Anthony commented a day or two ago:
“Another good thing about bulrushes is that female Aeshnea cyanea (Southern Hawker) dragonflies lay their eggs in the emerging stems of bulrushes. They have a sickle shaped ovipositor that they insert just above the water level….I’m waiting ’til next spring to watch them emerge and drop into the water where they spend up to 4 years before metamorphosing into adults when they will use the bulrushes to climb out and dry their wings before taking off and starting the process all over again.
And the picture above is the evidence from his garden pond in La Montagne in Brittany.
Anthony also comments:
“Our wildlife pond is just over two years old and is coming on strong… we already have frogs breeding and this summer we found some Palmate Newts in the garden and one newt tadpole in the pond!! Lots of dragonflies and damselflies using the facilities.”
Finally, for those of you more interested in your stomachs than your wildlife you might like to check out just how much of the bulrush plant you can eat.
http://www.northernbushcraft.com/plants/cattail/notes.htm
Now you know it makes sense to dig up the veg. patch and replace it with a nice pond full of bulrushes.
