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~ a celebration of nature

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Tag Archives: Spring colour

Youth and cheerfulness

14 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by sconzani in flowers, winter

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

British wildflowers, crocus, Crocuses, Spring colour, spring flowers

As I’m sure most of you know, in Victorian Britain flowers had special meanings, and many people could understand the language of flowers, could even send coded messages by choosing carefully the flowers they included in a floral gift to a friend or potential lover.

Crocuses, apparently, symbolised youth and cheerfulness. Sadly, my youth is long gone but seeing these beauties on a recent walk certainly made me feel cheery.

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131/366 New bloomers

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 5 Comments

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.

200510 milkwort

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.

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124/366 Ragged robin

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Bee-fly, British wildflowers, Grangemoor Park, Lychnis flos-cuculi, Ragged robin, Silene flos-cuculi, Spring colour, spring flowers

At Grangemoor Park on Friday, I spotted my first flowering Ragged robin for the year.

200503 ragged robin (1)

This gorgeous wildflower was formerly known as Lychnis flos-cuculi, but is now Silene flos-cuculi – from a scientific article I browsed, this seems a complicated story of almost constant reclassification of the species! You will still see both names used in books and on line, which is why I’ve mentioned both here.

200503 ragged robin (2)

According to a couple of books I discovered on the ‘language of flowers’, Ragged robin’s symbolic meaning is ‘wit’, and it is dedicated to Saint Barnabas. The ever-informative First Nature website says:

Lychnis, the genus name, comes from the Greek noun lychnos, meaning lamp; it refers to the use of a plant in this genus as the wick of an oil lamp. The specific epithet flos-cuculi means ‘flower of the cuckoo’ and was probably chosen because the first flowers of Ragged Robin appear just as the first cuckoos are being heard (in Britain and Ireland at least) in May.

200503 ragged robin (3)

A special moment: to try to stop it swaying in the breeze so I could get a sharp photo, I was holding one of the blooms when a bee-fly decided to zoom in for a feed of nectar. That super long proboscis comes in handy for long narrow flowers like these.

200503 ragged robin (4)

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117/366 It’s Pea time

26 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, spring, wildflowers

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Tags

British wildflowers, Bush vetch, Common bird's foot trefoil, Common vetch, Grass vetchling, Red campion, Spring colour, spring wildflowers

You know the summer’s not far away when members of the extensive Pea family start to flower and, during this week’s exercise walks, I’ve spotted four Pea species newly come in to flower. The first were three of the vetches …

200426 Bush vetch

Bush vetch (Vicia sepium)

200426 Common vetch

Common vetch (Vicia sativa) … and friends.

200426 Grass vetchling

Grass vetchling (Lathyrus nissolia)

200426 bird's-foot trefoil

And, also, one of my all-time favourites – possibly because it’s also a favourite with a lot of the butterflies and day-flying moths I adore so much, Common bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).

200426 Red campion

Oh, and this week’s new blooms also included one not-a-pea wildflower, the always lovely Red campion (Silene dioica).

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89/366 This week’s new wildflowers

29 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Barren strawberry, British wildflowers, Common Stork's-bill, Dog violet, Honesty, marsh marigold, Ramsons, Spring colour, spring flowers, Wild garlic

During this week’s walks, which have, of course, in our current lockdown situation, been shorter and much more restricted than my usual meanderings, my mood has been brightened by the sight of our beautiful flowering wild plants, especially those that have just come into bloom in recent days. They’re a heartening reminder of better times to come … eventually. These are those I’ve found this week.

200329 barren strawberry

Barren strawberry (Potentilla sterilis): It seems a shame that this species of strawberry doesn’t produce the luscious fruit we all enjoy in the summer months. Instead, its berries are small and quite hard.

200329 Common stork's-bill

Common stork’s-bill (Erodium cicutarium): I was delighted to spot these pretty little things. I’m a big fan of the whole Geranium family, the crane’s-bills and the stork’s-bills.

200329 dog-violet

Dog-violet (Viola sp.): The photos I took weren’t good enough for me to work out whether these are Early dog-violets or Common dog-violets but they’re pretty nonetheless.

200329 honesty

Honesty (Lunaria annua): When I had a garden I used to grow Honesty, partly for its lovely flowers but also to harvest the branches of seed pods once they’d dried. I love their fragility and the way they glisten in the sunshine. Their vernacular name, Moonpennies, is so appropriate.

200329 marsh marigold

Marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris): These were growing in the depths of a small dingle right in the middle of the town where I live, the flowers are little bright lights beaming up from the gloom.

200329 ramsons

Ramsons (Allium ursinum): That same valley where I found the Marsh-marigolds is also home to swathes of Ramsons, also known to many of us as Wild garlic. There must be thousands of these plants in the valley and along the sides of the stream bed that leads from there down towards the sea.

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48/366 First Coltsfoot

17 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, spring

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

British wildflowers, Coltsfoot, Spring colour, Tussilago farfara, yellow flowers

A new Spring flower has appeared in my local area, this time six bursts of the bright sunshine yellow that is Coltsfoot, the flower that appears before its leaves. I had just been sheltering, rather ineffectively, from a short sharp shower of rain when I spotted the flowers beside the path ahead of me. What a delight!

200217 coltsfoot (1)200217 coltsfoot (2)200217 coltsfoot (3)

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9/366 First Lesser celandine of 2020

09 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, wildflowers, winter

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

British wildflowers, Lesser Celandine, Spring colour, spring flowers

Not only did yesterday’s walk bring me the amazing sighting of a Mandarin duck, it also delighted me with this drop of golden sunlight come to earth, my first Lesser celandine flower of 2020.

200108 lesser celandine

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Happy St David’s Day!

01 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, spring

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

daffodil, First day of spring, spring, Spring colour, spring flowers, St David's Day, Welsh national day

180301 daffodils (10)

Dydd Gwŷl Dewi hapus! And Happy Spring!

180301 daffodils (6)
180301 daffodils (5)
180301 daffodils (7)
180301 daffodils (8)
180301 daffodils (3)
180301 daffodils (2)
180301 daffodils (4)
180301 daffodils (9)
180301 daffodils (1)

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Attracting thunderstorms and adders?

18 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, wildflowers

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Tags

Cardamine pratensis, Cuckooflower, Lady's smock, Milkmaid, Spring colour, spring flowers, wildflowers

170418 Cuckooflower (3)

It seems that everywhere I walk at the moment there’s Cuckooflower. With its penchant for damp soggy ground, it can be found sprinkled amongst the reeds at the edge of Cardiff Bay wetlands, underlining the willow scrub along the edges of the River Taff, accentuating the lines of a drying drain at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. And it’s such a pretty little thing, with its pale lilac flowers sitting high on an upright stalk, all the better for the bees and butterflies to find them.

170418 Cuckooflower (1)
170418 Cuckooflower (2)

Its scientific name is Cardamine pratensis and, if you don’t know it as Cuckooflower (it flowers at the time the cuckoos return to Britain), then you may know it by its other popular names, Milkmaid and Lady’s smock. Milkmaid is the older name, possibly a reference to its feminine colour and blousy shape when the flowers are first opening and I read, in an article in the Darlington & Stockton Times 23 June 2006, that

‘When Christianity came to these islands, that feminine association was transferred to the Virgin Mary, which led to a host of other names for the flower, such as my lady’s smock, lady’s glove and dozens more.
There is one old story which says that St Helena found Our Lady’s smock in a cave near Bethlehem, an article of clothing she left behind. It was later taken to St Sophia and then to Aix la Chapelle, where it was venerated for centuries, with this little wild flower being named in several European countries in honour of that relic.
‘In Europe, a lot of superstition used to surround this flower. It was thought that if anyone picked it, a thunderstorm would break out. It was also thought to generate lightning and for this reason was never taken into a house. In parts of England, it was believed to attract adders, Britain’s only poisonous snake, with a notion that anyone picking the flower would be bitten before the year was out.’

170418 Cuckooflower (5)
170418 Cuckooflower (4)

Luckily, I prefer to leave wildflowers where they are for everyone to enjoy so haven’t picked any, though I’m now almost tempted, just to see what happens … almost.

170418 Cuckooflower (6)

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Enjoying the blues

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

blue flowers, Grape hyacinth, Muscari armenaicum, Muscari sp., Spring colour, spring flowers

Blue is not a colour we see often in flowers – I can only think of a few blue-flowering plants: delphiniums, agapanthus, hydrangeas, cornflowers, bluebells of course, and today’s plant, the Grape hyacinth (Muscari sp.). The scarcity of blue flowers is due to plants having no true blue pigment so they must perform a degree of chemical manipulation to make the colour. According to author David Lee, who wrote Nature’s Palette: The science of plant color (University of Chicago Press, 2010), ‘Plants tweak, or modify, [their] red anthocyanin pigments to make blue flowers. They do this through a variety of modifications involving pH shifts and mixing of pigments, molecules and ions.’

174014 grape hyacinth (1)

That knowledge makes me appreciate even more the delicate Grape hyacinths that are currently adorning many of my neighbours’ gardens and blooming prolifically at the local cemetery. They are probably Muscari armenaicum – muscari comes from the Greek muschos, referring to their musky scent, and armenaicum is a clue to their area of origin, Armenia and the meadows and woodlands of the eastern Mediterranean right through to the Caucasus. The Grape hyacinth was first cultivated in European gardens in the 1870s but spreads freely and rapidly so has become naturalised in Britain, much of Europe and North America.

174014 grape hyacinth (3)
174014 grape hyacinth (4)
174014 grape hyacinth (2)
174014 grape hyacinth (5)

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About me

sconzani

sconzani

I'm a writer and photographer; researcher and blogger; birder and nature lover; countryside rambler and city strider; volunteer and biodiversity recorder.

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