown some freshly collected sweet violet seeds now, because they’ll need vernalisation, subjection to the freezing temperatures of winter, to break their dormancy.

Staphylinid beetle

2025-10-05T15:37:00.000+00:00

This tiny rove (staphylinid) beetle, about 5mm. long, found its way into the house, probably on washing dried on the washing line. But it might have flown in through an open window - the wings are tightly packaged under the wing cases, that look like a miniature back-pack, in the centre of the insect. These small staphylinids are weak fliers, generating enough lift to get airborne, but after that they’re at the mercy of wherever the wind and air currents take them.

Wood blewits

2025-10-02T09:50:00.000+00:00

I remember adding a few wood blewits Lepista nuda to a compost heap at this spot in the garden many years ago. Their network of hyphae seems to have persisted in the soil, because this is autumn they’ve reappeared in exactly the same place, looking particularly lovely because they were sheltered from rain by some tall weeds. That purple/amethyst pigmentation seems to be washed away by heavy rainfall and as they age the cap colour fades, though it’s usually retained by the stalk and gills underneath.

Mrs. Peasgood's Nonsuch

2025-09-30T14:55:00.000+00:00

This year the branches of the Peasgood’s Nonsuch apple are in danger of snapping under the weight of fruit. The variety was originally raised from a pip sown by the father of Emma Peasgood (nee Mamby), of Grantham in Lincolnshire in 1858. She and her husband John Peasgood settled in Stamford and planted it in their garden, and its apples won a prize in the local agricultural show in 1872. From there its fruit was sent to the Royal Horticultural Society in London, where it was awarded first prize, a First Class Certificate and named Peasgood’s Nonsuch.

It’s a dual-purpose apple, flavoursome and juicy for eating. It cooks down to a frothy puree in a matter of minutes. Perfect for baked apples and particularly good it you like apple puree with your porridge on autumn mornings. Individual apples can be very large but bruise easily and don’t keep well, so it doesn’t travel well and has never been commercially successful, but its a great apple to grow, producing a heavy crop every year.

There are far more apples than we can eat of give away, so butterflies and birds are going to be major beneficiaries of all the windfalls.

A poppy with political affiliations

2025-09-28T20:19:00.000+00:00

Welsh poppy Meconopsis cambrica is simultaneously a native and an alien wild flower in Britain. As a component of the Arctic-alpine flora, which probably colonised soon after the glaciers retreated, the wild plant was mostly confined to rocky, wooded slopes in Wales, where it seemed reluctant to spread beyond its native habitat. But over the past five decades it has advanced rapidly through much of lowland England, Scotland and Wales, with gardeners acting as intermediaries. It pops up all over my garden, filling in any vacant spaces.

This is an effortless plant to cultivate for anyone aspiring to the cottage garden style of planting, and excellent for wildlife gardens because hoverflies and bumblebees find it irresistible. It’s a perennial, prolific self-sower with tiny seeds that readily establish in paving crevices and even on walls. In recent years it has become a familiar sight in woodlands near most villages in Weardale, integrating into the local flora.

A couple of miles up the valley from here, in Wolsingham, it seems to be in every garden, no doubt finding its way into local woodlands in mud carried on walkers’ footwear and on the feet, fur and feathers of mammals and birds.

The spread of Meconopsis cambrica illustrates how difficult it is to predict whether a plant will become invasive; here is a species that’s slow to spread in ancestral natural locations but which, with no apparent changes in its botanical constitution, has readily established in a variety of habitats throughout Britain.

In 2006 Plaid Cymru chose a stylised version of Welsh poppy as its new logo. A serendipitous botanical choice, perhaps, for a political party with an eye to making its influence felt throughout the union?

A harvest festival of ripe fruit and colourful butterflies

2025-09-26T15:14:00.004+00:00

Apples, pears and plums are ripening faster than we can eat them, so the bird table has been taken over by butterflies feeding on the fermenting juice of over-ripe fruit.

There were are least twenty red admirals and half a dozen comma butterflies getting legless on alcoholic fruit juice in this afternoon’s warm sunshine in the garden. When they are in such a lethargic, inebriated state butterflies are very easy to approach and if they do fly they settle again almost immediately.

Drinkers on the bird table ‘Last Chance’ saloon.

Comma butterflies on pears, a red admiral on a rotting apple, plus a bonus seven-spot ladybird that probably came to feed on the mould growing on the fruit.

Comma butterflies seem to have a particular liking for pear juice

A red admiral with its proboscis sunk deep in the hole left by a plum stalk, drinking sun-warmed plum juice

As sometimes happens, a fight broke out between drunkards when this red admiral and comma butterfly were competing for the same feeding cavity in a pear. Wing blows were exchanged and the comma prevailed. It seems even some butterflies can become aggressive if they over-indulge with alcohol, although most seem to just become semi-comatose, to the point where they’ll crawl onto your finger rather than fly away if you poke them.

Titanic struggle: Garden spider versus bumblebee

2025-09-23T16:13:00.000+00:00

We witnessed a titanic battle between an unfortunate bumblebee and a female garden spider Araneus diadematus that had spun her web on the flight path to Michaelmas daisies in the abbey garden, Hexham, Northumberland last week. For a while it looked like the frantically buzzing bee might escape, but then the spider’s poisonous fangs found a weak spot and the struggle subsided.

Then the spider suspended its prize on a thicker thread and spun it round and round with its feet, wrapping it a silken shroud paid out from the spinnerets on the tip of her abdomen.

Oxford ragwort - rail traveller extraordinaire

2025-09-22T19:47:00.000+00:00

Oxford ragwort Senecio squalidus, growing on the wall of Hexham Moot Hall.

A native to the volcanic cinder slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, introduced into Oxford University Botanic Garden in the 17th. century where its plumed, airborne seeds soon carried it over the garden wall. It didn’t get far until the railways arrived, when the ballast between the tracks proved to be a good substitute for Etna’s volcanic slopes.

Its buoyant seeds, wafted along in the slipstream of passing trains, carried it along the route of the great Western Railway, then beyond along the tracks of other railway companies. Sometimes it even travelled inside trains: Geoffrey Grigson, in his An Englishman’s Flora, recounts the story of botanist George Claridge Druce watching a seed drift in through his train window in Oxford station, travel with him suspended in air then drift out again when the train reached Tilehurst in Berkshire. It’s now a common sight in towns throughout Britain, brightening up our walls and pavements.

Oxford ragwort’s population was boosted by the German Luftwaffe blitz on Britain’s cities during World War 2 when, along with rosebay willowherb, it colonised rubble-strewn bomb sites.