These are good times for those of us who enjoy the urban/suburban 'edgelands'. Increasingly areas that used to be mown to within an inch of their lives - in parks, on commons, beside roads and railways, in gardens even - are being left to get on with it. The result - if there are a couple of rightly timed mows in the course of the year - is that decent approximations to flower meadows are growing up everywhere. And, as the battle to control it is gradually lost, that ubiquitous Chinese invader, Buddleia Davidii, is more rampant than ever - and gloriously in flower now. This is always good news for butterflies and those of us who love them - though, oddly, I've yet to see a butterfly taking a serious interest in a Buddleia bush so far this year. Lately I've been watching, from my train, a promising area of flowery railside edgeland - brambles and wild peas galore, hogweed, toadflax, thistles, hawkweed, willowherb - between Croydon and Selhurst. I've seen disappointingly little in the way of butterflies there this year - but today my patience was rewarded when I spotted, flying merrily among the grassheads, a Marbled White! Not my first this year (that was a rather wonderful sighting on a Father's Day walk with my son), but my first ever on that railside plot. Just the thing to cheer the heart of a weary commuter...
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Marbled White
These are good times for those of us who enjoy the urban/suburban 'edgelands'. Increasingly areas that used to be mown to within an inch of their lives - in parks, on commons, beside roads and railways, in gardens even - are being left to get on with it. The result - if there are a couple of rightly timed mows in the course of the year - is that decent approximations to flower meadows are growing up everywhere. And, as the battle to control it is gradually lost, that ubiquitous Chinese invader, Buddleia Davidii, is more rampant than ever - and gloriously in flower now. This is always good news for butterflies and those of us who love them - though, oddly, I've yet to see a butterfly taking a serious interest in a Buddleia bush so far this year. Lately I've been watching, from my train, a promising area of flowery railside edgeland - brambles and wild peas galore, hogweed, toadflax, thistles, hawkweed, willowherb - between Croydon and Selhurst. I've seen disappointingly little in the way of butterflies there this year - but today my patience was rewarded when I spotted, flying merrily among the grassheads, a Marbled White! Not my first this year (that was a rather wonderful sighting on a Father's Day walk with my son), but my first ever on that railside plot. Just the thing to cheer the heart of a weary commuter...
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Good news (and a sight for tired eyes)! This means they'll be out and about here any day now. At the moment, if you go for a stroll here, there are ringlets, ringlets everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of rabbits in that area too as I recall...
ReplyDeleteYou're right Kate, tho the rabbits are late risers, not around in the morning.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes Mark, this seems to be a great year for Ringlets - excellent!
lovely butterfly nige -
ReplyDeletetalking as you do of 'edgelands' I was wondering if you've read that book of the same name? We're publishing excerpts from it on the dabbler in the next few weeks...
My local park, a drearily dull green desert for many years, has enjoyed a new mowing régime for the last two seasons and local schoolchildren were drafted in to plant wild flower plugs last year. The results this summer have been stupendous - dreamy drifts of blues, yellows, violets and whites around the pond and the perimeters of the fields, along with ravishing grass seed heads and butterflies. Grass paths have been mown through the flowers and, curiously, everyone sticks to these new byways, dogs and louts included. I even detect a lessening of litter drop. Hitherto the preserve of gangs of idling hoodies and raucous teenage girls, the park now attracts small groups of elderly Asian ladies gently ambling along in their saris and trainers. Yesterday evening, I passed a trio of young Afro-Caribbean men, sitting on the bench in silence, looking out across the flowery mead. As I passed, one acknowledged me with a friendly “All right?” Hardly science, I know, but evidence enough for me – the rightly timed mow is the new Prozac.
ReplyDeleteMary - thank you so much - see today's post, A Green Thought!
ReplyDeleteWorm - Oddly I haven't read Edgelands - something is putting me off, but I don't know quite what it is...