Rangers View
Marjoram
The Month of July
Basil
July is probably the best month of the year for insects because the flowers are at their most numerous and the source of nectar is at its best. There is a variety of insects to look out for like the hoverflies, lacewing, moths, dragonflies and butterflies. This month you should look out for the migrant butterflies from the continent like the mottled orange brown and white Painted Lady or the bright yellow Clouded Yellow.
Crops Starting to Ripen
The farmers are continuing to cut silage and hay. Where they are not doing that then they are grazing their livestock in the grass fields left. Now they will be cutting back some of the hedges along the roadside for better visibility and in preparation for the big push and harvesting next month. However, towards the end of the month, the wheat and barley will turn a beautiful golden colour and often the field margins will be bright red with field poppies. Conservationists would like to see that hedges elsewhere on the farm are left. This will ensure there are plenty of berries and nuts for the wildlife later in the year and it allows the birds that are nesting a chance to bring up a second brood.
Bumble Bee
Up on the Downs it smells like an open medicine cabinet. Look out for the purple flowering plants like the Majoram (Origanum vulgare), which has been used for centuries as a culinary herb for flavouring. Then there is the Wild Thyme (Thymus praecox), which not only is used for flavouring but also has aromatic oil with antiseptic and preservative qualities. In addition, look out for the Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare) that helps with jaundice and in days gone by was believed to help those with afflictions of the brain and those that had convulsions.
Wild Thyme
In the woods, the woodmice will be munching on the abundance of Wild Strawberries coming out on the woodland glade edges. The mother fox will be teaching her cubs how to find bird nests and how to feed on the young fledglings. A tree that stands out from the rest this month is the White beam (Sorbus aria). The Saxons called it “Weiss baum” which meant White Tree this refers to the white underside of the leaves. It has a hard timber and was used for making cogs in machinery until the use of iron usurped wooden cogs. A butterfly to look out for in the woods is the orange Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia). This is one of the largest and brightest butterflies you are likely to see this month. It derives its name from the silvery makings on its underside.
Wild Strawberry
Silver Washed Fritillary
In our meadows, you may see the blue hues of Meadow Crane’s-bill (Geranium pratense). Its blue colour makes it one of our most distinctive native British plants. However, the colour is not designed to catch our eye but to attract bees to the flower’s nectar. Another flower that attracts insects by colour is the Wild Carrot (Daucus carota). The remarkable thing about this plant is that right within the centre of its numerous white florets there is a single red spot. It is this red spot that the insects notice and cannot resist investigating and as the insect collects the nectar unwittingly it picks up pollen and then flies on to the next flower and hopefully pollinates it.
Whitebeam
On our heaths things are starting to warm up and you will see some purple hues from the Cross-leaved Heath (Erica tetralix) that likes the wetter heath and the Bell Heath (Erica cinerea) that prefers the drier heath areas.
Meadow-Cranesbill
In our wetter areas, wherever you go this month, you will come across various species of territorial dragonfly. Many dragonfly species are so territorial they will display the most ferocious dog fights, sometimes to the death. They can be so territorial that they will even buzz us if we wander into their patch. Look out for the dragonflies chrysalis which it sheds when transforming from a nymph into an adult. A good place to look for them is on reed or sedge stems along the water’s edge.
Next month, I will tell you about a number of plants that will be in berry.
