Book deserves a pat on the back

trouble, despite having 50 books on my shelf that purport to help with identification. I guess that for many people that ‘serious trouble’ covers most things they might see, so I provide tips and tricks in the book on how they might identify unfamiliar organisms. Mostly, I just suggest that people walk slowly and look closely at what they find.

As to the unknown plants in that unprepossessing boggy bit, I discovered them to be marsh pennywort, bog pondweed, bog st john’s wort, floating club-rush and common spike-rush, all of them rare. The habitat in which they lived is called a ‘valley mire’ and the New Forest hosts no fewer than 90 of the 120 such habitats that are found in northwestern Europe. Unnoticed by nearly everyone, valley mires are great treasures. My hope for the book is that it will encourage people to take note of such things on their walks, the ‘observant walker’ of the title becoming, I hope, the reader. For now, here is an excerpt from the chapter on Frome Valley:

‘… Leaving this last field, I needed to walk through a substantial herd of cows. It is a sad thing that such an experience is rare these days, with so many confined to quarters for the duration, in the south at least.

“Cows are an essential part of conservation, as it is only through them that grass can be kept to a height that will allow the more delicate plants to flourish. Also, and a much- neglected aspect of cows and conservation, there is the cowpat. These are endlessly fascinating, with scores of specialist fungi dependent on them, various nematode worms and over three hundred insects. I always look out for cowpats on fungus forays, checking for small Inkcap species and the commonest of the fungi on dung, the little orange and nicely named cup fungus, the Cowpat Gem, Cheilymenia granulata. Studying cowpats in the field is a bit odd, so I suggest bringing one home in a bucket and placing it in a quiet corner of the garden. Check every now and then for insects and fungi at some point you will need to look more closely by taking a bit of it apart to see what has developed inside. I strongly suggest you obtain your cowpat from an organic farm or a nature reserve, as some of the medicines given to cattle can kill any prospective fungi and invertebrates. There is an excellent little book by a couple of old friends of mine, Roy Watling and Mike Richardson, entitled Keys to Fungi on Dung, a great read for the enthusiast, if no one else.

“There is also a more substantial book (165 pages) keying out and listing most of the invertebrates found on dung. It is called Insects of the British Cow-Dung Community. Copies are rare and very expensive (£400 being the top price on offer), but you might be able to find it online as a file.

“In a particularly eyecatching piece of nominative determinism, the name of the author is Peter Skidmore.’