The Lophocolea Stump part 2

These first two photos show the south-east slope as it was in the spring of 2006 before we moved here. The spruce stumps both still had at least some of their bark and were pretty bare on top.

SE slope and rotting lean-to 2006

May 2014

By the spring of 2014, the lower stump had a good covering of the liverwort, Variable-leaved Crestwort (Lophocolea heterophylla).

with snow, March 2015

In the slightly snowy photo above, you can see sections of the tree's trunk. In the August of 2014, when I was trying to identify one of the mosses on the spruce wood, I discovered a large ants' nest inside the wood and came across blue leafhoppers for the first time. Blogpost about that here.

I still haven't identified this one ↑, or if I did I've forgotten what its name is.

During the low light days of the winter of 2015-16, the stump covering of Variable-leaved Crestwort was a lovely bright spot

and its sides were becoming clothed in bryophytes, lichens and small plants like heath bedstraw.

Sporophytes of Lophocolea heterophylla, November 2015.

In late February this year I removed the length of hosepipe that I'd been 'storing' around the stump for some years after finding it lying about in the way of my scything efforts once too often. There was plenty of evidence of insect activity.

someone has been digging into the wood

By November this year the top of the stump looked like this. I saw a young magpie pulling bits of wood out just recently, presumably in search of tasty morsels to eat.

the Lophocolea stump in December 2016

Most recently the stump has been decorated with three (found another after taking that photo) small pumpkins that I found (mystifyingly!) near it. I later discovered that Toadlet had thrown them out of her bedroom window at one o'clock in the morning during a break from revising for exams! It's the sort of thing my dad said he called a "scream" when he was a university student ☺ in the 1950s.

Some things don't change!

More drains and a new liverwort

This drain runs roughly north to south along the retaining wall back terrace and turns at a right angle round the corner below.

I've removed most of the ferns so I can clear the drain

Making the water that seeps almost continuously down the hill run round the terrace edge rather than straight across it and into the wash-house means we have a dry(ish) threshold. It also turns out that maintaining drains is fun because you find stuff. I found more Trailing St.John's-wort (Hypericum humifusum) and more Toad Rushes (Juncus bufonius). See left; a Toad Rush is 'bridging' the ditch at the right-hand side of the pic. Most importantly though, I found a new species of liverwort, one of the Riccia genus. I'm sending a sample off to be identified and recorded properly.

It's quite tricky, I found, to photograph a small liverwort in situ when its 'situ' is a more or less vertical piece of ditch bank on the ditch side farther from a retaining wall. The exercise requires an old camping mat to prevent one from getting soaked lying on wet ground for a start. I suppose I could have just got soaked, being so close to home but I probably would have given up sooner in that case.

I found an old stone painting of Toadlet's and used it to mark opposite the spot of my discovery. As it happens I found more of the same Riccia as I cleared out the ditch further.

Some animal wildlife kept me company: this tiny moth decided to flutter about in the wheelbarrow into which I was chucking ditch dirt.

A caterpillar on the wall was charging around (in caterpillar terms) for quite a while among the hornwort,

Caterpillar and hornwort

and a rather weary looking Angle-shades moth  decided to walk up my arm at one point. I repositioned him on a lungwort leaf where he stayed for the remainder of my ditch digging time.

A 'cage' in a clump of moss and liverwort

I found a net cage in among some moss and liverwort. The whole thing was about 8 millimetres long and 4 wide. There was at least one creature moving about inside it and I spotted a small spider moving around on its outside.