Category: Flowers

Dock and Hogweed

I happen to like fjords, I think they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent.

Slartibartfast, a venerable Magrathean planetary designer in Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, 1978

I feel the same way as Slartibartfast about the crinkled leaf edges and the swashbuckling flamboyance of unfurling leaf-buds of curled dock. They give this common weed an air of baroque bravado.

Meanwhile back at the Hogweed

hogweed

I’ve been following the progress of this hogweed from the emerging bud two weeks ago to the first umbels last week.

Three weeks ago, on the 9th of May I could step across the herbage at the edge of the car park to draw the unfurling bracken and garlic mustard. They’ve now been overtaken by dock, nettle and hogweed, what you might call rank vegetation except that today, after a short shower of rain (during which I continued drawing under the shelter of a large umbrella) there was deliciously fresh smell of spring vegetation.

Bee Orchid, Date Palm

Bee orchid, date palm and the laburnum arch at Brodsworth Hall this morning.

Thanks to the English Heritage garden staff for pointing out the bee orchid which were growing on a south-facing grassy bank, left un-mown, alongside the formal beds and lawns.

The date palm grows in the shelter of the sunken gardens, at the sunnier end.

Every Flower Counts

In this year’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey at the end of ‘No Mow May’ I’ve got double the amount of germander speedwell flowers that I counted last year.

During the time it took to count the 167 speedwell flowers, I saw one pollinator, a common summer migrant hoverfly, Eupeodes corollae. This is looks like the male.

Plant Life informs me:

Your nectar sugar could support…

14 honeybee workers for a day
4 hour-long foraging flight for an adult bumblebee
1 adult bumblebees to fly for a day

Plant Life

Nettle

nettle

Nettle drawn at Newmillerdam yesterday. The rolled leaf reminded me of the Naturalists’ Handbook, Insects on Nettles. I might take a closer look.

Nettle books
Dandelions on our front lawn

Curled Dock

curled dock

Curled dock, Rumex crispus, growing at the edge of the car park at Newmillerdam, is a common weed of rough ground, farmland and the sea shore.

Nearby another weed of rough ground, hogweed, Heracleum sphondylium, was starting to unfurl its leaves from large, hairy sheathes.

Garlic Mustard

Garlic mustard and bracken in the clearing at the far end of the main car park at Newmillerdam. On our return journey via Seckar and Woolley Edge we saw lots of garlic mustard on the verges alongside bluebells and dandelions, growing beneath roadside oaks.

Heuchera

A group of these plants were growing on the riverbank and on a rubbly bank at the side of the riverside path behind industrial units. It looks like a relative of water avens but doesn’t have the drooping flowerheads of that species. Most of the flowers were yellowish green but some plants had flowers midway down the stem with magenta petals. A garden escape?

Heuchera

Next day we spotted this plant amongst the ferns at Brodsworth Hall and Gardens. It’s a Heuchera, a member of the saxifrage family from North America, so definitely a garden escape.