Perhaps surprisingly, many fungi appear during the winter, especially the sort that form patches on tree branches and logs. Margaret Swan has been photographing some of them for me to try and identify. One I’m fairly confident of is Fomitiporia, the ‘elbowpatch crust’, whose oval form and smooth surface resembles those leather patches on men’s tweed jackets. Another, which rejoices in the name of Cylindrobasidium or ‘tear dropper’ (I’m not sure why), is pinkish with a white border and forms mini brackets emerging from the crust like little waves. We have yet to find the remarkable ‘hair ice’, a fungus which looks like a well-combed tuft of Santa’s beard caught on a branch. Appropriately, it grows best in frosty weather.
Play was suspended on 6th February to rescue a pair of oil beetles that had blundered onto the tennis court. This is an exceptionally early date for these magnificent flightless beetles. Frog spawn was spotted in at least one garden pond on 10th February after a croaking chorus during the night heralded their return. By then, at least two bumblebees were about on mild, sunny days, the buff-tailed bumblebee, and the smaller, appropriately named, early bumblebee, whose ‘tail’ is coloured bright orange. Both will have been queens, emerging from hibernation, and visiting gardens, verges and the churchyard in their search for energy-building nectar.
One of their favourite flowers is winter heliotrope, which has kidney-shaped leaves and pinkish clusters of strongly scented flowers, said to smell like liquorice or vanilla or cherry pie. In the interests of science, I took a good sniff at the few flowers I could find near the church and can categorically state that our winter heliotropes smell just like marzipan with a touch of honey. No wonder the bees love them. By the time you read this, its close relative, the butterbur, will be putting forth its pagoda-like flowers on wet, open ground near the river and its streams. Oddly, the flowers of both it and the winter heliotrope are all male. The bees will collect their nectar and pollen to make honey, but they won’t be pollinating the flower. Instead, the plants get around by underground runners.
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