It may be the first week of winter but there are still plenty of wildflowers in bloom. I hope you enjoy seeing these as much as I enjoyed finding them.
39 blooms
05 Sunday Dec 2021
Posted in flowers, plants, wildflowers, winter
Tag Archives: wildflowers in bloom
Late autumn wildflowers
24 Sunday Oct 2021
Posted in autumn, flowers, wildflowers
As this autumn has been very mild, the verges and paddocks, woodland rides and footpath edges are still full of blooming wildflowers. It’s a delight.
More yellow
09 Sunday May 2021
Posted in flowers, spring, wildflowers
A month ago, I shared some of the yellow-flowered wildflowers I’d found for the weekly #WildflowerHour challenge. In the weeks since, more yellow flowers have begun to bloom and, as today’s weather (I’m writing this on Saturday, as we sit under a heavy rain warning) is grey and windy and very wet, I fancy some bright sunshiny yellow. So, here we go …
The flowers are the butterflies’ favourite Bird’s-foot trefoil and the vibrant bushes of Broom. Although I shared some of these last time, I couldn’t resist a Shrew’s-eye view of more Cowslips. The buttercups are beginning to take over from the Lesser celandine as Nature’s yellow carpet in the meadows – these are Creeping and Meadow buttercups. Prickly sow-thistles line the edges of the lane behind my house, and Spotted medick is now brightening up the pavement verges. I’d glimpsed Yellow archangel last time but now these lovely spikes are popping up everywhere in my local woodland, a beautiful compliment to the Bluebells.
Wild blooms
28 Sunday Feb 2021
Posted in flowers, plants, wildflowers, winter
The results are in! After a concerted effort to check as many different local habitats as possible, walking 31.5 miles over 5 days, I managed to find 29 different wildflowers in bloom this week. Two (Ragwort and Smooth sow-thistle) were too distant for good photos; the other 27 feature in this week’s little video. I hope you’re also seeing plenty of flowers in your areas now too.
The 27 are: Alexanders, Barren strawberry, Colt’s-foot, Cow parsley, Cowslip, Creeping buttercup, Daisy, Dandelion, Dog’s mercury, Field speedwell, Forget-me-not, Gorse, Groundsel, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Lesser celandine, Opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage, Petty spurge (with little yellow spots of the rust Melampsora euphorbiae), Primrose, Red dead-nettle, Red valerian, Shepherd’s-purse, Snowdrop, Spurge laurel (a shrub really but I’m including it), Sweet violet, Three-cornered leek, Wavy bitter-cress, and Winter heliotrope.
Midwinter wildflowers
17 Sunday Jan 2021
Posted in flowers, wildflowers, winter
Tags
British wildflowers, midwinter wildflowers, wildflowers in bloom, winter colour, winter wildflowers
Nature’s resilience amazes me! It’s the middle of winter, we’ve had some very hard frosts and really chilly days as well as torrential rain, yet I’ve still been able to find 25 species of wildflower in bloom this week.
These heroes are Alexanders, Bramble, a garden-escapee Campanula species, Creeping buttercup, Daisy, Dandelion, Field speedwell, Gorse, Groundsel, Herb Robert, Hogweed, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Lesser celandine, Mayweed species, Meadow buttercup, Nipplewort, Oxeye daisy, Primrose, Ragwort, Red valerian, Shepherd’s purse, Smooth sow-thistle, Sweet violet, Wild radish, and Winter heliotrope.
327/366 Around the town
22 Sunday Nov 2020
Posted in autumn, wildflowers
For this week’s wildfloral fest, I’ve taken a couple of meanders around my town to see what I could find along the back lanes, in cracks on stone walls, on the verges, bordering the pavements, in the churchyard and cemetery. And here are the bloomers: Bramble, Daisy, Dandelion, Field speedwell, Hedge bindweed and Hedge woundwort, Hemp agrimony, Herb Robert, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Nipplewort, Oxeye daisy, my first Primrose of the season, Purple toadflax, Red dead-nettle, Red valerian, and Wood avens. Not a bad haul for late November.
320/366 Zigzag flowers
15 Sunday Nov 2020
Posted in autumn, wildflowers
Tags
autumn colour, British wildflowers, Penarth zigzag path, wildflowers in bloom, Zigzag path, Zigzag path wildflowers
I haven’t checked what’s flowering along the local zigzag path for a while so I thought I’d take a look for this week’s Sunday wildflower post and #wildflowerhour on social media. Imagine my delight when I found these 14 species: Ragwort, Cinquefoil (a nice surprise), Creeping thistle, Hedge bindweed, Meadow crane’s-bill (which is doing really well since the Council stopped cutting the vegetation on this site), Common vetch, Red clover, Bramble species, Herb Robert, Field scabious, Tufted vetch (nice to see the two vetches in bloom), Winter helleborine (another nice, unexpectedly early surprise) [ed. heliotrope, not helleborine – thanks, Vicky!], Black medick, and Meadow buttercup.
313/366 Flowers in a field
08 Sunday Nov 2020
Posted in autumn, wildflowers
Tags
autumn colour, autumn wildflowers, British wildflowers, farm field wildflowers, wildflowers in bloom
Running alongside the local coastal path are a series of farm fields, belonging, I understand, to the Welsh government.
These fields are usually leased for farming but, because there are currently plans to build 500 houses here (and don’t even get me started on how ludicrous that is!), it seems no local farmer was willing to lease the fields this year so they have not been cultivated. This has been an incredible bonus for wildlife (this is a well-used flyway so migrating birds have taken advantage of the re-wilded environment) and for the wildflowers that would usually be sprayed to death prior to crop planting.
This week I’ve checked which flowers are still in bloom in these fields and their surrounding hedgerows, and found the following: Hedge bindweed, Bramble species, Bristly oxtongue, Creeping thistle, Dandelion species, Field speedwell, Rape, Scarlet pimpernel (the day was too dull for the flower to open), Smooth sow-thistle, Spear thistle, Sun spurge, and Ragwort.
299/366 Blooming now
25 Sunday Oct 2020
Posted in autumn, wildflowers
Today’s blast of colour is brought to you by the colour purple, with splashes of pink and blue and lilac. All these gorgeous wild plants are still flowering in my local area and, on grey days, when we here in Wales are once again in full Covid-19 lockdown, seeing these on my daily exercise walks is a spirit-lifting delight!
For those who want to know, these are: Buddleja, Bush vetch, Common knapweed, Creeping thistle, Devil’s-bit scabious, Field scabious, Hedge woundwort, Herb Robert, Ivy-leaved toadflax, Meadow crane’s-bill, Musk-mallow, Purple toadflax, Rosebay willowherb, Teasel, and Tufted vetch.
286/266 Still blooming
12 Monday Oct 2020
Posted in autumn, wildflowers
Botanically speaking, I’ve been a bit preoccupied in the past few weeks with the structural shapes of seedheads and the autumn bounty of fruit, so yesterday, during a walk across farm fields and along woodland rides, I thought I’d record how many wildflowers I could find in bloom. Turns out, there are still rather a lot, including Agrimony, Bramble, Broad-leaved willowherb, Creeping buttercup, Creeping thistle, a Dandelion species, Hedge woundwort, Hemp agrimony, Herb Robert, Knapweed, Meadow vetchling, Ragwort, Red campion, Red clover, White clover and Yarrow.
earthstar 
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