Portland spurge

15 Sunday Jun 2025

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British wildflowers, Euphorbia, Euphorbia portlandica, Portland spurge, spurge, summer colour, summer wildflowers, yellow wildflowers

From its structure I knew this wonderfully sunny plant was a Euphorbia, a member of the Spurge family, as soon as I saw it, but I had no idea until I researched it later that the Isle of Portland had its very own species.

This is Portland spurge (Euphorbia portlandica), a close relative of Sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias) but with some subtle differences in the shape of its leaves: Sea spurge has thick fleshy leaves, whereas those of Portland spurge are thinner, with more pointy tips. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of that until later so the leaves are rather obscured in my photographs. I was just delighted by the joyous colour of Portland’s flowers, so appropriate for this seaside location.

Portland spurge is not confined to the Isle of Portland; it can also be found growing on dune sands and coastal sea cliffs around the south and west of Britain and Ireland.

Smooth tare

01 Sunday Jun 2025

Posted by sconzani in wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Ervum tetraspermum, Fabaceae, Pea family, Smooth tare, Vicia species, Vicia tetrasperma

Smooth tare (Vicia tetrasperma) (also known as Ervum tetraspermum) is a plant belonging to the pea (or bean or legume) family, the Fabaceae (or Leguminosae); so many names for one small plant.

As it grows in grassland and along road verges, it can often get lost amongst the larger, more dominant plant species – that’s certainly my excuse for having overlooked this lovely wildflower in previous years. But it is definitely worth searching for, if only to admire the ethereal beauty of its fine, delicate flowers. These are very pale, white with the merest hint of purple, with fine purple streaking on their upper petals. And now that Smooth tare has come to my attention, I am finding it in many of my favourite walking locations.

Kidney vetch

18 Sunday May 2025

Posted by sconzani in wildflowers

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Anthyllis vulneraria, British wildflowers, Kidney vetch, Spring colour, yellow wildflowers

If only Cardiff Bay had a large thriving area of Kidney vetch (Anthyllis vulneraria), then we might also have a small thriving colony of Small blue butterflies, as this is their larval food plant.

Sadly, the few plants that manage to survive in the Bay are locked away behind a tall barrier of diagonal wire mesh in a tiny patch of waste ground; the fact they’re inaccessible is probably the only reason they’ve survived Cardiff Council’s ‘spray herbicide on everything’ policy of environmental (mis)management. The mesh also means the plants are very much overlooked and under-appreciated, as well as being difficult to photograph, which is a great shame, as Kidney vetch is a very attractive wildflower.

White squared

11 Sunday May 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, spring wildflowers, white wildflowers

Over the past few weeks I’ve been gathering photographs of white wildflowers during my walks. These are what I’ve found: Bramble, Chickweed, Cleavers, Daisy, Garlic mustard, Hairy tare, Hedge parsley, Meadowsweet, Oxeye daisy, Three-cornered leek, Wavy bittercress, White clover, Wild strawberry, Wood anemone, and Woodruff.

Herb-Paris revisited

04 Sunday May 2025

Posted by sconzani in plants, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Cwm George, Herb Paris, Herb-Paris, Paris quadrifolia, wildflower, woodland wildflowers

I’ve written about Herb-Paris (Paris quadrifolia) a couple of times before (Herb-Paris, May 2017 and Devil-in-a-bush, April 2021) but it’s such a lovely and unusual plant that I feel it deserves another post, this time primarily of images that I captured when I went on my annual Herb-Paris pilgrimage to Cwm George woodland, in Dinas Powys, earlier this week.

Greedy for Garlic

20 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, spring, wildflowers

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Allium ursinum, British wildflowers, Dark-edged bee-fly, Honey bee, Ramsons, solitary bee, Speckled wood, spring flowers, Wild garlic

The first two days of the Easter break were very wet so I’m glad I took these images last Sunday. One of our local parks has the perfect environment for Wild garlic – Ramsons, if you prefer, Allium ursinum. A shallow ravine runs through the park, with a small stream meandering along its base, and, at this time of year, the steep sides of the gulley are carpeted with the lush green leaves and bright white umbels of garlic flowers. Elsewhere in the park, under tall old trees, the path is also lined with Wild garlic, so anywhere you walk, whenever you breathe, your nostrils are almost assaulted by garlic’s strong smell.

Though I know some people can’t tolerate this odour, it doesn’t seem to affect the insects, neither attracts nor repels them; a flower’s a flower, with the pollen and nectar that nurtures them. Last Sunday’s walk wasn’t particularly sunny but I still found a few creatures feeding greedily: a Speckled wood, a teeny solitary bee and a Honey bee, and a Dark-edged bee-fly.

Pretty drooping weeping flowers

06 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, Wood anemone, woodland flowers

‘The Wood anemone’, a poem by John Clare (1793-1864)

The wood anemone through dead oak leaves
And in the thickest woods now blooms anew,

And where the green briar and the bramble weaves
Thick clumps o’green, anemones thicker grew,

And weeping flowers in thousands pearled in dew
People the woods and brakes, hid hollows there,

White, yellow and purple-hued the wide wood through.
What pretty drooping weeping flowers they are:

The clipt-frilled leaves, the slender stalk they bear
On which the drooping flower hangs weeping dew,

How beautiful through April time and May
The woods look, filled with wild anemone;

And every little spinney now looks gay
With flowers mid brushwood and the huge oak tree.

Mad with joy

30 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring

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Tags

British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, wildflowers

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be
mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
~ Iris Murdoch, from the novel A Fairly Honourable Defeat, Vintage, 1970

Mad as a hatter, me, as the Spring wildflowers begin to bloom. I hope you’re enjoying them too!

Hairy violets

23 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Hairy violet, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, Viola hirta, violet species, violets

As I wrote in last Sunday’s post, it’s violet time, and I’ve since realised that I’ve not previously blogged about one violet species I see very often, the Hairy violet (Viola hirta).

This species and the Sweet violet (Viola odorata) are the only two to have rounded sepals, which narrows down the possibilities for identification purposes. Also, the sepal appendages are different: in Sweet violet, these are angled away from the flower’s stem, while the sepal appendages of the Hairy violet are pressed towards the stem.

Another distinguishing feature is the petal colour: the petals of the Hairy violet are paler, with a lilac hue, whereas those of the Sweet violet are a deep purple (unless they’re the white-coloured sub-species, of course).

The two violet species also grow in different environments. Sweet violets prefer the edges of woodland rides, and churchyards, and roadside verges, while Hairy violets are mostly found on dry calcareous grasslands, like those found in two of the fields at my local country park, Cosmeston Lakes, which is where I took these photos earlier today.

White Sweet violet

16 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, Sweet violet, Viola odorata, Viola odorata var. dumetorum, violet, white Sweet violet

It’s violet time and, though I’ve blogged about violets several times before, I simply can’t resist sharing once again a photo of what for me are the prettiest of the violets, the white variations. The only white-coloured violets are Sweet violets (Viola odorata) and there are two white subspecies, Viola odorata var. dumetorum and Viola odorata var. imberbis. The violets in my photograph are the former, and I only know of two places locally where these grow. The latter variation doesn’t have a ‘beard’ (the tiny hairs within the flower), and I’ve still not found any of those.