Insects on Box in Winter

Not from this year, but I commonly find 7-spot Ladybirds wintering on this Box.

On the way back from one of my New Year Plant Hunt walks I stopped briefly to look at a small box bush. This would have been planted many years ago, but is not regularly clipped, and I have found a variety of insects sheltering on it in the past. My idea was to see if I could find any ladybirds.

Box leaf with galls of Monarthropalpus flavus (the Box leaf-miner)

This time there were none to be found, but there were many examples of the galls of the box leaf miner, . This is one of the few phytophagous insects which mines leaves, and simultaneously galls them, by creating small blisters which are apparent on both surfaces of the leaf. The images show that the galls are more obvious on the underside of the leaf.

Underside of the same leaf.

This is the only location I have found this leaf-miner despite searching in various parts of the country. I suspect that the reason lies in whether the Box is clipped or not. The females oviposit in young leaves in the spring (shown in the video below) and thus the new growth needs to remain intact through the following winter. In recent years this insect has been identified as a major pest of Box and there are many good accounts of it's biology on the web.

I have tried to rear these through from larvae but failed because the leaves dried out. This year I was puzzled because many of the gall/mines had exit holes: perhaps early emerging parasitoids.

On opening the mine one finds a yellow-orange grub which usually wriggles vigorously.

Opened mine with gall midge larva

These insects are gall midges (Cecidomyiidae) a large family of Nematocerid flies. Many of the family are gall causers, but others feed on fungi (e.g.,Mycodiplosis spp. which feed on rusts), and others are carnivorous.

Gall midge larvae typically have three or four instars and most have a distinctive feature in the last instar called the sternal spatula. The Box leaf-miner is large enough for this to fairly easy to see with a hand lens.

Sternal spatula on late instar Box leaf-miner.
Taken using a USB microscope.

Another gall is found on Box much more frequently (and can be seen in plants in Garden Centres). This is the so-called Cauliflower gall caused by a psyllid,  Psylla buxi. Leaves remain tightly curled or are just distorted, usually at the ends of shoots.

Deformed leaves galled by Psylla buxi

I have never seen the actual gall causer, or another Box psyllid, Spanioneura fonscololmbi .

My last insect over-wintering on Box is a caterpillar, presumably of a polyphagous moth species, which I think might be a Tortrix.

Micromoth feeding between two Box leaves spun together.

Even a small bush can hold a wealth of insect life in winter if one knows where to look. 

 

Revised 2023-07-31: correction of typos, update names, correct links.

New Year Plant Hunt 2015

I've now participated in the New Year Plant Hunt for three years running. Last year I wrote it up on the Maps Matter blog disguised as a piece on the locations of lamp posts, but I thought it was time to find a space for my pure natural history posts. So this is the first (proper) post of a new blog.

I have moved some old articles here, concerned with plants and insects I've found at Attenborough Nature Reserve and on the Jubilee Campus of Nottingham University. I'll probably also try and write some retrospective posts covering Bioblitzes, and guided walks I've led.

Harebell, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham

Links on English Names are to photos on Flickr, those on Scientific Names are to wikipedia, which might help readers to find information in their own language. Most photos were taken on 5th January in better light.

The map below shows my records for this year (in blue) and for previous years (2014 primrose, 2013 plum), and the route I took this year.



See full screen

There's no need for a detailed account of my plant hunt. However, this year I extended the route in 3 places:

• Roadside verges which had been productive in previous years have been re-turfed, so I walked a much longer section of dual carriageway to try and find flowers. This also allowed me a minor diversion to pick up a flowering Cow Parsley Anthriscus sylvestris, which I'd noticed on Christmas Day.
• Queen's Medical Centre. I added this section because I discovered a Gorse (Ulex europeaus) bush just a couple of days after the end of the 2014 hunt. This also allowed me to walk through a car park which had a reasonable chance of some good ruderal plants.
• Added an extra section along the Leen in Radford. This was really done because I found Blue Fleabane (Erigeron acer)  in flower here in January 2013, and I thought it would be a nice find for the Plant Hunt.

To my surprise these additions made the total route, the better part of 6 miles, 10 kilometres, plus I walked an additional 2.5 kilometres where I was not recording. I actually split it over two days because my chest was suffering after an hour-and-a-half. On New Year's Day the light was poor and it was damp, the following day was better.

Red Valerian, St Mary's Churchyard
Prolifically self-seeds on gravel next to the church.
The churchyard was not heavily managed for a number of years
and now has a rich flora and many interesting fungi, including several Waxcaps.

It was already obvious before Christmas that this year's total would be down on last years. There was nothing in the garden, some great verges had gone, and lots of places had been mowed in November. Then we had 3-4 inches of snow on Boxing Day which was still lying on the ground on New Year's Day morning. In fact I delayed setting off so that I would not have to be searching through patches of snow.

A hoped-for ever present, Daisy Bellis perennis.
St. Mary's Churchyard Wollaton Park

I don't think any of finds were surprises (at least to me). Not least because this is my local patch and I was noticing unseasonal flowering for years before the New Year Plant Hunt persuaded to start recording things properly.

I had several new species from last year, ,at least in part because I changed the route to find them: Cow Parsley, Gorse, and Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium). Also new were two Sisymbrium species: Hedge Mustard (Sisymbrium officinale), and one which I'm not absolutely certain about, but think is most likely to be Sysymbrium loeslii, False London Rocket. The latter has a curious distribution in Nottingham, probably as a result of being introduced by Boots for a cosmetic of pharmaceutical product.

My most productive area is a combined verge and moat alongside buildings in the Jubilee Campus. The verge does get mown but not too frequently and sustains a fascinating mix of plants throughout the year, including Bee Orchids (Ophrys apifera), and some unusual plants (Sticky Catchfly Silene viscara, an unidentified Thyme, Tunic Flower Petroraghia saxatalis) which I think are escapes from the green roofs above. Here I found plenty of Harebell Campanula rotundifolia, a Leucanthemum (probably superbum, Shasta Daisy, as there is a small patch of them at this location), Yarrow Achillea millefolium, Wild Marjoram Origanum vulgare, and a solitary Red Clover Trifolium pratense. Absent from this location this year was Smooth Hawk's-beard, Crepis capillaris. New was Soft Rush, Juncus effusus.

Marsh Marigold, Jubilee Campus

An ever present in the moats are many flowering Marsh-marigold Caltha palustris. My theory is that as the moats get cut-back in late summer, early autumn, this encourages a second bout of flowering. I haven't checked, but I think the same plants flower again in the spring. The water in the moats may be quite a bit warmer as they form part of the heat pump system used by the buildings.

Syrphid, possibly Episyrphus balteatus, on Marsh Marigold

Of course there's always one plant which one only notices afterwards. This year it was Hairy Bittercress Cardamine hirsuta. Noted today, 5th January.

The one that got away.

My final list was 32 species:

• 17 on Jan 1st, Cerastium fontanum, Ulex europaeus, Arrhenatherum elatius, Senecio squalidus, Veronica persica (*), Capsella bursa-pastoris (*), Senecio vulgaris, Hordeum murinum, Bellis perennis (*), Sisymbrium loeslii (More checking needed), Taraxacum officinale agg. (*), Centranthus ruber, Poa annua (*), Euphorbia peplus (*), Stellaria media (*), Arabidopsis thaliana, and Anthriscus sylvestris;

• on Jan 2nd, another 15, Caltha palustris, Achillea millefolium, Sonchus asper, Heracleum sphondylium, Sisymbrium officinale, Campanula rotundifolia, Urtica dioica, Corylus avellana, Senecio jacobaea, Leucanthemum superbum, Juncus effusus, Trifolium pratense, Origanum vulgare, Lamium album, and Alnus incana. (An asterisk indicates seen on both days, those in bold not seen last year).

This was only a few short of the total 2 days later in Leicester. Two big differences can be noted: I covered a lot more ground in a broader range of habitats, and I had perhaps 10 more unusual plants which I expected to find on the 'patch'. In warmer years the ruderal habitats where the Leicester survey concentrated are probably much richer in diversity, but they equally may be more vulnerable to loss of flowers in cold weather.

Mowing & 'Tidyness': enemies of Wild Flowers

Our experience in Leicester showed how much the weather affects the number of flowers to be found, but for me there was another factor: later mowing of grass in the autumn and much more 'tidying up'. Both the local council & the University of Nottingham seem to be much more active. Here are a few examples of places where I might have found flowers a couple of years ago, but which have been brutalised since.

New turf replaced a verge rich in wild flowers (see below).
Unnecessary 'beautification' as part of road widening. The verge will probably develop the same flora fairly quickly.
This year all I found was Poa annua.

The same verge, New Year's Day 2014. Source of at least 5 flowering plants.

Residential service road, Derby Road, Nottingham
The lower part of these banks are not mown, rather they are scraped.
In the past I've found Buttercups, Dead-nettles, Chenopods, Knot-grass, Cow Parsley and others along here
In the Spring the Cow Parsley is as prolific as along a country lane, but soon gets cut back. It interferes with no-one.

A Note about the Map

Anyone who reads my Maps Matter blog knows that I'm at least as obsessed by maps as I am by plants, plant galls, and insects. The map showing my routes and finds for the last 3 years was built on a very useful website called Umap which was created by the OpenStreetMap France community. I simply imported some GPS traces and KML (Google Earth) files of my finds (I record on my mobile phone using ObsMapp and upload data to Observado, which works fine for short trips). Rob Nickerson has written a useful note about how to use Umap, I anticipate they might be useful for botanists too.