Help frogs, toads and newts with a garden pond

A pair of Common Frogs 

Do you like frogs? I do and have done since I was a little boy. In my childhood days, tadpoles were a common sight in ponds in parks, gardens and in fields in the countryside but sadly that is not the case today.

Most amphibians are presently under threat with fast declining populations. Habitat loss, pollution, pesticides and herbicides, Climate Change, deaths caused by traffic on roads, and the chytrid fungus are all taking a heavy toll. So we all need to do what we can to help in the conservation of frogs, toads, newts and salamanders.

Most amphibians need water to breed in. They gather in ponds, lakes, canals and wherever they can find enough freshwater suitable for their needs. This means that if you have a garden then you can make a significant contribution in helping the local populations of frogs, toads and newts by having a garden pond.

Ely

When I lived on the Ely estate in Cardiff I made a pond using an old bath that someone had thrown away. It had been thrown out and into a rubbish skip in the street I lived in but I saw a use for it so salvaged it. I dug a big enough hole in the lawn area of my back garden and put the bath in place. I got a plug to stop water getting out, filled it up, added some large rocks so that anything that fell in could climb back out, and got some water plants from a local pond.

Common Frogs

Within just a few years I had a thriving colony of Common Frogs (Rana temporia) and Palmate Newts (Lissotriton helveticus) using the home I had given them as a place to breed. It was wonderful seeing them gather there each spring. I know my efforts inspired others to have a go too because as many as four families in Ely that I know and that knew about my conservation efforts, now have ponds in their back gardens, all of which have frogs and newts breeding in them.

Pond in my friend Jane's garden

If I could achieve this with just an old bathtub, think what can be done with a proper pond! You can buy ready-made pools from garden centres or create a pond using waterproof sheeting to line it.  The bigger the pond you make the better it is for attracting and supporting amphibian species.  


Great Crested Newt
In the UK, the very rare and endangered Great Crested Newt (Triturus cristatus) only uses very big ponds or lakes, and the Common Toad (Bufo bufo) also likes larger sources of freshwater to breed in.

Having a pond in your back garden is likely to attract pretty Dragonfly species as well. The larvae or nymphs of these insects are predators and will eat tadpoles and baby newts but no need to worry about that. There will probably be too many this is nature’s way of keeping the balance.

A pond becomes a place that will provide a focal point in your garden and is a real help in the conservation of amphibians and other aquatic and semi-aquatic wildlife. Why not get a good book on Backyard Wildlife and find out what else you can do to create you very own nature reserve?

Find out how to build a frog pond here at the Save the Frogs website. 


Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Butterfly gardening means the right flowers and food plants too

Monarch butterflies reared on a balcony

Everyone loves to see pretty butterflies in their gardens and flying around wherever they live or travel to but sadly very many species are dropping in numbers fast.  Habitat destruction, pesticides and herbicides, as well as Climate Change are all taking their toll.

Fortunately many people who want to help with the conservation of nature and to do their bit, are getting interested in gardening for butterflies. This is a wonderful idea because these beautiful insects need all the help they can get.

A lot of people think that having plenty of colourful flowers and flowering trees and shrubs like the Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) will help, and this is true, up to a point. You see, whilst it is vitally important to provide nectar-bearing flowers for the adult butterflies to get their food from, we also need to provide food plants for the mother butterflies to lay their eggs on. If this is done it can work very well because the butterflies that have been attracted to your garden because of the flowers, will stick around to lay their eggs if they can see the right food plants also growing there.

If the right plants are grown in sufficient quantities you may well end up with an ongoing breeding population of various types of butterfly in your own garden. In the UK, Europe, North America and other countries where Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica) grow, having a clump of this plant growing in your garden is a wonderful help to the butterflies because many species have caterpillars that feed on it.  For example, the Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae), Peacock (Inachis io) and Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) butterflies all use the Stinging Nettle as a food plant.

Red Admiral at rest

In countries where the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) lives these magnificent insect can be attracted and encouraged to breed by simply planting any of the many species of Asclepias that can be easily obtained by searching on the Internet, or maybe from a garden centre near where you live.  Here in Tenerife the Scarlet Milkweed or Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) is the species that is grown in gardens and parks here.  The easiest way to get seeds is to buy them on Amazon. If you don’t have garden even just a balcony or terrace will do, if you cultivate the plant in pots. I managed to have as many as 50 adult butterflies emerge in the same week after the caterpillars had fed on Milkweed I had grown on my balcony.

Monarch caterpillars

If you have a wild part of your garden then make sure you leave plenty of grass to grow in it. You may be surprised to know that there are very many of the Brown butterfly family (Satyrinae), such as the Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina) and the Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus), that come into this category.  The Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria) is another butterfly in this group with a caterpillar that feeds on grasses.

Blue butterflies often like grassy lawns that are allowed to have wild flowers growing in them. Birds-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) is the food plant for some species of these pretty little butterflies. 

Here in Tenerife the African Grass Blue (Zizeeria knysna) has actually benefited from the lawns that people have in gardens and for hotels and other resort developments.  This is because these lawns often have the weed White Clover (Trifolium repens) growing amongst the grass and their caterpillars can feed on this plant as well as on Oxalis species.

White Clover patch that supports a colony of African Grass Blue butterflies

And of course it is not just butterflies that need the right food plants for their caterpillars because moths too need specific plants for their larvae to feed on.  If you really want to help the butterflies and moths in your area it is a good idea to get a good insect book that will tell you what each species needs and then to cultivate these plants in your garden.

Good luck with your efforts at butterfly gardening and I hope you end up seeing far more of these beautiful creatures where you live! 

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Discovering the Kei Apple

Kei Apple. Photo by Steve Andrews

How I discovered the Kei Apple

I first came upon the Kei Apple whilst wandering around the El Botanico gardens in Puerto de la Cruz on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. I didn’t know it by name then but needed to find out what it was. I was accompanied by my friend Gill and both of us were suddenly struck by a wonderful fruity aroma that filled the warm air. 

We discovered that it was coming from a tree very near to where we were in the gardens. Its branches were laden with fruit and some had fallen on to the ground below. These fruit were golden yellow and reminded me of small apples.

Of course I picked one up and smelled the amazing aroma. I decided to take it home with me in order to see if I could identify it online and find out more about this tree and whether the fruit were edible. They certainly smelled like they should be! I made a note of the Latin name which was Dovyalis caffra that luckily was on a label underneath the tree.

 

More about the Kei Apple

The Kei Apple, which is what the tree we had found was, is actually named after the River Kei in South Africa. This is where the tree grows in the wild and its range also extends up into the neighbouring African region of Tanzania. The Kei Apple is perhaps not commonly known as an edible fruit but the tree has nevertheless been introduced into many subtropical parts including countries bordering the Mediterranean, and the States of Florida and California in the south of the US.

The Kei Apple belongs to the Flacourtiaceae family and the tree is also known as the Umkokola. I think Kei Apple is easier to remember though so that will do for me.

 A small evergreen tree, the Kei Apple has branches covered and protected by spines and it reaches some 6-9 metres in height. It is excellent for use as a hedge when pruned, and this is why it was originally brought to Australia. It is well suited to a hot and dry climate being both drought and salt resistant

The Kei Apple has both male and female trees. They have very small flowers in the axils of the tree’s leaves. According to Wikipedia, some female trees are actually parthenogenetic and can produce fruit without being fertilized with the male tree’s pollen in the usual way. Kei apples can be produced in such great numbers tha they actually weigh down the branches of their parent tree.

The Kei Apple is most often grown from seed, and several of these are produced in each fruit. They can be propagated by taking hardwood cuttings. However, Kei Apple saplings take around four years before they are at a size where they can flower and bear fruit of their own.

The Kei Apple is often cultivated as an ornamental tree for parks and gardens. Its pleasantly aromatic fruit contain vitamin C and although they are edible they are very acidic and are too sour for many people’s palates.

Jams and Jellies

Kei Apples can, however, be used to make delicious jams and jellies, or as an ingredient in chutneys. The apples can be eaten raw but, as already noted, many people find they taste far too sharp. Sugar or honey can, of course, be used to sweeten the fruit.

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Winter drought on Mt Teide. January 2012

Tenerife is still suffering an ongoing drought having not had anywhere near the normal rainfall last autumn or in  the winter months. The island depends on the storms that normally occur at these seasons to fill up the reservoirs and small number of ponds and to soak the ground so the plants can all grow. It simply didn't happen this time around.

Here I am filmed up on Mt Teide, the highest mountain in Spain, in January 2012, talking about the terrible state of the highland vegetation there. Much of it was dying or dead and crumbled to dust in your hands.




The media here for some unknown reason failed to report on this climatic disaster until over a month later. People I spoke to that live on the island thought I was making too much of a big deal about this. They told me it would rain in February and all would be OK. It didn't!

My report on the unusual winter drought was published in Tenerife News, making me, as far as I know, the first serious news report on the subject. Since then a few other news stories have gone out about the problem. It is sad that it is the worst winter drought in 50 years.

Apparently sometimes you get no rain or very little in the autumn and early part of the winter but then in the New Year the thunderstorms arrive and make good for the lack of rain until then. It is very unusual for there to be no rain in the autumn followed by none in the winter too!  This is a very serious problem, not only for farmers, but also for much of the varied and unique flora and fauna of the island of Tenerife.

Because Mt Teide is so high the rain falls as snow up there. It is usually capped in gleaming white from November onwards, sometimes as late as may of the following year but not this time. The one place you can normally count on having a White Christmas in the Canary Islands didn't have one, and visitors to Tenerife over the winter months did not get to see the majestic mountain arrayed in a white mantle that can be seen easily from the windows of planes approaching the island.

The unique, and in some cases, very rare plants that grow high on Mt Teide may well be drought resistant to cope with the extreme climatic conditions experienced up there but they are not adapted to withstand drought for this length of time. They normally get a very hot and dry spell in the summer but this is followed by autumn rains that help to rejuvenate them but sadly these rains never came.

 Ponds in the village of Erjos that usually fill up in autumn and winter with enough water to carry them through the summer months did not get their seasonal top up. These ponds, which form a unique wildlife haven for water birds, frogs and aquatic insects such as dragonflies and water-beetles, were drying up as early as March. Even tough vegetation like brambles that grow around the ponds have suffered very badly and are dried up and gone brown in the heat. Where tadpoles could normally be seen in large numbers a cracked and barren expanse of dried mud baking in the sun meets the eye.

It is impossible to say how badly hit the wildlife of the island has been by this drought and we can only hope and pray for some equally very unusual summer rainfall, and as much as possible is wanted, if not by the tourists, but by the farmers and the animals and plants that live on the island.

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Edible plants: Mallow

Tree Mallow

Many people today are becoming increasingly interested in foraging and finding out what edible plants are out there that we can safely gather. There are many books and videos on the subject available and anyone that knows much about the subject would I am sure agree that it is vitally important to be able to identify the plants you can eat and to avoid those you cannot. There are wild flowers out there that can make you very sick and some that can actually kill you. So this is why identification of an edible species is so important.  Fortunately there are many common plants that are very easy to find and that are difficult to mistake for poisonous ones. The Mallows come into the common and safe to eat category.

Marshmallows are very popular sweets but what you probably don't know is that they are named after a wild flower, the roots of which were once used to make a confection. Actually many plants in the Mallow family (Malvaceae) are edible and many have properties that make them useful in herbal medicine too.

The leaves of the Common Mallow can be cooked like spinach greens and the flowers are edible, as are the roots that ban be boiled and eaten. Most plants in the Mallow family can be eaten and some have been used in recipes in different parts of the world. The leaves cook well in soups and stews and because they contain vitamins and minerals are a nutritious ingredient to add.

You can find out more about plants to forage for here: Edible plants for foragers

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Edible plants: Fennel

Fennel in bloom

Fennel with its aniseed aroma and feathery foliage has got to be one of my favourite herbs. It grows wild in Tenerife in many places too and I can't pass by a clump of the plant without being able to resist eating some of its fresh leaves or the very tasty seeds. I simply cannot end up crushing some of it up in my hand and inhaling the wonderful perfume. I love Fennel!

Fennel is one of many common wild flowers that is edible and nutritious. It is a herb that foragers would look out for. Of course, when gathering wild plants to eat or use in herbal medicine it is vitally important to be able to identify those that are safe to consume. There are some plants out there that can make us very sick and some that can be lethal. Some relatives on the Fennel in the Apiaceae or Parsley family come into this dangerous category. Fools Parsley and Hemlock are tow of the deadly ones.  Fortunately Fennel is very easy to identify. It has a distinctive aroma that poisonous plants that look a bit like it do not have. That is one way of checking if you have found a true Fennel: crush some of the leaves or flowers and see if there is a pleasant perfume that reminds you of Anise.

Fennel grows on waste ground, in grassy places and by the sea. It is often found in large clumps and its fine feathery foliage and tall flowering stems are what to look out for.

You can read more here: Edible plants: Fennel

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Frogs need saving too

I have loved frogs ever since I was a little boy so the news that they are disappearing is very sad to hear. Fortunately a charity has been set up in America called Save The Frogs, and as its name suggests, it is all about frog and amphibian conservation.
As many as a third of the frog species in the world are endangered and some types have already become extinct. The frogs are dying out due to a combination of lack of habitat, water pollution, a deadly chytrid fungus disease, predation by invasive species, over-collection by humans and Climate Change. Pesticides and herbicides like Atrazine and Roundup are taking a heavy toll. Many frogs get run over by heavy traffic on roads that the animals have to cross to get to and from their spawning sites.
It is really sad to know that these amazing animals are dying out in many places, often due to human behaviour that is destroying the habitat of these amphibians. Conservationists are working on saving the frogs but a worldwide effort is really needed.
All children love to see tadpoles and to watch the amazing transformation into tiny froglets. Frog spawn and tadpoles used to be such a normal thing to see in ponds in parks, gardens and the countryside but sadly this is no longer the case in many places. Something must be done to give the little creatures their chance at survival.

Find out more here about what you can do to help: Frogs need saving too

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.