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~ a celebration of nature

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Tag Archives: spring flowers

Spring flowers in winter rain

18 Saturday Feb 2023

Posted by sconzani in flowers, wildflowers

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crocus, Lesser Celandine, primrose, raindrops on flowers, Snowdrops, Spring colour, spring flowers, Winter aconite

As the remnants of Storm Otto continue to blast and batter, a local meander turned up these glorious spring flowers, little beacons of colour and light on a grey winter’s day.

230218 spring flowers winter rain

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First Primroses

29 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by sconzani in wildflowers

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British wildflowers, primrose, spring flowers, spring flowers in January, winter colour

I went hunting spring wildflowers on Friday but was, for the most part, disappointed. There was an abundance of Lesser celandine leaves but no sign of any flowers, and the merest sprinkling of Snowdrops, though no open flowers. I was, however, much more lucky with Primroses, with a single plant flowering amongst a sea of plants on a grassy hillside in a local park.

230129 primrose (1)

And then a circuit of the yard around a local church brought another plant flowering amongst the graves. Spring is coming …

230129 primrose (2)

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Tree flowers

08 Sunday May 2022

Posted by sconzani in flowers, trees

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spring flowers, tree flowers, trees

Instead of wildflowers, this week we have some of the tree flowers I’ve noticed in recent weeks. It’s certainly not an exhaustive list but I’ve definitely got a much better appreciation for the lovely flowers so many trees have.

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Common fumitory

16 Sunday May 2021

Posted by sconzani in spring, wildflowers

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

British wildflowers, Common fumitory, Fumaria officinalis, Spring colour, spring flowers

This native British wildflower may well be the ‘common weed of gardens, arable fields and waste places’ that my Flora Britannica describes, but I’ve only found it once, earlier this week, in my local area, despite there being plenty of those suitable habitats. This is Common fumitory (Fumaria officinalis), which also goes by the vernacular names of Earth smoke and Red-tipped-web. Flora Britannica goes on to explain:

Both scientific and English names stem from the Latin Fumus terrae – ‘smoke of the earth’. The delicate, grey-green leaves do have a slightly smoky appearance, enough to persuade one seventeenth-century herbalist that ‘it appeareth to those that behold it at a distance, as if the ground were all of a smoak’.

210516 common fumitory

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Blooming most recklessly

16 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by sconzani in flowers, wildflowers

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

British wildflowers, Spring colour, spring flowers

‘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

210316 colt's-foot
210316 creeping buttercup
210316 crocus
210316 daisy
210316 dandelion
210316 lesser celandine
210316 primrose lilac
210316 primrose yellow
210316 smooth cat's-ear

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Snowdrops, native or not

21 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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British wildflowers, naturalised wildflowers, non-native British wildflowers, Snowdrops, spring flowers

I thought the Snowdrop was a native British wildflower but it seems not.

210221 snowdrops (1)

This is from the publication Wonderland (by Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss):

Though they were once considered native, botanists now believe they were brought here from continental Europe to adorn Elizabethan gardens.
The first definite record in the wild dates from the 1770s, when they were discovered in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. If these showy flowers were truly native before then, it is hard to imagine them being overlooked.

210221 snowdrops (2)
210221 snowdrops (3)
210221 snowdrops (4)
210221 snowdrops (5)

I’m now seeing plenty of Snowdrops when I’m out and about on my exercise walks, though I’m not sure whether they’re naturalised non-natives or have been planted along the roadsides by green-fingered locals. There are several different varieties of Snowdrop, and I’ve also seen quite a lot of double-flowered varieties amongst the more common types. The doubles (pictured on the right above) are probably Galanthus nivalis Flore Pleno, according to the identification crib sheet on the BSBI website, which, if you’re interested, also gives clear details of how to ID the single-flowered varieties.

210221 snowdrops (6)

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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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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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91/366 The bells are ringing

31 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

blue flowers, Bluebells, British wildflowers, spring flowers

The Bluebells are in bloom!

200331 bluebells (1)

Sadly, these are not native Bluebells but they were growing in a semi-wild location rather than in a park. As I passed along the edge of one local park yesterday, I noticed the Bluebells inside are also starting to open their gorgeous flowers but, as the park is currently closed, I can’t get in to enjoy them. Are the Bluebells out yet where you live?

200331 bluebells (2)

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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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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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