Tags
Bee-fly, British wildflowers, Grangemoor Park, Lychnis flos-cuculi, Ragged robin, Silene flos-cuculi, Spring colour, spring flowers
At Grangemoor Park on Friday, I spotted my first flowering Ragged robin for the year.
This gorgeous wildflower was formerly known as Lychnis flos-cuculi, but is now Silene flos-cuculi – from a scientific article I browsed, this seems a complicated story of almost constant reclassification of the species! You will still see both names used in books and on line, which is why I’ve mentioned both here.
According to a couple of books I discovered on the ‘language of flowers’, Ragged robin’s symbolic meaning is ‘wit’, and it is dedicated to Saint Barnabas. The ever-informative First Nature website says:
Lychnis, the genus name, comes from the Greek noun lychnos, meaning lamp; it refers to the use of a plant in this genus as the wick of an oil lamp. The specific epithet flos-cuculi means ‘flower of the cuckoo’ and was probably chosen because the first flowers of Ragged Robin appear just as the first cuckoos are being heard (in Britain and Ireland at least) in May.
A special moment: to try to stop it swaying in the breeze so I could get a sharp photo, I was holding one of the blooms when a bee-fly decided to zoom in for a feed of nectar. That super long proboscis comes in handy for long narrow flowers like these.
We usually get a good swathe of this in our park in north Cardiff but not that much this year,which is a shame
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I wonder why. It’s certainly been wet enough in the Cardiff area. Hopefully, it will return for you next year.
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I don’t know but head ranger said she was seeing similar in other areas for some reason with other things too. We monitor some of park as a Friends group and help council manage certain areas for wildlife. Mind you we do have lots of bistort this year
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Interesting, because at my local country park, Cosmeston, the Ragged robin did really well this year. Good to know you have lots of bistort though. 🙂
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*species!
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That is a secies that I have never seen here, I would love to though. You wre lucky to get the flower and the best Fly.
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They like to have wet feet but their heads in the sun, so I see them around local ponds.
The bee-fly was a wonderful bonus! 🙂
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