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A froth of Cow Parsley in Stefen Hill Pocket Park.
22 May, 2020
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The Cow Parsley was still in full, frothy flower. I have featured these delicate, zygomorphic flowers before but they are always worth a second look.
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| The flowers are fragile and the petals ephemeral. |
On some umbels the fruits were already developing. When ripe they will look vaguely like tiny slim sunflower seeds but are structurally different and completely unrelated.
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The fruits are developing on the Cow Parsley. Stefen Hill Pocket Park.
22 May, 2020
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Only tiny insects visit Cow Parsley. Large insects besiege Hogweed flowers but although they are present all around Daventry they are apparently not in the pocket park. However some larger insects were around. This Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, was busy on a cultivated rose which has found its way into the park. The most commonly grown garden roses tend to receive few insects as the stamens are inaccessible but this variety had a temptingly open flower structure.
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The thoracic marking which have earned this insect the name of
Batman Hoverfly are not clear here. Stefen Hill Pocket Park. 22 May, 2020
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Dragonflies and damsel flies are carnivorous and so pollen and nectar are of no interest to them. I swept a tussock of grass hoping to secure what I suspected was a tachinid fly, missed it but instead found this in my net. I am ashamed to say that I hadn't noticed it prior to its capture. I claim no expertise with dragonflies/damselflies but this appears to Be the Common Blue Damselfly, Enallagma cyatherigum.
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Common Blue Damselfly about to be released. Stefen Hill
Pocket Park, 22 May, 2020
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Neither of the insects featured here were new to the pocket park. The list currently stands at 313 and, as usual, I ended up with a few specimens requiring microscope work. So the day may ultimately have yielded a little more than Llaregub. (In fact the total rose to 317.)
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