Crab-apple picking

Walking through Finsbury Park yesterday I noticed two beautiful crab apple trees, their leaves all shed but with the jewel like fruits still hanging in profusion. Below these small trees grey squirrels were frantically gathering the hard, crimson apples. They are perfect apples in every way but cherry sized, bullet hard and sour, you wouldn’t want to eat one no matter how seductive they look.

If you make a jelly of the fruit however, that is another matter. These pictures were taken last year, when Richard and I gathered three bowls full from his mothers tree. There were so many fruits that it took three people at least an hour to gather them in, and we still hadn’t got them all by the time we stopped. We are still eating the delicious, sweet clear amber jelly from last years crop, and this years crop will probably be gathered this weekend. The trees are native to the UK and so we can forage wild crab apples if we want, but not many people seem to know about these abundant fruits. Which is lucky for the wildlife that relies on the wild crabs bounty; when foraging in the wild I have a personal rule – whatever you are gathering NEVER take more than one third of the crop. To us it may be a delicious treat but to local fauna it is all the food they have.

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Stale oatcakes and black headed gulls

A couple of weekends ago I went to visit friends on the south coast; on our last day we made up a picnic and headed for Studland bay. We only had a couple of hours and the weather turned a little stormy. However, I’ve always loved the bleakness of a stormy beach and before the rain got too bad we discovered that stale oatcakes are considered a delicacy by black headed gulls.

These small, dainty gulls are beautiful flyers and it diddn’t take long before we had several competing to snatch oatcakes out of the air. I wouldn’t even consider feeding a larger or more aggressive gull such as the herring gull; these birds can become a nuisance in holiday areas where they will attack tourists for their food. This shyer, smaller bird is wary of humans however and we felt quite safe sharing our food with them. It also meant an opportunity to photograph them in flight and close up. Their flight is fast, spectacular and unpredictable; the vast majority of photos from that day show blurred, empty air.

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What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s a classic image of springtime, delicate apple blossom unfurling on the branches of an orchard tree. What could possibly be wrong here? The problem with this image lies in the date it was taken. It was taken this year on the 16th September; apple blossom is supposed to emerge around about April time. If this is not eerie enough, the same tree was sporting a heavy crop of apples alongside it’s unseasonable flowers.

Similar phenomena have been observed in recent years. This article written in October 2006 describes unseasonal blooms and other signs that plants and animals are becoming increasingly confused as to the season, probably due to global warming. In 2005 there was a “phantom spring” in November, including sightings of red admiral butterflies, trees in blossom and flowering violets.

Allotment holders and other small growers that I know have reported that crops like cabbages and lettuces benefited this year from a very late emergence of butterflies, which in some places only started to fly in August this year. The dull rainy summer kept them grounded; does this mean that they will be breeding late and therefore risking their caterpillars to the onset of winter?

Perhaps apple trees use light and day length to gauge when the seasons change – if this is so, then it may explain the freak blooms. This summer was possibly one of the dreariest ever, and lack of light for a couple of months may have fooled these trees into thinking that winter has already occurred. I’m going to be watching out for other peculiar effects of our cold, dark rainy summer.

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Lunchtime foraging

On the beautiful late summer walk we took recently, I suddenly noticed that it was time for a little something. We had been walking non-stop in hot sunshine for several hours, and I had been so engrossed in the beautiful hedgerows and field margins along the way that I just hadn’t noticed how hungry I was. Imagine my joy when, as I straightened up from examining some unidentified yellow flowers, the first thing that hit my eye was a beautiful wild apple tree, absolutely laden with fruits.

I must confess I have never seen a more beautiful wild apple tree, nor at a more opportune moment. Its fruits were large, firm and rosy, with a waxy feeling skin. I had always thought that wild apple trees, perhaps the result of a bird depositing a pip on the ground or a carelessly discarded apple core would only yield small sour fruit, but luckily for us this seems to be untrue.

Richard picked this one. It was juicy and a little sharp, but delicious nonetheless.

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