Second May

I thought it would be interesting to compare this year’s meadow with last year’s. Here is how it looked in early April last year, on the left, and in late March this year on the right. Similar comparisons from mid to late May, with last year on the left: It is impossible to say yet…

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…

I’m back!

After three local walks, I couldn’t resist posting some spring flowers. On Roborough Down, there were lots of violets and March flies related to the St Marks fly but resting with their wings out, making a cross with their little scorpion-like bodies. Next was Devon Wildlife Trust’s Andrews Wood reserve. Glorious sunshine with lots of orange tip…

Leigh Lane and Lud brook

New oak and hazel leaves, holly and blackthorn flowers, and the last few catkins overhead in Leigh Lane. Under foot, bluebells, three speedwells, two violets, and three umbellifers. Yellow dandelions, lesser celandines, and creeping buttercups in Leigh Lane, and gorse and tormentil on the moor. Also in Leigh Lane, pink purslane, herb robert, and campions and white wood…

Newts

We have newts in our pond! We didn’t want to disturb them by getting the camera too close, hence the blurry photos. This one swam around in a leisurely way for an hour or so near the bottom of the pond. We saw another briefly, which was smaller and had darker markings. It swam with this one…

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…

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

At White Oxen

Mum and Dad have beautiful wildflower meadows with a variety of flowers that enjoy wet grassland, including bog stitchwort and ragged robin. Bugle grows among the grasses, along with what I believe is a white-flowered form