Category Archives: flowers

‘Dedicated Naturalist’: Herb Robert

03 Friday Nov 2017

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A snippet from my volunteer work on the ‘Dedicated Naturalist’ Project, helping to decipher and digitise, record and publicise the life’s work of naturalist extraordinaire, Dr Mary Gillham.

171103 Herb Robert (1)

As part of my current work to research and write the story of Mary’s life for the project website, I was, this week, going through items from Mary’s university days – she held a BSc in agriculture and botany from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and a PhD from the University of Wales at Bangor. Amongst the treasures Mary had retained was a folder of botanical drawings, and I couldn’t resist choosing a few to scan for the website and also to share here.

171103 Herb Robert (2)

The paper Mary used is tissue-thin so doesn’t scan well – the details on the reverse show through – and I’ve had to clean this up a lot on photoshop. It’s still not great but I love the level of detail in these drawings and, as Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) is still to be found blooming here and there (photographed yesterday), this seemed a good flower to feature.

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For the full story about the Mary Gillham Archive Project, check out our blog, https://marygillhamarchiveproject.wordpress.com/  and follow our progress on Facebook and on Twitter.

Stinking Iris

30 Monday Oct 2017

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I gave it a really good sniff but I smelled nothing. It was only later that I read the smell comes from the leaves, but only when you crush or rub them, which I didn’t do. And, even then, some people can’t smell the ‘slightly stale, raw beef’ smell that Stinking iris is named for. Even its scientific name, Iris foetidissima, refers to the smell, as do two of its vernacular names: Roast-beef plant and Bloody bones.

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However, I’m not here to warn about this iris’s smell nor, in fact, to extol the virtues of the plant itself, which is often a bit untidy and tatty looking, but rather to praise the beauty of its seeds. The flowers themselves are nothing to write home about, being a rather dull greyish-purple but the seeds erupt in the autumn, like bright orange peas in a papery brown pod. As the weather gets colder, if they’re not plundered as food by birds, they turn a fabulous scarlet and then, eventually, if the weather’s not too wet, dry to a rich golden brown. Just beautiful!

Wild words: nyctinasty

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Here’s one from my volunteering on the Mary Gillham Archive Project. According to the Oxford Dictionary, nyctinasty is ‘the periodic movement of flowers or leaves caused by nightly changes in light intensity or temperature’, though I have also read that these movements, particularly the opening and closing of flowers, don’t always occur at night. When the weather is very dull due to thick cloud, or when the weather changes dramatically, as with the onset of a sudden storm, from a bright sunny day to a dark, grey, heavily cloudy sky, some flowers react by closing up. The word nyctinasty comes from the Greek and is a combination of nux or nukt meaning night and nastos meaning press or squeeze together.

171025 nyctinasty

A Milky blob

20 Friday Oct 2017

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For today’s Floral Friday theme, we have a very common wildflower White clover (Trifolium repens), which is also known by the vernacular names Milky blobs, Sheepy-maa’s and Bee-bread.

171020 White clover

It seems I had a deprived childhood because, according to Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica, ‘Almost all children learn two traditions about white clover: that the white flowers can be pulled out of the heads and sucked for a bead of honey (hence ‘bee-bread’ …); and that four- and, even better, five-leaved clovers are lucky, though you must ideally come across them by accident.’ Okay, so I knew about four-leaved clovers being lucky but I’d never heard about sucking the flowers for honey. Did you?

‘Like a flight of butterflies’

13 Friday Oct 2017

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171013 Cyclamen (3)

‘… a cyclamen that looks like a flight of butterflies, frozen for a single, exquisite moment in the white heart of Time …’ ~ Beverley Nichols, Down the Garden Path, 1931

As you may have guessed, this is not a wild cyclamen but rather one of my houseplants. I bought it in flower back in February and it has just started flowering again. I actually have two this colour – the other has buds but they’re not yet open, and another cyclamen that has white blooms, also in bud. I love the little burst of colour they bring to my bedroom windowsill.

When is a water-lily not a water-lily?

29 Friday Sep 2017

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This pretty plant may look like a water-lily, it even has the words water lily in its name but it’s not actually a member of the water-lily family.

170929 Fringed waterlily (2)

This is the Fringed Water-lily (Nymphoides peltata) and its closest plant relation is the Bogbean (the fringed edges to its petals are a bit of a giveaway). It can be found in ponds (the one in my photo is in the dipping pond at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park), lakes and other watery places where the water is still or slow moving. Apparently, it is well established in the Leeds and Liverpool canal, and in much of south-east England, as well as in the East Anglian fens. It is also widely planted in ornamental ponds in parks and gardens, and snippets of those plants may account for its spread in the wild. The gardeners amongst you may know it as Yellow floating heart, which is such a charming name, I think.

Traveller’s joy

22 Friday Sep 2017

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The joy of this plant is that you see it wherever you travel in Britain. See what I did there?

170922 Travellers joy (1)

Clematis vitalba is most commonly called Traveller’s-joy but you might also know it as Old-man’s-beard, Father Christmas, Smokewood or Woodbine. Its feathery white seed heads are its most distinctive feature, making it easy to recognise and identify, and this really is a plant that you’ll see draped over hedges and fences almost everywhere in Britain.

Yet SEWBReC, the South East Wales Biodiversity Records Centre, have revealed that Traveller’s-joy is not well recorded: they have less than 2000 records in their database. And so they have made this plant their species of the month for September. If you spot Traveller’s-joy this month (or next, or the month after), please make a point of recording it with your local records centre – almost every county in Britain has its own records centre where you can log your biological sightings and those of you based in south-east Wales can find out more about biological recording, and the species of the month, on SEWBReC’s website.

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