Category Archives: wildflowers

On Common fleabane: bees and flies

23 Sunday Aug 2026

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As I wrote in my blog last Sunday about the life-saving benefits to wildlife of Drought-tolerant Common fleabane, the sheer number of insects I’ve seen feeding on fleabane gives me hope for their survival of this summer’s heat and drought. And, fortunately, many locations in the UK have had some rain this week, easing the situation a little for both wildlife and humans. This final blog includes some of the bees and flies I’ve seen on Common fleabane. However, as I’m not very skilled at identifying either of these families, I’ve excluded several I wasn’t able to name. Bees first.

A worker Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), out foraging for pollen to take home to its family, all the offspring of a single queen who mated at the end of last summer, hibernated through the winter and began a new family in the spring. That life cycle will soon begin again.

A Common carder bumblebee (Bombus pascuorum), hard at work just like its Buff-tailed cousin.

A Honey bee (Apis mellifera) – I think we all know about Honey bees, their hives, their delicious product.

And now the flies I’ve been able to identify. Firstly, the very distinctive Red-sided parasite fly (Eriothrix rufomaculata). I spotted a few of these, which appeared to be feeding on the flowers but may also have been looking for moth larvae to parasitise.

This splendid metallic green fly is Lucilia sericata. Although there are several similar green flies, by zooming in on my image I was able to confirm that this one has ‘one anterior-dorsal bristle on the mid-tibia’, which is one of the main identification features for this species.

On Common fleabane: spiders and wasps

22 Saturday Aug 2026

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This is the penultimate blog about the creatures I’ve been seeing feeding on Drought-tolerant Common fleabane, aiding their survival during this summer of record-breaking heatwaves and drought. Today’s post features both spiders and wasps, starting with the spiders.

This first little cutie is a Flower crab spider, Misumena vatia, one of several of these sneaky creatures I found, not actually feeding on the fleabane but lurking around the edges of the flowers, ready to pounce on anything unsuspecting and tasty looking that was unfortunate enough to perch too close.

Nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis), quite a small specimen so perhaps one of this year’s brood.

Xysticus lanio is another crab spider, one that’s actually quite difficult to identify so I’m not 100% sure of this one.

These last two are Ichneumon wasps, not identifiable from these images but possibly from the subfamily Pimplinae. The one in the second photo is munching on a very tiny creature. There were also lots of common wasp species but they rarely stopped still so I didn’t manage any photos of them on flowers.

On Common fleabane: hoverflies

20 Thursday Aug 2026

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Here’s the second of my more general blogs about the insects I’ve been finding in the past week that are managing to survive the season’s destructive heatwaves and drought by feeding on the flowers of Drought-tolerant Common fleabane. Today we have some of the many species of hoverflies I’ve noticed and managed to photograph.

First up, two different Eristalis species – I included the first image just because I liked it.

Episyrphus balteatus, aka Marmalade hoverfly, one I’m sure most people will have seen.

The Footballer, Helophilus pendulus, which gets its common name from the resemblance of its stripy thorax to a football strip.

The Sphaerophoria species of hoverfly were probably the most common in my favourite wildflower field, but they can be tricky to name precisely.

There were also a lot of these Syritta pipiens, but they were very wary of me getting close enough for photos so I was pleased to snap this one.

Drought-tolerant Common fleabane

16 Sunday Aug 2026

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I’ve just been looking at the rainfall data for my area: 1mm on 2 July, 0.4mm on 17 July, 0.8mm on 25 July and a few very welcome showers on 4 August that seemed to have given us an accumulation of about 4mm, and that’s it for the last seven weeks. And, today, our fifth heatwave of the year has just ended, with temperatures dropping to the mid-20°s Celsius. It’s little wonder then that drought was officially declared for the whole of Wales at the end of July.

Nature is struggling, to say the least, but there are some plants that are remarkably drought and heat tolerant, and the one that I’m noticing most often during my walks is Common fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica).

During today’s walk I revisited the wildflower meadow I featured here two Sundays ago, A meadow full of Painted ladies. All the gorgeous Knapweed that had attracted the Painted lady butterflies had gone to seed but the Common fleabane remained, as full of life and vibrant as two weeks ago. Though some flowers had gone over, buds were still opening on most plants.

Even better, that fleabane was feeding a lot of little creatures, from butterflies and a few moth species, to hoverflies, flies and bees, as well as various bugs, both adults and nymphs. It made me feel a little more hopeful that some of our wonderful wildlife will survive this difficult weather.

When I noticed yesterday how well the fleabane was surviving, I started taking photos of the creatures I was seeing on it, and I continued that theme today. During a series of blogs this week, I’ll share what I’ve found.

A meadow full of Painted ladies

02 Sunday Aug 2026

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I had a different blog planned for today (though it was also about this butterfly, and will follow tomorrow) but, after spending a magical hour in this wildflower meadow today, spellbound at the sight of at least twenty, probably more Painted ladies, I just had to share my enchantment with you.

Wood sage

19 Sunday Jul 2026

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With its sage-green leaves, this looks like a herb you should be able to cook with but it doesn’t have the smell you’d expect from a sage and, though I haven’t actually tried to cook with it, everything I’ve read says not to bother. I guess the lack of smell also indicates a lack of culinary taste.

I’m talking about a plant that I personally think is very poorly named, Wood sage (Teucrium scorodonia). I have never yet seen it growing in a woodland setting; the two photos below were taken in the last ten days, the first showing Wood sage growing very happily on the sea wall in Penarth, on the south Wales coast, the second in the hot rocky landscape of a former quarry on the Isle of Portland, where Wood sage is abundant and thriving.

Wood sage is a very pretty plant, I think. Those sage-green leaves look lush, despite the heatwave we’ve been experiencing for the past couple of weeks, and have a wonderful crinkly texture. And the flowers are a smooth buttery cream, with prominent pinkish filaments and yellow anthers.

Two bedstraws

05 Sunday Jul 2026

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The bedstraw family of plants (the Rubiaceae) includes wildflowers like Field madder (Sherardia arvensis) (featured in a post of that name in May 2023), and Woodruff (Galium odoratum) and Cleavers (Galium aparine) (both of which appeared in New and noticed, May 2021), but today I want to focus on the two bedstraws I’m seeing everywhere in the local fields at the moment, the yellow-flowered Lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum) and white-flowered Hedge bedstraw (Galium mollugo).

In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey writes that the flowers of Lady’s bedstraw smell strongly of honey, something I’ve never got down low enough to notice, and when dry, smells of new-mown hay, which is why it used to be stuffed into straw mattresses. Mabey also notes that this plant is ‘a coagulant and was once employed not just as a styptic, but as a vegetable substitute of rennet … in the making of cheese’.

Though I mostly see Hedge bedstraw growing alongside its yellow-flowered cousin in the local wildflower meadows, as its name implies, it is more often seen climbing amongst other plants in and around hedgerows, and in areas of low scrub. Both plants are a lovely addition to the profusion of summer flowers now in bloom.

NFY: Small skipper

24 Wednesday Jun 2026

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The butterflies are emerging in a steady flow now; for four days in a row last week I saw a new species each day – one day I saw two. My first two Small skippers (Thymelicus sylvestris) popped up at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park on Sunday 14 June; the beautiful creature shown here was the second of them. Although I did get a reasonable photo of the first Small skipper I saw, I’ve chosen these images for two reasons. Firstly, with the butterfly perched feeding on a Pyramidal orchid, this scene is much more photogenic.

Secondly, if you look closely at my second photo, you’ll notice that the butterfly has something attached to the end of its proboscis. These are pollinia, little packets of pollen that some flowers have specifically to aid in pollination. When a creature like a bee pokes its head into the flower, the sticky pollinia will attach themselves to its head and so, when the bee next pokes its head into a flower, the pollen from the first flower will rub off onto the second. Bee orchids also have these pollinia, and I’m guessing this lovely Small skipper has a particular preference for feeding on orchids.

Orchids at Grangemoor Park

21 Sunday Jun 2026

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During a recent wander around Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park, I was delighted to spot four different species of Britain’s native orchids. I thought our unseasonal heatwave in late May might have caused the orchids to frizzle but I think the fact that the record-breaking high temperatures were followed immediately by a week of rainy weather has meant that the orchids growing at Grangemoor and in other local parks are looking particularly lush this year. Here’s a selection …

Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera)

I have an ambition to get a photo of all three species – Bee, Common spotted and Pyramidal – growing together but I’ve yet to find them. These are Common spotted and Bee.

Another Common spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsia)

Pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis), in the usual pink colour

White Pyramidal orchids – I’ve seen these given the scientific name Anacamptis pyramidalis var. albiflora (on the FirstNature website), but that name is not included in the list for recording purposes.

Southern marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza praetermissa). These hybridise easily with Common spotted so it took a while to find a true Southern marsh.

Orange-tip larvae

20 Saturday Jun 2026

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Adult Orange-tip butterflies may now have died away for this year but not before completing their life’s purpose, mating and egg-laying to ensure the continuation of their species. (The egg shown below was photographed on Garlic mustard on 15 May.)

Orange-tips overwinter as pupae, not something I’ve ever seen but, if you look now at the plants their larvae munch on, you’ll probably spot caterpillars of various sizes.

Their favourite larval plants are Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) and Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) but they will also use other crucifers: Hedge mustard, Winter-cress, Turnip, Charlock, Large bitter-cress and Hairy rock-cress, according to Peter Eeles in Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies.

Looking at the excellent photos in Peter’s book, I think the larvae shown in my photos are all late instars; the larvae go through five different stages before they pupate. Eeles writes that the pose shown in the photo above is characteristic of a 5th instar larva.

I’ve made myself a note to look for a pupa near the many Garlic mustard plants on which I found these larvae, though I’m not very hopeful of finding any, as Eeles notes that the larvae often travel quite a distance to find a suitable plant; they don’t use the larval plants as these die back during the winter months.