Called To The Shaded Broad-Bar

I got some good shots of a female speckled bush cricket but I've posted one of those recently. I was quite pleased with an ichneumon wasp ovipositing in a thistle seed head and a pink grasshopper which is missing a hind leg (extras) but I've posted those in the past. I've never blipped a shaded broad bar moth before. I identified it by my usual method of making a sketch of its markings from my photo. Strange how this galvanises the mind when scrolling through hundreds of images.

Moths can be a bit boring but I found interest. For a start its scientific name is Scotopteryx chenopodiata. I have read that its food plants are clover and vetch. Chenopodium, or fat hen as I know it, isn't mentioned. I remember fat hen being used in place of spinach in Greek island tavernas. Chenopodium means goose foot. Maybe the shape of the moth is a bit like the foot of a goose?


Also of interest is the cranesbill that the moth is on. A seedhead can be seen bottom right looking just like a crane's bill. Cranesbill is in the Geranium family. It was originally thought that, because of the very similar shape of their seedheads, zonal pelargoniums which we use for summer bedding and still call geraniums were from the same family.


Today's poem is Some Trees by John Ashbery. https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/some-trees.html


It's difficult. Less so if read aloud. "That their merely being there Means something;" I think I slightly get it.