Poa nemoralis - Wood Meadow-grass

Grass of the Month for February 2012

(See other month's grasses)
Ha -
I bet you did not expect Poa nemoralis to be my next choice for a Poa!

but in winter/early spring it is an excellent choice:-

• Its new vegetative shoots are growing rapidly at the end of January - (Woodland plants often grow early before the leaves come on the trees)
• The vegetative blades have strong boat-shaped tips and tramlines (as "good" Poas should) 
• whereas the blades that will grow on the flowering shoots from April onwards are very flat - almost as flat as Agrostis -and the tramlines and boat shaped tips take a lot of imagination) and the vegetative shoots may have shrivelled by then.

Above is a video of Poa nemoralis in Castleberg Wood (above the Coop in Settle) on Jan 28th - I think the church bell was ringing for a wedding

Jan 28.  2012 South west facing wall at edge of Castleberg Wood -
 See the boat shaped tips

Same plant as above

Beside the path inside the wood.
Last years shoots still have the delicate flowerheads.
 Because it is a wood there was no grazing
and the flower stems have persisted

In winter, as in summer, the flower heads look a bit like
Agrostis flower heads - delicate Christmas tree panicles

This picture needs straightening.
Above the Station water tower is the wood where the pictures above were taken.
This water tower will be on Channel 4 on 16 February

Its still 28 January - but I have walked almost to the station.  

Poa nemoralis grows well on walls - 

maybe its woodland habitat is "chosen" to avoid predation

Taken at the same place near the station
 18 April 2009. It is just coming into flower 

18 April 2009

28 January - Station wall.
You can see how the base of the shoots curve.
 You can also see a node and the stem even here is round. (Poa pratensis would have rhizomes
and some of the shoots may be  more upright from the ground

Same again

This is a Poa pratensis - Its vegetative leaves are
similar - boat shaped with parallel edges and
slightly bluish green - but it has rhizomes - and as seen below has spread between the paving stones of St John's Methodist Church Hall pavement

Poa nemoralis is rare / absent in Western Ireland and scattered in eastern Ireland. It occurs thorugh mainland Britain except the very north west of Scotland http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/atlas/map_page.php?spid=1504.0


(See other month's grasses)

Let there be light cafe-service at Settle

 Four times a year St John's Methodist Church has a "Cafe-style service"  The theme of January 2012's service is "Let there be light". Above we are assembling and helping ourselves to sandwiches and cake. 

A leader in pink has positioned words round the room -head-sky-traffic-lime-etc. - Later we will have to look for these to match up with the word "light" she has already positioned on the board.

The junior church  prepared two banners the previous Sunday - they will brighten up the church.

We had a short amusing drama - with three characters who could not see because they were blindfolded or had dark glasses. They kept crashing into objects and people.  Character 4 (brown jumper)  had a torch and implored the other people to take off their blindfolds and see.  But they didn't. They were quite happy as they were, they did not want to change.

     

Next was searching for objects in the dark cave. (Click on the arrow)

More on the cave game. There were two teams 5 boys/men against 5 girls/women. A member from each tean had to enter the"cave" and search for a designated object

Posing inside the cave 

Singing

Settle Churches CTISAD Barn dance 2012

The LOAF Display was put on the wall in time for the Barn dance.

 On Sat 20 Jan Churches Together had a barn dance and meal.

This time the dance was just in aid of Churches Together,  not half in aid of the rainforest as last year.

However I sold £16.50 worth of cards - See the display on the table.

People did not notice the LOAF posters much either - too busy dancing and eating - but it gave me all the more incentive therefore to draw people's attention to it - and I kept asking if people knew of local products - it really is quite hard to find many.

We danced..

To the music of the piano accordion

Only watch this video if you really want to .. 

It will probably make you a bit dizzy ;)

Book your ticket for our next barn dance.

LOAF - Local - Organic - Animal friendly - Fairly traded

You can download posters about LOAF from our Christian Ecology Link's resources section and make your own LOAF Display.

• Locally produced
• Organically grown
• Animal Friendly
• Fairly Traded - note that 27 Feb – 11 March 2012 is Fair Trade Fortnight

Christian Ecology Link have a leaflet and some posters on this topic.  I used  our new local photoprinter in Settle Iprint to get some A3 posters made and put the display on the church hall notice board”

This display at Settle Methodist Church Hall, N Yorkshire, also includes pictures of loaves (from the Naked Man local baker), “posing” in Winskill Stones nature reserve with Yorkshire Three peaks in the background.. I plans to make an extra “title strip” to place above the display linking all the separate posters together, and matching the title strips on adjacent notice boards

“It is surprisingly hard to find “local products” In an “Interactive Section”, viewers are invited to write in ideas of what and where local products can be bought.

 “The land round here, being high up, is mostly used for sheep and cattle. Here are the ones we have found so far:- these may sound parochial – but see what you can list for your area.. or send us more suggestions for ours”

1. Lots of people suggested Growing with Grace  the local (Quaker inspired) organic greenhouses at Clapham, seven miles away.They have veggie bags with pick-up points in several towns and villages – and compost at 3 bags for £10-00. At this time of year they sell their own kale, and mixed salad, and stir-fry salad.
2. Settle Creamery uses only milk from the UK. So we can buy Settle Creamery Butter in the local shops. At least it is packed in Settle!
3. People who have milk delivered to the house are able to get local milk and eggs and sometimes potatoes… (Just across the border in Lancashire can count as local too…
4. Drake and Macefield have butchers shops at Skipton and Settle. They get their beef from Thorlby, two miles this side of Skipton, their chickens from Pately Bridge and their pork from near Grassington.. that’s from within 25 miles of Settle
5.  See Dales-local-food-map - you can download the leaflet/map -
6. Wensleydale cheese for Hawes (20miles)
7. Goat’s cheese from near Horton (7 miles)??
8. Ribblesdale goat and sheep cheese, now made in Hawes, 20 miles away, but available in Booths, the local supermarket..
9. Townhend Farm Shop at Airton, seven miles away, sells lots of very local meat and other produce
10. The website N Yorkshire Local Food shows only one local food for our postcode at Settle:- BD24 – Far Cappleside Farm:- Organic lamb, beef and pork.  Available direct from the farm, local retail outlets, box scheme and home delivery.
11. Nelson’s Footwear (and Clogs) – Settle
12. Booths Supermarket, Settle – These make an effort to sell produce form the NW of England.

The LOAF posters were up in time for the Barn dance.  more on the next blog post

 On Sat 20 Jan Churches Together had a barn dance and meal.

I look forward to your suggestions of local produce we can buy at Settle

Poa annua - Annual Meadow-grass

Poa annua - Settle Railway Station in October  2007

Grass of the Month for Jan 2012


(For more grasses, see  Grasses Index )


Poa annua - Annual Meadow-grass was set to be my "joker" or reserve card in this series - It is one of the easiest grasses - because you can find it in flower ANY MONTH of the year!.. And in EVERY PART of the British Isles .. I was going to save it till there were no other grasses in flower to describe..
Well - we are now starting Year Three, and it is January, so I shall use it - You can look at the 24 grasses already described at Grasses Index

Poa annua is a good introduction to the Poas - I plan to  present Poas for the next six months (!!!) - that should be very useful for you because they are very common..  bookmark this blog!.

INVITATION-

Go out and look in the paving stones where you live - any small grass in flower now is almost bound to be Poa annua.  Easy!

A walk round Settle or most towns and villages will reveal a head poking up between paving stones somewhere!

The walk from Ripon to Fountains Abbey on Boxing Day 2011 revealed - Groundsel, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Red Dead-nettle, White Dead-nettle, Ragwort, and the grasses Cock's-foot and Annual Meadow-grass in flower.

All Poas have blunt boat shaped-tips to their leaves - and the flower heads are like Christmas Tree panicles.

The blades have "tramlines" -
Definition of "tramlines":- Look at the blade from diagonally above - on either side of the midrib there is a groove which looks darker because of shading from the light. These are the tramlines - or maybe it refers to the midrib which sticks up from the centre of the grooves - as the metal bar does in street tramlines.

At the base of the 2 grooves are special cells which can contract under dry conditions (thus causing the blade to fold) and expand under moist or sunny conditions allowing the blade to open and collect more light for photosynthesis.  The majority of the stomata (holes where gases move in and out of the blade) are on the upper surface of the blade. Hence water loss can be reduced by the blade folding under dry conditions.

Since all common Poas have boat shaped tips to the blades and tram lines and Christmas-tree flower heads,  how do we differentiate Poa annua?

	Poa annua	Poa trivialis	Poa pratensis
blade tip	boat-shaped	boat-shaped	boat-shaped
blades sides	very slightly tapering	tapering	parallel sided
colour of plant	whitish green	bright shiny yellow green	bluish-green
ligule on flowering shoot	big wide white	long	very short
ligule on vegetative shoot	big wide white	very  short	very  short
rhizomes/ stolons/none	tufted only; shoots grow at diagonal angles	stolons (eventually) vegetative shoots lie flat along ground	rhizomes.

1st Jan 2012 - Poa annua growing
in Allhallowgate Car Park, Ripon 

Poa annua does not have rhizomes (as do Poa pratensis, Poa humilis and Poa angustifolia)
Poa annua does not have stolons or shoots that lie flat against the ground as does Poa trivialis

Poa trivialis and Poa pratensis are the most common other Poas. Poa pratensis always has short ligules.
Poa trivialis has long ligules on its flowering stem but short ligules on the vegetative stems.
Poa annua  has big white, wide, ligules on all its stems - giving tiny plants a whitish green colour.

The blades of Poa annual can have undulations or crinkles in them which is very characteristic - but these can occasionally be found in other grasses too.

(For more grasses, see  Grasses Index )

Fountains Abbey - Boxing Day Pilgrimage 2011

This year was the 25th(?)  annual pilgrimage on Boxing Day from Ripon Cathedral to Fountains Abbey.

This is the second blog page I have written about the event - See also yesterdays post - 

Fountains Abbey Pilgrimage - Fungi, Flowers, Ferns; Feathery and Furry Friends

Today's post deals with:-

Striding-out, Scenery, and Cellarium Song

(Scroll down for a video of the singing in the Abbey)

We haven't tropical forest in the UK but we are grateful

• that this Parkland exists - 
• that the magnesian limestone gives rise to a variety of lime loving plants -  
• that the National Trust who own the Abbey, and the main landowners between Studley Park and Ripon care for nature conservation now.

There was a service at the Cathedral before the pilgrimage - I arrived too late for that this year, but met the people here, near the Tennis Courts opposite the Spa Hotel in Ripon. On the far right you can see the Bishop (with crook) and Dean.

This path used to pass through the open field. Now a hedge has been planted. The white birch trees in the background have all been planted and grown since the walk started. In the foreground there are dead-heads of knapweed a wildflower - perhaps left so it can seed.

Short halt whilst we let others catch up.

At the end of that path  near Stuldey there is a big old Small-Leaved Lime tree - see the suckers - It could have been here even before the Monks founded the Abbey in the Abbey in the 1132

The gatehouse at the entrance of  Studley Park - (with the relatively new Studley church a head)

The Gatehouse from the other side - and Ripon Cathedral in the distance

At the entrance to Fountains Abbey Grounds we were allowed in free by the National Trust up till 12 o,clock - though donations welcome.

Another third of a mile - Approaching the Abbey. The blue flag with a white rose in it on the right is the Yorkshire Ridings Flag

The sun came out briefly and lit up Huby's Tower - this was one of the latest parts to be built before the dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539

Inside the cellarium (the long low hall where the grain used to be stored) -
people assembled - It was packed.
There were some loudspeakers outside
and we could look in through the windows

Looking in through a window

Making friends at another window -- and looking in ..

We sang carols - and there was a prayer which included thanking God for the beauty of creation and reminding us to remember our responsibility to look after it.

Here is singing at the Abbey:-

.

The Bishop of Ripon after the service... and member of congregation drinking the welcome hot punch, (or coffee)

The band

A good view of the Abbey from the River Skell on the way home

Plenty of water today

A view back to the Abbey

More pictures at Fountains Abbey Pilgrimage - Fungi, Flowers, Ferns; Feathery and Furry Friends