Tag: reproduction

#365daysofbiking Life in all it’s forms

January 10th – At this time of year, I desperately scan the world around me for signs of the oncoming spring, however small or odd. Today, I spotted one.

This floating root in the canal at Walsall Wood spotted on the way to work is just such a sign. It looks like a random piece of flotsam in amongst the maturing algal bloom which in recent weeks has turned red from green. But this root is actually the front guard for a larger movement.

It’s a water lily rhizome.

These roots break from last year’s dead growth and sink to the floor of the canal, then as spring comes, they gain buoyancy and begin to float. They move with the currents, boats, winds, waterfowl moments and eventually settle and sprout roots.

In high summer they will provide a new carpet of the familiar huge leaves and bright flowers for us to enjoy.

So it’s good news: Lily thinks spring is coming!

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March 12th – I felt awful. Really bad, as if I had the mother and father of hangovers. I’d not had alcohol, and it could have been an MSG thing, but I was dehydrated and groggy. But I had to go out.

I called in at Shire Oak Park to check the frog pools to see if they’d mated there yet – if caught at the right time, that place is like toad soup but today, it was devoid of amphibia – but a heathy patch of spawn in each attested to the frog’s presence at some point.

I was interested in the difference in the frogspawn. I know that frogs produce globular ‘clumps’, and toads ribbons, but the frogspawn seemed to vary from the huge ones in my hand to tiny eggs the size of a small blackcurrant. I wonder why that is? Age and health of the female? Different types of frog?

Never noticed the variety in this stuff before.