The wild patch looks quite bare but there is plenty to see on close inspection. How it will look in May Elsewhere, in the iris bed I made in the autumn, a tiny, beautiful and rather unseasonal sprig of common ramping fumitory
Tag: cleavers
New Year’s resolutions
Cut carbon, fight climate change, keep plastic out of our lanes and waterways (more on that later)… Our Devon stone walls and banks are amazing. Here’s a random small patch: There are some patches of colour, even on a misty January day and the cherry-pie smell of winter heliotrope. Lichens and moss, as colourful as…
Wild patch
A couple of years ago we marked out a small patch of lawn, strimmed it and sprinkled yellow rattle seeds to keep the grass in check. Here’s how it is getting along. Flowering now: prickly sowthistle, herb robert, scarlet pimpernel, ribwort plantain, yellow rattle, cornsalad, common mouse-ear, red campion, common field speedwell, cleavers, wall speedwell,…
Moorhaven to Green Lane
I haven’t done this walk for a while and the big change was clumps of three-nerved sandwort at the side of the Moorhaven drive. On the sunny southern verge just past Leigh Lane, lots of shining cranesbill and ransoms, greater chickweed, and creeping buttercups. Past the golf course, there are stunning displays of bluebells on…
April sunshine
The burst of sunshine over the weekend has brought out some new flowers along Bittaford Road, including the first delicate lady’s smock. There was a clump of greater chickweed. It was hard to do it justice with my phone camera but you can see the 10 stamens – each purple blob is a pair – that distinguish it…
New Year’s Eve
Holly and ivy for Christmas and lots of new growth in the hedgerow, notably cow parsley, goose grass (cleavers), and shining cranesbill. Spotted medick leaves are easier to see now than in summer. New flowers of lesser periwinkle, dog’s mercury, winter heliotrope and pink purslane alongside a few scattered flowers of shining cranesbill, rough chervil, nipplewort,…
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…
Weeds
In the garden, a tiny specimen of common ramping fumitory, some lady’s smock and yellow rattle that we planted to kick-start a wild flower patch by parasitising the lawn. There are five species of speedwell: germander, wall, thyme-leaved, ivy-leaved, and slender speedwell. Other flowers thrive through lack of weeding rather than by design. Common cow-wheat in woods in South Brent
Moorhaven to Green Lane 