Dene Park Beech Trees

Following up on the Beech story from yesterday, there are several compartments of Beech planted up at Dene Park that must be about 40 - 50 years old, so I was able to compare these with the mixed age woodland at Bitchett Common.

Looking at the ID features first, the trees in both locations are pretty much the same. One of the things to note about the Beech leaves in both locations are the silky hairs along the veins and particularly in the vein axils on the underside of the leaves:

On the other hand, there was one difference, the trees along the track at Dene Park do have much better beech mast than the trees at Bitchett Common, and this is ripening up fast:

The invertebrate population looked quite similar, with the lepidopteran Phyllonorycter maestingella leaf mines and the gall midge Hartigiola annulipes galls easy to find, as yesterday.

The other species that was very common was the upper leaf rolling gall mite (Eriophyid mite) Aceria stenaspis, which is not easy to notice unless you know what you are looking for and are specifically searching from it. However once you get your eye in, its quite easy to see. The edge is rolled and may be crimped or thickened, and is usually a different green or yellow colour in comparison to the rest of the leaf surface. I didn't see any yesterday but I wasn't looking for it so it may well have been as widespread at Bitchett as it was today at Dene Park.

In addition I was able to find patches of an erineum (felting) on the underside of some leaves caused by another Eriophyid mite, said to be Aceria fagineum. This may very well have been on the underside of the leaves at Bitchett Common, but I didn't really look at the undersides yesterday. Distribution today was quite patchy, but there was definitely a concentration on one tree in compartment one.

Of course it is also important to be aware of galls that are not found, and there are still several fly serpentine mines and the gall midge Mikiola fagi to be discovered. This last is quite beautiful, but I have never seen it.

Trees

Ranscombe Farm

What a fantastic place this reserve is - where Meadow Clary has survived ever since it was first named here 250 years ago. Took a slow walk around the really colourful field by the railway line and managed to get some reasonable photos.

Warwick services

Its amazing what a bit of tree and shrub planting can do. At Warwick services London-bound there is a nice mixed area of closely planted trees, shrubs and grass at the far end of the car-park, which is primarily used by dog-walkers (including myself). As long as you ignore the rubbish strewn absolutely everywhere and the roar from the motorway carriageway a few dozen yards away, its very pleasant on a nice warm summers day - although I remember it as very wet underfoot over winter.

Today while walking Monty on the lead (he knew there were rabbits there and I didn't want him running off) I found many ringlets fluttering near the shrubby trees and the associated long grass margins (no meadow browns that I could see for sure), several gatekeepers near each other on the sloe bushes in a sheltered clearing and a lovely marbled white butterfly wandering the area as a whole, with its aposematic colouring backed by the repellent chemicals supposedly found in the fungi growing on the grassy food-plants originally consumed by the larvae!

There were also the normal soldier beetles, marmalade hover-flies and many small moths - what a shame I didn't have my camera!