21 Tuesday Apr 2020
It’s that time of year again, when the Hawthorn blossom scents the air with its distinctive perfume and carpets the ground with its snow-like blossom.
My Flora Britannica reminds me that Hawthorn, also known as the May tree, was ‘the ancestor of the Maypole, the source of May Day garlands … and one of the models for the foliage which wreathes the faces of Green Men carved in churches and inns.’
For lots more fascinating information on the Hawthorn, check out my previous post here.
09 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in nature, spring, wildflowers
Tags
Alexanders, British wildflowers, Cherry plum blossom, crocus, Dog's mercury, Lesser Celandine, snowdrop, Spring blossom
This week’s wanderings produced sightings of two new wildflowers for the year, Dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis), thriving under a hedgerow, and Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum), an exceedingly common plant along the local coastal path.
I’d seen Crocuses already but this swathe, growing on a small green in the village of Michaelston-le-Pit, was a lilac delight.
Not a wildflower, but the local Cherry plum trees have burst into bloom this week. They say Spring to me!
Snowdrops are out en masse now, and more and more bursts of bright yellow Lesser celandines can be found, sprinkled along paths and in the local woodlands. So cheery!
28 Tuesday Jan 2020
Despite being caught twice in freezing hail showers, I had a lovely walk today, and part of the reason is because I saw my first Blackthorn blossoms for 2020. As Blackthorn flowers appear before the leaves (in contrast to Hawthorn, where the leaves appear first), this hedge along the roadside at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park still looks lifeless and barren.
In fact, the brown branches and twigs were dotted here and there with white buds and occasional fully open blossoms. Spring is coming!
16 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, nature, spring, trees
Today was a chores day so I just had a little tootle around my local haunts. But my photo was taken right outside my house. As a first-floor-flat dweller, I don’t have a garden but the tiny stone-filled front yard of my building has a magnificent Cherry tree, which fills half the view from my living room window and brings me great joy throughout the year. I have been watching its buds swell fatter and fatter until, finally, today the first several of its blossoms have opened.
10 Tuesday Apr 2018
Tags
blackthorn, blossom, Cherry plum, Prunus cerasifera, prunus species, Prunus spinosa, spring, Spring blossom
Being a relative newbie to Britain, I’m still very much a learner when it comes to identifying plants (and everything else, to be honest), so I was pleased recently to learn how to tell Cherry plum blossom from Blackthorn.
It’s partly in the timing – Cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera) usually flowers first, apparently – and also in the growth pattern, but a sure-fire way to tell whether the gorgeous blossom you’re puzzling over is this or Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), which flowers soon afterwards, is to look at the back of the flower.
In the Blackthorn the sepals (those leaf-like bits that originally enclose the flower but split apart when the flower opens) lay flat along the backs of the flower petals, or between them when fully open (photos above), whereas in the Cherry plum, the sepals are folded back (photos below).
02 Sunday Apr 2017
‘Blossom by blossom the spring begins.’ ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), ‘Atalanta in Calydon’, Collected Poetical Works (1924), vol. ii, ‘Chorus’, p.250. My blossom photographs were taken on a very grey day in Cardiff’s magnificent Bute Park.
