We entered the park at the southern side and decided to keep to the cooler, wooded area along the Allerton Road edge. A Song Thrush was calling. The edges of the woodland have been left unmown, and we spotted both Meadow Brown and Small Skipper butterflies in that area, which was thick with Meadowsweet.
They have also planted many new young trees there. We spotted Tibetan Cherry, Prunus serrula, with its lovely mahogany-coloured bark; Golden Grey Alder, Alnus incana ‘Aurea’; a Katsura, Cercidiphyllum japonica. We searched in vain for the young Golden Rain tree reported in this area, but did see a young Mulberry Morus nigra, perhaps intended as a replacement for the old one between the lake and the Mansion House, which appears to be dying.
Most birds were hiding away, with only Magpies and Wood Pigeons on the lawns and Mallards and Moorhen on the lake. One distant white duck had a mixed brood of ducklings, some yellow, some brown. Other trees that we stopped to examine included a young Plane tree, which we thought might be an unusual variant, but it was just the ordinary London Plane Platanus x hispanica. We had never seen a young one before! A young Judas tree, still in its cage and leaning alarmingly, had produced a huge crop of pea-type seed pods.
A delicate Japanese Maple had produced its “helicopter” seeds, in bunches hanging below the leaves.
As well as this year’s profusion of young seeds and nuts, high summer is also a time for parasites. The leaves of the Horse Chestnuts are starting to show their infestations of Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner. They are the caterpillars of the tiny moth Cameraria ohridella. New to the UK, they were first seen in 2002. I first saw it locally in Reynolds Park in 2014.
A young oak tree bore Marble galls, about the size of an old-fashioned glass “ollie”. Each contains a single female larva of the wasp Andricus kollari.
The large Walnut tree at the entrance of the flower garden was producing many young walnuts, but some lower leaves were marked by the blisters of the Walnut Leaf Gall Mite, Aceria erinea. The mites live in the corresponding depression on the underside of the leaf.
Along the wall of the toilet block, opposite the Japanese garden, the roots of the Ivy support a parasitic plant called Ivy Broomrape, Orobanche hederae. It is entirely dependent on the Ivy, having no chlorophyll of its own. It is commoner in southern England and Wales, but there is a cluster of reports in the Merseyside area, and it isn’t often seen further north than here.
In the trees over the Japanese garden, a Blackbird was calling repeatedly, possibly to its nest or mate as an announcement that food was on the way. But it had food in its beak. How did it call when its mouth was full?
Public transport details: Bus 86A from Elliot Street at 10.04, arriving Mather Avenue / Ballantrae Road at 10.35. Returned on bus 86A from Mather Avenue / Storrsdale Road at 2.35, arriving city centre at 3.10.
No walk next week. On 13th July we plan to go to Crosby seafront, meeting 10 am at Central Station.