More pocket park bits and bobs

Having an hour spare today I strolled over to Stefen Hill Pocket Park. Until recently it was known as Stefen Leys Pocket Park and a couple of the old signs are extant. 

Stefen Leys was the former name of Stefen Hill Pocket Park.

20 June, 2020

The weather was warm and very humid; insects seemed to be enjoying the conditions, none more so than the Black and Yellow Longhorn Beetle, Rutpela maculata. Until a few years ago it was known as Strangalia maculata and I still have to correct myself occasionally.

Rutpela maculata was common in the pocket park. 20 June, 2020

It is quite a large, handsome insect and I was pleased to find a specimen on bramble blossom. Then I saw another, and another...  The adults feed on pollen but the larvae live in rotting tree stumps.

All seen were on bramble blossoms

A Dock Beetle, Coreus marginatus, was also present but in a shrub, resting between docks. Or yet another faulty satnav.

This Dock Bug should have been elsewhere.

The rain which has curtailed walks recently has replenished the pond, but it came too late and probably no more than a handful of amphibians will have survived. Only a few iris blooms remained but the sword-like leaves were of some interest.

Just a few blooms of Iris pseudacorus remained. Stefen Hill Pocket Park.

20 June, 2020

They bore the neat mines of the agromyzid fly Cerodontha iraeos. The map provided by the National Biological Network shows only a couple of dozen records for the UK but it is likely to be far more widespread than this suggests.

The mine of Cerodontha iraeos always runs parallel with the leaf veins.

Stefen Hill Pocket Park, 20 June, 2020

The blooms of these Yellow Flags, to use their other name, were being replaced by the frothy flowers of Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria. The specific name ulmaria means 'elm-like' and is a refence to the shape of the leaves, but in fact they are pinnately compound whereas the leaves of elms (Ulmus species) are simple.




The Meadowsweet flowers were particularly fragrant today.

Stefen Hill Pocket Park, 20 June, 2020

Perhaps it was the heavy atmosphere but I have never found the flowers to be as fragrant as they were today.