Buckthorn for Brimstones
Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:45 am
The Brimstone butterfly is seen by many keen butterfly enthusiasts such as myself as one of the heralds of spring. That fast-paced flash of bright yellow as they seem to be on a mission is something I remember well from my childhood in Chester every year.
But ever since I moved to Sheffield in 2004, until March 2020, I hadn’t seen a single Brimstone in Sheffield. That’s not to say they aren’t in Sheffield, they are, as the local reporting of sightings demonstrates. But numbers are low.
What changed in March 2020? Well in spring 2017, I removed the non-native privet hedge that was the back garden border between my neighbour and I, replacing it with Alder Buckthorn (rhamnus frangula). I did this purposely with the Brimstone butterfly in mind, as both Alder Buckthorn and Common (or Purging) Buckthorn (rhamnus cathartica) are their larval host plant.
I had read that the adult Brimstone butterfly can snip out Buckthorn from many miles away, and make a beeline for them. So, would I see a Brimstone straight after planting the 10-metre hedge line? Well, not straight away, but three years isn’t too bad.
It didn’t stay to lay eggs, but I did see it again in Spring 2021, so perhaps the plants are still too small, and they are just waiting.
Anyhow, in my part of south west Sheffield, we have an active community of residents who are interested in general wildlife and green issues, and I’m part of the committee of a new group called Nether Edge and Sharrow Sustainable Transformation (NESST). The group has nearly 400 members and is the successor group to the organisation that fought Sheffield Council so successfully to save Sheffield’s wonderful street trees, including the now famous 120-year-old elm tree on Chelsea Road. NESST is now focused on wider environmental, biodiversity and sustainability issues, not just street trees. Our motto is “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally.”
In early March 2021, I was chatting on the phone to a friend of mine called Julian Dowding, who lives in Ipswich about my Buckthorn hedge, and he told me about an initiative he and others had led in East Suffolk from 1998 onwards. The Brimstone butterfly was very rare in that area in 1998, but over a number of years, he encouraged local people to plant Common Buckthorn in their gardens and local green spaces. By 2010, the Brimstone butterfly population had “exploded” in Julian’s words!
Inspired by Julian, the next day I emailed the 400 members of NESST to see if they were interested in participating in a similar initiative. I knew we were reaching the end of the bare root delivery season, so I felt I had to act quickly, and gave people a week to respond. Amazingly, despite the short notice, and minimal advertising, I received orders for 180 plants from 28 people. You can see the locations of where the plants were planted in the map below. Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust found out about my scheme, and we are currently working together to run a much bigger whole of Sheffield version of the scheme in September/October this year. Fingers crossed that should mean huge numbers of Buckthorn plants being planted all across Sheffield and nearby.
One word of advice on which species of buckthorn to choose. The basic information on the internet suggests choosing Alder Buckthorn for clay soils. However, speaking to the experts, Alder Buckthorn only really thrives on waterlogged acid clay soils. In all other conditions, Common (or Purging) Buckthorn is best suited.
The reason I’m writing this article is to encourage readers to do something similar in your towns and villages. The local scheme I ran this Spring probably took up a total of 24 hours of my time, spread over 2 weeks. I anticipate the same this coming autumn for the bigger Sheffield wide scheme. This is such a small investment of my time, for the anticipated gain of an explosion in the Brimstone population in Sheffield, in ten years’ time.
Practical conservation action is sometimes hard and arduous, but the Buckthorn for Brimstone initiative is quite the opposite. Why don’t you also give it a try?
But ever since I moved to Sheffield in 2004, until March 2020, I hadn’t seen a single Brimstone in Sheffield. That’s not to say they aren’t in Sheffield, they are, as the local reporting of sightings demonstrates. But numbers are low.
What changed in March 2020? Well in spring 2017, I removed the non-native privet hedge that was the back garden border between my neighbour and I, replacing it with Alder Buckthorn (rhamnus frangula). I did this purposely with the Brimstone butterfly in mind, as both Alder Buckthorn and Common (or Purging) Buckthorn (rhamnus cathartica) are their larval host plant.
I had read that the adult Brimstone butterfly can snip out Buckthorn from many miles away, and make a beeline for them. So, would I see a Brimstone straight after planting the 10-metre hedge line? Well, not straight away, but three years isn’t too bad.
It didn’t stay to lay eggs, but I did see it again in Spring 2021, so perhaps the plants are still too small, and they are just waiting.
Anyhow, in my part of south west Sheffield, we have an active community of residents who are interested in general wildlife and green issues, and I’m part of the committee of a new group called Nether Edge and Sharrow Sustainable Transformation (NESST). The group has nearly 400 members and is the successor group to the organisation that fought Sheffield Council so successfully to save Sheffield’s wonderful street trees, including the now famous 120-year-old elm tree on Chelsea Road. NESST is now focused on wider environmental, biodiversity and sustainability issues, not just street trees. Our motto is “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally.”
In early March 2021, I was chatting on the phone to a friend of mine called Julian Dowding, who lives in Ipswich about my Buckthorn hedge, and he told me about an initiative he and others had led in East Suffolk from 1998 onwards. The Brimstone butterfly was very rare in that area in 1998, but over a number of years, he encouraged local people to plant Common Buckthorn in their gardens and local green spaces. By 2010, the Brimstone butterfly population had “exploded” in Julian’s words!
Inspired by Julian, the next day I emailed the 400 members of NESST to see if they were interested in participating in a similar initiative. I knew we were reaching the end of the bare root delivery season, so I felt I had to act quickly, and gave people a week to respond. Amazingly, despite the short notice, and minimal advertising, I received orders for 180 plants from 28 people. You can see the locations of where the plants were planted in the map below. Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust found out about my scheme, and we are currently working together to run a much bigger whole of Sheffield version of the scheme in September/October this year. Fingers crossed that should mean huge numbers of Buckthorn plants being planted all across Sheffield and nearby.
One word of advice on which species of buckthorn to choose. The basic information on the internet suggests choosing Alder Buckthorn for clay soils. However, speaking to the experts, Alder Buckthorn only really thrives on waterlogged acid clay soils. In all other conditions, Common (or Purging) Buckthorn is best suited.
The reason I’m writing this article is to encourage readers to do something similar in your towns and villages. The local scheme I ran this Spring probably took up a total of 24 hours of my time, spread over 2 weeks. I anticipate the same this coming autumn for the bigger Sheffield wide scheme. This is such a small investment of my time, for the anticipated gain of an explosion in the Brimstone population in Sheffield, in ten years’ time.
Practical conservation action is sometimes hard and arduous, but the Buckthorn for Brimstone initiative is quite the opposite. Why don’t you also give it a try?