Signs of autumn

Autumn hawkbit (above) and camomile on the golf course. At the base of the hedgerows, there are tangles of redshank, knotgrass and water-pepper. There is lots of wild marjoram opposite the top of Green Lane, by the golf course sign, and enchanter’s nightshade at the bottom of Leigh Lane.       The last of the wild…

Peas, hawksbeard and mutant plantains

Many relatives of the pea are flowering now. At Ivybridge station there are two sorts of medick, spotted medick, black medick, and lesser trefoil. Black medick, with dense pompoms of flowers and a tiny point – mucro – on the tip of each leaf: Lesser trefoil, with looser flower heads: Vetches and clover are part of the…

Zempson again

I found some more photos from White Oxen and Zempson on my camera, which is temporarily indisposed. There was a chiffchaff singing from the treetop – chiff chaff chiff chiff chaff – lots of crosswort, moschatel, yellow archangel and bluebells, and the first bush vetch I’ve seen this year. A frog visited on 8th April, cooling…

The end of August

A mix of late-summer flowers and autumnal fruits, with hedge bindweed stealing the show. Climbers like bryony and vetch are still hanging on, while persicaria, knotgrass, knapweed and the magically-named enchanter’s nightshade are in their prime. Early traces of autumn include blackberries, rose hips, hazelnuts and dandelion clocks.

Flowers, fruits and flies

Lots of pink on the last day of July: rosebay willowherb and great willowherb,  brambles, buddleia,   knapweed, anad persicaria. Hogweed provides food and shelter for numerous insects, including this bee-mimicking drone fly and a relative of the house fly called graphomyia. These caterpillars emerging from their silky nest are larvae of the parsnip moth. Their usual host…

Biodiversity

I counted over 90 different species currently flowering between Moorhaven and Green Lane, starting with the weeds in our garden (1-36), progressing to Moorhaven communal gardens where Perforate St John’s Wort (37) and Dark Mullein (38) were growing in a weedy border (they could have been planted there originally), and then via Wrangaton Road to the…

June

June flew by too fast! New arrivals in the hedgerows were bistort and common valerian and numerous yellow flowers like dandelions. I’ll deal with those in another blog. Figwort has interesting flowers but is easy to overlook among the luxuriant summer growth Black medick and lesser trefoil growing side by side makes it easy to spot their differences. Note the cylindrical clusters of seeds…

Last day of April

I spent some time wondering what this was and ended up going back to have another look, book and lens in hand. It is greater chickweed, with downward pointing buds and seed capsules, 8-10 stamens, and oval, opposite leaves. Common chickweed and lesser stitchwort have similar flowers but 8 or fewer stamens and long, narrow…

Happy New Year

I am trying to capture in pictures the variety of flowers in a one-mile stretch of south Devon hedgerow from Moorhaven to Green Lane. Today there was winter heliotrope, the first primroses, campions, daisies, bush vetch, herb robert, ivy, bright green new leaves of hedge bedstraw and cow parsley, a rain-soaked celandine, and some small yellow flowers…