Pictures from Saturday’s 5 km (almost 4 hours with all the stops) walk along the Homla river canyon from Storfossen (this area’s second highest waterfall) to the sea at Hommelvik! As usual, a memorable trip!
We were joined for the weekend by Amandine Faury from France, a new student of Agroecology at Ås, on her way to a hiking holiday in Lofoten!
Kidney vetch (fjellsyre) is found along the river
Another mountain plant, not previously registered this low down in Malvik was found by the waterfall: Thalictrum alpinum
Very little water in the river!
Ostrich fern
Ostrich fern
Ostrich fern
Cicerbita alpina
Mountain queen (fjelldronning)
Campanula latifolia (eaten for lunch!)
Eirik Lillebøe Wiken and the giant ostrich fern!
Kidney vetch (fjellsyre)
Taraxacum eirikii (Eirik proclaimed this one to be a new species) ;)
Eirik Lillebøe Wiken poses at the famous permaveggies course ostrich fern patch!
A demonstration wood for growing quality alder wood for furniture!
On 2nd April 2018, Matthias Brück who had invited me to Switzerland to take part in the Perennials for Resilience seminar in Stans asked me along on a trip through the Alps to the Piedmont area of NW Italy! This is the first of three blog posts about this trip to an area that I think one day Matthias and his good lady Katharina will have a big impact in this area! This is also written as a thank you to Centro d’Ompio’s founder Pius Leutenegger who invited us to stay at the centre, wined, cheesed and dined us and took us on a wonderful tour of gardens and nature in the Lago d’Orta / Lago Maggiore area! I hope to come back one day and repay your kindness in helping developing the Centre’s gardens and maybe holding a course to start the process!
Pictures from this week’s 5 hour (botanist pace) walk along the spectacular Homla canyon, the start about 14 km from home!
Storfossen
Storfossen
Ostrich fern (strutseving) had already come too far in most places, but in the cooler air next to the river and in places where the snow lies late, they were perfect for harvestingth the warm weather, the ostrich fern (strutseving) had already come too far to harvest, but other places on the banks of the river and where snow lies longer
Wood anemones (hvitveis)
Ostrich fern (strutseving) emerging from river spring flood silt deposits
Ostrich fern (strutseving) emerging from river spring flood silt deposits
Ostrich fern (strutseving) emerging from river spring flood silt deposits
A particularly luxuriant patch of ostrich fern
A particularly luxuriant patch of ostrich fern
Wild salad gathered for lunch on the Homla walk this week, including giant bellflower (storklokke), alpine bistort (harerug), Viola spp., red and green leaved sorrel (engsyre), Rumex longifolius, raspberry (bringebær) shoots, wood sorrel (gjøksyre), lady’s mantle (marikåpe), stinging nettle (brennesle), young leaves of Cirsium palustre, coltsfoot (hestehov, don’t use much as it contains alkaloids) and dandelion (løvetann)
Wild salad gathered for lunch on the Homla walk this week, including giant bellflower (storklokke), alpine bistort (harerug), Viola spp., red and green leaved sorrel (engsyre), Rumex longifolius, raspberry (bringebær) shoots, wood sorrel (gjøksyre), lady’s mantle (marikåpe), stinging nettle (brennesle), young leaves of Cirsium palustre, coltsfoot (hestehov, don’t use much as it contains alkaloids) and dandelion (løvetann)
Thanks to Anna who told me she’d heard my name mentioned on BBC Gardener’s Question Time yesterday in connection with my June appearance at the programme’s summer party at Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland :)
I’m appearing at two events at National Trust property Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland this summer. I’ll be doing talks and walks and talks at both events
9th June: BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time Summer Garden Party (see also http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/415rx5ZndyLb1gz3jnQ0SJV/gqt-on-location)
22nd and 23rd September: Planter’s Seminar (with Bob Flowerdew and Ken Cox)
On the second day, we started with the second part of my talk and then had a walk on the beach at the Ytre Hvaler National Park looking for edibles. Randy Gunnar Lange works here and talked a little about the park.
Introduction by Randy Gunnar Lange… a species of sand wasp was active in the sand below our feet!
The course participants…a wonderful diverse group!
It was a bit early for most of the spring edibles such as sea kale (strandkål), but we did see a few young shoots of strandarve / sea sandwort (Honckenya) and sea aster (strandstjerne), young seedlings of Atriplex (strandmelde / beach orach), Rumex crispa and silverweed (gåsemure)
Randy shows us a speciality of the park, Strandmaurløve / ant-lion (Myrmeleon bore), a threatened species in Norway See https://www.artsdatabanken.no/Pages/223124
Randy found an ant-lion in the first depression in the sand he checked…it waits in the depression in the sand for an ant or other insect to fall in
…og tusen takk til Mariann Bekkevold Hovda who baked a sugar-free birthday cake for me <3
What a perfect present….an evening with Anders Often, one of Norway’s leading botanists and a lovely person too! Thank you Randy Gunnar Lange and Ingunn Bohmann. I’d never met him before, but had emailed with him about old relic locations of Hablitzia some years back.
We walked from Eikeløkka through an amazing varied landscape, in places extremely poor with twisted pine trees and ground covering spruce, in others rich where marine sediments had been deposited, to the highest point on Kirkøy, Hvaler (Botneveten) at just over 70m from where there were amazing views showing a forest covered island and with spectacular panoramic views towards the Koster Islands (where I’ve been a couple of times: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=4225), Strømstad, Svinesund and Torbjørnskjær (where we had a buoy measuring marine environmental parameters in the 90s!)
Anders showing us a pincushion moss (blåmose)
Pincushion moss (blåmose)
Spruce trees had a very special form in places hugging the ground under a pine tree!
The pine trees seemed to be growing on almost nothing and were much older than one would think…
Anders counting annual rings on one small tree…it was around 20 years old!
Anders called these special pines “knausfuru” and told us they could be very old
One of 3 information boards on the top
A tumulus (gravrøys) from the iron or bronse age on top (they were placed with a good view during that period)
View towards Svinesund bridge (the boundary with Sweden)
Another ground hugging spruce under a pine
Anders told us here of the difference between the native and cultivated forms of spruce. The latter more often have several tops and irregular growth…this one had probably been damaged as a small tree…and a kink in the trunk can also be seen high up on the right
This was a hybrid oak
One branch of this rose was sprouting from the warnth of the rock
Cirsium palustre
What made this perfectly round hole in the ground?
We didn’t see any, but woodlark (trelerke) breed here!
One small patch of ostrich fern
Anders explained that this was an old beach, where waves crashed at one time
I’m chuffed to be asked to be a guest at the BBC Gardener’s Question Time Summer Garden Party at Mount Stewart on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland on 9th June! I will be doing a couple of talks and a couple of garden foraging walks and talks on the day!
It’s a ticketed event, more information when I get it…here’s the press release:
Great family lunch in a pub at Shawford in Hampshire followed by a walk along the river between Shawford and Hampshire
Shawford Down walk down to the village
Old cattle breed on Shawford Down
Pub lunch next to the river…fish and chips and Abbot Ale!
Walk along the Itchen Navigation between Shawford and Eastleigh!
Epilobium hirsutum
Water vole is an endangered species in England, over the North Sea it’s called jordrotte (earth rat) and is feared by gardeners because of the damage they can do!
Bamboo!
My Aunty Margaret lived in these houses and we spent a lot of time as children by the river!
Maybe it was this hous that was my Aunt’s, but without the gnomes and trees where there’s now terassing
I took the ferry across from Vancouver Island to the city of Vancouver. I’ve already posted a lot of pictures of the birds of fabulous Stanley Park, a green lung right in the centre of the city (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=10476). Here’s a few pictures of emerging edimentals I spotted in the park during my visit on 4th April 2017.
Stanley Park
Gunnera chilensis
Cowslip (Caltha palustris) is an important edible of native americans, but needs careful preparation to detoxify and remove the bitterness, the flower buds have also been used to make capers
Ostrich fern ready to eat, planted in an ornamental bed
Ostrich fern
Hosta shoots
Hosta shoots
Hosta shoots
Magnnolia buds and flowers are used in the Far East
Typha spp. (cattails), the supermarket of the swamps, with a backdrop of central Vancouver
