Primrose x Cowslip = False Oxlip

12 Friday May 2017

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, wildflowers

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British flora, British wildflowers, Cowslip, False oxlip, flora hybridisation, flower hybrids, primrose, Primula veris, Primula vulgaris, Primula vulgaris x veris = P. x polyantha

Where Primroses (Primula vulgaris) and Cowslips (Primula veris) grow in close proximity they will occasionally hybridise to produce the False Oxlip (Primula vulgaris x veris = P. x polyantha). Though this is not really clear from my images, the hybrid is usually a larger plant than the Cowslip, and I think it combines the prettiest traits of both parents to produce a real stunner!

Botany 101: Status = scarce

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by sconzani in nature, plants, seaside

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Bota, British clovers, British coastal plants, British flora, British grasses, Bulbous Meadow-grass, Poa bulbosa, Scarce British flora, Suffocated clover, Trifolium suffocatum

I would normally walk right over these tiny plants but, after my outing with my botany mentor on Thursday, I now know to look more closely at what’s growing under my feet. These two plants may not look like much but they are nationally scarce and just as fascinating as the more colourful and showy flowering plants that most easily catch our eye.

170507 Trifolium suffocatum Suffocated clover (1)

Trifolium suffocatum Suffocated clover
Suffocated seems an apt name for this little beauty, surrounded and almost overpowered as it was by the species-rich grassland in which it was living. Luckily, it seems to thrive on a good stomping by humans, in places like picnic sites and car parks, as this was growing in a much-trampled area of the south Wales coastline. Luckily, too, we visited at the right time, as this little clover does not hang around long: its seeds usually germinate in the autumn, it flowers between March and May, and then ‘disintegrates’, according to the Online Atlas of British and Irish Flora. The flowers, which are white and tiny, are contained in the burr-like clusters you can see in the photo above.

Poa bulbosa Bulbous Meadow-grass
The exceedingly dry April weather meant we didn’t get to see this second scarce plant at its best: though we counted 27 flower heads, the plants themselves had mostly dried up, though you can still see the bulbous bases that give it its name. Though it’s called a meadow grass, it actually seems to prefer rather infertile sandy soils, living, according to the Atlas, in ‘open sparse grassland’ and even ‘on bare sand in dune systems’. We found ours in a car park adjacent to a beach and dune systems but it wasn’t actually growing in those dunes.

170507 Poa bulbosa Bulbous Meadow-grass (1)

170507 Poa bulbosa Bulbous Meadow-grass (2)

Though this grass can spread through the wind blowing the bulbs around, the plants that live in south Wales are also all viviparous: the flowers are ‘replaced by tiny plantlets which are capable of rooting and becoming established as individual plants’. I thought the flower heads (inflorescences) were particularly lovely with their shades of purple, green and cream.

Botany 101: sore knees and sniffy nose

06 Saturday May 2017

Posted by sconzani in nature, plants, wildflowers

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botanists' knees, botany mentee, botany mentorship, British coastal plants, British flora, learning botany

You’ll recall I blogged recently about my first outing as a botany mentee. Well, on Thursday I took my second tentative step on the road to learning more about the incredible variety of plants that surround us. This time it was just me and my mentor Julian, though we were joined by another enthusiast David for the morning part of our jaunt. This time also I was better prepared, with a notebook to write down plant names and, though I somehow managed to lose my pen around lunchtime, I’m proud to say I remembered the names of all but one of the afternoon’s plant finds.

The ‘grass’, the view and a nice spot for morning tea

One thing I hadn’t expected was a condition I will describe as botanists’ knees. The plants we spent the morning looking for and at, in a ‘grassy’ area on the south Wales coast (I now know ‘grassy’ is a hopelessly inadequate adjective to describe the incredible number of plants growing in those areas I would once have called grass), were never more than an inch or two high so we spent most of the morning on hands and knees, bums in the air. One further unexpected result of that was full sinuses (and the accompanying drippy nose), though perhaps there was an element of hay fever in the mix as well – with my poor eyesight the easiest way to see the finer details of some plants was to take my specs off and get my face within an inch or two of the plants, so I’m sure I breathed in plenty of pollen and dust in the process.

170506 Anthyllis vulneraria Kidney vetch Newton

170506 Arenaria serpyllifolia Thyme-leaved sandwort

170506 Erodium cicutarium Common stork's-bill

After lunching on a nearby river bank (a couple of specialist plants there too), Julian and I headed to another coastal site nearby, to inspect a car park – it has a rare grass – and to wander amongst some large sand dunes. I’ll blog separately about a couple of the special plants we saw but here is a selection of the more common but no less lovely: (above) Anthyllis vulneraria Kidney vetch, Arenaria serpyllifolia Thyme-leaved sandwort, Erodium cicutarium Common stork’s-bill, (below) Medicago lupulina Black medic, Polygala vulgaris Milkwort, and Sherardia arvensis Field madder. Needless to say, in spite of my sore knees and sniffy nose, I enjoyed the day immensely.