Sunshine at last

A week with some sunshine has made a difference. There isn’t a bigger variety of flowers yet but it certainly looks more meadow like. It was nice to see some wildlife enjoying the flowers already, including a 14-spot ladybird and a few garden chafers. A wild shady patch under the trees in the formal garden,…

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…

Wild patch in winter

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

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,…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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