Moorhaven cemetery

The grass has been left long in the cemetery and is full of flowers and insects. Here are some of the plants growing there. Several speedwells: Some to look forward to: Insects: Plantains and buttercups in the arboretum This goatsbeard is growing in the wild patch in our garden but is worth looking out for…

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…

Bumblebees

There is a large patch of Russian comfrey just past the top of Green Lane and it was humming with bumblebees. Two species were present (assuming my ID is correct). The shaggy yellow one in the top left picture with a gingery tail is Bombus pratorum, one of the first bumblebees to appear in the spring and quite…

Sunny garden

Among the yellow rattle is a single bulbous buttercup. Even though it is common according to my book, I haven’t knowingly noticed one before. Its defining feature is downward pointing sepals but the leaves also look different from those of creeping buttercup, which tend to be mottled and not softly downy like these. At soil level, the stem…

Evening in the garden

My camera insisted on using flash on a bright evening, with some nice results. There is a wild patch under the sycamore tree where red campions are thriving, and also the last few early dog violets.

Ice

  It was cold on the moor this morning but the crevices in walls were full of tiny plants, including new leaves of sheep’s sorrel, navelwort, heath bedstraw, and stonecrop. There were some beautiful ice formations near the Ludbrook, including extruded strands of frost around a fox’s burrow. Gorse and an unseasonal strawberry flower This orange-yellow jelly…

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,…

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…

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…

Sunshine

The first sunshine for a week has coaxed out tiny white flowers of hairy bittercress and three-nerved sandwort, as well as early wild strawberry flowers and stag’s horn fungus.