25 Sunday Feb 2024
Posted in wildflowers
I’m a bit late to the party but last Wednesday, 21 February, was Celandine Day, so named, according to the PlantLife website, ‘since 1795, when the renowned naturalist Gilbert White noted that the first celandines usually appeared in his Hampshire village of Selborne’. The date for the appearance of the first blooms has changed rather a lot in the intervening 229 years but these gorgeous wildflowers are still worth celebrating, I think.
18 Sunday Feb 2024
Posted in wildflowers
I’ve been checking this little area each time I’ve passed in recent weeks, looking for early signs of growth. It’s very overgrown with straggly brambles and long grass but, last Friday, after poking about the area with a stick, I found what I was hoping to see, my first Coltsfoot flower of the season.
This spot, on the edge of a local park, is where I’ve seen my first Coltsfoots in bloom in the past but, as seems to be the case with most flora and fauna, this flower is at least a week earlier than my sightings in previous years.
14 Wednesday Feb 2024
Posted in wildflowers
This photograph was taken several years ago, at Merthyr Mawr National Nature Reserve, but I’ve not shared it before and, though I don’t personally celebrate Valentine’s Day, I was looking for something appropriate to today’s love theme for those of you who do. Heartsease (Viola tricolor), a delicate and delightful little pansy, grows wild on the edges of the dunes at Merthyr Mawr.
11 Sunday Feb 2024
Posted in flowers, trees, wildflowers
Despite this having been a very wet week, the temperatures have been quite mild and, in some cases – as with the ornamental Cherry tree outside my flat, for example – I’ve felt like I could almost see the buds fattening. So, it comes as no surprise to me that, this week, I’ve managed to find ten species of wildflower and tree in flower: Alder, Field speedwell, Dandelion, Lesser celandine, Primrose, Wild strawberry, Sweet violet, Common fumitory, Three-cornered leek, and Red dead-nettle.
04 Sunday Feb 2024
Posted in flowers, plants, wildflowers
Tags
Or should that be Croci, like Hippopotamuses becomes Hippopotami? On a grey damp day, these were a sublime sight.
28 Sunday Jan 2024
Posted in wildflowers, winter
January’s weather has been all over the place. First, we shivered through a week of colder than average temperatures, then two wild and windy named storms blew away what few flowers had survived the cold, and now our weather is milder than usual. As a result, our flora (and fauna) seem confused about whether it’s winter or spring, and finding wildflowers in bloom has been hard work this week. However, after walking my patch for several years, I know where the more sheltered places are and so have managed to find 18 wildflowers in bloom.
Just in case you don’t recognise them, these are: Daisy, Dandelion, Field speedwell, Gorse, both the female and male flowers of Hazel, Hoary mustard, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Lesser celandine, Mayweed, the white-flowered version of Pink campion, Primrose, Sea radish, Snowdrop, Sweet violet, Three-cornered leek, Wild strawberry, and Winter heliotrope.
21 Sunday Jan 2024
Posted in wildflowers, winter
A detour through the local cemetery produced my first Snowdrops of the year today, just a few and looking a little blurry in my image as Storm Isha was already beginning to blow and shake the landscape, but a delicious sign of botanical treats to come.
10 Wednesday Jan 2024
Posted in wildflowers, winter
Phenology: noun; the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life (Oxford Dictionary).
In 2020 I was amazed to find my first Lesser celandine of the ‘spring’ flowering on 8 January (First Lesser celandine of 2020). This year, I was even more amazed to find my first even before the turning of the year, on 29 December, and then located another two flowers at a different site on my 1 January walk around Cardiff Bay. The way our changing climate is affecting plant phenology (i.e. how flowering times are influenced by seasonal weather variations) is just crazy.
07 Sunday Jan 2024
Posted in wildflowers, winter
The wet and windy weather may have passed but now it feels more like proper winter, with daytime high temperatures in single digits. Still, there are wildflowers to be found in bloom, some that we would usually see in a couple of months time rather than this early in the year. These sixteen are those I found on a walk around the outskirts of my town yesterday and this morning.
03 Wednesday Jan 2024
Posted in plants, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, seeds germinating on seedhead, Teasel, Teasel seedhead, viviparity, viviparous
Viviparity: noun; (of seeds) germinating before separating from the parent plant (from the Latin words vīvus, meaning alive, and parere, meaning to bring forth) (the adjective is viviparous), (Collins Concise Dictionary).
I’d seen a couple of photographic examples of viviparity on Twitter but had never seen this myself until a walk at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park on 28 December. The tiny green shoots on this Teasel are its own seeds which, for some reason, have not been released from the seed head and have now begun to sprout.
earthstar 
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