Butterfly on thistle


Great willow herb


black, with a red stripe and only a few spots on their forewings. The caterpillars have a distinctive yellow and black stripe: both caterpillar and adult are also distasteful to predators. They feed on ragwort. Ragwort brings me


to some more of the daisy family. There are lots of tall plants with yellow daisy-like flowers at this time, giving a purple and gold look to meadows. Many of these are in the group called hawk’s beard or hawkbit, of which there are many different varieties that most of us can’t tell the differ- ences between! They are harmless, quite pretty plants of meadowland and verges, and most people just see them as a tall kind of dandelion. They do have flowers like a small dande- lion but the shape is quite different, tall and branching. Ragwort on the other hand is more


daisy-shaped, with a button-like cen- tre and a ring of outer florets, all in yellow. It grows more on waste land and doesn’t mind disturbed ground. It’s very common along railway lines and some of the varieties have


definitely spread along railways in the past. It is actually very attractive – I


once saw bunches of it for sale in London - but most people hate it. This is because it is poisonous to animals, especially horses and cat- tle. If growing it doesn’t cause harm, because the animals will avoid it. The


trouble is if it is Bee on knapweed


dried, as in hay or if pulled up and


left, because then the animals will eat it.


Horses have died from it.


So, leave it alone, or pull it up and destroy it. Other daisy fam-


ily plants add to the July colour. Tansy is pure gold, like the middle of a daisy without outer florets. Fox- and-cubs is that wonderfully named bright orange plant, now naturalised and common. The other vivid moth you


may see is the garden tiger moth. This has brown-and-cream marbled forewings and red underwings with dark spots – the exact colours vary quite a lot. Their caterpillars are the once-familiar “woolly bear” ones which are a favourite food of cuckoos. They like to eat all the kinds of plants we think of as weeds, so I suppose that’s why they are garden moths! I saw one last year at the Tardebigge lime kilns. Along the canal you will see anoth-


er brightly coloured insect family in July. The dragonflies and damselflies range from brown and gold to elec- tric blue. The most distinctive are the delicate blue damselflies, which you see flying and mating, and the bigger, stronger dark blue demoiselles. The larvae live in water for up to five years, and the adults fly for a cou- ple of months. They were be- lieved at one time to carry a poison- ous sting. They don’t, but they do hunt and


Demoiselle


eat smaller insects. They


have declined in continues overleaf The Village July 2017 45


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