If you read in last year's edition of the Essex Naturalist about Giant Fennel not far
from Upminster, then you may find this story interesting. If you did not read it last
autumn, then please skip the rest of this paragraph. In April and May I looked hard for
'my' plant appearing, but nothing happened so it is presumed dead. Maybe it could
not cope with the very cold winter. However, Tony Boniface, of fungus fame, told me
that he had a plant of Giant Fennel in his front garden, grown from seed some years
back, bought at Beth Chatto's garden near Elmstead Market. I am told this garden is
wonderful, though I have never visited. In mid June Tony rang me to say his plant was
flourishing, and he had a 'seedling' next to the original plant that was as high as his
bedroom window and in full flower! This clearly shows that Tony's plant had set seed,
and one seed at least had germinated! Now why did mine not set seed? The climate is
not so different in Chelmsford from that in Upminster, so what was happening? Any
suggestions welcome!
Early in July we noticed a few small brown pupae on the floor of our home, in tiny
narrow corners where the vacuum cleaner could not reach. There were 3 we found, so
I destroyed two and put the last in a small tube with soft tissue tied over the top, so it
could breathe. We went away to Wales (beautiful, but very wet) and came back a week
later to find several shiny green flies moving lethargically about in the front room.
They were easy to catch and squash, presumably starving. In the back room were two
corpses on the floor, presumably already starved. I collected these, and then saw in the
kitchen that the pupa had hatched and another identical fly was dead inside (starved
again) with the empty pupa. So they were packed up and sent to Del Smith, who now
lives in Scotland but still identifies flies, and he said they were Lucilia sericata, a very
common kind of greenbottle. Thank you, Del. I hoped to find the cause of this outbreak,
as I do not leave raw meat lying around. But Del says they lay eggs not only in meat,
but anything rotting, including a nest in the loft or a dead mouse under the floor
boards. However, the minor infestation is now over.
Later on Peter Harvey and I visited the same field that we visited in early May. It was
windy again, so there were few insects to be caught and no special plants were found
either, so this was less exciting than the first visit. However, there was a lot of the
yellow Lady's Bedstraw Galium verum, scattered throughout the poor grassland, and
this indicates an unimproved grassland area, confirmed by the presence of Yellow
Oat-grass Trisetum flavescens. And Peter was pleased to find a number of scarce
invertebrates not previously seen, including the UKBAP Brown-banded Carder Bee
Bombus humilis and the scarce shieldbug Eurygaster maura. A previous visit by Peter
in June had also added various new species including Anelosimus aulicus, a spider
new to Essex, the UKBAP picture winged fly Dorycera graminum and the Silvery
Leafcutter Bee Megachile dorsalis (=leachella).
At the end of the month I was in Wennington marsh again, and came across 10 flowering
heads of the beautiful pink Flowering Rush Butomus umbellatus. This is becoming
veiy uncommon in Essex due to wet areas being drained, so I was pleased to see it. In
the rough grassland I was striding along and very surprised when just in front of me a
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Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 60, September 2009