Sunday 13th June saw the first Moorhaven Open Meadows event, part of the open meadows series organised by Moor Meadows https://moormeadows.org.uk. In lovely sunshine, we welcomed around 20 visitors to view the new cemetery meadow and Trudi and David’s larger and better established meadows up the hill at Stoneybrook.
Tag: nipplewort
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…
Piles Copse
Piles Copse is a magical place to spend a sunny evening. On the way, there were some flowers hanging on in the hedgerows, caterpillars and butterflies, and lovely views from Ugborough Beacon. A pair of ravens patrols the beacon: In Piles Copse: Sunset from Ugborough Beacon
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…
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…
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,…
October 1st
In the vegetable patch, plenty of weeds are enjoying the autumn sunshine. Daisies, foxgloves, catsear and nipplewort are still in flower in the grounds of Moorhaven while the hedgerows sport a mix of late specimens of summer flowers, like campions and rough chervil, and autumn flowering cyclamens, marjoram and water pepper. The cyclamen is an…
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…
Dandelions
Dandelions can reproduce asexually, without pollination, which means that a random mutation can create a new ‘microspecies’. There are several hundred of these microspecies but all have the familiar yellow flowers, toothed leaves and sappy stems. Despite their reputation as a persistent weed, dandelions have benefits for gardens attracting bees, moths and butterflies, particularly early in…
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…
Moorhaven to Green Lane 