: Collections & Research

Juliet Hodgkiss is Senior Garden Conservator for Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. She leads a dedicated team of gardeners and volunteers at St Fagans, who care for the gardens and their special heritage plant collections. In response to an increased interest our own gardens and a growing yearning for the beauty of some of our nations’ magnificent great gardens during lockdown, over the past few days we’ve been collecting your questions for Juliet about her work. Here are her answers in our ‘heritage’ version of Gardener’s Questiontime.

What's the best thing about your job?

The best thing about my job is being paid to work in such beautiful gardens.We have such a great variety of gardens, I’m doing something different every day. I also get to meet so many great people through my work - staff, volunteers, visitors, fellow gardeners and more.

Which of St Fagans' gardens is your favourite and why?

This time of year, my favourite part of the gardens is the area by the ponds. Throughout spring, the terrace banks are covered with spring bulbs; daffodils, bluebells and fritillaries, all above a carpet of anemones.  The magnificent Magnolia ‘Isca’ comes into flower first, followed by the cherries and the apples. The latest tree to flower is the Davidia with its giant white bracts, which sway in the breeze, giving its name of the handkerchief tree.​

​Which is the rarest plant in the collection?

One of the rarest plants we have is the Bardou Job rose, which was one of the original roses in the Rosery. This was thought to be extinct, then it was re-discovered by a group of rose enthusiasts growing in the old garden of the head warder on Alcatraz! They propagated from it, and sent us over 6 roses to grow in our gardens.

We also have a collection of heritage potatoes, donated to us by the Scottish Agricultural Research Agency. One of the potatoes we grow is the Lumper, the potato grown at the time of the Irish potato famine. These cannot be bought, so we have to grow them each year to maintain our collection.

Which is the most difficult plant you have to tackle - one that is hardest to maintain?

The most difficult plants to keep are the heritage potatoes. We have to grow these every year to maintain our collection, and most of these old varieties are very susceptible to blight, so require careful management to ensure a good crop.

Which is the most difficult plant to control?

The hardest plant to control is Oxalis, a persistent weed with a clover-like leaf, which multiplies by means of bulbils. These bulbils are spread when the soil is cultivated. It is virtually impossible to eradicate. After years spent trying to weed it out, we now keep it under control with ground cover planting and mulching.

Which is your favourite time of the year in the garden?

My favourite time of year is spring, with the spring bulbs, blossoming trees, the ferns unfurling their fronds, and all the plants in the garden bursting into growth. Everything looks fresh and new, and we gardeners are full of hope for a great year ahead in the garden.

For our avid blog readers, you might recall previous articles about a group of worms which certainly dig! They are the shovel head worms, or to give them their scientific name, magelonids. Shovel head worms are a small group of marine bristle worms (polychaetes), which are sea worms related to earthworms and leeches, with bristles along their bodies. Shovel head worms get their name from their spade-shaped heads, which they use to dig in soft sediments such as sands as muds. They are pretty small and delicate, so although we have them around our coasts, they are often tricky to find. Therefore, they are not as well-known as other marine bristleworms such as lugworms and ragworms, often used by fisherman as bait! Their size also means that they can be pretty difficult to collect, ever tried looking for a worm less than 1 mm wide on a beach? We have! Despite their size they are quite beautiful worms (although, I may be slightly biased!) and like other marine bristleworms they are an important food source for many other sea creatures, and also are the gardeners of the ocean, re-working the sediments like earthworms do on land.

Shovel head worm, Magelona filiformis, first described off Plymouth in 1959

Although, I wear many different hats in the museum, one of my principle jobs is being a taxonomist. Taxonomy is the science of naming, describing and classifying life on earth. That may be finding new species, or re-describing species which were discovered many moons ago. When we find a new species, we draw it, take photographs of it (sometimes using Scanning Electron Microscopes enabling us to Zoom in really closely!), describe it and then pick a name for it in Latin. To give you an example here is a species that I described with colleagues in China.

Shovel head worm, Magelona equilamellae, first described off Southern France in 1964

So, what have we been up to recently? We have been reviewing the shovel head worms of Europe, of which there are currently nine species known. Four of which were first described from the UK, three off France, one off Portugal and one off Sweden. Although, these are worms we know, back when the species were first described we didn’t know all of the features/characters that we needed to know in order to correctly identify and seperate them. Unfortunately, this means that the worms get mis-identified, causing problems for people who monitor the health of our seabeds! This is where we step in, re-describing the species and producing identification keys and guides to help people in the future. Over the last year we have been busy reviewing the species, a paper on which has just been published. Now scientists all around the world will be able to correctly identify their European shovel head worms.

Eight species of shovel head worm found in Europe

We have been doing this with a Professional Training Year Student from Cardiff University, and colleagues from Spain and Portugal. 

 

Find out more about our work on ‘Worms that Dig!’

West African Worms that Dig 

More on West African shovel head worms

Species new to science, Shovel head Worms from around the world

 

 

Chama sarda from the Caribbean, found in western Ireland

In the previous blog (What are Non-native (or alien) Species?) I talked about non-native species and how they are transported around the planet. In this blog I’ll tell you a bit more more about rafting bivalves that can cross the Atlantic on plastics and about some of the UK hotspots for these non-native (alien) hitchikers.

 

What is rafting?

Rafting has occurred throughout geological time, and it is how many terrestrial (land-dwelling) species colonised islands and other regions across the seas. A good example of this is the lemurs of Madagascar. 60 million years ago there were no lemurs on the island of Madagascar, but their ancestors were on the mainland of the African continent. So how did they actually get to Madagascar? Palaeontologists tell us that rafting is the answer. Back then, Madagascar was closer to the mainland and currents in the Mozambique Channel were much stronger towards the island than they are now. The lemurs’ ancestors must have found their way onto mats of vegetation or branches and by chance rafted to Madagascar. A completely fluke event! 

 

Violent storms assist the dispersal of non-native species on plastics

Today, our litter ends up in the oceans and provides unnatural vehicles for marine non-native species. Over the last decade more than 20 species of Caribbean bivalve shells have ended up on British and Irish beaches attached to plastic buoys, bait buckets, ropes and others items – even a piece of a car running board! The latter had three different types of Caribbean bivalves attached, one of which, the Bicolor Purse Purse Oyster, is an invasive species in Brazil. Violent storms help to throw the plastic objects high onto our shores and they are then found by beach cleaners, beachcombers and others on the strandline at the top of the beach. Many of the shells or photographs are sent to Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd - National Museum Cardiff to be identified and hence to work out where they came from.

 

Conveyor belts and hotspots

General locations of rafting bivalve records in the southwest of Britain and Ireland

The rafting species that we are studying start off attaching to plastics in the Caribbean. These plastics eventually float into the warm ocean currents of the Gulf Stream, which originates in the Gulf of Mexico, and provides a conveyor belt to transport non-native species across the Atlantic Ocean to the British Isles. Once here, violent storms then deposit the plastics, with their hitchhikers still attached, onto our shores. 

The hotspots for non-native species records are in the southwest of England and western Ireland, but there are also records for western Scotland. Strangely enough there are no records for Wales, even though some of the beaches are prime, exposed shores similar to those in Ireland and England. 

I want to discover if there are any welsh hotspots for rafting bivalves, find out which beaches to search and to encourage people to go out to those locations to try and get some records for Wales. 

 

Why should we monitor these species?

It is important to establish points of entry for any non-native species, which is why we need to map where the rafting species are arriving so that we can monitor numbers of any species arriving alive that could possibly pose a threat. When a species moves to a new location, the species that already live there have to adapt to cope with the newcomer. This can put a strain on populations that use the same food source or habitat as the invading species, which is why we want to know where these rafting species are washing ashore. All the rafting species that we’ve encountered so far cannot reproduce in our waters as they need warmer sea temperatures of 20°C or more to breed. However, if sea temperatures continue to rise, climate change could aid more rafting species to create self-sustaining populations here which could become a real problem

 

The Bicolor Purse Oyster – an invasive species in Brazil

Byssus threads of Bicolor Purse Oyster from the Caribbean

Of the non-native rafting species found so far in the UK, the Bicolor Purse Oyster (Isognomon bicolor) is the one that has shown up in the greatest numbers. It was first described as a species in 1846 by C.B. Adams who collected it in Jamaica. It has been spotted around the coasts of Florida, Texas and Bermuda and several of the Caribbean islands all of which are considered its natural range. However, in 1970 it was recorded outside its natural range in the eastern state of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. It has since moved further southwards and is considered an invasive species in Brazil as it is competing with native oysters and mussels for space and is spreading quickly. 

The Bicolor Purse Oyster in Britain and Ireland

The Bicolor Purse Oyster has been found in Cornwall, Dorset and western Ireland by eagle-eyed beachcombers. They noted locations, objects that the oysters were attached to, and they collected the shells. The beachcombers are great photographers so we have a record of the variety of sizes, shapes and colours of the shells found here. The Bicolor Purse Oyster is small (up to 28mm), flattened and elongated. The outside is beige and white, sometimes with purple blotches and is smooth apart from being a bit flaky-looking. The front of the shell has byssus threads of pale to dark brown that protrude ready to attach to hard surfaces. In its natural range this species attaches to rocks and is commonly found in the Florida Keys. 

 

What next?

Although there are lots of records of rafting species in Ireland and England, there are none for Wales. Does that mean that they do not wash ashore in Wales? Doubtful! This is why I’ve set up a project to get people out onto beaches looking for any plastics that could be likely rafts. The project involves citizen scientists – volunteers from the general public – who can help to spot these rafting species in Wales.

To find out more about this part of the project see next week's blog entitled Rafting Bivalves - the Citizen Science project.

The Vulcan Hotel was first registered as an ‘ale house’ in 1853. By the time it was dismantled by the Museum in 2012 it had seen several phases of alterations. The scale of the 1901 and 1914 alterations required approval by the County Planning Authority and these plans are held today by the Glamorgan Archives. Further work was undertaken in 1925 and 1941.

The planning application from 1914 features two drawings of the façade (the 1901 application doesn’t show the façade). A drawing in black and white was labelled ‘At present’ while a drawing in colour was labelled ‘Proposed’. No written text survives to accompany the drawings, but careful study can shed more light on the proposed changes. The most obvious alteration was the number of windows on the first floor was increased from two to four, which were flanked by new, raised pilasters of red brick. The parapet fronting the roof, depicted as a series of horizontal lines above the windows was removed, the chimneys were altered, and the roof was tiled in new, grey slate. Another change - which is quite subtle on these drawings - is the most dramatic in The Vulcan’s history. The whole building was increased in height. The drawing labelled ‘At present’ shows a roof of the same height as its neighbours, while the drawing labelled ‘Proposed’ shows The Vulcan being taller than those either side of it.

The configuration of the ground floor façade remained unchanged – two doorways and two windows, each divided into two large panes with fanlights above. Looking closely, however, there are several key differences which suggest that they are in fact, two different facades. The ‘At present’ drawing depicts two fielded panels under each window, while the ‘Proposed’ drawing has only one. The number of door panels are different. The pilasters on either side of the windows, depicted in the ‘At present’ drawing, are fluted and stop short of the frieze, while the pilasters in the ‘Proposed’ drawing aren’t fluted and continue through the frieze to the cornice above. There are seven fanlights above each windowpane in the ‘At present’ drawing, while the ‘Proposed’ drawing shows only three. The decorative finial above the cornice was removed and last but not least, only the ‘proposed’ drawing features the inscriptions THE VULCAN HOTEL, WINES & SPIRITS and ALES & STOUT.

Although not made clear by the plans, we assume that the drawing labelled ‘Present’ depicts a ground floor façade made of timber - just like a traditional Victorian shop front - and that the façade proposed in 1914 was of glazed earthenware tiles - which remained in place until 2012.