It is the time of year when reserve officer’s thoughts turn to invasive plants, yes we can be a bit boring like that! Anyway after weeks of building tern rafts today the volunteers had a walk along the Dockens Water to look for Himalayan balsam. This plant used to dominate long stretches of the stream shading out other species but several years of pulling it up is showing real dividends, it is not gone, but for long stretches there is little or none to be found now. The seed are only viable for two or three years so pulling it up before it flowers for this time should have seen it gone, but a few always seem to hide away and get missed, so it never quiet disappears.
Although the balsam has got much rarer it is noticeable that we are seeing more of another invasive alien plant, the pink purslane, this time hailing from North America. Hopefully it will not become as much of a problem as the balsam, but we are pulling it up, just in case it has plans for a take over!
pink purslane
We came across a few other plants that do not belong, highlighting that garden plants are getting thrown out and establishing themselves all the time and, probably some of them will become invasive in time. One of the new ones today was star of Bethlehem, I doubt this will become a problem, but you never know and every garden escape is growing where a native plant could have been, so in a small way they all impact upon out native flora.
There should have been a picture of star of Bethlehem here , but it would not load!
Of course alien plants do not just impact upon other plants, they also reduce the native plants available for insects and other species to feed upon. Plants support lots of other wildlife, often specific to single species, native plants support a native fauna. By contrast alien plants tend to support a range of species that live in that plant’s native range and usually do not occur here. Some alien species will support some of our native fauna, but usually not much, which is why they do so well, there is not much eating them!
The warm sunshine today did bring out quite a few insect, I actually saw two species of dragonflies for the first time this year, which just shows how slow the season has been so far. The species were broad-bodied chaser and downy emerald. I did not get pictures of either of them though, but I did get one of a snail-killing fly,
snail-killing fly
and a weevil.
weevil
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 
You probably know that Purslane leaves are edible and full of Vitamins. Could you not harvest them for visitors?
I confess I did not, although there are lots of different plants that go by the name “purslane” so I would want to be sure the one I was dealing with was an edible one before I tried it.
Isnt the weevil beautiful! I walked around the sculpture lake day before yesterday and noticed the Wiegela shrub, a garden Asian escapee? near the fish sculpture. Was also pleased to be told from a local that the Whitethroat female I had photographed from the woodland hide, collecting insects from under the nettle leaves there, was an unusual sight in that location. Personally only usually get to see them, like other warblers, flash across the path in front of you and play hide and seek with you for ages in the bush until you give up!