A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

It's surprising what you can photograph in just one hour. That's all the time I had spare before work, so I took a quick walk around Kent Wildlife Trust's Longfield Chalk Bank and the adjoining sports field. This photo was taken last April. The grass is quite a bit shorter at the moment. Being a small area of chalk grassland it will be a while before it comes to life. However, with the grasses being short, I could easily see the tiny specks of purple here and there in the open turf. On a closer look they were Early Dog Violets, a pleasant change from the more numerous Sweet Violets at this time of the year and a first for this venue for me. Unlike Sweet Violets, these have pointed sepals, the spur being small but darker than the petals and usually un-notched. Violets are quite the little beauties. The Early Dog Violet is called :   Viola reichenbachiana I've not yet been able to photograph any insects so far this Spring, so I was pl...

Early March is a transition time from Winter to Spring with the Winter finally finishing off the stragglers from last year and the beginnings of the new Spring wildflowers starting to appear. Here's what I found this week. My previous blogs can be found at barbus59.tumblr.com First up was a visit to Kent Wildlife Trust reserve at Stockbury in Kent. The woodland floor was already carpeted with Bluebells, but a few were already flowering. In a month or so, there will be a huge carpet of them. Being mostly the native Hyacinthoides non-scripta their scent will fill the wood. Early Purple Orchid rosettes were now showing as well. The leaves on Orchis mascula are nearly always spotted, making them easy to distinguish from the more common Bluebell leaves coming up now as well. However, I was fortunate enough to find the rarer unspotted version as well. This wood, has in the past thrown up pure white Early Purple Orchid flowers and they usually have u...