(^36) Cornwall Life: August 2019
OX-EY E DA ISY
I’m very fond of this plant,
because it is a grassland species
and specifically because I am an
advocate of including an area
of long grass in gardens – one
of the five ‘mantras’ for wildlife
gardening, and a habitat that
we know delivers for nature in
gardens large or small.
This common wild and native
plant provides 3D structure
and height for orb weaving
spiders such as the marvellously
huge Garden Cross Spider
and a perfect pad on which
colour-changing crab spiders
such as Misumena vatia can
sunbathe and await ambush
on unsuspecting hoverflies.
It is simple to grow, formerly
widespread plant in Cornwall
that typifies dry grassland plant
communities and shouts out
that ‘this is being managed as
a wildflower meadow’. It is also
useful to use as an indicator
for timing your mini-meadow
cut and collect at the end of
summers; simply wait for at least
half of the Oxe-Eye Daisies to
have set seed, ready for next
year’s new plants.
LU NGWORT
As members of the Borage
and Forget-me-not family,
lungworts greatest trick to
wildlife gardening is in extending
the flowering season from the
earliest days of spring (or even
in mid-winter in warmer parts
of Cornwall). More flowers with
available nectar not just means
a welcome splash of colour to
us gardeners, but also provides
food and a tonic of energy at
a time of year that is crucial to
the early emerging bumblebee
queens such as Bombus
terrestris, waking up with a
deafening buzz having spent
a royal slumber in vole holes
or deep cracks in north facing
Cornish hedges. Their native
food of choice is Wordsworth’s
favourite flower too, the humble
Lesser Celandine, which will
grow well in damper areas of
garden lawns that are left uncut
well into the start of summer. In
the wild it favours stream banks
and woodland edges where it
often makes an impressive show
of brightest yellow long before
grasses and the other flowering
plants have even started to wake
up from winter.
HONEYSUCKLE
No plant comes close to
recreating the perfect heady
evening scent of our native
Honeysuckle as it clambers
gently through a hedge or trellis
in a still corner of your garden,
smothered by the evening’s
cornucopia of moth species and
a curious/hungry bat.
A less obvious benefit is in
the shape of the Honeysuckle
flower; its nectaries are designed
on purpose to be hidden at
the end of an extraordinarily
long trumpet-like corolla. This
design ensures that the species
of animal that it prefers to have
sugary treat also pays its way
in collecting a handful (headful
actually) of pollen and visits the
next plant flying distance away
to pollinate. Nothing is free in
nature after all, and everything
(everyone) has a role to play
to make ecology work. The
long corolla ensure that there is
food for the specialist feeding
long-tongued native bumblebee
species, which tend to be the
species that are outcompeted
by cultivated honey bees or
more common and more
generalist bees and fly species
(nature being nature, of course
there is also a native bumblebee
that has evolved to ‘rob’ the
nectar of Honeysuckle by biting
a hole at the base of the corolla!
TOP FIVE GARDEN WILDFLOWERS
Butterflies can be found feeding
from daisies
The spotted Lungwort belongs to the botanical
family Boraginaceae
Honeysuckle flowers are designed for
maximum pollination
The Eden Project introduced mass planting of wildflowers in 2018
Emily Whitfield-Wicks
barry
(Barry)
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