23 Monday Jan 2017
Tags
crocus, Galanthus nivalis, Lesser Celandine, primrose, Primula vulgaris, snowdrop, spring flowers in January
It’s not even the end of January and the spring flowers are starting to open. I saw these Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), Crocuses (Crocus sp.), Lesser celandines (Ficaria verna) and Primroses (Primula vulgaris) yesterday during a walk through my local park and cemetery. They’re wonderful to see but I have a feeling winter hasn’t quite finished with us yet.
17 Saturday Dec 2016
You’d think with the shortest day fast approaching that the landscape would be dull and grey and completely lacking in colour. But it’s not! If you look around, you’ll find the cotoneaster trees loaded with red berries, and holly trees, too, bursting with shiny red fruit. In my local park, the Mahonia bushes are flowering in brilliant yellow starbursts, and the Callicarpa shrubs are covered in stunning lilac berries that seem almost unreal and man-made, rather than something Ma Nature created. I thought I’d put some of Nature’s beautiful baubles together to make my very own ‘unreal’ Christmas tree!
11 Friday Nov 2016
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‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them’
~ Laurence Binyon, ‘For the Fallen’
‘These poppies were made by members of the Penylan Craft Group, members of the WI in south Wales and members of the U3A. They were made in recognition of the sacrifices made during conflicts that have enabled each one of us to have a future.’ The poppies are on display in a small lawned area near Roath Lake in Cardiff.
21 Friday Oct 2016
Today was the fiftieth anniversary of one of the saddest days in Welsh history. Wales is a country that has seen more than its fair share of mining disasters but they usually involved the men, the Welsh miners, explosions, and cave-ins. On this day, 21 October 1966, the tragedy was even worse, as the 144 people who died included 116 children, happily attending the village school when a colliery spoil tip collapsed, sending a huge landscape down the hillside, obliterating everything in its path. Today, in Wales, we remembered the children of Aberfan.
14 Friday Oct 2016
It’s a rather grey and gloomy Friday evening here in Cardiff so I think we need some brightening up. There aren’t a lot of flowers around now that autumn is well and truly here but the dandelions and their lookalikes continue to provide little bursts of sunshine on grassy swards, the rudbeckias (at least, I think that’s what they were) have just finished a magnificent show at my local park and, at the cemetery, the Fox and cubs blooms are adding wonderful spots of orange to the autumnal landscape. Happy weekend, everyone!
30 Friday Sep 2016
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This little Harlequin ladybird was just one of the many insects – flies and hoverflies, honey bees, bumblebees and wasps, and a Red Admiral butterfly – that were enjoying the nectar and pollen to be found on these ivy flowers, an important source of food for so many insects in the autumn months.
16 Friday Sep 2016
I mentioned to a co-worker that I was going to Bute Park to take photos of hydrangeas after I’d finished my voluntary work and got this response: ‘Hydrangeas? Bleh! They’re so boring!’ Well, I beg to differ.
Not only are they relatively hardy and widespread around the world, they also come in a range of gorgeous colours (whites, blues, pinks and purples and every shade in between) and forms (shrubs, small trees and even climbers).
They are much loved plants in Asian countries, where a tea made from one particular variety, Hydrangea serrata, features in celebrations for Buddha’s birthday on 8 April – the tea is both poured over statues of Buddha and consumed by those attending the ceremonies. And, as with many flowers, the pink hydrangea has a range of special meanings, the loveliest of which I think is ‘You are the beat of my heart’. What could be more special than that?
13 Tuesday Sep 2016
Tags
Amaryllis belladonna, Autumn crocus, Belladonna lily, Colchium autumnale, Naked Ladies, Roath Park
When I posted last Friday on the Naked Ladies of Roath and Bute, my gardening friends were quick to point out that, as well as the Autumn crocus, Colchium autumnale, there is another flower that also has the common name Naked Lady … and here she is, Amaryllis belladonna, found flaunting her gorgeous pinkness outside the glasshouse at Roath Park on yesterday’s walk. Though a South African native, the Belladonna lily, as she’s also commonly called, can be found in gardens and parks throughout the world. Her large showy blooms appear in the autumn, with the narrow strap-shaped leaves following a little after the flowers.
10 Saturday Sep 2016
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that
it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure
is a need and an ecstasy.
from Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
05 Monday Sep 2016
It must be autumn – even if I chose to ignore the cooler evenings, the nights drawing in and the falling leaves, I can’t ignore the gorgeous cyclamen flowering in my local park!
The Wild cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium) is not native to Britain – it hails from the Mediterranean countries, though has, over time, made its way into more northern European countries, including Britain, where garden escapees have gradually become naturalised in many of the southern counties and here in Wales.
The word cyclamen comes originally from the Greek for circle, cyclamīnos, which is a nod to its round-shaped tuber, and the species name, hederifolium, is a combination of the Latin hedera (meaning ivy) and folium (meaning leaf), which refers to the shape and patterns on cyclamen leaves. More interesting though is its common name, sowbread, which apparently came about because pigs like to eat cyclamen, a fact reflected not only in the English common name but in several other languages as well: pain de pourceau in French, pan porcino in Italian, varkensbrood in Dutch, and ‘pigs’ manjū’ in Japanese.
earthstar 
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