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Tag Archives: spring flowers

Snowdrops, native or not

21 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by sconzani in flowers, spring, wildflowers

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Tags

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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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90/365 Marsh merry-golds

31 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

British wildflowers, marsh marigold, spring flowers, yellow flowers, yellow wildflowers

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Now before you feel the need to correct the spelling of ‘merry-gold’ in my title, let me just say that it was deliberate because I find Marsh marigolds such cheery, merry flowers, and it always makes me smile to see them. I spotted some yesterday in Cardiff’s Heath Park, and they’re also in full flower at the moment in Penarth’s Alexandra Park, where I went for a meander earlier today.

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190331 marsh marigolds (2)

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82/365 First Bluebells

23 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

blue flowers, Bluebell, spring flowers, spring wildflowers, springtime

Almost …

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Nearly there …

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Yes! My first Bluebells of the year today in St Augustine’s churchyard in Penarth.

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Some crane’s bills

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

British wildflowers, crane's bills, geranium, Geranium lucidum, Geranium Robertianum, Geranium rotundifolium, Herb Robert, Round-leaved crane's-bill, Shining crane's-bill, spring flowers, spring wildflowers

The word geranium comes from the Greek geranos, meaning crane, so named because of the likeness of the plant’s seed case to the bill of the bird. Thus, in the plant world, the crane’s-bills are the wild geraniums.

180511 round-leaved crane's-bill

’Tis the time the geraniums begin to bloom and I’m trying to learn which is which, so I thought I’d share a few I’ve found during recent perambulations. The first is the Round-leaved crane’s-bill (Geranium rotundifolium).

180511 herb robert

This next is the one most people can name. It seems to grow almost anywhere and makes even a rubbish heap look beautiful: Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum).

180511 shining crane's-bill

At a quick glance, this Shining crane’s-bill (Geranium lucidum) looks a lot like Herb Robert … and then you notice how different the leaves are.

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A host of local names

27 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

British wildflowers, Cardamine pratensis, Cuckooflower, Lady's smock, Meadow bittercress, spring flowers

‘Any flower that comes with a host of local names is likely to be of human use, either as food or as medicine’, writes John Lewis-Stempel, in his truly wonderful book Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field (Doubleday, London, 2014; highly recommended, if you haven’t already read it). And he goes on to mention just a few of the local names that have been given to Cardamine pratensis, namely Cuckooflower (because the pale pink flowers tend to appear around the same time the Cuckoo returns to Britain from its winter sojourn in warmer climes); and Lady’s smock, Lady’s gloves, and Lady’s mantle (due to the flower’s resemblance to those articles of clothing) (though I don’t really see the gloves).

Lewis-Stempel also notes the vernacular Meadow bittercress, so named because ‘the needle-thin leaves … make a peppery edible that used to be sold on medieval market stalls’, which I never knew before. I also didn’t realise that Cuckooflower is the food plant of the caterpillar of the Orange-tip butterfly – reason enough for me not to eat those peppery leaves as I’d love to see more Orange-tips fluttering around.

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180427 cuckooflower (4)
180427 cuckooflower (5)

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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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