Wytham Area General Field Notes by CS Elton Book 1 WYTHAM AREA GENERAL FIELD NOTES ...

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Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1

WYTHAM AREA
GENERAL FIELD NOTES BY C.S. ELTON.
Book 1.
12 December 1942- 14 May 1944.
C.E. 82-269.

Red ticks1 mean ready to be indexed. Crossed red ticks mean indexed.
Circles2 round the code-numbers for specimens mean they have been named, or were
named as far as practicable.
Where not otherwise annotated, all species determinations are by C.E. in the year the
specimen was collected.
“n.k.” = specimen not kept
Editor’s notes:
Sheets (not pages) of loose-leaf quarto are numbered, with many pages missing. Pages that begin or
end in mid-sentence are shown as such.To maintain consistency of pagination with the original, page
numbers are inserted manually and ‘{reverse side}’ indicates material on the under side, which often,
but not invariably, relates to the following sheet (i.e. would be on the left page in an open book).
The original layout and typography are followed as closely as electronic systems allow though to
enable both sides to appear on a single page, blank spaces may be reduced and the margins are
omitted. Drawings are scanned and inserted as near to the original size and position as pagination
allows. Repagination to accommodate large maps etc. and other corrections are explained in {}.
Specimen numbers (many, but not all, originally in right margins headed ‘C.E.’ on top side and left
margin on reverse side) are placed as near to their subject as possible, as A and 00, or A and 00 as
they appeared in the original.
Species names appear in italics, other underlining remains and bold replaces C.E.’s red marks.
Handwritten additions and corrections are not distinguished from typing. Scored out material is
omitted entirely. Abbreviations are shown in full where the meaning is clear. Incomplete or
ungrammatical sentences and inconsistent use of upper/lower case, number format, inverted commas
etc. are unaltered and only blatant spelling errors are corrected.

1 Shown as bold in edited version.
2 Edited to A or 00
Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 64
12 DECEMBER 1942. SEACOURT STREAM, BERKS.
Saw (with Pat Venables) a kingfisher on Seacourt Stream, just below the farm with
old disused mill that lies a little way up that stream from Wytham Village. At this
farm the farmer is a hurdle maker. They are made of pollard willow, which lasts
quite well, getting green with lichen/alga. He buys the pollard willow rights from
neighbouring farmers, but apart from the periodical cutting there is no other
management. This farm has on its (? Stonesfield) slate barn roofs, gorgeous green
cushions of moss, now with developing fruits. The clumps are up to six inches
across.
{reverse side}
17 APRIL 1943.

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 69
17 APRIL 1943. WYTHAM WOODS.
These woods have just become the University's property. Today I went up to the
south side of Wytham Great Wood, passing beyond the gamekeeper's cottage into
large and fairly uniform stretches of sycamore coppice or regeneration from seed,
with scattered large sycamores, ash trees and a few oaks. A little spindle and haw
and much elder in the underwood. The almost universal dominant in the layer is
dog's mercury growing in vast sheets. Mercurialis perennis is said by Tansley to
dominate heavier and more basic oak (robur) wood societies; also the drier
ashwoods of Derbyshire -- ground ivy, as in Wytham being also abundant. Bluebells
form only local patches
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17 APRIL, 1943
86 Hermaeophaga mercurialis Fabr. C.E. det.
After 24 hours the beetles had produced intensive perforations, worse than most seen
in the field. Specimens of the leaves kept. C.E 90.
(There are none on the minute patch of mercury in C.C.C. garden, Oxford).
Dr Clapham says Mercurialis comes where soil is alkaline, also confirms my
diagnosis that Wytham Great Wood as oak-ash, but says soils up there are a bit
complex. R.B.Freeman says herb Paris comes among Mercurialis up there.

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 70
17 APRIL 1943 *** WYTHAM WOODS.
in these sycamore woods. But the most likely association to fit this place is
Tansley's “Calcareous oakwood facies: -- ash-oak wood” (p. 288). The soil here is
calcareous marl of the Coral Rag. (The typical ash-oak has Mercurialis perennis,
with Fragaria vesca, Brachypodium sylvaticum, Circaea lutetiana. On the other
hand, there are patches of bluebell and bracken that fit the drier oakwood -- but
perhaps there are gravel patches).
The mercury almost everywhere was perforated with small holes by some insect, 86
and two samples of these plants were pressed. At the first search I only found tiny
yellowish ? collembola on the undersides of the leaves, but these did not look
powerful enough to have made the holes. But higher up the hill I noticed really large
numbers (sometimes several on a plant) of small dark blue flea-beetles, which
hopped or tumbled easily off the mercury. 87
They were conspicuous once one had noticed them, sitting mostly on the leaves or
axils. Some were in copulation. 88
I kept some undamaged leaves and left some beetles in for a day to see if they
produced the holes. (90)
The damage was not quite evenly spread and one could find patches with none.
Nevertheless it seemed extremely widespread over the area of ¼ mile or more that I
observed the mercury closely. One got a strong impression that it was greatest in the
shade of trees.
The sycamore leaves were only just emerged and apparently free of insect life
except a few settling flies. 82
On the trunks casual observation showed a fat coccid-shaped larva ¼ in. long
walking up, and a small elongate springtail. n.k.
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17 APRIL 1943.

85. Tubifera (Eristalis) pertinax (Scopoli). L.W.Grensted det. 1946

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 71
17 APRIL 1943 *** WYTHAM WOODS.
In the clear hot sun-shafted space of air among the tall sycamore coppice with its
mercury carpet, there were here and there hovering bee-flies, usually at 6 -- 8 ft. 85
One was taken. A good many bumblebees were visiting bluebell flowers. I took a
Bombylius major visiting flowers of ground ivy (Nepeta glechoma) in the glade. 84
The sycamores show traces of terrific rabbit ring-bark damage, which has either
killed, or left great scars -- all old. Only one rabbit seen. The clearances of rabbits
(whose former abundance may explain the frequency of elder in Wytham, and
general poverty of interesting scrub) may allow spindle to multiply. In the open
“glade” of the trackway were a brimstone, a small tortoiseshell and a peacock
butterfly, also a large white in the wood.
The number of queen Bombus hunting for holes on the banks of the trackway just
below the keeper's house, was noticeable.
There is a large hornbeam by the main woodland track above the keeper's cottage,
now in full catkin. No mosquitoes were seen today.

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 75

{No title or information on this side}

{reverse side marked ‘opp. p.76’}
15 MAY 1943.

94 Gomphus vulgatissimus L. 1 ♂, recently emerged. 70% alcohol C.E.det.

95 Agrion splendens (Harris) 1 ♀. 70% alcohol
Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 76
15 MAY 1943. GODSTOW, OXON. & BERKS.
I walked to Wolvercote and a few hundred yards up the river path above the “Trout”,
to just opposite where Pixey Mead begins. Here there is a low-lying rushy pasture,
trodden by cattle and flanked on the north by a hawthorn hedge in which willows are
growing to future climax suitable to the flood-plain wet alluvial soil. There is a
narrow fringe of Scirpus reedswamp, and marsh, on the gravelly river bank. There
were no dragonflies at the river margins, where a cool north wind blew; but several
species flew or settled in the sheltered field below the hedge. There was one small
dark demoiselle with its abdomen blue at the tail, not caught. One or two Gomphus
hawking about. 94
The ♂ seems to have less yellow splashed on the abdomen. Several ♂ Agrion
splendens and with them some ♀♀: of which I took one, (because they cannot be
identified on the wing, from A. virgo ♀). 95
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15 MAY 1943.

96 3 ♀. 1 ♂ Ephemera danica Müll. (pale body; ♂ smaller, + claspers)
3 ♀. 3 ♂ E. vulgata L. (darker, more marked body; ♂ smaller, + claspers).
70% alcohol. Not certain if duns or imagos.

97 Lepidium draba L. C.E. det. W.J.L. Sladen confirm 1953.

A swan nesting by the big railway pool at Wolvercote. A pair swimming at the
Trout.

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 77
15 MAY 1943**** GODSTOW, OXON. & BERKS.
The Agrion were hawking up to 50 yards or more from the river.
A good many, though not vast numbers, of large mayflies were out, a few dancing
and dipping, but most hanging on to the hawthorn hedge. There were large light-
coloured ones, and a smaller darker ones, with dark wing patternings. Kept the
sample. 96
Some alder-flies about too (Sialis [lutaria]).
In sallow bushes -- big clumps up to 8 feet, across the river, a cock reed bunting.
In the river, both here and in the eastern loop, very large shoals of many fish, all
sizes. At the eastern loop bridge, just above the ford which is the children's bathing
place, the clear waters swarm with fish, among which were largish chubb and one or
two trout.
On a consolidated rubbish tip at the Trout Inn, a great patch of hoary-cress in white
flower, smelling faintly of honey. Dunn (1905) says it lives in dry sterile ground in
S.E. Europe and western Asia e.g. Caspian deserts. It came into Great Britain about
early 19th-century and has established on non-competition bare ground (rubbish
dumps and transport premises or margins). It has extraordinary minute short down,
although the plant looks smooth to the naked eye. 97
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13 DECEMBER 1943.

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 124
13 DECEMBER 1943. WYTHAM WOODS.
Walked through the woods on a cold frosty morning, with a committee of the
University, to which the estate now belongs. A tawny owl flew away from a place
where a dead hare was hanging on a tree, 11 a.m. This was in “Burket's Plantation”.
The perforations of beetle (= Hermaeophaga mercurialis) damage still everywhere
conspicuous on the dog's mercury.
{reverse side}
11 APRIL 1944.

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013
Wytham Area General Field Notes by C.S. Elton Book 1 Page 129
11 APRIL 1944. WYTHAM WOODS.
Walked from 12 -- 4 on the south top, from Botley Lodge as far as My Lady's Seat.
It was very hot sun, and cloud, and a cool wind on the west top, elsewhere calm and
hot, and the ground almost dry.
One begins to get an ecological feel! The frame-work is limestone-marly-sandy
cappings of Coral Rag and Calcareous Grit, tilted slightly to east, over the basis of
(also somewhat calcareous) Oxford Clay. There are two tops, with a narrow isthmus
of the capping almost nipped by the clay of Radbrook Common (which was a
bracken-scrub-savannah, now being burned-partly uprooted-ploughed) and of
Wytham Park (grazed pasture fenced from the woodland above). Very broadly
speaking, the Clay is farmed (but not for instance in Marley Wood Plantation, and
part of the north lower slopes of the Great Wood), and the capping is woodland (but
there are field enclaves, as 169). The fence between 169 and 168 is roughly the line
of junction, and a slight escarpment under grass marks it. Here, as at other points
around the junction (e.g. in 114 and 101) springs break out or at any rate wet the soil
and on the fields are marked by Juncus marshes. They seem mostly on the east,
whither the capping tilts; but Tilbury Farm hugs the western line of junction, and
below the line are also Hillend and Woodend Farm (the latter name suggestive of
this natural land classification).
Discussed Juncus associations with A.R. Clapham, who points out that the numerous
air ducts in the tissues of rushes enable them to supply oxygen to their roots, even if
the soil water is deficient in them. Most species probably can take nitrogen in the
ammonia stage i.e. can live in reducing soils, but I could not quite follow the
chemical argument here. The seasonal length of immersion and the salts present are
important in determining which species occurs.
At the top of the first track up from Botley Lodge is a large patch of Plateau Gravel,
showing many quartzite brown rounded stones in the field, of which I kept one fine
ellipsoidal “paper weight”.
{reverse side}
11 APRIL 1944.

Apis mellifica L. queen

Transcribed and edited by Caroline M. Pond 2013