131/366 New bloomers

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, spring, wildflowers

Tags

Bittersweet nightshade, British wildflowers, Common milkwort, Cut-Leaved crane’s-bill, Flax, Goat's-beard, Spring colour, Wood avens

Here are this week’s newly flowering wildflowers …

200510 bittersweet nightshade

Bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara), also known as Woody nightshade and Deadly nightshade, though my Flora Britannica assures me this is actually one of the less poisonous members of the nightshade family.

200510 cut-leaved crane's-bill

Cut-leaved crane’s-bill (Geranium dissectum), one of the many lovely members of the extended Geranium family.

200510 flax

Flax (Linum usitatissimum), a small delicate plant, with beautiful pale blue flowers. This is rather different from the plant I, as a New Zealander, usually associate with this name – see my September 2018 post Flax.

200510 goat's-beard

Goat’s-beard (Tragopogon pratensis). As well as producing these glorious large sunny flowers, this wildflower, also known as Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon, has the most wonderful seedheads.

200510 wood avens

Wood avens (Geum urbanum) – you may know this wildflower by its alternate name of Herb Bennet.

Common milkwort (Polygala vulgaris). Discovered during my walk to Lavernock Nature Reserve earlier this week, this was the first time I’d seen this pretty little plant, though it’s very small and was almost hidden amongst the other wildflowers and grasses so it may be that I had simply overlooked it on previous visits.

One theory behind its common name is that the flowers of milkwort are shaped like udders and so medieval herbalists, following the ‘signature’ belief (that body parts can be treated by plants that resemble them), used to prescribe this plant to nursing mothers to increase their milk flow.

A confusion of geraniums

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, wildflowers

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Cut-Leaved crane’s-bill, Druce’s crane’s-bill, geranium, Geranium dissectum, Geranium pratense, Geranium x oxonianum, Meadow crane's-bill

I’ve always loved geraniums, of the easy-to-grow vibrant-colour-in-a-terracotta-pot pretend-you’re-in-the-Mediterranean variety, but here in Britain there are wild native geraniums that are just as gorgeous but rather tricky to identify. This seems partly to be because you can’t always tell those that are truly wild from those that are garden escapees, cultivated from birds’ droppings or windblown seeds. And the local geraniums also seem to hybridise easily – check out this chart – so, when I look up the various identification guides, the flowers and leaves I see don’t quite fit with what the books and websites show.

Here, then, are some photos of geraniums, which may or may not include Meadow crane’s-bill (Geranium pratense) and Cut-Leaved crane’s-bill (Geranium dissectum) and Druce’s crane’s-bill (Geranium x oxonianum), or possibly something else entirely!