Friday 20 May 2016

Snail's Place


This, I think, is a Girdled snail, Hygromia cinctella, or possibly a Trochoidea elegans, elegantly climbing a dandelion leaf:


Sitting on breakfast

  My friends over at El Cargol del Montseny (appropriately, 'The Montseny Snail') suggest that it might be Helix aspersa or Helix pomatia, but this one had a flattened profile, not the fat round of the Roman snail.

Anyone out there an expert on snails?

Monday 16 May 2016

Floral sex

There are lots of ways of reproducing in the animal kingdom, as the brilliant Olivia Judson has shown; her 'Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation' is the funniest biology book I've ever read. Here are a couple of much more mundane examples from plants and fungi, gathered yesterday at the Croft. 

In the flowers camp I have picked two that illustrate another point - food and sex; the first is a Broomrape (Orobanche alba), a parasitic plant that has no chlorophyll and survives instead on the juices of, in this case, the thyme plant. The Thyme Broomrape has a sort of sweet smell of cloves and cinnamon. The second is an orchid, Orchis militaris. Both flower, and thus depend on pollinators to reproduce. The orchid may, like many orchids, have a specific pollinator species - which would mean that both it and the Broomrape depend on another species for survival.


Thyme for more juice
Military Orchid, in pacifist pink

 For spores, here is a splendid fungus; I am rubbish at identifying them, which is why I rarely collect them to eat them, but a friend of a friend suggests it might be the edible Leccinum Lepidum, or possibly but less likely a Suillus granulatus


Faeries be here








Monday 9 May 2016

The Next Village Along

When a person dies people here in Catalonia say that she has 'gone to the other neigbourhood.' On Friday morning our lovely Hazel went to the other neighbourhood - I'd rather think of it as the next village - after a short illness.


A scent of a dog


She was a kind, empathetic dog - one of the crofters called her 'a sweet dog' - and had lived at the Croft for eight years after we brought her home from a rescue kennel nearby. She was highly adapted to live with humans, understanding our moods (flattening her ears while we had one of our debates), ready to walk anywhere, and loving of all of us. When one of the Crofters was away for a while he or she would be enthusiastically welcomed by Hazel on their return; this was especially true for our two children who grew up with Hazel around them. We are all missing her, our lovely Hazel.