Battlefield

Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) is the holy grail of wildflower meadows, where the flowers are often out-competed by vigorous grasses. If the density of yellow rattle is adequate, it can supress the growth of grasses, making them less competitive. It does this because it is partly parasitic - it has root-like structures that enable it to penetrate the tissue of the grass and tap into the xylem - the vessels that transport water and nutrients from the grass roots into its leaves. It does not penetrate the grass's phloem - the other main transport vessels in plants, which carries sugars from the leaves to the rest of the plant. Yellow rattle has its own green leaves and can do its own photosynthesis, but benefits from the 'stolen' nutrients

The yellow flowers are somewhat underwhelming, but the fleshy structure supporting each flower eventually becomes a dried out capsule, containing the seeds - and if you shake the plant, the seeds rattle against the dry husk. Our shed roof is not exactly a meadow, but the plant is obviously happy there, because there are several dense patches. It is an annual, so these have grown from last summer's seed, which must have been prolific

The little pink-purple flowers of the vetch are so exquisitely structured and vibrant that it seems impertinent to give it its usual English name of 'Common'. It's Latin name is Vicia sativa; 'sativa' means 'cultivated' which, in some contexts, is the opposite of 'common'. It is a native, wild plant, but vetches were indeed cultivated for human consumption at one time, as well as for animal fodder, with records of such crops in this parish. It is a legume, of course, meaning that it grows symbiotically with bacteria that occupy nodules on its roots. The bacteria benefit from a supply of sugars from tbe plant; in return, they convert atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen into nitrates that dissolve in soil moisture and are absorbed by the plant roots - a natural fertilizer

Yellow rattle are not only parasitic on grasses, they also attack vetch. If you are of a dramatic frame of mind, you can read this picture as the vetch seeking to take its revenge

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The bee inspection happened and the results are worse than we anticipated. The disease is present in all our colonies, not just the two that I suspected. Two colonies are salvageable, but we must kill the brood and destroy all the combs. The other three colonies must be destroyed completely. This is a more severe blow than we expected and we are still somewhat in shock, I think. The inspector was sensitive to our feelings and careful to praise the standard of our beekeeping and emphasise the injustice of the situation. The next couple of weeks will not be pleasant but, on the scale of human tragedy, it is barely a ripple. In fact the inspector was a very open person, who shared with us - a propos of nothing - her sadness over her current estrangement from her son. I can imagine nothing more heart-breaking, and it puts into proper context our mere beekeeping woes