Wed 27th March 2013 - Castle Copse, East Cowes

Mark's Contribution.

Here are some photos of this week's session for the blog.  There are a couple photos of galls caused by a Gall Wasp called  Diastrophus rubi and the gall is on Rubus (bramble).  

The plant creates the gall as a reaction to the wasp laying its eggs within the stem, the grubs then feed inside and you can see the holes are where the little wasps emerge from the gall.

Carrie's Contribution.

Our venue for this week's Green Gym was at Castle Copse in East Cowes.  We have done some clearance work here in the past, but today we were planting trees in three separate areas.  We had bags of holly, field maple, oak and hazel, some 200 in all, so we soon set too with planting, and managed to finish all 200 during the session.  The guys from St Georges also did an amazing job with the litter pick, filling about six or seven bags of rubbish, which was carted away and put into a large skip on the nearby building site - with the permission of the builders of course!

Carrie's Nature Lesson.

The picture this week is of a budding Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) a deciduous tree, defined as a naturalized non-native.  Non-native is a species introduced by human action outside its natural past or present distribution, and naturalized species are those existing as a self-sustaining population persisting for more than four years and not dependent on repeated re-introduction.  Evidence from historical records plus the lack of fossil pollen record supports this view, and it is suggested the 16th century is when sycamore arrived in the UK.  The sycamore is a survivor and can withstand salty sea spray, cold winters, shady conditions, almost any type of soil and usually flourishes wherever it grows.  It also produces a good crop of seeds more often and more reliably than beech or oak, helping woodland and urban wildlife alike to survive. Abundant throughout the UK many specimens were originally planted in farmyards, as their luxuriant summer foliage provided livestock and dairies with a welcome and cooling shade.

There was certainly a sycamore in Dorset in 1834, when a group of labourers formed a society - the Tolpuddle Martyrs - to protest against falling wages. This tree has recently been dated and found to be around 150 years old when the meeting took place which puts it around 320 years old, far exceeding the common estimate of 200 years for the tree’s lifespan.

Many thanks to Carrie and Mark for the blog this week.