Category Archives: wildflowers

Marjoram and sage

18 Sunday Jul 2021

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Two of this week’s wildflower finds are herbal so it makes sense to blend them together here. First up, is Wild marjoram (Origanum vulgare), known in the Mediterranean countries as Oregano, though it doesn’t smell quite as pungent when grown in Britain’s cooler climate. This lovely plant can often be found in chalk and limestone grasslands, under hedge rows and in roadside verges, where its flowers are favourites of butterflies and other insects.

210718 wild marjoram (1)210718 wild marjoram (2)

The second plant, a new one for me, is Wood sage (Teucrium scorodonia), another wild herb that doesn’t have the strength of scent you find in the sage you use in cooking. As you might guess from its name, this plant thrives along dry woodland rides, but can also be found in coastal situations, in dunes and heaths and on cliffs.

Marsh helleborines

07 Wednesday Jul 2021

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As their current conservation status in Britain is rated amber, meaning they are vulnerable and near-threatened, I feel privileged to have within easy travelling distance a large colony of Marsh helleborines (Epipactis palustris).

210707 marsh helleborine (1)

And, as our rainfall levels in Wales during May were the highest recorded since records began in 1862, this has been a very good year for a plant that thrives in the wet – hence, the ‘Marsh’ in its name.

These are low-growing orchids, no more than a foot in height, but it is well worth getting down to their level to appreciate more fully the elegant and delicate beauty of their flowers. To my fanciful eye, they sometimes resemble a woman dancing, her frilly white petticoats swirling about her. At other times, I see a white blouse, with an extravagant ruffle down the front, like the jabot worn by some judges. What do you see?

210707 marsh helleborine (4)

Heath spotted-orchids

04 Sunday Jul 2021

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From the often-boggy, mostly acid grasslands at Aberbargoed direct to your screens, this week’s native British orchid is the appropriately named Heath spotted-orchid (remember, the spotted part of that name refers to the marks on its leaves, not its petals). Its scientific name is Dactylorhiza maculata, which the Plantlife website explains as follows: ‘The genus name Dactylorhiza is formed from the Greek words daktylos meaning finger and rhiza meaning root’ – so, this orchid has a multi-fingered root, rather than a single tuber. And maculata means spotted – those leaves.

210704 Heath spotted-orchid (1)

As you can see from the flower spikes below, this is another orchid with some variation in both its colours, which range from white through pink to pale purple, and its markings, which, though they look spotted from a distance, actually have various combinations of streaks and little loops. The shape of the petals is also distinctive, the lower one in particular is less deeply lobed than, for example, the Common spotted-orchid, which the Heath spotted does superficially resemble.

A viperish plant

27 Sunday Jun 2021

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Of Viper’s-bugloss (Echium vulgare), Richard Mabey writes in Flora Britannica:

[It] is a viperish plant in all its parts. The sprays of flowers that spiral up the stem are half-coiled; the long red stamens protrude from the mouths of the blue and purple flowers like tongues; the fruits resemble adders’ heads. Even the ‘speckled’ stem (it is hairy in fact) suggested snakes’ skins to early herbalists.

And like all members of the Echium family, this glorious plant is much loved and visited by insects, especially (from my own observations) bumblebees.

A local woodland

23 Wednesday Jun 2021

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I write often about my wanderings in my local woodlands so I thought I’d share one of my walks in a series of landscape images. There are, in fact, several separate areas of woodland, sandwiched together, and this is just one of them, a combination of ancient woodland and a newer area of trees planted to mark the turn of the millennium. Not surprisingly, the ancient part has many huge old trees, is cool and dark in the summer when their foliage shades the paths. Above, along the plateau at the top of the hill, is the millennium woodland with its wide open rides and small meadows. This area has more wildflowers and is where I look for butterflies, dragonflies and other insects. Often, I don’t see a single soul when I walk here, which, for me, just adds to the attraction – it’s my own little piece of paradise.

Summer yellow

20 Sunday Jun 2021

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We’ve rain today, the gentle soft rain that I’ve come to associate with life in Wales, but I’m not complaining. It’s much needed, by the land, its plants and its beasties, after a couple of weeks of strong sunshine and baking heat. To counteract the dull grey I see out my window, I’m about to compile today’s post, a little video full of summer sunshine, with some of the yellow-flowered wildflowers currently in bloom. I know I’ve done this before, and quite recently, but I do so enjoy the bright cheeriness of yellow.

Pictured today are: Bird’s-foot trefoil, Creeping buttercup, Creeping cinquefoil, a Dandelion species, Dyer’s greenweed, Evening primrose, Meadow buttercup, a Melilotus species, Mouse-ear hawkweed, Nipplewort, Pineapple weed, Reflexed stonecrop, Silverweed, Smooth sow-thistle, Tormentil, Wood avens, Yellow iris, Yellow loosestrife, Yellow pimpernel, Yellow water-lily, and Yellow-wort.

A select club

19 Saturday Jun 2021

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A couple of years ago, I discovered through chats to local Butterfly Conservation Senior moth ecologist George that three rare moths use Dyer’s greenweed (Genista tinctoria) as their larval food plant. (There’s a Butterfly Conservation factsheet about these here.)

210619 dyers greenweed

The larvae create little homes for themselves by spinning together the leaves at the tips of Dyer’s greenweed shoots, and, yesterday, after much careful searching, I finally found a ‘spinning’ that was occupied.

George has now confirmed for me that this little beauty is the larva of the nationally scarce moth Mirificarma lentiginosella. And he writes: ‘You now join the select club of people who have seen this species in Wales: you, me, and C.G. Barrett who recorded it in Pembrokeshire in the 1800s’. As you can imagine, I am extremely pleased to have joined this select club!

210619 Mirificarma lentiginosella (3)

Southern marsh-orchids

16 Wednesday Jun 2021

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Mostly, I only see four species of orchid: Early purple, Common spotted, Bee and Pyramidal, so I find it tricky identifying other species. And the fact that many species of orchid hybridise with each other also complicates the identification picture. So, when a Twitter pal tagged me for help identifying a Southern marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza praetermissa) I couldn’t assist, but decided to try to find some for myself to learn more about their appearance. I found one specimen during a recent visit to Aberbargoed (though not at the grasslands) and several at Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park.

The first thing I realised is that you can’t rely on colour. I found another orchid that looked the perfect shade of purple but didn’t have the right markings – perhaps a hybrid of Southern marsh and Common spotted. The two key things for Southern marsh-orchids, it seems to me, in non-botanist speak, are that the upper petals all reach skywards, like a person holding their arms in the air, and that the larger, lower petal has two cascades of spots that sometimes merge in to one but always fall in the centre of the petal, not spreading outwards. I’m sure there’s a more succinct way to phrase that but I think it’s best we each have our own ways to remember key points.