Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I’m saying with flowers for Sofia, who becomes a teenager today.
Flower number three is a bit of a tribute to Burt Lahr, the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz:
I’m afraid there’s no denying
I’m just a dandy lion,
A fate I don’t deserveBut I could show my prowess
Yip Harburg (lyrics), ‘If I only had the Nerve’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Be a lion, not a mouse
If I only had the nerve.
Common or field forget-me-not has hairy leaves, hence its Latin name, Myosotis arvensis, which translates as ‘mouse ear of the fields’.
Hairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, reminds me of a small version of lady’s smock, Cardamine pratense. It’s one of the earliest of weeds to flower and one plant can produce 50,000 seeds.
I always think of groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, as a user friendly weed. It doesn’t have a taproot or spreading rhizomes, so you can soon clear a bed of groundsel just by pulling it up. Although it will probably soon appear again as its seeds can germinate within a week.