08 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers
Tags
#365DaysWild, blue flowers, blue wildflowers, British flora, pink flowers, pink wildflowers, wildflowers
Rain, rain, rain today but I managed to get out for a local bimble without getting too wet.
Due to the risk of rain damaging my good camera, I just took my point-and-click and, as there weren’t many insects braving the weather, the subject today had to be inanimate, in this case wildflowers, for no particular reason in shades of pinks and blues. Can you name them?
24 Wednesday Apr 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, nature, plants, wildflowers
Tags
ale-hoof, blue flowers, Blue runner, British flora, British wildflowers, Glechoma hederacea, Ground ivy
Ground-ivy (Glechoma hederacea) is a type of dead-nettle, common in woodlands, lurking under hedgerows and scrambling over dampish spaces. Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica tells me this pretty little plant was once known as blue runner because of its blue-ish flowers and its habit of spreading via overground runners. Another interesting titbit: ‘before hops became widely used in brewing, it was once one of the chief bittering agents in the making of beer’, which is why another of its common names is ale-hoof.
23 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers
Almost …
Nearly there …
Yes! My first Bluebells of the year today in St Augustine’s churchyard in Penarth.
05 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in flowers, nature, wildflowers
Tags
blue flowers, British wildflowers, Chicory, Cichorium intybus, Penarth Docks, Penarth Marina Park, Succory
There’s just something about a blue-coloured flower that catches my eye and this Chicory grabbed me by the eyeballs as I walked home from Penarth Marina yesterday.
Although Chicory (Cichorium intybus) is a native British wildflower, these particular plants were not truly wild; they’re growing in a series of large wildflower beds planted around the edges of Penarth Marina Park. (Interestingly, the park itself is also artificial – it was once part of the inner basin of Penarth Docks, then became a rubbish dump, before being repurposed as a park in the 1980s – details and photos here.)
Chicory, also known as Succory, used to be widely cultivated. Its spears (buds) and leaves were eaten, and the dried and ground root has been used as a substitute for coffee. I think I’ll stick with my cup of tea, thanks.
24 Sunday Dec 2017
Blue feathers, blue water, blue flowers, blue butterflies …
The reasons why our eyes perceive these things as blue (or don’t, if we’re colour-blind) vary depending on what we’re looking at. With birds’ feathers, for example, the blue is actually a ‘structural colour’, because ‘When white light strikes a blue feather, the keratin pattern causes red and yellow wavelengths to cancel each other out, while blue wavelengths of light reinforce and amplify one another and reflect back to the beholder’s eye’ (from the amazing Smithsonian website).
Water looks blue because it more readily absorbs light in red, orange and yellow wavelengths but reflects the blue wavelength, so it’s reflecting the colour of the sky above. Blue flowers occur in plants that are able to chemically modify red anthocyanin pigments to reflect white light as blue, and those butterflies that look blue are also reflecting white light, the blue colour being dependent on the placement of the minute scales on their wings. Colour is so complicated!
14 Friday Apr 2017
Blue is not a colour we see often in flowers – I can only think of a few blue-flowering plants: delphiniums, agapanthus, hydrangeas, cornflowers, bluebells of course, and today’s plant, the Grape hyacinth (Muscari sp.). The scarcity of blue flowers is due to plants having no true blue pigment so they must perform a degree of chemical manipulation to make the colour. According to author David Lee, who wrote Nature’s Palette: The science of plant color (University of Chicago Press, 2010), ‘Plants tweak, or modify, [their] red anthocyanin pigments to make blue flowers. They do this through a variety of modifications involving pH shifts and mixing of pigments, molecules and ions.’
That knowledge makes me appreciate even more the delicate Grape hyacinths that are currently adorning many of my neighbours’ gardens and blooming prolifically at the local cemetery. They are probably Muscari armenaicum – muscari comes from the Greek muschos, referring to their musky scent, and armenaicum is a clue to their area of origin, Armenia and the meadows and woodlands of the eastern Mediterranean right through to the Caucasus. The Grape hyacinth was first cultivated in European gardens in the 1870s but spreads freely and rapidly so has become naturalised in Britain, much of Europe and North America.
