Had a very busy insect-free weekend but just before this latest spat of crap weather I did manage a quick loop about Ally Pally after work as a rare sunny evening went by.
Not an awful lot to report except a couple of botanical lifers in the form of Sheep’s Sorrel and a very pretty grass, Crested Dog’s-tail. And a bug I had thought I’d recorded before – Stenotus binotatus. All achingly common but just another example of how much there is to learn.
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| Crested Dog's-tail (Cynosurus cristatus) |
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| Yeah, it's an awful, blurry photo but it shows the structure quite well. |
In one oak I found the predatory mirid bug, Phylus melanocephalus; and a hopper that turned out to be a Ribautiana sp. and therefore pretty much unidentifiable for the likes of me. An alder tree had the dark capsid bug, Capsus ater and quite a lot of a type of bristletail which coils its antennae into a loop. I believe this makes it Pogonognathellus longicornis, the one species of bristletail I’ve previously recorded. In the long grasses in the south-eastern corner of the park came many of the usual characters - lots of the Thick-thighed Flower Beetle, Oedemera nobilis; the mirid bug Leptopterna dolobrata; and Roesel’s Bush-cricket nymphs. Also possibly the most richly marked Tortoise Shieldbug I’ve ever seen:
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| Tortoise Shieldbug (Eurygaster testudinaria) |
Sorry, Rob, the grass isn't Crested Dogstail, it's a Rye grass. CDT has more 'interwoven' seeds. The Ryegrass has a very undulating stem between the seeds.
ReplyDeleteCTD here: http://homepage.eircom.net/~hedgerow9/june06.htm
Thanks Stuart. There's quite a bit of this growing near my flat so I'll pick another one soon and run it through the key again. I'm very new to grasses so every pointer helps.
DeleteI've been using the book on grasses, sedges and rushes by Francis Rose and came to CDT based on two things in particular:
- The key mentions that CDT's inflorescences are all facing over to one side which this grass had
- There were parts which I now understand to be sterile florets which appeared to be like "stiffly spread fingers". You can make these out in the first photo at the base of the spike (it's clearer if you open the photo separately and view it in its higher resolution)
Would you expect to see those features in one of the rye-grass species?
Yes, Rob, on further examination, I unreservedly withdraw my wrong identification. I didn't realise they were shots from different sides. The 'one-sidedness' didn't really come across from the two shots. Sample in hand trumps images any time. Sorry for any angst caused.
ReplyDelete