Category: Nature Notes

Oak Apple Day

Saturday 29th May is Oak Apple Day so don’t forget to celebrate our wonderful oak trees. Take the time to admire them, give them a hug, write a poem about them or paint or photograph them. If you have children, make sure they can identify an oak with its very distinctive leaves and its acorns. You won’t have to go far to find them as they are in the school playground next to the pavement.

So what is Oak Apple Day all about? When Prince Charles (the Stuart one!), who was eventually to become King Charles II, was being pursued by the Parliamentarians (Roundheads) he hid in an oak tree near Boscobel Hall in Staffordshire. The oak is still there and is known as the Boscobel Oak. Those who supported the restoration of the monarchy would wear a sprig of oak and if you did not you might have your bottom pinched – so, Wenvoe – beware! The day also became known as Pinch-Bum- Day. It is celebrated in many places with processions and the drinking of beer and eating plum pudding. The nearby Battle of St Fagans in 1648 between the Royalists and Parliamentarians was probably the largest battle ever to take place on Welsh soil. There are an estimated 467 pubs in Britain called the Royal Oak, most featuring an Oak Tree, Prince Charles or a Crown and some with Parliamentarians prowling in the vicinity. It is possible that the Royal connections took over a much earlier pagan tradition.

There are two native oaks in Britain. The more common around here is the Pedunculate or English Oak – Quercus robur. Then there is the Sessile Oak – Quercus petraea – which is more frequently found in the North and West of Britain, often on higher ground. To tell them apart, the English Oak has its acorns on stalks, the Sessile Oak has them attached directly to the twig. But, as always, just to make things awkward, the two species do hybridise. An impressive total of 1,455 Sessile Oaks have been planted recently in Whitehall Quarry. There are many types of non-native Oaks planted in our Parks and larger Gardens including the Turkey Oak.

But what is an Oak Apple? It is a gall, that is a malformation in the bud, leaf or twig of a tree caused by tiny wasps or fungi. The common gall on Oak is the Marble Gall – this is hard and looks very much like a Malteser. Many people think these are Oak Apples but they have only appeared in the last couple of hundred years and need Turkey Oaks to be around as part of their life cycle and they were only introduced to Britain in the 1700s. The Oak Apple is much less common and is only very occasionally seen around Wenvoe. It is much larger than the Marble Gall – up to 4 centimetres across and is soft and spongy. One very similar to the one shown in the photo was found near Goldsland Farm. If you come across one, do let the Wildlife Group know as they can then be recorded. In the meantime, celebrate your Oaks and wear your sprig with pride!

Good News on The Tree Planting.

For once there is a little bit of good local news on the tree planting front although the overall position for the UK remains dire. Despite the importance of trees for carbon capture, climate change and biodiversity, despite the impressive commitments and bold targets from all the UK governments whatever their political persuasion, the actual delivery of new trees in the ground can only be described as lamentable. Take the example of Wales where the Welsh Government’s target is to plant 2,000 hectares of trees every year. Achievement in 2019/2020? 80 hectares – just 4% of its target. So where is the good news?

Tree-planting on any scale in the parish of Wenvoe and St Lythans has been very limited and with road-widening, housing development and cutting down of trees by individual householders, we have probably had a net loss of tree cover every year. The last significant tree planting was at the Jubilee Wood by the Vale of Glamorgan Council around 9 years ago of 5.5 acres (2.2 hectares) and how many of you know where that is? But now, walkers on the public footpath from near the corner of Walston Road to Whitehall Farm can glimpse the tree-planting that has been carried out by Cemex as part of the quarry restoration plans. This involves 2,530 trees and 1,100 shrubs – a significant number by any standards. There is a lot more potential good news in the scheme including the variety of trees planted including Cherry, Aspen and Rowan and the planting of woodland and pond margin plants. Whilst there is no public access to the site at the moment, it is assumed that either Cemex or the Vale of Glamorgan Council who own the site will be arranging both access and information when the site is secure and ready in the future.

Meanwhile the Wildlife Group continue to plants trees as they have for 13 years now. 28 fruit trees donated by Keep Wales Tidy were planted last month in Wenvoe, St Lythans and Twyn yr Odyn. New varieties are being planted on the Upper Orchid Field. These include Black Poplar, described by the Woodland Trust as ‘imposing, elegant and rare’. Once widespread in the UK it is now isolated with Somerset being the nearest county with established numbers. It is the food plant for many moth caterpillars including the Figure of Eight, Poplar Hawk and Wood Leopard moths. Bees and other pollinators take advantage of the early pollen in the catkins and birds enjoy eating the seeds – see photo. Ideally the tree flourishes best in damp conditions so we may well need to supplement our generous rainfall with dousings of extra water in dry periods.

The Quarry and the Upper Orchid Field will be complementary, particularly as they are next to each other. The Quarry will have a large number of trees but fewer species – 11 on present plans. The Upper Orchid Field will have fewer trees but more species with 30 planned for this year. It will be interesting to compare the biodiversity on the two sites as the trees become established

Otters Seen in the Middle of Cowbridge

The news that Otters had been seen in the middle of Cowbridge where the River Thaw flows under the main street was a reminder that this mammal is making a bit of a come-back. We have yet to get a confirmed record of it in the parish – ideally a photo – but there is no reason why they should not be seen here. After all they have been spotted in Porthkerry Park, Fonmon Estate, Rhoose Point, Cosmeston, Lavernock and Llantwit Beach. They are well-established in the River Thaw and many of the watercourses in the Goldsland Farm area flow into the Thaw. So if you do come across one, please take a photo and contact the Wildlife Group.

Known variously as the Eurasian Otter, European Otter or Common Otter, this species was driven to near-extinction by hunting, pesticides and loss of habitat. It is a large member of the weasel family weighing up to 12 kgs and measuring up to a metre in length. In contrast, the Mink (which have similarities in appearance) is only around 1.5 kgs and about the same size as a ferret. Otters are a priority species and fully protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. It is amazing to think that whilst they were on the brink of extinction in the 1950s it was not until 1978 that hunting them was banned

An otter’s home is a ‘holt’ and the collective noun for a group of them could be a ‘romp’, ‘lodge’, ‘bevy’ or ‘family’. Whilst most people would love to see an otter, not everyone welcomes their return. Owners of fish farms and managed fisheries can suffer significant losses to their stocks but in a good example of working together a consortium of interested parties have been issued with licences allowing them to trap otters in certain circumstances before returning them to the wild in a different location. Project Otter has been launched in the Vale of Glamorgan to try to establish how they are doing so if you would like to participate by doing some surveying, get in touch with the Wildlife Group who can pass on contact details. Full training will be given.

Nature Notes

Private Gardens In The UK

Private gardens in the UK cover an area bigger than all the Nature Reserves combined, estimated at over 10 million acres. Just as our countryside and woodland is shrinking, so is the amount of garden space which wildlife can use as more gardens become wholly or partially paved over or covered with decking, replaced with artificial grass or sheds and offices. This is the season for New Year resolutions so please take some time to think about how you and the family impact on your environment. Anyone can feed the birds or leave a little patch of lawn or flower-bed to go a bit wild. Will hedgehogs become an animal that our children only read about in books? In the last 20 years numbers have declined by 30% in urban areas and 50% in rural ones and this on top of massive declines in the 20th century. But there are several things you can do to help, such as by creating small gaps in your fence to allow them to move from garden to garden. Try planting pollinator-friendly plants, shrubs and trees – for more on this visit the Bee Loud Glade near the Goldsland Orchard. And what about a pond?

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They do not have to be large. The one in the picture cost 97p with a black bucket popped into a hole. It includes two plants, Purple Loosestrife and Marsh Marigold (Kingcups). In the summer it was full of Rat-tailed Maggots which may sound awful but are the larvae of the attractive Hoverfly, the Drone Fly. So, why not make a difference yourself.

The Welsh Have No Use For Orchards nor Gardens!

(The Welsh) have no use for orchards nor gardens’. So said Gerald of Wales, the 12th/13th century historian and archdeacon of Brecon.

We described in the previous two issues something of the background and history of the sweet apple – so did Wales really miss out? You will often come across old farmhouses called Ty’n y Berllan (the house in the orchard) and apples feature prominently in Welsh mythology. In the Mabinogi collection, Pwyll’s men are ordered to ‘wait outside the court in the orchard’. King Arthur’s Avalon derives from the Welsh ‘afallen’ or apple tree.

The Welsh king, Hywel Dda, set out in the 10th century the values of different assets and a sweet apple tree was worth 60 pennies, equivalent to 60 lambs or 15 pigs. There are many references in the Middle Ages to apple-growing whether in poetry, land-use records or folk traditions. There were 12 acres of orchards on the lands of Llanthony Priory and even this far back vines, pears and other Mediterranean fruit were grown. St Donats featured orchards which were ‘fair things to behold’. The Physicians of Myddfai (visit our Welsh orchard to find out more) praised the medicinal value of apples.

By the end of the 18th century the colourful Iolo Morganwg was compiling a list of 147 apple varieties then growing in Glamorgan and Gwent. From the large country houses to the small peasant cottages, apple trees could usually be found and all the way from Glamorgan to Anglesey. By 1899 there were 6,500 acres of orchard recorded of which 4,000 were in Monmouthshire. Love spoons were often carved in applewood and the old custom of wassailing was celebrated. Even David Lloyd George was praised for the quality of the apples he grew. Many varieties were of Welsh origin such as Cissy and St Cecilia. Others like Morgan Sweet were a favourite with the miners (which they enjoyed with Caerphilly cheese) as the juice, which was tangy yet sweet, was refreshing when working down the pits.

All of these can be sampled in our Wenvoe orchards with St Cecilia judged the top apple this year. Did Gerald of Wales get it right? What do you think? Much of the information here is taken from a little book called the Apples of Wales by Carwyn Graves, published in 2018 and a great read if you find the topic interesting.

And finally, just to get the little grey cells working, where are the ruins featured in the photo and what is the connection with this article? A clue for you – it is less than 10 miles from Wenvoe.

NATURE NOTES

Community Orchards Resurgence

With 5 Community Orchards in the parish we are starting to reclaim some of the ground lost through the wholesale removal of orchards over the last hundred years. In this and future articles we shall consider the origin of orchards, the history of their rise and fall and why they are important for wildlife.

To begin at the beginning – the ‘sweet’ apple that we eat originated in the Tien Shan mountains of Kirghizia on the border between western China and the former Soviet Union. A Russian plant geneticist writing in the 1920s commented that it was like a Garden of Paradise with apple groves, mountain turkeys, porcupines and a host of other wildlife. Alma Ata, capital of Kazakhstan, means ‘Father of Apples’. Over time these apples travelled locally in the intestine of bears and other animals or were carried along the silk roads, eventually reaching Europe and Britain. A couple of thousand years BC the remains of apples have been found in Mesopotamia. The Persian word Pairadaeza was a walled garden enclosing fruit trees and canals and this translated to the Latin word Paradisus and our word Paradise.

Now, take an apple and plant a dozen or so pips from it and you will get 12 different apple trees of which 11 may be useless and just one palatable. Because apples from seeds do not grow true to the original, grafting is necessary where a bit of branch/twig from the original is attached to a rootstock. So if you find a particularly tasty apple you can produce more of those trees by grafting. The Romans understood the principles of grafting as specialist tools have been found in excavations. Pliny referred to over 20 varieties of apple in his Natural History and he was writing in the first century AD. Subsequently fruit growing was maintained by the monasteries but really took off in Tudor times with Henry Vlll’s fruiterer, Richard Harris, establishing what was England’s first large fruit collection. The 18th and 19th centuries was a high point in the development of apple varieties with thousands of varieties being grown, many of which have now been lost.

There have, of course, been apples in Britain for thousands of years but these were Crab Apples, small, sour and often sporting spines on the branches. There are many still growing in the hedgerows around Wenvoe. References to apples in old Celtic traditions and myths would have been about Crabs which were cooked or fermented. But most commentators suggest that Crab Apples had little or no impact on the origins of the sweet apple and that they do not generally hybridise.

The image in the painting shown may be a little idealised but it is one that it would be nice to replicate and we are getting there slowly. Next month we shall discuss the decline of orchards and apple-growing in Britain and why it is important to bring them back.

Nature Notes

Commentaries on Nature will always be something of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

So let’s start at the grimmer end of the spectrum. Neonicotinoids are a form of insecticide widely used in the 1990s but when evidence became clear that they were killing bees they were banned in the European Union in 2018. What does history tell us? It took 30 years to ban DDT before it was proved that what was believed to be safe just wasn’t. It took 24 years to ban neonicotinoids and 50 to ban chlorothalonil. But the salmon-farming industry in Scotland are now seeking to have approved a new pesticide, Ectosan, which includes imidacloprid, one of the banned neonicotinoids. One teaspoon of imidacloprid could kill one and a quarter billion bees. You can read more about this topic in British Wildlife, August issue.

On a happier note, our Gabalva apple tree in the Goldsland Orchard is bearing fruit – see photo. This local apple, introduced by no less than the Treseder family in 1901 was until a few years ago thought to be extinct. In 2006 the National History Museum at St Fagans considered it ‘lost’. But it must have been rediscovered as a number of fruit suppliers now have it on offer. Described as having yellowish flesh and being somewhat dry and spicy, the apples are quite large as are many of the older varieties. Gabalva is believed to derive from the Welsh Ceubalfa or ‘place of the boat’ as it was once the site of a ferry crossing across the Taff. We shall return to the topic of apples and their history in future issues

Nature Notes

Discover our 5 Community Orchards

With more and more people discovering one or more of our 5 Community Orchards, all designed and planted by the Wenvoe Wildlife Group, the question is often raised – What has this got to do with wildlife?

Orchards are a priority habitat in Biodiversity Action Plans whether at UK Government levels, Welsh Government or Vale of Glamorgan County level. And as with wildflower meadows, what once were common are becoming rarer. Since the 1950s, Britain has lost 90% of its traditional orchards and of those that are left in Wales, 35% are in a poor condition and only 7% excellent.

Orchards, particularly traditional, established ones, attract many species of wildlife. The obvious ones like Fox, Rabbit, Badger, Blackbird and Thrush take advantage of the fruit but our cameras at the Goldsland Orchard also recorded Greater Spotted and Green Woodpecker, Tawny Owl, Jays, Chiff-chaff and Goldfinch all visiting regularly. And some much rarer species such as Noble Chafer Beetle, Shaggy Bracket Fungus and Red-belted Clearwing Moth are almost exclusively associated with orchards. There is even a European Orchard Bee which only arrived on our shores recently.

Our orchards, although still young and immature, are already attracting Field Mice and Voles, Moles, Grass Snakes (which do not bite!) and a legion of plants and insects. It is worth distinguishing between traditional orchards where the trees are allowed to live their full lives which may be 100 years or more and are not sprayed with chemicals and commercial ones where the trees are grubbed up after 8 or so years and may be sprayed 20 times a year. The commercial orchards have only minimal wildlife benefit.

The second reason for planting an orchard is to help conserve the old varieties of apple, pear, plum and cherry along with less common fruit like Medlar, Quince and Mulberry. Names like Catshead (photo) and Tom Putt apples, Jargonelle Pear and Morello Cherry go back hundreds of years.

The orchards are also there for you to enjoy thanks to the generosity of farming families like the Readers and the Vale of Glamorgan Council. Orchards have played an important role in our history and literature from the Garden of Eden, through the Romans, Normans, mediaeval monasteries and the fruit-growing bonanza of the 18th and 19th centuries. And when the fruit is getting riper from August onwards why not try sampling the odd apple and let us know your favourite.

Red Kites spotted flying over the Parish

A number of residents have spotted Red Kites flying over the Parish recently which is great news. Once upon a time they were quite common and Shakespeare referred to London as a ‘city of kites and crows’. They were the street cleaners of the time and even had a degree of protection However steady persecution led to a massive decline and by the end of the nineteenth century there were just a few pairs hanging on in Wales. Gamekeepers played a major part in the persecution along with Victorian egg and skin collectors. Some farmers believed they took lambs and that view can still occasionally be heard today. However research has shown that Kites are essentially scavengers and are ill-equipped to take animals as large as lambs. They may be seen in fields when lambs are being born but they are attracted by the afterbirth and end of the tails that have fallen off. Even dead lambs will be ‘opened up’ first by ravens and crows, followed by the buzzards. At Gigrin farm near Rhayader where many people have watched Red Kites being fed, young lambs were allowed to graze in the field where the kites were feeding and at no point did they appear as a threat. But persecution continues and in April three Kites were killed at Tregynon near Newtown.

The most likely threat may be to your frilly knickers – if you happen to own some! Shakespeare said ‘When the kite builds, look to lesser linen’. Particularly in the days when washing was spread on bushes to dry, kites were in the habit of helping themselves to items that they felt might enhance their nests. Items found in Red Kite nests recently included flags, handbags, magazine pages, tea towels, lottery tickets and socks. One was even adorned with – yes, you’ve guessed it! – frilly knickers. In one case a Kite swooped down into a suburban garden and pinched the squeaky toy from under the nose of the shocked family pooch.

From a low point at the turn of the last century, re- introduction programmes using eggs from nests in Sweden and Wales have caused the numbers of Red Kites to increase significantly and the UK now has 48,000 breeding pairs – around 15% of the world’s population. Without any local re-introductions it has taken a while for the Kites to reach here – Rhayader is only 80 miles away – but the signs are promising. And, hopefully, we can all look forward to finding the occasional disappearance of an item from our washing lines.