A fortnight for personal, novel observations.

So what’s new? There’s always something different to spot without leaving the home plot.

We grew few Hydrangeas before we moved to Gelli Uchaf, though we did bring with us a cutting of H. villosa (above) from our Bristol garden – the original plant having been sourced after seeing a massive specimen, in bloom, at the lovely Dingle gardens near Welshpool. We had no idea Hydrangeas could be so spectacular, given time to develop – this cutting, offspring, is probably now about 12 years old. Later on, regular trips with our children to the beach at Llangranog, took us past the walled gardens at Pigeonsford, which for a time were open to the public and contained a variety of mature Hydrangeas with, even better, some home propagated ones for sale. The foundations of a Hydrangea studded garden were laid, well before I discovered that the speed of their autumnal leaf decay, makes them excellent shrubs, for growing snowdrops beneath.

Later still, I remember quizzing a local gardener with a fabulous garden, but lacking any significant numbers of Hydrangeas, why he didn’t have more. His answer was that he hated them after they finished flowering, because they resembled sweets that had been sucked for too long, and lost all colour. The opening section of this post is designed to counter such thoughts, and try to persuade anyone who can, to plant a few. More.

Continuing to work on my Gelli Uchaf plant palette pages, click here, I’ve realised that from mid-summer onwards, they’re fabulous easy sources of colour, and that with careful cultivar selection, this can continue for months. But also that size, and length of flowering varies a lot between varieties, as well as leaf colour changes. And that’s before the additional range of flower colour changes over time, is considered. Though I have to admit a couple of mop head forms are not reliable flowerers, and frankly there’s no point growing a Hydrangea which doesn’t flower each year.

In looking at these colour changes more closely, I discovered something that I’d never been aware of before – so apologies for all who take this as read. As the larger “petals” (technically sepals, in such flowers, see more below) age, and colour changes develop, they also flip over, or around.Usually through 180 degrees. Even in mopheads.

The question is, why?

Hydrangeas, like Clematis, don’t have conventional petals. What appear to be these parts of the flower are, in fact, modified sepals. Which in many flowers form the insignificant green structures at the flower’s base.

Whilst I’ve discussed plant movements before in flowers – orchids’ flower buds, cyclamen seed heads, and viola seed heads spring to mind – in each of these cases, I can think of a rational functional reason for such a change in direction, or positioning, of a flower’s structure. But for the Hydrangea sepals, my mind has drawn a blank. Several differently worded google searches for more information on the subject, have proved equally unsuccessful. So, if any reader can supply some useful links on how, or why, Hydrangeas are busily flipping sepals, when most true flowers simply shed petals once the flowering period is over, then do let me know.

In the meantime, I hope that you just enjoy the pictures and, like me, think that this change, once noticed and appreciated, adds an additional charm to these plants, many of which have an oriental origin. (The changing faces of H. “Blaumeise” below).You can enjoy spectacular examples of many varieties of Hydrangeas, at the nearby gardens at both Aberglasney, Picton Castle and The National Botanic Garden of Wales. ( H. “Tiara”, below).

In the last post, I mentioned the Bombus pascuorum nest, which I’d come close to inadvertently damaging with the power scythe in our hay meadow. Since then the poor bumbles have had a torrid time. Twice more the bees had to rebuild their nest, after having it partially excavated by a nocturnal predator. In one case they toiled through a day of incessant drizzle tending damaged cells, and lastly combing over the mossy top. On one sunny morning they managed to complete this latter process in less than 3 hours.

Rather belatedly I opted to cover the nest with a metal grid tray. The bees fly through unhindered and it’s stopped the nest being damaged again, so I don’t think that a badger is responsible, since it could have easily shifted this.

This is the second nest I’ve come across this year. The first was located, rather inconveniently, beneath our large empty oil drum, used as a firewood kindling store. Once I was certain bee movements had ceased, after the colony had naturally come to the end of its lifespan, I rolled out the drum, to find the rudimentary nest beneath the far rim. Nothing like as large or sophisticated as honey bee combs, but nevertheless a functional system for rearing workers in our wet climate.

Last week saw me pausing from hay shifting, for a drink on the terrace, when a small insect alighted on the wooden table top. Vibrant, metallic turquoise, gold and red are unusual combinations, and I was wondering what it was, when it flew off. But fortunately, it returned a little later and hung around for long enough for me to nip in and grab a camera. What an amazingly beautiful insect – a parasitoid wasp, which was new to me, and perhaps, the garden.

At first (after a lot of googling) I thought it was Pseudomalus auratus – click here for more, but after contacting WWBIC, Kate passed my photo on to Ian Morgan, who kindly suggested it was Chrysis ignita, a ruby-tailed wasp. Click here for more on this species, which is a cuckoo wasp.To quote from the excellent review on Wikipedia:
Chrysidid wasps are parasitoids, meaning that their parasitic activity, in most cases, kills their hosts. Some species are also cleptoparasites, meaning that they also use the host species’ food supplies as resources to sustain themselves. Chrysis ignita is both a parasitoid and a cleptoparasite. The female wasp possesses a long, telescopic ovipositor, which evolved from the reduction of the usual Hymenopteran stinging apparatus. It uses this appendage to deposit its eggs inside the nest of the host wasp. The female ruby-tailed wasp will hide nearby, waiting for an ideal host. She will look for wasps that are in the process of digging burrows or dragging prey or bringing food back to their nests. She will then observe the nest until the host leaves, or hitch a ride on the prey, to slip in.

There are two basic strategies for parasitizing the host. In the first strategy, the wasp eats the host egg or host young larva as soon as it hatches and moves on to eating the food resources in the nest (cleptoparasitism). In the second strategy, the Chrysidid waits for the host larva to reach its prepupal stage, and it kills it after clearing the nest of food sources. Each strategy has its advantages. The second parasitoid strategy is generally utilized when the host wasp species is a nectar and pollen gatherer. These host wasps stock up their nests with food sources that contain nutrients the Chrysidid wasp cannot synthesize itself. Additionally, if the host mother wasp is able to accumulate enough food resources for both her kin and the host larva, the parasitoid wasp can remain undetected by not killing and eating its adopted siblings.

There are many other fascinating aspects to their natural history outlined in some detail on the Wikipedia link provided. Their extremely tough exoskeleton, beneath all those iridescent colours, (since they lack a sting), means that attempts by the “host” wasp to chew or sting it, sees the ruby-tail curling up into an impenetrable ball which resists all attacks. The host may then resort to rolling this ball out of the nest – where the ruby-tail will patiently wait, and then unroll and crawl back in at a later time. We certainly have lots of solitary bees in the garden now, so maybe I’ll get to glimpse another one of these colourful wasps in years to come.

September 2nd saw the annual Welsh fifteen moment easily surpassed, actually probably on September 1st, but we had no free time to observe, when there were more than 15 butterflies around the Buddleia. Two warm days with sunshine, saw an explosion of butterflies in the garden, probably well over a hundred, with Buddleia davidii, Sedum “Autumn Joy” and Eupatorium maculatum all favoured as nectar source plants.

Pristine Red admirals, Vanessa atalanta. Peacocks, Aglais io. and Small tortoiseshells, Aglais urticae, sharing flowers with many Painted ladies, Vanessa cardui.Most so unblemished, that I wondered whether they were local, second generation insects.

Always a delightful time in the garden, and one which confirms that although it looks like 2016 will be the gloomiest year here for a long time, the warmth and lack of rain has meant it hasn’t been as disastrous for garden butterflies as 2015.

If we hadn’t had so many butterflies suddenly appear, I wouldn’t have bothered to dead-head the Buddleia bushes. And if I hadn’t done that, I would have missed finding this stunning Cyclamen hederifolium, grown from scattered seed in the shrubbery and lurking in deep shade beneath a Weigela and Buddleia. I’ve never seen so many flower buds on a single tuber in the garden before, and can’t work out why – if it performs as well next year, I shall have to save lots of seed from it.