#viper's bugloss

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Thursday 11 July 2024

On the free draining growing conditions of the shingle beach in Deal, Kent, the Echium vulgare (viper's bugloss) was flowering and attracting pollinating insects. This native biennial grows in bare soil on short grassland, on heathland and on more disturbed habitats such as cultivated land, railways and roadsides, cliffs, and sand dunes. The plant has a deep and persistent root which allows it to exploit free draining, drought prone land.

Jill Raggett

[unkn0wnvariable]

Lots of Bugloss

Rich blues of viper's bugloss, flowering in the grasslands at RSPB Fen Drayton Lakes.

[mothmiso]

2019 Morawy (2) (3) (4) by Aleksander Witosz

[greencheekconure27]

[drhoz]

The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 - North Island Volcanic Plateau

Strictly speaking the Taupō caldera complex is just one part of the volcanic plateau covering much of central North Island, which also includes ash deserts, crater lakes, lava plateaus, the Ōkataina caldera complex, and the Tongariro Volcanic Centre. It's very active - Mount Ngauruhoe for example, is a beautifully cone-shaped stratovolcano 2,291 m tall, and less than 2500 years old. In fact the plateau is currently the most frequently active and productive area of silicic volcanism on Earth.

You might also recognise it as Mt Doom from the LOTR films.

In 1974 a champion skier (and presumed lunatic) by the name of Jean-Claude Killy skied down the side of Ngauruhoe you can see here, as part of a promotional campaign for Moët & Chandon. He hit well over 100kph. And he was doing this while the volcano was erupting.

Mount Ruapehu, south of Ngauruhoe, is also active, but is also the site of the North Island's only glaciers and major ski resorts. The eruptions have certainly been deadly, but most of the fatalities occured on Christmas Eve 1953 when the tephra dam constraining the crater lake collapsed and sent a landslide of mud, rock and water down the Whangaehu River minutes before an express train came through.

In 2007 two climbers nearly drowned on top of the mountain, when they took shelter in an alpine hut 600m from the crater, and an underwater eruption in the crater lake drove a surge 2km from the crater. Luckily for them the floor gave way and the water drained into the seismometer vault beneath the hut. One of the mountaineers still had a leg crushed by boulders in the debris.

East of the volcanoes is Te Onetapu, also known as the Rangipo Desert. It gets a decent amount of rain and occasionally heavy snow, but doesn't hold onto any of it because the entire area is thickly buried in unconsolidated ash and other volcanic debris and it immeadiately drains away.

It also doesn't have any trees to speak of, because the supervolcano eruptions at Lake Taupo 26,000 years ago carbonised every living thing in the area, including the seeds, and the ecosystem is still recovering. Forests on the western side of Ruapehu were partly shielded by the height of the volcano, and survived.

While @purrdence spent a few hours at the military museum south of the desert, I drove back up the road and went looking for insects. Some were abundant, like the Tiger Beetles, but they amazingly frustrating to photograph, taking off and being whisked away by the wind the moment I came near. Or being chased off, sometimes in flight, by the aforementioned ravenous beetles. At least the plants stayed in one spot, and the bumblebee was enthralled by the blue paintjob of the car.

[crudlynaturephotos]

[speepybees]

details from my niagara gorge hike :3

[eighteenbelow]

[benshanti]

[steffiandcesar-photography]

[dansnaturepictures]

19th August 2024: Thistle, view with an interesting sky on a great day for it, bindweed, hogweed and red bartsia and fleabane on walks at Lakeside Country Park, another interesting scene with the sun this morning looking vivid due to the smoke from the North American wildfires travelling across this Atlantic and Lesser Black-backed Gull out the back this afternoon.

House Martins, Green Woodpecker, Great Crested Grebes with incredibly the pair that have produced two sets of chicks this year on eggs again, Moorhen, Small Heath, Meadow Brown, pineappleweed, teasel seed heads, alfalfa, hogweed, purple loosestrife, viper's-bugloss, plantain and rowan, hawthorn and guelder rose berries were other highlights today.

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Sunday 7 April 2024

In this sunny, sheltered courtyard the biennial Echium pininana (giant viper's bugloss) was getting ready to flower. This plant from the Canary Islands forms a low rosette of silver, hairy leaves in the first year, and then in the second year it sends up a huge spike covered with small blue flowers.

Jill Raggett

[unkn0wnvariable]

Viper's Bugloss

The frothy blue and pink flowers of viper's-bugloss, out in the afternoon sun at RSPB Fen Drayton Lakes.

[mothmiso]

Spreewald 2013 (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) by Achim

[greencheekconure27]

[drhoz]

#1899 - Echium vulgare - Viper’s Bugloss

Another plant spread around the world as an ornamental, but this one might have spread up to Lake Takapō by itself - it’s certainly become invasive in other parts of the world including north-eastern North America, south-western South America. This borage has been naturalised in New Zealand since at least 1870, but was originally native to Europe, and Western and Central Asia.

Other names include blueweed. The Viper part of the common name derives from the shape of the seeds - Greek physician Dioscorides noted a resemblance between the shape of the nutlets to a viper’s head - but the plant has also been used to treat viper bites. Not that the treatment actually worked, but the Doctrine of Signatures led to a lot of dubious medicine like that.

The related and similar E. plantagineum is even more invasive. Variously known as Lady Campbell weed, Riverina bluebell, and purple viper's bugloss. In Australia it’s also known as Salvation Jane and Patterson’s Curse, both name supposedly after one Jane Paterson or Patterson, an early settler near Albury, who brought the first seeds from Europe to beautify a garden, and then watched the weed infest previously productive pastures for many miles around. Echium vulgare is now a dominant broadleaf pasture weed through much of New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania and also infests native grasslands, heathlands, and woodlands. We certainly get it here in Western Australia too, where I noted it as a rather pretty plant that I suspected was an escaped ornamental. I was right. 

Patterson’s Curse can be used as fodder in bad summers - hence the Salvation name - but not if anything else is available. It’s toxic to mammals (especially horses) through the accumulation of pyrrolizidine alkaloids in the liver, and can irritate the skin. Unfortunately bad summers are when the seeds spread fastest, attached to fur or in transported fodder. Both species thrive in disturbed environments, producing huge amounts of seed. 

In Australia, biocontrols have been introduced in an attempt to control E. plantagineum.  These include the leaf-mining moth Dialectica scalariella, the root weevil Mogulones geographicus, the crown weevil Mogulones larvatus, and the flea beetle Longitarsus echii. The latter two are proving quite effective.