NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

On my River Hogsmill walk yesterday I came across an unfamiliar plant growing alongside one of the ponds at Bourne Hall. It was in rude health and next to a similarly robust specimen of Green Amaranth. It was vaguely sow-thistle like, a bit Rudbeckia-ish, but fitted neither. When home, I uploaded the four images reproduced here in the hope that one of my Twitter-chums could furnish me with an identification, and, as hoped, three responded in quick time to let me know that my mystery plant was Niger (Guizotia abbysinica). I've seen plenty of Niger seed in my time at bird feeding stations, but this is the first time that I have seen the plant.

Bourne Hall, Ewell - it's an area that I don't know particularly well, save for a twitch at the turn of the millennium (Ring-necked Duck) and feeding the ducks with my daughter's when they were tiny tots (feeding the ducks with bread, not my daughters...) It's an area with a lot of birding potential. The River Hogsmill meanders through close by and there are plenty of ponds, streams, culverts and waterside vegetation for the wildlife to utilise. Kingfisher, Grey Wagtail and Little Egret are regular, plus historical records of Cetti's Warbler, Water Rail and Jack Snipe exist. Fortunately at least one local birder is a regular visitor to the area, and he will no doubt be rewarded in time with something special - I don't know if it was he who found the Ring-necked Duck, but that is the kind of bird that all patch-watchers wish for - rare and 'out of the blue'. The pond on which it turned up hardly entices much beyond Mallards and the odd Tufted Duck, so t...

A couple of weeks ago I visited the River Hogsmill at Bourne Hall, Ewell. I posted an image of a flowering Winter Heliotrope which prompted the following comment from pan-list professional, Seth Gibson: "I trust you saw the Ramularia purpurascens all over the Winter Heliotrope then?" Er... pardon? Ram what? I had to Google it. Apparently it's an anamorphic fungus. Does that make it a mushroom, or some sort of shady version of one, like a rust or that white powdery stuff that appears in the superior fungi guides. They don't all look like Fly Agaric, do they... Anyhow, I was back at Ewell briefly this morning, so I thought I'd better take a closer look at the Heliotropes (of which there was so much more in flower). And many leaves had obvious browny-mauve splodges on them, with paler centres. A bit of internet detective work suggests that I had, indeed, captured Ramularia purpurascens. There   are literally thousands of species out there, in our gardens,...