11 Sunday May 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, 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.
04 Sunday May 2025
Posted in plants, spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
20 Sunday Apr 2025
Posted in insects, spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
06 Sunday Apr 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
‘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.
30 Sunday Mar 2025
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!
23 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
16 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
02 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in spring, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, Colt's-foot, Coltsfoot, Coltsfoot leaves, Coltsfoot seedhead, signs of spring, Spring colour, spring flowers, spring wildflowers, Tussilago farfara, yellow wildflowers
Every year I celebrate my first sighting of Colt’s-foot (or Coltsfoot, if you prefer; Tussilago farfara), as the aggressive way it punches its way through overgrown vegetation, layers of dead leaves, even a covering of gravel seems to express for me Nature’s determination to put the cold dark days of winter behind.
And, of course, the sight of these bright bursts of golden yellow seems to mirror the sun’s reappearance in our skies and the ever-lengthening daytime hours.
My focus for this plant has always been on its flower so this year I thought I would also show what comes after. This is a plant whose leaves appear much later than its flowers; in fact, the flowers are often beginning to set their seed before the leaves emerge. The shape of the leaf, supposedly resembling the shape of the underside of a colt’s foot, is how this plant got its common name. And I think you’ll agree that the seedhead is rather beautiful too.
23 Sunday Feb 2025
Posted in flowers, wildflowers, winter
As poet Robbie Burns wrote ‘The best laid schemes … gang aft agley’, and such was my experience this week. I’d planned to go for a long walk today to search out as many wildflowers in bloom as I could but the weather has intervened, with forecast strong wind and heavy rain warnings. So, here are nine flowers I grabbed in a short walk yesterday, though I didn’t photograph all I saw. I know, for example, that Petty spurge, Groundsel, one of the bittercresses, Snow drops and Three-cornered leek, as well as Ivy-leaved toadflax, were among those I missed. Still, it was nice to see my first Sweet violets of the year and a little Red dead-nettle, and there’s always next Sunday …
09 Sunday Feb 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers, winter
Though a tremor of the winter
Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
To greet the vernal sun.
And the sunbeams gave them welcome,
As did the morning air—
And scattered o’er their simple robes
Rich tints of beauty rare.
Soon a host of lovely flowers
From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
The crocuses were first.
First to weave for Earth a chaplet
To crown her dear old head;
And to beauty the pathway
Where winter still did tread.
~ four verses from the poem ‘The Crocuses’ by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)
earthstar 
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