Lophocolea Stump Part 3

I had an enjoyable morning bumbling about on the south slope of the garden. I saw my first two bees of the year foraging in the gorse that grows against the den (Toad calls it his studio).

First bee I've seen; spot the spider also.

Between scything swathes of the main Whorled Caraway patch, I took some pics of the old spruce stump that I nicknamed the Lophocolea Stump on account of this liverwort covering its top surface. More about that can be seen here in an old post. Below are some of today's photos showing its progress or rotting down, breaking down and being broken down–magpies in particular seem to like jabbing at it.


Whorled Caraway leaf and the patch I scythed and raked. It will fill with pignut flowers and then whorled caraway as the year progresses.


What's growing on the stump. I need to gen up on moss names. There are at least four mosses including a polytrichum, what I think is Common Tamarisk Moss, Springy Turf Moss, as well as Heath Bedstraw.


The west and east faces of the stump today:

Cat neighbours

 

This is Max. He lives down the hill but our garden is part of his territory. He has a large black dot on his white bib, one orange eye, and one yellow. Today he decided to lounge nonchalantly on my white stone stump for long enough that I could take a photo. I've seen him there before so I reckon it's one of his lookout posts.

Our neighbours' once thin and feral but now quite chubby cat, Missy, seems to thinks Max is a cheeky young upstart. There have been some spectacular chases as she runs him down the hill.

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!