According to the British Arachnological Society, there are some 654 different species of spider in the U.K.   However, a recent survey they undertook (in conjunction with Natural Resources Wales) suggests that 16% of our spider species are threatened.   Eighteen of these species are critically endangered and eighty four species are classified as vulnerable or endangered. The terms used are based on those of IUCN Red List categories, so critically endangered means Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. Read more...

The yellow banded bumblebee (Bombus terricola) is a North American species of bumblebee.  It has been in decline across its range.  This bumblebee is now down to about 10% of its former numbers.   Recently, its genome has been sequenced at York University, Canada.  This genetic analysis shows that the bumblebees are inbreeding.  As bees become more inbred, the face difficulties in maintaining their population numbers.  As population become smaller, there is a greater risk of inbreeding.  Inbred bees have problems in terms of fertility.  Males can become infertile so that if they mate with a queen, there are no offspring or the queen may produce sterile males instead of worker bees. Read more...

The horseradish tree has other names - moringa, the drumstick tree or the benzoil tree.  It scientific name is Moringa oleifera.  The word moringa is derived from a Tamil word, murungai - which means twisted pod, referring to the shape of the tree’s young fruit.  It is native to the foothills of the Himalayas.  It is known to have been cultivated for some 3000 years (source : Mabberley’s Plant Book) and it is a very ‘versatile’ plant as nearly every part of the tree can be used.   It can thrive in semi-arid conditions. Moringa is grown in India, Thailand, the Philippines, parts of the Caribbean and Indonesia. Read more...

Parasols should be popping up all across the UK at the moment. Paul Stamets in Mycelium Running calls them “one of the most majestic of all edible mushrooms.” The second part of the Latin name Macrolepiota procera literally means lofty, upraised or extended to a great height, and they are certainly hard to miss on late-Summer and Autumn forays.  The Parasol mushroom starts out looking something like a drumstick, before the initially egg-shaped cap opens up to a maximum size of around a foot across (typically between 10-30cm) when fully grown. Read more...

WoodlandsTV has made a new ant film that shows wildlife film maker, Tom Hartwell taking a closer look at the life of Wood Ants. With numbers decreasing across the UK it is important to pay more attention to these fascinating creatures and the role they play within our ecosystem. There are over 200 species of Formica rufa - the scientific name for Wood ants. As the name suggests they are most commonly found in woodlands but some species are also found in grasslands. Read more...

The long hot summer months have provided plenty of scope for al fresco cooking and eating this year. For most, this means channelling our inner caveman, poking at unevenly cooked slabs of meat over a bed of smoking charcoal. The record-breaking levels of sunshine we have enjoyed recently, however, suggest other opportunities for off-the-grid culinary experimentation. The expanding range of solar ovens on the market may never replace the traditional barbecue experience, but cooking using just the free power provided by the sun’s rays can be a lot less faff than hours of fiddling with newspaper, firelighters and dusty briquettes. Aside from providing the smug satisfaction of keeping carbon emissions down to a minimum, these campsite counterparts to Le Creuset offer up far more possibilities for the more adventurous outdoors cook than the usual backstop options of the charred sausage or the billy can of beans, opening up a brave new world of stews, curries, baked vegetables, even risottos… Read more...

Bumblebees are important pollinators; their bodies are often seen covered with pollen grains.   However, when visiting certain flowers they have a special mechanism for releasing the pollen grains from the anthers (the special sacs on the stamens).    This mechanism is known as sonication or buzz pollination.   When visiting flowers of the potato / tomato family (the Solanaceae) or blueberries, they land on the flower, use their mouth parts to hold onto a stamen and then use rapid contractions of their (thoracic)  flight muscles to make the stamen vibrate.  The effect of these vibrations is to allow the pollen to be released from the tube-like anthers from a pore or small slits (poricidal stamens). Read more...

The world's larger and older trees are dying at in unprecedented numbers, according to Professor David Lindenmayer (Australian National University). One of the first clues to this phenomenon was a Swedish study of their forestry records - dating back some 150 years.  Then an Australian study of (their) Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forest confirmed that the bigger and older trees were not only dying in forest fires, but were also dying at a higher rate (than normal) in non-fire years. There has been a similar loss of large, old pines in the forests of (western) North America - partly through selective logging but also through very severe wild fires.    Read more...