During Friday’s walk I was vaguely hoping to see the Otter that’s been visiting Cardiff Bay wetlands during recent weeks (I didn’t – and I’m not one to stand around for hours on the off chance) but my secondary purpose was to look for pavement plants, those wildflowers that manage to colonise the cracks between bricks or slabs of tarmac and the subject of today’s Wildflower Hour on social media.

Fortunately, I bumped in to a local birding friend who is also a keen botanist and he was able to point me in the direction of this plant, a new one for me, Field woundwort (Stachys arvensis). Though its natural habitat is fields and hedge edges, especially on sandy soils and mostly in the southern parts of Britain, this plant has extended its range to include some urban locations, like allotments and, as shown here, the tiny cracks between a building and the pavement.

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