tawny colour, like a coagulated juice, and to the touch like a jelly." Alchemists
endowed it with remarkable properties, and some even thought that shooting stars
landing as Nostoc could bring pestilence to earth from space (see Belcher & Swale
1984). In fact N. commune appears to be perfectly harmless to humans, and a variety
of it is eaten in the Far East.
In lowland England it will grow on short turf such as garden lawns, but it seems
particularly happy, and may be abundant, at the edges of quiet tarmac roads and
tracks, especially where there are rabbits, but the colonies are only conspicuous in wet
weather.
A review of N. commune and six other species of Nostoc in Europe has been
published by Mollenhauer et al. (1999), and Belcher & Swale gave a short account of
the occurrence of N. commune in Cambridgeshire (1988).
References
Belcher, J. H., and Swale, E.M.F. 1984. Catch a falling star. Folklore, 95: 210-220.
Belcher, Hilary, and Swale, Erica. 1988. A mass occurrence in Cambridge of Nostoc
commune Vaucher, a conspicuous terrestrial blue-green alga. Nature in
Cambridgeshire, 30: 29-31.
Mollenliauer, D., Bengtsson, R., and Lindstrom, E. 1999). Macroscopic cyanobacteria
of the genus Nostoc: a neglected and endangered constituent of European inland
aquatic biodiversity. Eur. J. Phycol. 34: 349-360.
Bumblebees
Ken Hill 93 Elmshurst Drive, Hornchurch, Essex RM11 1NZ
On the evening of 18 March my wife drew off a bucket of water from the water butt,
brought it indoors, and called out that there was a bumble bee floating in the water. I
went to investigate and found a very large bee swimming hard on the surface. It was
rescued, dried off somewhat on toilet paper, and put under an inverted jam jar until
morning.
Further investigation then showed a very large bec buzzing vigorously. I initially took it
to be a queen Bombus terrestris, but closer examination puzzled me. Looking through
the descriptions in the key provided in the Naturalists' Handbook scries, it could only
have been a cuckoo bee. The size, colour, tail shape and stripes, short, sparse hairs, and
black shiny scutellum, all convinced me that is was Psithyrus vestalis. The identification
was checked with a friend of mine who has studied bumblebees for a number of years,
and confirmation obtained.
References
Majerus, M. & Kearns, P. 1989. Ladybirds. Naturalists Handbooks No. 10. Slough.
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 33, September 2000