Stumpy

I was on my hands and knees this afternoon forking over part of our freshly exposed vegetable patch. Thanks to our friends The Snobs for that.



The weedy edge to the side of the plot, left untended all summer, was alive with grasshoppers until recently. Maybe with the forecast mild conditions next week, there may be one last chirrup or two before the first frost finishes them off. The bushy, purple-flowered 'weed' was still pulling in some bumblebees though. I am a self-confessed, atrocious botanist (in fact I feel bad even writing the word). My crude attempts at identification have lead me to believe that this is Black Horehound. During the summer, after I had read that it was the larval foodplant of an attractive little micro-moth, I was seeing it whereever I went. Or maybe I wasn't.

 

Absent grasshoppers and the odd bombus were not exciting me this afternoon though. The action revolved around the ivy covered stump next to it.

 

 

This was left from when we moved in a couple of years ago. Remnants of a leylandii-type thing. As I was digging near it, I hoiked up a small larvae. About 2.5cm long, with a juicy, fat body and a head the colour of a Werther's Original, it was obviously a Stag Beetle. You'll note, I said "small larvae". This one was a mere infant. They live in their larval state for 5-6 years (typically in buried dead wood) and I have seen them as fat and long as my little finger. I immediately dug a hole near the base of the stump and put him (or her) in and covered it over. A delicate touch was now required, as I still had a bit more to finish off. A few forks later and up popped these:

 

 

As well as being a bad botanist, I am hoping this year to receive a nomination in the "C**p Coleopterist of the Year" competition. Saying that, given their size, I feel safe in saying that these are parts of a now deceased Stag Beetle, probably a female. Why so? I understand that female stag beetles don't have much of a life once they emerge from their lengthy subterranean sojourn. Wafting pheromones everywhere, they spend most of the time on foot searching for suitable egg-laying sites. Once they have been courted to within an inch of their life, they burrow down to the selected spot, lay their eggs and then snuff it.

 

Stag Beetles aren't everywhere, in fact they are quite localised, but if you have a stump in your garden there are going to be a whole host of dead wood invertebrates, not forgetting fungi, lichen and other plants that will love you back for leaving it.