Wolves Wild

The flowers on a star magnolia were already showing signs of the punishment they had been taking from the weather when I grabbed this picture earlier in the month.

Two ladybirds, different species, were resting on the same thistle plant. The harlequin ladybird, colour scheme yellowish with black spots. It’s an intrusive species, originating in Asia. First recorded in Britain twenty years ago, they are now very common.

The other is a 7-spot ladybird, which is also common, with a reputation as a gardener’s ally in the constant effort to control pests.

In a favoured spot which catches the sun for most of the day (when it’s not cloudy) hawthorn flowers were forming and the buds beginning to open by the first week of April.

Photomicrographs of Hydrilla verticillata at different magnifications. The subject is a plant, native in a wide zone of Eurasia from Poland to India, but now introduced and an intrusive waterweed in much of the rest of the world.

Taken using a National Geographic branded microscope with its digimicroscoping* attachment. The microscope is designed for use by children, and occasionally appears in the special offers aisle at ALDI. Today’s pictures feature one of the prepared slides which is included in the purchase.

* My coinage, on the model of digiscoping, where birders put their mobile’s phones up to the eyepiece of their telescope to picture birds.

A fungus growing on the inner surface of a red pepper which had been left exposed for some days. I’m guessing that the liquid-seeming ends of the strands hold the spores.

Quite impressively big, but not actually a giant, a house spider in a house.