Fireweed
31/07/2010 23:49
Get up when the sun shines and head into the breaking cloud with the cameras to film timelapse and bee fly-bys. As we drive along the A386 to Dartmoor, massed plants light up the verge, blazing pink. The rose-purple flowers open just after sunrise and provide nectar and pollen for bees at the tail end of summer. Honey made from its nectar is spicy. Park up below Sheepstor and follow a pony path through the rough wet grass to a big clump of brambles where we did the sound recording. A Golden-ringed dragonfly, yellow and black striped with glinty green eyes, lots of bumble bees, about 3 honeybees, several small Ringlet butterflies, chocolatey wings with a scattering of white spots; and a male Orange tip.
Scouting around for views, see a haze of Rosebay willow herb. The spikes are over 2 metres tall, narrow serrated (willow-like) leaves spiral around the stem. Pointed blood-red sepals support 4 large soft lilac-magenta petals around a drooping fringe of 8 stamens or a prominent 4-lobed curly white stigma. In the grass below, a small dark brown turd is a toad with slitty eyes.
Rosebay willow herb (Epilobium angustifolium or Chamcenerion angustifolium) is from the same family as the Evening primrose, and grows across the Holarctis, a broad sweep of land across the northern half of Europe, Asia and north America, and Greenland. The seeds germinate on disturbed ground, especially after fire. The dried leaves can be made into a tea (known as Kaporie tea in Russia). In Kamchatka the leaves are fermented with the sweet gelatinous pith inside the stems and dried Fly Agaric (Agaricus muscarius) to make a trippy shamanic brew.
Huge heat in western and southern Russia, the highest temperatures for more than a century, hundreds of forest fires. Three quarters of China is flooded. A man struggles through shoulder-deep milky tea floating with polystyrene chunks, wood, plastic. After 50+ temperatures, the worst monsoon floods since 1929 in north west Pakistan. The ground disappears; water and mud all around the roofs and treetops. Waist-deep families carry children and wade south to safety. Here, the lowest rainfall for the first half of the year since 1929, but Burrator reservoir is almost full, the air is soft and moist, light grey cloud flashed with blue; rowan branches bend as the berries turn.
A large Green woodpecker with a red head flew across the track into the deep forest. On the hilltop two cloud layers moving in different directions overhead as the sun set and a robin pulled worms from the grass.
Scouting around for views, see a haze of Rosebay willow herb. The spikes are over 2 metres tall, narrow serrated (willow-like) leaves spiral around the stem. Pointed blood-red sepals support 4 large soft lilac-magenta petals around a drooping fringe of 8 stamens or a prominent 4-lobed curly white stigma. In the grass below, a small dark brown turd is a toad with slitty eyes.
Rosebay willow herb (Epilobium angustifolium or Chamcenerion angustifolium) is from the same family as the Evening primrose, and grows across the Holarctis, a broad sweep of land across the northern half of Europe, Asia and north America, and Greenland. The seeds germinate on disturbed ground, especially after fire. The dried leaves can be made into a tea (known as Kaporie tea in Russia). In Kamchatka the leaves are fermented with the sweet gelatinous pith inside the stems and dried Fly Agaric (Agaricus muscarius) to make a trippy shamanic brew.
Huge heat in western and southern Russia, the highest temperatures for more than a century, hundreds of forest fires. Three quarters of China is flooded. A man struggles through shoulder-deep milky tea floating with polystyrene chunks, wood, plastic. After 50+ temperatures, the worst monsoon floods since 1929 in north west Pakistan. The ground disappears; water and mud all around the roofs and treetops. Waist-deep families carry children and wade south to safety. Here, the lowest rainfall for the first half of the year since 1929, but Burrator reservoir is almost full, the air is soft and moist, light grey cloud flashed with blue; rowan branches bend as the berries turn.A large Green woodpecker with a red head flew across the track into the deep forest. On the hilltop two cloud layers moving in different directions overhead as the sun set and a robin pulled worms from the grass.