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…

Close up

At a first glance, you might think plants were all dying back now but looking closely there are many flowers still among the seed-heads. Here are some from the verge between Ivybridge station and Bittaford.

To the station and back

A poppy near the church in Bittaford, and some more poppy buds and capsules further on. All along the verge there are patches of zigzag clover, which is less common than white and red clovers but is plentiful here. Note the tapering, pointed stipules and widely spaced brightly coloured petals. Another interesting flower is agrimony, its tall…

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…

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…

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…