What lies beneath

Minuscule springtails vault at the base of rough grass, ants march robotically to pursue their mission and, at night, female glow worms light the way with their abdomen. John Lewis-Stempel discovers the life in a meadow’s underworld

- John Lewis-Stempel

IF we were to lie face down like Gulliver in Lilliput and part the grass and plants of a meadow, what creatures would we see down in the jungly depth? The seen and the heard of the meadow top, the flickering butterflies, the droning bees, the chirpy grasshoppers are familiar, but what lives in the hidden meadowland beneath our careless feet?

Prising apart towering stems and stalks in a slow dive down, our passage is arrested halfway by an encounter with a glob of ‘cuckoo spit’, a piece of white froth on a frond that has nothing to do with the bird, except that both are phenomena of spring. Gently smearing out the foam on the back of the hand will expose the yellowy babe-naked being that lives inside: the nymph of the common froghopper, Philaenus spumarius. The ‘spit’, moistly protective and entirely concealing, is produced by the larva blowing bubbles from its rectum.

Welcome to the meadow underworld in all its vulgarities, sacral wonders, bizarre cruelties and strange beauties. Say we were to do our deep dive down into the long grass after dark, our journey would not lack equal fascination, although it may be less profane. Our way might be lighted by female glow worms, who illuminate their abdomen (via biochemical process) to attract mates. Glow worms are not worms, but beetles. Much is misnamed in the undergrowth. But then much is unnamed, even unknown down here.