Tag Archives: Molluscs

Slugs and snails expected to re-emerge this weekend

Snail photo by jamieanne under creative commons

iNEWS reports unseasonally late frosts have been keeping them at bay in Britain’s gardens but slugs and snails are set to return at the weekend with a vengeance.

Warmer conditions combined with scattered showers offers them ideal conditions, just as gardeners are tending their prized seedlings and garden plants are putting forth tender, and a to a gastropod, highly munchable fresh shoots.

It all adds up to, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is warning, a perfect slug storm for gardeners. Nevertheless, the RHS is urging gardeners to go easy on their most traditional of enemies.

Oysters bed down in the Thames once again

The Times reports oysters are to be reintroduced to the Thames estuary in the hope of reviving production of the shellfish on a scale not seen for centuries. 

The oyster population of the Thames has suffered an estimated 95 per cent decline in the past 200 years, due to habitat loss, pollution and disease. Human intervention is now the mollusc’s only hope, according to conservationists from the Zoological Society of London, and work will begin this month to build a new oyster bed in Essex.

Hunt in your gardens for slugs, RHS urges, amid worries beneficial British slug is being wiped out

 The Telegraph reports that gardeners have been urged to pick up their torches and hunt in their gardens for slugs as the Royal Horticultural Society issues a plea for data on the disappearing British bug. [See the full article for details of how to hunt and how to report what you find]

There are worries the Yellow Cellar Slug, which is useful for gardens as it feeds on decaying rather than live plant material, is being usurped by the Green Cellar Slug, originally from Ukraine, which arrived in the 1970s.  Since the Green Cellar Slug arrived, numbers of the useful slug are thought to have sharply declined.

While both slugs have large, green-yellow, patterned bodies, the Yellow Cellar Slug has a long yellow stripe running along the centre of its tail.

You can also learn more about these slugs from this Slugwatch guide to the Yellow Cellar Slug and Green Cellar Slug.

Photo above by Jon Sullivan under creative commons.