April 2021 Botanical Finds in Kent

 Well it's been a long time since I wrote a blog. With the Winter carrying on well into Spring combined with a second consecutive year of Spring drought, the wildflowers weren't doing so well, again!

Here's a selection of the more interesting plants I photographed this month from assorted venues.

 

One of my favourite Springtime wildflowers is Toothwort, which looks like a sickly pink mini triffid sprouting out of the base of (usually) Hazel trees. I often miss these little luvvies, but I managed to see some at Ranscombe Farm near Cuxton in April. Sure enough they were parasitising Hazel trees.

They're too small to harm the tree, though if you get a huge swarm of them, the tree will be somewhat stunted and may not fruit.

Lathraea squamaria

The plant below doesn't look like much and it won't be in flower fully until mid-May providing no one picks it, tramples it or steals it. It's a Lady Orchid, a Kent speciality. This plant was all on its own so is vulnerable. Ranscombe Farm, Kent, it's a huge venue, so I won't say where!

Orchis purpurea

Below is Wood Spurge which isn't anywhere near a wood, it's invading an arable field edge. Plus, it is right next to gardens and it looks too lime green for normal Wood Spurge.

It's the close cousin of our native but is called Turkish Wood Spurge, which has a similar but brighter coloured inflorescence and shiny compact green leaves. It's escaped from gardens and becoming more frequent in the wild.

Euphorbia amygdaloides ssp robbiae

By the 11th April 2021, the first few Field mouse-ears had come into flower locally. Longfield holds the last colony in West Kent VC16 and our local councillor wants to build huge council estates all over them. They are thus likely doomed.

Cerastium arvense

This looks like a weird Hairy Violet, and I suppose it is partly. The other part is from the white form of Sweet Violet as it is a hybrid between the two. The flowers were larger and dual coloured as shown. Flower stem bracts were all over the place and the hairs were short with a mixture of hairy and glabrous stems. I invited our County Recorder to visit. He took samples and he was satisfied that they were part of a hybrid swarm.

Viola hirta x odorata var imberbis = V x scabra  

TQ59766954 Longfield VC16 110421

Dartford Heath from April to May is a haven for tiny wildflowers, most of which will have shrivelled, seeded and died off by the end of May. As such, it's wise to try and go and see them when an opportunity arises.  Next to the 10p coin is one of our smaller wildflowers, Common Whitlowgrass, even dwarfed by the tiny Common Storksbill above it.

Erophila verna and Erodium cicutarium

I've quite got into Violets this Spring and one of the rarest in Kent is the Heath Dog Violet. A small colony still holds out of Dartford Heath, but they are being swamped by heather and suffering badly from drought for the second year running. As such, the flowers were small. 

They are easily told apart from other violets as they are blue!

Viola canina

Throughout April, I was primarily searching out Section Erythrosperma Taraxacum species to record, otherwise known as small Dandelions with finely cut leaves of which there are 29 species. In Kent previously, 17 species have been recorded, most in the 1970s by Eric Philip. Given this I thought it would be a good idea to try and re-find these or even find some new records.

 

 I won't post any finds here yet but I will complete a Dandelion/Taraxacum blog in due course with what I found and how to identity them. I am awaiting confirmation of identities from the BSBI referee, so will wait a while yet. Watch this space!

 

Meanwhile, I kept my eyes open for other interesting plants and lo and behold, I find another Viola hybrid. This time it's the one between Common Dog Violet and Early or Wood Dog Violet.

It was a very impressive patch of plants with very large flowers. It had features of both parents (both nearby) as shown in the photo below. I took a specimen for my herbarium and had a bit too much material so planted it in my garden and it's doing fine! I would add there were lots of hybrid plants at the site and taking one did not harm the overall population.

I found it on Preston Hill near Eynsford on a woodland edge.

Of course, with all the searches for unusual dandelions and violets I was missing out on the explosion of orchids coming into flower. Twitter was full of finds of Early Purple, Green-winged and Early Spider Orchids, and I hadn't seen any.

When I did stumble across some Early Purples on Fackenden Down near Shoreham, they were stunted and parched through drought and frost. This plant below was one of about 10 all only 6-8" or so tall.

Orchis mascula

The best part of that day though was seeing a Grizzled Skipper butterfly, the first of the season. This area is good for butterflies of all kinds, but the Grizzled Skipper is becoming quite rare. They are difficult to photograph and I had no chance of getting a photo, so here's one from the same location a few years ago that I did manage to photograph.

And that is it for April. For the whole month there was hardly a drop of rain and it was the frostiest April on record, not ideal for botany, but it's coming good now. As I write this on the 8th May, the cold spell has finally broken and it's rained quite a bit too, both good for the plants, so I expect the May wildflowers to explode onto the scene after being held back so long.

I hope you enjoyed my first blog of 2021.

Take care

Dave

@Barbus59