All the yellows

19 Sunday Apr 2026

Posted by sconzani in flowers, plants, spring, wildflowers

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Alexanders, British wildflowers, Broom, Cowslip, Creeping buttercup, dandelion, gorse, Lesser Celandine, marsh marigold, Meadow buttercup, primrose, Sea radish, Spring colour, yellow wildflowers

The splendid sight of road verges gleaming with the brilliant yellow of blooming Dandelions is fast becoming just a wonderful memory as the council tractors and strimmers once again destroy any wildflowers they see in the name of ‘neat’ and ‘tidy’, and this despite the loss of some devastating percentage (50%?) of our insect populations in the last couple of decades. I grabbed some photos before everything started to disappear …

Alexanders: in places like the coastal path the only plant in flower so currently feeding a lot of small insects.

Broom: this might survive as it was in a park surrounded by Brambles.

Cowslips: in a country park so surviving, and looking very lush.

Creeping buttercup: gone.

Dandelion and Lesser celandine: prime targets for destruction.

Gorse: these tend to survive until the flail gets used.

Marsh marigold: a small survivor from a more numerous population, where a volunteer group decided they would build a dead hedge. Make it make sense!

Meadow buttercup: gone.

Primrose: these tend to survive while they’re flowering, then it’s off with their heads!

Sea radish: on the Barrage so not strimmed but the many dogs like to pee on them.

In flower now

12 Sunday Apr 2026

Posted by sconzani in wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Cardamine pratensis, Common fumitory, Common Stork's-bill, Cornsalad, Cuckoo flower, Erodium cicutarium, Forget-me-not, Fumaria officinalis, Hairy violet, Honesty, Lamium purpureum, Lunnaria annua, Myosotis species, Red dead-nettle, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, Valerianella locusta, Viola hirta

It seems every time I step out the door now I notice new, different wildflowers in bloom. These are some of this week’s finds; for no particular reason, I seem to have focused on the blue / pink colour tones.

The grassy area on Cardiff Bay’s Barrage is full of Common stork’s-bill (Erodium cicutarium), looking very lush.

Cornsalad (Valerianella locusta) is blooming in many of the local areas of waste ground, proving those areas are not really a waste at all.

Just in time for the emergence of the Orange-tip butterflies that use this wildflower as one of their larval plants: Cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis).

One of the Forget-me-not (Myosotis) species, possibly Common (M. sylvatica), though the plant did seem very small.

A wildflower with a lot of variation in its flower colours, Common fumitory (Fumaria officinalis), also known by the vernacular name Earth smoke.

At this time of year, the east and west paddocks at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park are tinged lilac with the flowers of Hairy violet (Viola hirta).

Escaped from its original garden plantings and now adorning the edges of local lanes, Honesty (Lunnaria annua).

This was the scene alongside the bike / pedestrian path around the edge of Grangemoor Park this week, where swathes of beautiful Red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum) are in full bloom.

Thrift

29 Sunday Mar 2026

Posted by sconzani in seaside, spring, wildflowers

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Armeria maritima, British wildflowers, Heugh daisy, Ladies' cushions, Sea-pink, seaside wildflowers, Thrift

Though Richard Mabey writes in Flora Britannica that Thrift, which may have acquired its common name ‘from its tight and economic tufts’, is found in ‘almost every kind of seashore location’, I don’t see it in my area of south Wales so it was lovely to see this beautiful plant just coming in to bloom on Portland.

Though Thrift’s scientific name Armeria maritima rolls nicely off the tongue, I much prefer the vernacular names listed and explained by Mabey: Sea-pink (a lovely name and easily understandable from this plant’s lovely blooms, which vary from dark pink through to white), Cliff clover (cliff I get, but this is nothing like a clover in appearance), Ladies’ cushions (from their padded cushion-like form); and Heugh daisy (a name used only in specific locations in Scotland and northern England, where heugh means cliff or ravine).

No woodland here

15 Sunday Mar 2026

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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Anemone nemorosa, British wildflowers, Roath Park Lake, spring wildflowers, white wildflowers, Wood anemone

Wood anemone is meant to be ‘one of the most faithful indicators of ancient woodland’ and, from the plants I’ve seen previously that would seem mostly to be true.

However, the Wood anemones pictured here were something of an anomaly, growing on the sloping banks of the lake in Cardiff’s Roath Park. The lake is an artificial creation; the Nant Fawr stream was dammed in the early 1890s to create a lake over what was formerly a boggy marsh.

Beating the gloom

10 Tuesday Mar 2026

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, marsh marigold, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, yellow wildflowers

Today I can finally see the sky again but for the past several days we’ve had nothing but grey foggy damp dismal gloom. I’m generally quite a buoyant person and try always to see the positive in situations but, yesterday, even I was starting to find the constant dreary weather a bit depressing, until I saw this. The big bold golden flowers of Marsh marigold are so beautiful and cheering that a smile instantly formed on my face and my mood improved for the rest of the day, in spite of the gloom.

Up they pop

01 Sunday Mar 2026

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Colt's-foot, Coltsfoot, Spring colour, Tussilago farfara, yellow flowers

Happy Spring to those of you in the northern hemisphere, and what better way to celebrate the passing of winter than with an iconic spring flower!

Colt’s-foot (Tussilago farfara) is a member of the Asteraceae, the family of daisies and dandelions. It flowers most commonly appear in March and April, though can sometimes be seen as early as January; I spotted these flowers on Thursday, 26 February, which is about usual hereabouts. The colt’s-foot-shaped leaves won’t appear above ground until much later, perhaps in April or May.

After a long wet winter, these little droplets of golden yellow are a very cheering sight when they emerge, and it would be very easy to take just a cursory glance, smile and move one. If you take a moment to look closer though, they are very interesting little plants, with stems covered in white woolly fibres and an abundance of sepals that are a very pale maroon with green stripes up their centres.

The centres of the flowers are surrounded by petals that are fine and delicate but plentiful and, as they age, the flowers develop a soft reddish tinge that looks to my fanciful eye a bit like the colour of a setting sun, though, in this case, on the ground rather than in the sky.

Mid-winter 10

25 Sunday Jan 2026

Posted by sconzani in wildflowers, winter

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British wildflowers, mid-winter wildflowers in bloom, winter wildflowers

After a week of very cold temperatures earlier this month and what seems like almost constant wind and rain since then, our native flora have finally realised it’s winter and so it was a struggle to find any wildflowers in bloom this week.

I thought I was going to have to be content with the ‘Winter 9’ in the above image (which are Alexanders, Daisy, Dandelion, Gorse, Groundsel, Sea radish, Sweet violet, Winter heliotrope, and Yarrow) but then, during this morning’s walk, I spotted this Hogweed, bringing me to a total of 10, still quite a disappointing total compared to recent years.

Pinkish wildflowers

12 Wednesday Nov 2025

Posted by sconzani in autumn, flowers, wildflowers

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autumn colour, autumn wildflowers, British wildflowers, pink flowers, pink wildflowers

It’s been a very grey week here so I thought I’d change things up and we’d have a splash of mid week colour. During my daily walks last week, I took photos of all the pinkish-coloured wildflowers I found – more than I expected but, after our very dry summer, the wet but mild autumn weather has caused a flush of late growth and flowering in the local flora.

Blue fleabane, Burdock, Common mallow, and Creeping thistle

Devil’s-bit and Field scabious, Pencilled geranium, and Hedge woundwort

Hemp agrimony, Herb Robert, Ivy-leaved toadflax, and Meadow crane’s-bill

Purple toadflax, Red campion, Red clover, and Red valerian

The scabious and the bee

19 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by sconzani in autumn, insects, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Common carder bee, Common carder on Devil's-bit scabious, Devil's-bit scabious, insects on Devil's-bit scabious

This has been such a strange year for flora and fauna. Usually, in mid autumn, I’d be checking what insects I could find on the Devil’s-bit scabious flowers, as they are one of the last sources of nourishment for many of our flying insects. Not this year. The summer drought seems to have led to a lot of our local insects either failing to breed second and third generations or, perhaps, just dying off earlier than usual due to a lack of food, and the Devil’s-bit scabious flowers are nowhere near as lush as they normally are. When I walked through a local nature reserve this week, I found just one Common carder bee on the scabious … just one! It will be very interesting to see what effect this changing climate has on next year’s flora and fauna when they begin to grow and emerge.

The ones I missed

12 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by sconzani in autumn, flowers, plants, wildflowers

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autumn colour, autumn flowering wildflowers, autumn flowers, British wildflowers

Despite finding a respectable 60 wildflowers still in bloom during last week’s walk, I knew I could find even more so I’ve kept my eyes peeled during this week’s walks. These are the ones I missed last week …

Bird’s-foot trefoil, Blue fleabane, Bramble, Common chickweed, Common mallow, Common toadflax, Creeping thistle, Gorse, and Hedge bedstraw.

Hogweed, Honeysuckle, and Mayweed.

Meadow buttercup, Narrow-leaved ragwort, Nipplewort, Red dead-nettle, Selfheal, White melilot, Woody nightshade, Yellow corydalis, and Yellow-wort.

I had to add this last one – not a wildflower, but a random Tomato that had somehow self-seeded along the edge of one of the local back lanes. I admire its tenacity.