Just peas, no carrots

19 Sunday May 2024

Posted by sconzani in flowers, wildflowers

Tags

Black medick, British wildflowers, Broom, Bush vetch, Common bird's-foot trefoil, Common vetch, gorse, Grass vetchling, Pea family, red clover, Spotted medick, White clover

The challenge for the regular Sunday night 8-9pm Wildflower Hour (#WildflowerHour on most social media platforms) this week was to find flowering members of the carrot and pea families (#CarrotsAndPeas). I decided, for no particular reason, to stick with the peas, the Leguminosae, and here they are …

240519 birdsfoot trefoil and vetchling grass

Common bird’s-foot trefoil and Grass vetchling

240519 broom and gorse

Broom and Gorse

240519 clover red and white

Red and White clover

240519 medick black and spotted

Black and Spotted medick. These look very similar so you need to check the leaves: Spotted medick has splotches on its leaves, while the leaves of Black medick have no marks but have tiny points at their ends.

240519 vetch bush and common

Bush vetch (top) and Common vetch (bottom). I’m a bit confused about the white-flowered vetch in the centre – is it Bush or is it Common? I’ll ask the experts on tonight’s Wildflower Hour.

A Milky blob

20 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, wildflowers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bee-bread, British wildflowers, Milky blobs, Sheepy-maa's, Trifolium repens, White clover

For today’s Floral Friday theme, we have a very common wildflower White clover (Trifolium repens), which is also known by the vernacular names Milky blobs, Sheepy-maa’s and Bee-bread.

171020 White clover

It seems I had a deprived childhood because, according to Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica, ‘Almost all children learn two traditions about white clover: that the white flowers can be pulled out of the heads and sucked for a bead of honey (hence ‘bee-bread’ …); and that four- and, even better, five-leaved clovers are lucky, though you must ideally come across them by accident.’ Okay, so I knew about four-leaved clovers being lucky but I’d never heard about sucking the flowers for honey. Did you?

Summer wildflowers

10 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, wildflowers

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Common comfrey, Common honeysuckle, Cornflower, Field bindweed, Fox and cubs, Hedge woundwort, Lesser stitchwort, Ox-eye daisy, Ragwort, White clover, Wood forget-me-not, Yellow loosestrife

As the summer progresses so, too, do the varieties of wildflowers that add colour to the roadside verges, beautify patches of waste ground, light up drab spots along hedgerows, adorn the edges of the trails I regularly walk, and sparkle in the conservation areas at my local cemetery.

These are some that have caught my eye in the past couple of weeks: Fox-and-Cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca), Yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia vulgaris), Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), Field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis), Wood forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica), Hedge woundwort (Stachys sylvatica), Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), White clover (Trifolium repens), Common comfrey (Symphytum officinale), Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea), Common honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum), and the last, I think, is Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea).