Winter

Why do they call you Long John Silver?

It’s because of my pirate ancestry, innit?

So, it’s not the underpants then?

Everybody wears long johns in the winter, it’s cold!

That’s not what you told Andrew.

I may have embellished things a little bit.

Ah well, it will soon be spring.

I can’t do much today, I can’t get lovely photographs it is too dark. So let’s look at some insects instead. Dragons and Damsels Okay?

This is the female of one species, Common Blue Damselfly, lovely?

This is the male. He is a bit shy.

I am sure that if you just go over and say hello then she will be pleased to say hello back.

 I forgot, the odonata are a bit carnivorous.

I think she liked you.

Burp!

It is great that they are carnivorous 😀 The things they eat need eating.

Come into my world little Dragonflies.

This one is a Southern Hawker.

This next one is a Migrant Hawker.

This is a Hairy Dragonfly, sometimes known as a Spring Hawker it is the earliest of the big blue dragonflies to appear but it is not that early, it arrives in May.

The Hawkers above all belong to the same family (Aeshnidae) They are the largest and fastest of our Dragonflies. They hunt by patrolling the skies and swooping down on their prey like Hawks.

We also get a lot of Darters, Skimmers and Chasers, these belong to the family Libellulidae, the largest family of Dragonflies. These Dragonflies tend to be ambush predators rather than Hawks.

Common Darter.

Black-tailed Skimmer.

Broad-bodied Chaser

Well that’s enough Dragonflies. I know that you would rather have news from the farm and pictures of Fizz but it is just horrible outside. (I would stay in HK if I were you 🙂 )

I was talking to a friend in Vancouver recently about lime green flowers and I got inspired to add Wood Spurge to EW. Thank you David.

Euphorbia amygdaloides, The Wood Spurge

Euphorbia is a genus of plants commonly known as Spurge. There are about 2000 species in this genus including the familiar Christmas Poinsettias and the Rubber Tree. In South Africa some Euphorbia have developed characteristics very similar to Cacti and are often incorrectly referred to as such. All Euphorbia species contain a milky white, toxic sap in the stem and leaves which can severely irritate the skin on contact.

The Wood Spurge is a species native to Europe and to Southern England. It grows in woodland and shaded hedgerow. It is an evergreen perennial and the small plants are a common sight in winter.

        Wood Spurge spreads by underground rhizomes so you will often find plants growing close together in a group.

Spring growth.

The Wood Spurge has a complex and very unusual flower. The green buds that you see in these pictures are not really flower buds, they are a pair of modified leaves that contain an unusual flower head.

The “Bud” is called a cyathium (plural, cyathia) sometimes referred to as a “false flower” and it contains the inflorescence of the Spurge.

There is quite a lot going on inside each cyathium. There are four small “horse shoe” shaped glands, called “Involucral glands”, these glands are not part of the flowers themselves but part of the cyathium, they produce nectar.

The flowers themselves are the small two lobed yellow anthers in the centre of the horse shoes. There is nothing more to the flowers than a single stamen with two yellow anthers at the top. The anthers produce pollen.

The two large bud like objects beside the flowers are in fact further cyathia. So there are flower heads growing out of each flower head as well as flowers and nectar producing glands.

The cyathium also produces a female flower. It consists of nothing more than a three lobed stigma (pollen receiving organ) leading down to an ovary. The female flower is produced before the male flowers that I have shown you and drops down out of the way when the male flowers arrive to avoid self pollination. I don’t have photographs of the stigma at this time.

It sounds complex but it is not that difficult to understand. The horse shoes are producing nectar, the flowers are just the stamens in the middle and the buds are new flower heads with all the same stuff inside them.

It is a lime green flower and it is beautiful.

Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Malpighiales

Family: Euphorbiaceae

Genus: Euphorbia

Species: Euphorbia amygdaloides

       Wildflowers in winter.