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Rievaulx Terrace

This was a most enjoyable and successful Ryenats trip, on a lovely sunny day. 20 people came, including two very welcome guests from Teesdale – it is always a pleasure to welcome fellow naturalists from other clubs and societies and share their enthusiasm and expertise (which is often different from ours, so everyone learns something new).

We met at the National Trust car park where Nick Fraser greeted us, sorted out the parking and then gave us an introductory talk before leading us through the visitor centre, into the woods and to the temples. The site is mostly old woodland modified by ornamental plantings in the 18th and 19th centuries when the aim was to create multiple layers of shrubs, undershrubs and interesting foliage plants as well as colourful flowers. There is a fine mixture of mature trees, mainly oak but with beech, ash and lime as well, and many shrubs including a good deal of mountain currant which does occur sparingly as a native plant (or at least one planted by the birds!) in our woodlands. There is also quite a bit of dead wood which is left for the invertebrates; a practice that is so successful that this is an SSSI. Some of the dead wood also supports fantastic fungi, such as these large Dryad’s saddles Polyporus squamosus. There were a few freshly emerged speckled wood butterflies basking in the patches of sunshine filtering through the trees, and the eagle-eyed also spotted some red damselflies – Nan even managed to get a photo of one....

Speckled Wood butterfly Pararge aegeria	Large red damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula Pyrrhosoma nymphula

Probably the botanical highlight was a patch of baneberry (also known as Herb Christopher) Actaea spicata in full flower (see photo top left; click on the picture for a larger version). Despite appearances this curious plant is a member of the buttercup family, and those feathery white flowers produce small black berries later in the summer; it is very poisonous. This is a plant with a very restricted, and odd, distribution in the UK: essentially it only grows in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumberland/Westmorland as it is restricted to a narrow north-south band but also only grows on limestone (so it will be in trouble if climate change gathers pace, because it won’t be able to move north easily since it would run off the limestone – just imagine what would happen here as the acid moors occur immediately to the north and this plant doesn’t have seeds that travel far).

First of all we walked along the top of the wood, and then emerged at the temple, set at one end of a wide, grassy terrace. Some members of the party returned to the visitor centre along the grass, while the more intrepid of us were allowed access onto the steep slope that is not open to the public, through old woodland that has vistas cut through it to give fantastic views of the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey (see photo below).

There was a good deal of bird cherry, and we noticed that most of the leaves had little red galls on the upperside (Eriophyes padi), caused by a gall wasp. These were similar to those commonly seen on limes. The wasp lays its egg in the emerging leaf, and programmes the plant – probably using chemical instructions that hi-jack the plant’s normal development path – to produce these protective chambers for the developing grubs, one per gall. Thanks to Stuart Dunlop for the id.

View of the abbey ruins through the trees with early purple orchids and cowslips

Nick kindly invited us into his garden to eat our lunch – and then things got even better: Rita offered us home-made biscuits and elderflower cordial, which was delicious and very welcome on a hot day. Many thanks to both of them!

Ashberry

After lunch we went on to Ashberry (sharing cars as the parking is limited nearby) where Nan was our guide. Starting at the farm we walked up the road to the bottom gate of the reserve, and then spent the afternoon happily plant-hunting, being careful where we put our feet as there are so many special things here. I think there was less interest for the birders, especially in mid-afternoon when they were quiet: but it was a nice afternoon for a siesta in the sun on the grassy bank above the beck!

I have never known the reserve so dry, but even so we did manage to find a few early marsh orchids, and the birdseye primroses were fully out – not so the globeflower which was only in bud. Janet spotted a sport milkmaid with double flowers which would have graced any garden – in fact this is how many of our cottage garden plants were created, by an observant gardener who then propagated the unusual specimens.

	Unusual double form of milkmaid (cuckoo flower or lady’s smock) Cardamine pratensis and early marsh orchid Dactylorchis incarnata (left), showing the characteristic almost waxy yellowish leaves and flesh-pink flowers.

We thanked Nan, who had to leave at this point.

As a final treat a small group went to the SW corner of the reserve to see the meadow saxifrage, which was at its best, and I was delighted to see it more prolific than any previous year. We also had the chance to compare the two golden saxifrage species which grow together there near the plank bridge. It is not easy to identify these plants from the books, but seeing them side by side shows they do in fact have quite different “jizzes”. even now, when they are past their best. And I couldn’t resist a picture of this kingcup growing right on the edge of the footbridge!

Kingcup Caltha palustris and meadow saxifrage Saxifraga granulata (right)

We then returned to pick up our cars from the Terrace, and Tom thanked Nick on our behalf for a fascinating day.

Species lists

I made a reasonably comprehensive plant list but it is not complete, for instance I didn’t record all the trees at Ashberry, and I’m sure I will have missed several sedges and particularly grasses, since most of them weren’t in flower and I can’t identify them from just the leaves! I made no attempt to record mosses or liverworts. I have split the list for the two sites; Ashberry is below. Thanks to Tom for the bird list.

Birds

Blackcap; rook; jackdaw; robin; blackbird; wren; chaffinch; blue tit; wood pigeon; pheasant; sparrow hawk; bullfinch; stock dove; chiffchaff; greater spotted woodpecker; swallow; tree sparrow; house sparrow; starling; goldfinch; marsh tit; house martin; carrion crow; grey wagtail; nuthatch.

Insects, Spiders, Amphibians

There weren’t very many butterflies about other than fresh speckled woods Pararge aegeria but I did spot a couple of green veined whites Pieris napi and some male orange tips Anthocharis cardamines. As the Latin name suggests the foodplant of this species is usually a Cardamine species, most commonly milkmaids (also known as cuckoo flower or lady’s smock). The females lay their eggs on the flower stalks and the caterpillars eat the developing seedpods. The females are hard to distinguish from other white butterflies as they lack the orange tips – although they do share the moss-green camouflage pattern of the males on the underwing but that isn’t easy to see! Other insects included red damselflies at Rievaulx and blue ones at Ashberry, small black-and-white hoverflies on the wild garlic – which Andrew Grayson has since id’d as Portevinia maculata for me, and soldier beetles. Wolf spiders, freshwater shrimps and caddis fly larvae were also seen, plus a couple of small frogs an inch or so long, probably last year’s tadpoles.

Plants, Rievaulx Terrace

As well as those in the list below there were a number of cultivated shrubs including lilac, a philadelphus, possible holm oak and a dogwood cultivar. The Solomon’s seal was probably the hybrid rather than the species P. multiflorum

Ashberry

Lists created with “PlantFinder”.