Dr Miriam Darlington's #30DaysWild 'Nettle' Prompt

Nettle, taken on 1 June 2020 at 20:00 hrs

Home Patch Nettles

A slight breeze from the east ruffled the broad brim of my hat as I turned to inspect our 'sting' of nettles this morning. I had started the season with high hopes that this straggly clump in a shady corner would attract more biodiversity into my home patch. If gardeners notice a wilting Petunia in a pot, they check for greenfly and attempt to revive the specimen with water and plant food. Nettles in private gardens are not usually afforded horticultural intervention of this kind. And yet the nettles in my patch are failing to thrive. Perhaps a good splash from the watering can will help.

I live in a dry part of the country and lack of moisture may indeed be part of the problem, but there could be more to this situation than meets the eye. When I look for information, the sites I find focus on how to eradicate these potentially useful weeds rather than on how to preserve them. I have checked the serrated leaves frequently in the hope that I might find butterfly larvae or eggs, but there have been no signs of either to date. I have yet to see a weevil. I have searched for ladybirds, and particularly for the native 7-Spot: this species appears to be absent from this part of the garden, although I have encountered a couple in the adjacent triangle of long grass during the last couple of days.

Edward Thomas, a favourite poet of mine, wrote a short poem called 'Tall Nettles' in which he showed how a particular patch in a farmyard had engulfed old bits of machinery. My nettles are poor specimens in comparison. What had I hoped for? Well, many years ago I was served a gourmet nettle soup, but growing nettles for the cooking pot was not part of my current plan. My aim was to attract Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock butterflies, as both species are noticeable by their absence or infrequency on my Butterfly Conservation Garden Butterfly Survey for 2020. The situation may yet improve, perhaps when the nettles are joined by Buddleia blooms. Back in 2016 Northumberland-based CONE ran a ‘Be nice to nettles week’. Perhaps it is time to revive this enterprise and raise awareness of these versatile plants, plants that risk extermination in our manicured gardens.  

1 June 2020

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This post was written in response to Dr Miriam Darlington's 'Nettle' prompt on Facebook for Day 1 of #30DaysWild.

Insects on our Flowers

There have been a few sunny spells here this week, though as I type it looks as if a thunder storm is not very far away. It has been lovely to see insects nectaring on the flower heads. The photo above and the two immediately below show (as you might guess) a Thick-legged Flower Beetle (Oedemera nobilis).

I can tell it is a male by the bulge in its femora.

This species seems to favour the southern half of the UK: I see I recorded these insects at WWT Llanelli back in 2011 when we lived in Swansea. I must add my latest sighting to my home-patch list.  

Bees have been enjoying the yellow Mouse-ear Hawkweed flowers...

...and the less wild Osteospermum (below).

I thought I would share a photo of a corner of our wild patch. It is a shady area, covered by Buddleia and Acer Negundo, the Box Maple. I can see strands of Hawthorn, nettles and a mass of Herb Robert. I suspect the insects (and snails) are there, but I have hardly seen any in this corner of the garden yet.



The photo below shows our insect houses a few weeks ago at the start of May. The only activity I have noticed so far is the scuttling of an occasional ant.

The photo below was taken yesterday: the pansies may not be wild (the mini-pond marks the entrance to the wild patch), but they are looking lovely and will hopefully prove attractive to flying insects of one sort or another.

I am so enjoying the Large Red Damselflies: I wonder whether the water feature is attracting them or whether it is the bramble bush!

I wonder if, like us, you enjoyed Chris Packham's Tree Slug moon graph on BBC Springwatch. This blog attempts to highlight the fact that nature is full of the wild and wonderful; and when we went outside a few minutes ago to look for bats, which failed to appear, we saw a couple of large Cockchafers (or perhaps Stag Beetles) floating around the sky, looking like airborne aliens.

Seasonal First - Comma

I love this season of 'firsts'. A Comma landed in the garden today in the spring sunshine. May there be many more!

The larvae of this species feed off nettles in areas where hops are not plentiful. Our own wild nettle patch is growing fast and I have been surprised by the number of toadstools it seems to attract!