Category: Friends

Four months without you.

Posted on by andy.winfield

It’s been four months without you, the visitors, students, University staff and members of the Garden; four months maintaining a Garden without volunteers, just each other and wildlife for company. Without doubt we’ve all missed you. Missed when the sun shines and people are walking around, some pointing some ambling with their hands behind their backs (also my own chosen method of garden viewing), some sitting with eyes closed feeling the warmth and listening to the chatter of birds around them.  On days like this we feel a sense of Gardening for a purpose, when visitors have had an hour away from their usual existence in the company of plants, or taken away new facts and knowledge about the plant world that they’ll forget until that pub quiz, or time has run away from them and its suddenly four o’clock; these all make our work worthwhile. The Garden was built for people to view and without people here it feels a little eerie.

The twining menace, bindweed.

What have we been doing except watching weeds pop up all over the place and stopping plants from wilting away in the driest spring on record? Well we tried to get the Garden to you as best we could with a series of short videos on our social media channels, and even a live tour during a monumental thunderstorm where Curator Nick Wray and I were absolutely soaked as the drought broke over our heads. We’ve also been having zoom tea breaks with volunteers which has been great; and our Friends have been receiving weekly enews about the garden and its plant collections to see them through the gardens closure. We’ve been firefighting in the Garden, stopping the spread of weeds. There had always been a tea break discussion, “in an apocalypse, which plants would dominate the Garden?” We’re now getting a small inkling that horsetail, enchanter’s nightshade and bindweed would create their own empirical pockets, perhaps a few border skirmishes before one begins a land grab, my money would be on bindweed.  We’ve kept them in check with weeding, but they’ll never give up!

So after four months without you we’re now building up to reopening the Garden, although it’s not so simple as just flinging the gates open. The University is a large institution with many schools, laboratories and departments each with different challenges and environments; every one of these spaces must be safe for the staff and the Garden is no different. There is a certification process that each department must pass before becoming COVID secure, and for us having members of the public passing through is an additional concern.

Then there is the question of staffing.  As many of you know we rely on volunteers; we have four gardeners, two trainees, two and a half admin staff and our Curator; added to this are over fifty gardening volunteers a week, three shifts a day for Welcome Lodge volunteers seven days a week, many volunteer guides and admin volunteers. We currently have no volunteers in the Garden at all and the admin staff are working at home; many volunteers are retired and some are in the vulnerable category for COVID risk and we wouldn’t want them here in harm’s way. Opening the Garden would move gardeners away from the horticulture and Admin staff away from supporting our educational courses in order to check tickets and monitor Garden capacity. This is something we will do, but understanding our situation hopefully will help you realise the challenges we face with reopening. It’s for this reason that to begin with we won’t be opening at weekends, purely for staffing reasons. One more change will be that the Glasshouses won’t be open initially; the humidity that causes so many tiny water droplets in the air is good for the plants but also perfect for an airborne virus. This will be the case until the danger is over.

So, in short, we’ve missed you and we want you back, but it will be different this time. We’ll be open but it won’t be business as usual, but nothing has been normal this year; be patient as we look to reopen and keep an eye on our social media and website for news of the unlocking of our gates.

The 10th Bee and Pollination Festival!

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Alice Maltby

So much is happening in the exciting world of pollinators at the moment. Even wasps have employed a new public relations team to promote their cause! Their key message is sacrifice a bit of your picnic to save the planet! One of the best news stories this year was that even though Notre Dame suffered that terrible fire, the bees in the three hives on the roof were unharmed.

2019’s Bee and Pollination Festival takes place this weekend (Saturday 31st August and Sunday 1st September_will be the best ever. Now in its tenth year the event has become an important feature in the south west’s horticultural, beekeeping and wildlife calendar. (more…)

Look out for the early bumblebee…they’re emerging now!

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Alida Robey

I am always so impressed and uplifted when I see the first bees out, braving the cold and wind to forage in the spring sunshine. The buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) braves the winter, emerging on fine winter days to forage, but another species that you are likely to see right now is the ‘early bumblebee’ or Bombus pratorum.

The early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum).
Photo credit: S. Rae [via Flickr CC by 2.0]

How to tell one stripy buzzing creature from another

Being larger and hairier than honey bees, bumblebees in general have a bit more protection to cope with colder weather conditions, giving them an advantage when it comes to foraging in the early spring. The early bumblebee is common throughout Britain from March until June or July, and in milder parts of the south of England, as early as February.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has a very good identification chart and video guide to help distinguish different bumblebee species. When trying to distinguish between species of bee, size, tail colour and stripes are the features to look at. Bombus pratorum is noticeably smaller in size than other bee foragers at work in the spring. Queens, workers and males have a yellow band on the thorax and abdomen, though the band across the abdomen is less obvious or sometimes absent in workers.

The tail is a strikingly dark orange-red, but can be tricky to see as this colouring is only in the final tail section and may also fade with time. Males have a broad yellow collar that wraps around the thorax, and yellow hair on the face.

The bee’s choice of diet

The early bumblebee is a  good pollinator of flowers and fruit, enjoying in particular white clover, thistles, sage, lavender, Asteraceae, cotoneaster, alliums and a range of daisy type flowers; it is also an important pollinator of soft fruit, such as raspberries and blackberries.

Habitat and lifecycle 

B. pratorum’s nesting period is shorter than other bumblebees at just 14 weeks. Queens are fertilised in late summer and then usually go into hibernation. They will emerge from hibernation between March and May depending on the climate in that location and find a place to make their nest. However, because of their short nesting period, they can have two or even three colonies a year in the warmer, southern regions of the UK; new queens mate and, instead of hibernating, immediately start a nest.

At the start of a colony cycle, the queen has a large store of food, which allows her to start laying her eggs to produce workers and foragers who will then gather all the supplies she needs in order to remain in the nest and continue to lay eggs. As the colony cycle nears its end, she will produce more queens before dying herself, allowing the young queens to take up the cycle for the next spring. These young queens will go out to forage for themselves and return to the nest for shelter, but they don’t contribute to the dying colony. When they are ready to mate, the young queens follow the scent of chemical attractants deposited by males. The old colony dies off, with B. pratorum rarely seen after July in the UK,  and so the cycle continues for another season.

The early bumblebee is known for nesting in unusual places such as abandoned bird boxes or rodent nests or just under the ground. Colonies are small at less than 100 workers.

Cuckoos

The bumblebee is no more immune than other creatures to being taken advantage of. Of the 24 bumblebee species in the UK, 6 are ‘cuckoo bees’, which don’t make their own nests, but rather kill off the queen in another nest and get the worker bees to raise her larvae. It is the species Bombus sylvestris, which is a nest parasite of the early bumblebee.

Buzz Pollination

I was intrigued to hear this term, describing a process unique to bees, whereby they catch hold of a flower and by emitting a high pitched buzz shake free the pollen trapped inside (watch a video here). I had also often wondered if bees had any way of knowing whether others had raided the pollen stores before them. It turns out that they have smelly feet that leave a distinctive odour on flowers, which indicates to other bees that the supplies have been raided.

What can we do to help?

As you will know, our pollinators are in decline not just in the UK, but globally.  I was saddened to learn that two species of bumblebee have become extinct in the UK since 1900 – Cullums bumblebee (Bombus cullumanus) and the short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus). Having lost 97% of wildflower-rich grasslands, we can take action to plant the flowers that are rich in pollen and nectar and therefore of most benefit to bees – some flowers, like pansies, and most double flowers may look pretty, but are of little benefit to bees.

Then there is the whole issue of pesticides. Neonicotinoids, used in some pesticides, are lethally toxic and infiltrate every aspect of the plants systemically – one teaspoon of neonicotinoids is enough to give a lethal dose to one and a quarter billion bees. Professor Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex and a bee expert, has been on a mission to see how widespread the use of these pesticides are as plants with a ‘Bee-friendly’ label may have been treated with these pesticides before being put on the shelves of the plant nursery.

Splitting and sharing plants and growing from seed can help ensure the plant hasn’t been exposed to these pesticides – it’s another thing we can do as gardeners to help these valiant and much-assailed vital workers in the garden. Also, as a Friend of the University of Bristol Botanic Garden, you have a unique opportunity to grow special plants from seed collected at the garden!

Another fun way you can help is to take part in The Great British Bee Count using an app developed by Friends of the Earth and which will be running again this year from 19 May – 30 June 2017. This is an initiative to help monitor the numbers of the different bee species found
in the UK.  You can see the results of last year’s survey and access various educational resources on their website.

Alida Robey has a small gardening business in Bristol. For several years in New Zealand she worked with others to support projects to establish composting on both domestic and a ‘city-to-farm’ basis.

Floral visits to the western Mediterranean

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Helen Roberts

A floral excursion to the western Mediterranean at this time of year appeals to many of us. The anticipation of warm weather, beautiful landscapes and a dizzyingly diverse range of exquisite wild flowers and I want to pack my bags in a flash. I certainly felt that way when I saw some of the images of the region’s wild flowers in a recent Friends‘ talk given by botanist Dr Chris Thorogood.
However, if you cannot escape overseas, then the Mediterranean collection at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden will give you a taste of some of the Mediterranean Basin species although you will have to wait till later in the year to see some of the flowers in bloom. 
If you do have a trip in mind though, here are a few of Chris Thorogood’s favourite spots to see the wild flowers of the western Mediterranean:
Cape St Vincent, Portugal. Photo courtesy of Peter Broster via
Flickr [CC license]

The Algarve, Portugal:

This area has a diverse flora due to varied geology and weather with numerous endemic species and beautiful wild flower meadows. Cape St Vincent, the most south-westerly point in the area and a vast nature reserve, has a spectacular display of flowers in the spring and early summer (January through to the end of May). There are many unique species of thyme and endemic rarities like the tiny diamond flower (Ionopsidium acaule).

Almeria, Spain:

This province is located in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula and has a wealth of species adapted to cope with extremely dry conditions. Many plants are salt tolerant including sea lavenders like Limoniuminsigne and the rare low growing lily, Androcymbium europaeum whose flowers emerge on sand dunes in mid winter. An area called Cabo de Gata, an impressive tract of volcanic cliffs, is host to numerous unusual species. Many of these are freakishly odd looking from the succulent Caralluma europaea with its purple and yellow striped flowers to the phallic form of the parasitic Cynomorium coccineum.

Cap de Formentor, Mallorca:

This peninsula in the northeast of the island has many unique sea lavenders and orchids. Endemics are closely dotted only metres apart. Much of the landscape is fairly inaccessible due to its rocky and precipitous nature so one needs to be fairly adventurous to spot some species. Notable endemic species include Arum pictum, an arum that smells of rotten meat to attract its fly pollinators and a species of St John’s Wort unique to Mallorca, Hypericum balearicum.

Maremma, Southern Tuscany, Italy:

The Maremma region is rich in wild flowers and contains 25% of all Italian flora. It has a unique geology and extremely varied landscapes including the protected coast, swathes of pine forest and abandoned agricultural plains. The giant fennel, Ferula communis, is one such distinctive plant with its towering inflorescences that can take many years to develop.

Gargano National Park, Puglia, Italy:

The yellow bee orchid (Ophrys lutea) is one of the orchid
species found in Gargano National Park.
Photo credit: Alastair Rae [via Flickr, CC license]
This park has a unique flora and are highly specialised for growing in certain conditions many being endemic. The park covers a vast area and as a result the landscapes are varied from rich beech forests, steep cliffs, karstic plateaus and scrubby maquis. There are many orchid
species here (over 65) including some unique bee orchids.

Helen Roberts is a trained landscape architect with a background in plant sciences. She is a probationary member of the Garden Media Guild and a regular contributor to the University of Bristol Botanic Garden blog.