Wood care project
Despite the problems caused by death watch beetles (Xestobium rufovillosum) to many cathedrals, including Salisbury and Winchester, and historical houses such as Kew Palace, methods of control are costly and ineffective. This is partly because of the paucity of information about the beetle's life cycle and behaviour. Kew, in partnership with Birkbeck College, has been part of an EU-funded project (co-ordinated by English Heritage and Ridout Associates) to look at methods of beetle control. For the last three years Steve Belmain has been collecting beetles from the rafters of old buildings and studying their behaviour.
Kew Palace (above) was a good source of death
watch beetles (left) for studies on their behaviour, undertaken
by Steve Belmain (pictured below searching for beetles in the
attic).
One basic discovery was that the beetles could fly and are
attracted to light, enabling the use of ultra-violet or sticky
traps to monitor populations and possibly control them.
Collaborative studies with University College Dublin showed that,
contary to previous belief, infestation of wood by the fungus
Donkioporia expansa was not critical for beetle development;
however, beetles may develop faster in fungal infested wood.
Steve found that beetles could discriminate among different types
of wood, showing a preference for old decaying oak, and parallel
studies by TNO in the Netherlands revealed that wood chemistry
changes with age and these changes could be influenced by fungal
infestation. The next phase of the project is to make traps more
attractive to beetles by incorporating volatiles from old oak
wood or by-products from fungal-wood interactions.
Contact: Dr Monique Simmonds (0181-332 5328)
First Flowerings
Iris odaesanensis (left), a very rare member of the
Series Chinenses endemic to the Odaesan mountain range of S.
Korea, flowered in the Cumberland woodland garden this May. The
species was described in 1974 and this is the first known record
of it flowering in cultivation.
Contact: Tony Hall
Jodrellia fistulosa (right), sent by Prof. Himansu Baijnath (Univ. Durban-Westville) who described the genus in 1978 whilst studying at Kew for his PhD, flowered in the Science Support Unit in late September. The plant, named after T.J. Phillips-Jodrell who funded the original Jodrell Laboratory, is now the subject of cytological and molecular research.
Contact: Clive Foster (0181-332 5523)
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