Wolsingham, County Durham: When I cut open a pod, a small black and green ball rolled out from among mouldy seed remains
“When gorse is out of flower, kissing’s out of favour” goes the old saying, currently out of kilter with pandemic social distancing rules.
Today, on a bleak, wintry morning, gorse bushes were coming into bloom all along this moorland road. Will these out-of-season bloomers, with no bumblebees to pollinate them, produce any seeds? Maybe, if buffeting winter winds dislodge pollen inside the flowers and they self-pollinate. And if they do, those seeds might escape their greatest enemy, the gorse seed weevil, Exapion ulicis, which hibernates in winter. This tiny beetle can be so destructive in summer that it has been used as a biological control agent to limit their host’s invasion of California and New Zealand, where it has become a noxious weed.
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