Well, my walk began today with a train ride. Bit of a cheat, but I wanted to get down to the south-western corner of Banstead Downs, an area that I don’t visit too often. So, I hopped onto the train at Belmont and got off one stop down the line at Banstead. Leaving the station and crossing the road I was straight onto Banstead Downs and walked home across the Downs from there.

The first thing I spotted was new growth of Cuckoo-pint / Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum) and in the same area a lot of the evergreen Hart’s-tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium), which I have not yet found elsewhere on the Downs.

Searching the underside of Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) leaves for any overwintering insects I found one leaf that had several broadly disc-shaped ‘attachments’ or growths along the mid-rib of the leaf. I lean towards ‘attachments’ as there are also several transverse marks on the mid-rib that may mark previous positions of these or other similar ‘attachments’. What are these attachments? I can’t really answer that, but a wild guess might be that these are overwintering female scale insects. I post the image in the hope that someone may have the answer.  

Some of the fallen and decaying branches displayed some rather prolific growth of Crimped Gill (Plicatura crispa) and it seemed that every other fallen trunk had growths of Jelly Ear fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae). Whilst Jelly Ear is known to occur on other deciduous tree species such as beech and sycamore it is usually found on Elder (Sambucus nigra).

Back on familiar territory along the western edge of the main grassland I came across a tree recently ‘freed’ after some major thicket clearing that had multiple types of lichen growing on its trunk. Most prominent of these are large whitish blotches of the aptly named Whitewash Lichen (Phlyctis argena).

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