Pete Flood

New favourite sedge!

Got a rare gig this weekend!

Hot news is we've got percussion legend Pete Flood joining us for our London Launch
1st March @WorldHeartBeat, Embassy Gardens
Hope you can come. TICKETS...
worldheartbeat.org/.../lisa-kna...

Fruitbodies of Proliferodiscus pulveraceus at x45 magnification, looking like furry, irregular jam tarts with yellow centres and grey edges

Fruitbodies of Proliferodiscus pulveraceus unmagnified - looking like grey-blue speckles on a branch

The ascomycete Stictis radiata at x45 magnification- looking like irregular star-shaped holes with orange centres, erupting through the stem of a herbaceous plant.

Stictis radiata unmagnified, looking like a loose scatter of holes with lighter rims on a dark stem of Great Willowherb

Proliferodiscus pulveraceus and Stictis radiata. And what they look like from afar. I love the way that a few spots on a twig can become a wildly colourful world when you look at it under a hand lens. Essentially (and stupid as it sounds) it’s my prescription for the blues, every time.

page of novel describing collapse as hard to grasp and making each of us into a different kind of time traveler

sadly, my 2021 novel hummingbird salamander is not getting less relevant

I found some in central Hants too - took me a while as it looked completely different to the neat, showy tufts I’ve found before in the summer

A terrace of Whorl-grass comes close though!

Nothing beats a glossy emerald drift of Stream Water-crowfoot- back in this stretch of the River Arle in quantity after decades of scarcity

A curl of Water Figwort in bloom - a late addition to the #NewYearPlantHunt list

Dry Cratoneuron filicinum

Branch leaves x100 with stout nerves and decurrent auricles

Dry moss x20 showing rhizoids and tufa-encrustation

Section of stem with paraphyllia - tiny leaf-like structures that are hard to find and photograph

Straggly tufa-encrusted Cratoneuron filicinum from the banks of the Itchen at Winchester while waiting for a mot. Common name is Fern-leaved Hook-moss but this form was more Hookless Drab-mo. Stout nerve (pic 2), big auricles on branch leaves (2), rhizoids (3) and paraphyllia (4) give the game away

A just-open flower of Water-avens

A single plant of Hybrid Water-speedwell towering over watercress

Shiny green leaves and yellow-green flower clusters of Spurge-laurel

A mat of Opposite-leaved Golden-saxifrage on the brink of flowering

Walked the perimeter of Alresford today and found 44 species for the #NewYearPlantHunt
Most surprising: Water Avens
Tallest: Hybrid Water-speedwell
Most reliable: Spurge-laurel (always out at this time of year)
Most annoying: Opposite-leaved Golden-saxifrage (just about to pop but no open fls yet)

Thanks! @jimhorsfall.bsky.social suggested Fusarium heterosporum - is that just the name of the teleomoroh so +/- the same thing? Also - great to read about the connection with gibberelin - I knew the name rang a bell!

E.g. on a dev I know - 1 pl JC w/ pops of Heath Speedwell, Common Rock-rose, Goldenrod, Wild Strawberry, Field Woundwort - all NT. Guess which plant gets the bespoke mitigation and its own translocation site. The others will be lucky to get a spade and a wheelbarrow and a corner by the dog poo bins

Thousands of plants of Jersey Cudweed lining a road verge near Southampton Water. I guess it’s the botanical equivalent of a £100,000,000 bat tunnel: joke ecology, wasting everyone’s time and driving disaffection with conservation across the board. Hoping NE delist it asap

Brilliant - looks very much like it - many thanks!

Out looking at Spartina meadows on the edge of Southampton Water yday. Loving all the ergotic Common Cord-grass - but the bright orange rust on the ergot sclerotia is new to me - anyone got a name for this peculiar thing?

Would that be Potamogeton gramineus by any chance?

Great track - has that crucial dash of melancholia that the rest (brilliant though they are) lack. Not sure if my dying field is drumming, folk music or botany, or whether I qualify as an expert in any of them, but appreciate the song as a sort of immaculate, shiny 3’30” cosplay window

The liverwort Microlejeunea ulicina and unknown myxomycete at x40 magnification.

Unknown myxomycete in water at x40 magnification, showing multiple lower stems coalescing into one

Dingy green 1mm ‘tongues’ growing with the liverwort Microlejeunea ulicina on Willow bark in wet woodland. Grazed/old slime mould sporocarps, right? Right??? If so, which species/genera have multiple stems that coalesce halfway up? In the books I have most species have a discoid hypothallus instead

Breathing opportunity

Penultimate day. SPORTS CLUB with @rachaelmcshane.bsky.social and @floodenheim.bsky.social 🥰

At the end of busy week I’m reflecting on the highly partial coverage devoted by the media to different issues. Massive coverage this week on a farm demo, but a far larger demonstration on Nature in June got hardly anything. Both about land. Why might that be? amp.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

FolkScape Live

LIVE STREAM TONIGHT!

See Bellowhead live streaming at our Gateshead gig from 8.45pm📺🎉

Watch LIVE from your living room AND/OR on demand for up to 12 months. Tickets & Info - folkscape.live

Yes but WHAT IS THAT FLYING SPIKY FRUIT?!?!

Have wonderful memories of you all when Bellowhead first started out. That night at Whitchurch Folk Club North Shropshire when Pete Flood was setting his windup mechanical toys loose on the small stage & you said all us clapping along should dance & thus a big conga round the small hall happened. :)

How privatisation works (and Thames Water is just the latest example).
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵

Rude! Going to tell Dionne (gf) that you compared her to a bus - then you’ll be sorry! 😂

Huuuge fan of Borges, but he never made me cry like Gloria’s letter to Saul did. I get the feeling that JLB believed in the pre-eminence of humanity over the rest of creation, while you’re not so naive. Finished Acceptance (again) yesterday - ready for Absolution…

Aw - just very happy B. capillare

Sheffield station, waiting for Dionne. Initially far more drawn to the vacant lot than the water feature but - Bryum pseudotriquetrum/ old hand lens in pocket - hours of fun