Exactly 2 weeks since my last walk on the Downs. My wife and I have been away for a while. What a difference in 2 weeks. Summer is gone and with it most of the insects.

I walked for an hour, much needed exercise after the short holiday, and my tally of insects was –

Butterflies – ZERO, Moths – 1 unidentified, Bees – 1 Common Carder Bee, Wasps – 2 Common Wasp, Hoverfies – 1 unidentified, plus numerous small midges/gnats/mosquitoes swarming around my head. Not getting September off to a great start even if it is mid-month already.

Forget new flowers, with the arrival of autumn the focus is now on fruits and seeds. The haws on the Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) are well on the way to fully ripe, as are the dogberries on the Common Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea). So too are the berries on European Privet (Ligustrum vulgare) and the rosehips on Dog Rose (Rosa canina).

Apples are way beyond ripe and already line the paths, starting to rot. Whether these are true crab apples (Malus sylvestris) or a cross with a domestic apple I don’t know. The Woodland Trust provides more information on the Crab Apple.

Nature note for the day

The ‘berries’ of dogwood and privet are not berries at all. Superficially they look like elderberries, which are true berries, but like holly berries they are drupes, having a fleshy outer layer surrounding a stone containing a single seed. So botanically they are like cherries, peaches, plums and olives. Don’t let their similarity to elderberries fool you. Both are inedible, with dogberry mildly toxic and privet berries highly poisonous.

Haws and rosehips, on the contrary, are both edible after cooking. They are both pectin-rich so make good jams and jellies. Botanically, though, neither is a berry. Nor are they drupes. Similar to drupes they are pomes, which contain multiple seeds, so like apples and pears.

The full botanical explanation of what constitutes drupes, pomes, berries, aggregate fruits – the list goes on – is way beyond my comprehension. I’ll just stick to the much more common terms like berries, fruits and seeds. For those that may want to delve a little deeper start with Wikipedia.

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