Banded Demoiselle

There has not been many of the bigger dragonflies around since the spring started. Today (Now summer) Eileen and I found some nice Banded Demoiselles at Ellingham Churchyard.

Rusty Plants

On a Sunday 6th June Eileen and I decided to visit the Ted Ellis Reserve at Wheatfen on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. Concidentally it was also the annual public Swallowtail butterfly day, so to avoid the crowds we decided to explore Surlingham Wood and the dykes and marsh away from the main event. As soon as we arrived beside the wood Eileen noticed several non flowering Southern Marsh Orchids Dactylorhiza praetermissa covered in a rust fungus, On closer inspection I found the leaves to be covered in tiny orange circles which bordered small pits where the spores would emerge. I immediately knew this to be the Arum rust Puccinia sessilis. This rust I had found on Wild Arum Arum maculatum in 2005 at Ditchingham but this was the first time I had seen it on Marsh Orchids. I then brought a voucher back for microscopic examination and they confirmed my find. My next step was to see how many East Norfolk records there were for P. sessilis through the British Mycological Society web site. There are only 64 records dating from 1866 to 2002 with only ten records for Orchids. The next step was to contact my professional Mycologist friends for more details and one correspondent informed me it was the first record since 1997 where it was recorded in Cambridgeshire. There have as far as I know been no further records published or otherwise. It was quite a find and although recorded in the past from Wheatfen I was pleased to add a 21st century record to Wheatfen where Ted taught me field mycology.