Bracken fiddleheads and fungi

An email came through recently asking if I had any dried bracken for sale. Did you mean the photo of dried bracken - on the right? No, yer actual dried bracken! And what colour is it after boiling? Stupid here actually went and collected some dead bracken and tried boiling it - made a terrible smell in the kitchen.

After applying a brain cell, I looked up bracken and found that the tightly furled young bracken shoots are called fiddleheads - so called because they each look like the scroll at the top of a fiddle/violin. Now, fiddleheads are edible apparently, provided you boil them long enough - that's a project to try in spring. (Fiddleheads would be a great name for a band - and sure enough, it is the name of a band! Or two...)

Round here, bracken is viewed as bit of a pain, as it is poisonous to some animals - and tends to squash the small saplings that the RSPB have planted out round Haweswater. However it is harvested commercially by the local Dalefoot Composts to make various composts - I added their use and link to the bracken wikipedia entry.

On my stomp to get some bracken, I came across some nice fungi on Knipe Scar, in particular what I think is Golden Spindles Clavulinopsis fusiformis. Here are some others I photographed but not identified:

Earlier in the week in the Naddle oak woods, I saw a nice Hen of the Woods fungus and what I think is Moasaic Puffball as we collected acorns:

Westmorland Damsons for sale

We have limited supplied of Westmorland Damsons for sale at our gate for £1.50 per lb.

These damsons make excellent jam, though it is hard work de-stoning the mixture. 5 or 6 lb of damsons makes about 12 standard jars of jam.

We were given suckers from Lyth Valley damsons several years ago. We have tended our five trees without chemicals, with occasional pruning. The trees suffer from Pocket Plum disease (also known as Bent Banana!) so we pick this infected fruit off mid-summer and now in Autumn during picking. Some view this disease as a useful means of reducing the load on the tree so the crop quality is better. We may have some spare suckers.

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Nature update: moths, beetles and wasp

The first moth reports are in our back garden, near trees, wild areas and grassland. * means new for here
Various other moths still need to be identified from these nights.
Will add photos at some point.

1 August 2009 overnight
Yellow underwings, Muslin footman, 2 x ?wainscot*, 2x Map-winged swift, Gold spot, Burnished brass, Clay, Common plume, Antler, Twin-spot carpet*, Riband wave*, Scalloped Oak*

5 August 2009 late evening
Brimstone, Antler, Yellow underwings, Dark arches, Silver Y, Muslin footman, Snout, Flame carpet, Common footman, Riband wave

7 August 2009 overnight
Sexton beetle (Nicrophorous investigator)*
Yellow underwings, 3 x Antler, Dark arches, Burnished brass, Common footman, Barred straw, Muslin footman, Barred red*, Rosy minor*, Tawny speckled pug*, Twin-spot carpet*

16 August 2009 briefly late evening
Sexton beetle
Large yellow underwing, Silver Y, Flame carpet, 4 x Common carpet, micro: possibly Eudonia mercurella*

Tarn Hows moth evening, 12 August 2009 late evening
At the Butterfly Conservation Society event at the National Trust visitor centre car park at Tarn Hows, quite a few carpets were identified, including (provisionally?) the rare Yellow-ringed carpet. Also nice Phoenix and Small phoenix, Square spot rustic, Green carpet, Common carpet, Flame carpet, Snout and Dark marbled carpet. Unfortunately we didn't see the rare Netted carpet which might have been nearby.

Burnbanks, 12 August 2009
We saw a digger wasp in a picnic table, carrying in paralysed flies. The only one that we could find listed that digs in wood is Ectemnis cavifran.