11 Sunday May 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Over the past few weeks I’ve been gathering photographs of white wildflowers during my walks. These are what I’ve found: Bramble, Chickweed, Cleavers, Daisy, Garlic mustard, Hairy tare, Hedge parsley, Meadowsweet, Oxeye daisy, Three-cornered leek, Wavy bittercress, White clover, Wild strawberry, Wood anemone, and Woodruff.
27 Sunday Apr 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
I had hoped to get to my local slice of ancient woodland for a walk amongst the native Bluebells this week but it didn’t happen so here are some beautiful non-native but naturalised Bluebells that I’ve encountered in this week’s urban meanders. I hope you all have woodlands near you with Bluebells to enjoy.
06 Sunday Apr 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
‘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.
30 Sunday Mar 2025
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!
23 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
16 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
02 Sunday Mar 2025
Posted in spring, wildflowers
Tags
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.
23 Saturday Mar 2024
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
As this week’s #WildflowerHour challenge on social media is to find white flowers (they will feature in tomorrow’s blog), I thought that today I would post about the coloured wildflowers that have begun to bloom in my local area, so here they are:
A quite random combination of Forget-me-not and Cuckooflower
Both the traditional blue and the pinkish-lilac variation of Spanish bluebells
The yellows: Cowslips and Marsh marigolds and, not really new but beginning to flower in greater numbers now, Dandelions
Flowers with leaves shaped like Ivy: Ivy-leaved speedwell and Ivy-leaved toadflax
Members of the Geranium family: Common stork’s-bill, Herb Robert and Shining crane’s-bill
16 Sunday Apr 2023
Posted in spring, wildflowers
Tags
#WildflowerHour, Borage family, Boraginaceae, British wildflowers, Comfrey, Forget-me-not, Lungwort, Spring colour, spring wildflowers
Finding flowering specimens of the Borage family was the target of this week’s Wildflower Hour. This family, the Boraginaceae, includes the various Forget-me-nots (Myosotis species), the Comfries (Symphytum species), Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis), Viper’s-bugloss (Echium vulgare), the Gromwells (Lithospermum species), Green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), Borage (Borago officinalis), of course, and a few other species as well. Unfortunately, our wet Spring, the recent cold spell and storm mean many of these wildflower species are not yet flowering locally but I have managed to find three species.
Comfrey : I’m not sure which of the Symphytum species this is. It’s growing on the edge of a carpark so is probably a wind-blown garden escape or was perhaps seeded via a bird dropping.
Lungwort : Sadly, this isn’t a common plant locally – I only know of two locations where it grows. I wish there was more as the bees love it.
Forget-me-not : Did you know that the yellow ring at the centre of the Forget-me-not flower fades from egg-yolk yellow to white after pollination, which indicates to insects that there’s no more nectar and they should try another flower?
10 Sunday Apr 2022
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
In which I share a little video of the latest wildflowers to bloom in my neck of the woods …
earthstar 
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