23 Friday Apr 2021
Tags
blackthorn, Blackthorn blossom, British insects, British trees, insects on Blackthorn blossom, Spring colour
Flies and hoverflies, bumbles, bees and butterflies – all love feasting on Blackthorn blossom as much as I love watching them enjoying its bounty. And the blossom itself is so blindingly white it’s like a springtime snowfall when the petals fall to the ground.
21 Wednesday Apr 2021
There’s something quite startling about a tiny blue creature flying through your field of vision – it’s certainly eyecatching. I saw my first Holly blue of the year during Sunday’s meander but that one didn’t linger for a photograph. Yesterday, in a location where I didn’t see any last year, they were like buses – I saw four in total, including these two that floated in together.
18 Sunday Apr 2021
Posted in spring, trees, walks, wildflowers
Tags
Bluebells, British wildflowers, Herb-Paris, Lesser Celandine, Moschatel, Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage, Spring colour, spring wildflowers, Wild garlic, Wood anemone, woodland wildflowers
I thought for this week’s Sunday wildflower post, I’d take you on a walk through parts of my local woodlands to show you some of the gorgeous plants a’blooming there at the moment. There are other wildflowers too, of course – Primroses, Violets, Dog’s-mercury, etc – but my video features Wild garlic, Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage, Wood anemone, Herb-paris, Lesser celandine, Moschatel and Bluebells.
16 Friday Apr 2021
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, Bush vetch, Garlic mustard, Herb Robert, Honesty, Red campion, Shining crane's-bill, Spring colour, spring wildflowers
These gorgeous wildflowers are now blooming in the sunnier, more sheltered spots I pass on my daily walks:
Bush vetch (Vicia sepium), the first of the vetches I’ve seen this year.
Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), also known as Jack-by-the-hedge
Honesty (Lunaria annua), originally a garden escapee but now naturalised in the local countryside
Red campion (Silene dioica)
Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) and, below, its cousin, Shining crane’s-bill (Geranium lucidum). As you can see, the flowers of these two are very similar but the leaves are quite different.
11 Sunday Apr 2021
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
This week’s Wildflower Hour challenge was to find yellow-flowered wildflowers currently in bloom. Here are my finds – a blast of spring sunshine to enjoy this Sunday evening:
Colt’s-foot, Dandelion, Gorse
Lesser celandine, Marsh marigold, Meadow buttercup
Groundsel, Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage (perhaps a bit of a stretch to say this is yellow, but it does have ‘golden’ in its name), Yellow archangel
Prickly sow-thistle, Cowslips, Ragwort
Pushing the envelope on these ones but … Alexanders (greenish-yellow), Primrose (buttery yellow), Pussy willow (not strictly a wildflower, but I’m having it)
04 Sunday Apr 2021
Posted in nature
Tags
Bluebells, British wildflowers, Cornsalad, Cuckooflower, Doves-foot cranes-bill, Ground ivy, Lords-and-ladies, Lungwort, Red dead-nettle, Spring colour
All of a sudden, the countryside has been splashed and daubed and sprinkled with these pretty shades of pink and blue.
Bluebell (Hyacinthoides sp.), not the native species but still pretty
Common Cornsalad (Valerianella locusta), also known as Lamb’s lettuce
Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis), which you might know as Milkmaids or Lady’s smock
Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), this little beauty has some wonderful vernacular names, including Gill-over-the-ground and Run-away Robin
Lords-and-ladies (Arum maculatum), another wildflower named for a bird: Cuckoopint
Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis), also known as Our Lady’s milk and Mary’s tears
Red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum), which seems to be under every hedge, along every woodland edge right now
Dove’s-foot crane’s-bill (Geranium molle), found growing around the base of a local power pole yesterday
02 Friday Apr 2021
Posted in plants, spring, wildflowers
Tags
Adoxa moschatellina, British wildflowers, Good Friday plant, Moschatel, Spring colour, Town Hall clock
This couldn’t have been more appropriate if I’d planned it, which I assure you I didn’t. Until yesterday’s wander through a local woodland, I’d never seen Moschatel before. Its scientific name is Adoxa moschatellina but one of its vernacular names is Good Friday plant, because it usually begins flowering at the beginning of April and is often first seen in bloom at Easter.
Another of its common names is Townhall clock, which Richard Mabey explains in Flora Britannica is because the small flowers ‘are arranged in a remarkable fashion, at right angles to one another, like the faces of a town clock – except that there is a fifth on top, pointing towards the sky’. My photos don’t show this very well so I might have to revisit to get more.
21 Sunday Mar 2021
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, Common dog-violet, dog violets, Early dog-violet, Spring colour, Sweet violet, Viola odorata, Viola odorata var. dumetorum, Viola reichenbachiana, Viola riviniana, violets, white Sweet violet
The wildflower hour challenge this week was to ‘find a violet in bloom and work out which one it is’. Now, you might think that’s an easy task but, once you learn – as I did – that there are five subspecies of Sweet violet alone, you could easily decide – as I almost did – that this was a challenge too far. But I persevered, and found three different species (and two subspecies of one).
Let’s start with Sweet violet, and the two subspecies I Iocated, the standard purple violet with the glorious scent, Viola odorata var. odorata, and one of the two white subspecies, Viola odorata var. dumetorum. As well as its glorious smell, the Sweet violet can most easily be identified by the rounded sepals that lay flat against the flower (if the sepals were angled back towards the stem, you’d have a Hairy violet – I didn’t find any of those this week). And I’ve not yet seen the second variation of the white violet, Viola odorata var. imberbis (which doesn’t have a ‘beard’, the hairs inside the flower).
I managed to find both the dog-violets (the word ‘dog’ in this case indicating there is no scent; nothing to do with the domestic pet!). These are Common dog-violet (Viola riviniana) (photos on the left below) and Early dog-violet (Viola reichenbachiana) (photos on the right). These two can be difficult to tell apart sometimes but, though both dog-violets have pointy sepals, the Common dog’s sepals are usually bigger, with tops (the sepal appendages) that are more square, and often notched or scalloped. Also, the spurs at the back of the flowers are mostly stouter and notched at the end on the Common dog, and the veins inside its flowers are longer and multi-branching.
You can find Wildflower hour on Twitter by clicking this link, and their website is here. They’re probably on Facebook too but I no longer use FB. If you’re on Twitter, there are many excellent botanists’ accounts to follow but one I definitely recommend is Moira O’Donnell (@nervousbotanist), who often shares easy-to-follow species crib sheets, one of which I have drawn on for this post.
18 Thursday Mar 2021
Tags
7-spot ladybird, British ladybirds, Coccinella septempunctata, Seven-spot ladybird, Spring colour
A tiny spot of red caught my eye, and then, close by, another – my first ladybirds of the year, both Seven-spot ladybirds (Coccinella septempunctata).
If you’re lucky, you may have had these little beauties hibernating in your garden shed but, in this case, these two are countryside dwellers so have probably spent the winter inside a plant stem, or perhaps tucked securely within the dense branches of ivy, or maybe in a deep crack in tree bark. A few sunny days and warmer overnight temperatures will have triggered their emergence from hibernation, and produced another spring treat for me to enjoy!
16 Tuesday Mar 2021
Posted in flowers, wildflowers
‘Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.’ ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke
earthstar 
You must be logged in to post a comment.