Pretty drooping weeping flowers

06 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, Wood anemone, woodland flowers

‘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.

Speckled woods on the wing

01 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, spring

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British butterflies, butterfly, Speckled wood, spring butterflies, Spring colour, Wood argus

Sunday was a brilliant day for butterflies, with my first three Speckled woods of the year, each in a different location, all basking on hedgerows and flitting out to defend their territories as I passed by.

With its rich chocolately brown background colour mixed with small circular dollops of creamy yellow, it’s almost like a living crème egg … or is my imagination just being overly affected by the bombarding of pre-Easter advertisements?

My brilliant guide book, Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, tells me that the Speckled wood was once called the Wood argus, the name Argus coming from the ‘many-eyed shepherd of Greek mythology’. That seems a very apt name for this beautiful creature.

Mad with joy

30 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring

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British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, wildflowers

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!

Hairy violets

23 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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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.

White Sweet violet

16 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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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.

Flowers and beyond

02 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by sconzani in spring, wildflowers

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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.

Greeting the vernal sun

09 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers, winter

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

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)

Red-flowered Cowslips

05 Sunday May 2024

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Cowslip, natural colour variation in Cowslip, red-flowered Cowslip, Spring colour

240505 red-flowered cowslips (1)

I wish I’d found these for #WildflowerHour’s recent Cowslip challenge: a small number of red-flowered Cowslips amongst a sea of yellow at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. This is a natural variation, just like the occasional pink-flowered Primroses you might see growing in the wild, though I’ve only ever seen these at Cosmeston.

240505 red-flowered cowslips (2)

The national butterfly of Finland

15 Monday Apr 2024

Posted by sconzani in insects, spring

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blue butterfly, British butterflies, butterfly, Celastrina argiolus, Holly blue, Spring colour

No, I haven’t been on a whirlwind trip to Scandinavia, more’s the pity. I’ve just read that the Holly blue (Celastrina argiolus) is not only native to Britain but can also be found throughout the Palearctic, and is the national butterfly of Finland. Well done the Finns for recognising the beauty of this gorgeous creature. And well done this particular Holly blue for sitting still for a few minutes yesterday so I could grab a few quick photos.

240415 holly blue

The white wildflower challenge

24 Sunday Mar 2024

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring flowers, white wildflowers, white-flowered wildflowers

As I mentioned yesterday, this week’s #WildflowerHour challenge on social media was to find native and/or naturalised white-flowered wildflowers and, by walking around with my eyes engaged in a weird version of vertical tennis spectating (eyes to the ground for plants, eyes to the skies for birds – not recommended!), I managed to find seventeen white-flowering plants.

I felt the lushness of Daisies (above) deserved a photo all of its own. The following sixteen are Bramble, Common chickweed, Common mouse-ear, Common whitlowgrass, Cow parsley, Danish scurvygrass, Garlic mustard, Hairy bittercress, Hogweed (purple edged but mostly white), white-flowered Red valerian, Shepherd’s-purse, Snowdrop, Sweet violet, Three-cornered leek, Wild garlic, and Wild strawberry.