A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

We had a few hours to spare before I had to go to work, so we thought it would be nice to visit a reserve not too far away that we knew had a sea of Bluebells and a few Early Purple Orchids. Other orchids grow there but they don't flower until May, so the above was all we expected to see. There's no real car parking just a small area you can get a couple of cars into. As I got out of the car I could see many Wood Anemones had already gone to seed, though many were still flowering well in the wood itself. Anemone nemorosa As we walked on I spotted a Lord and Ladies in flower. These are very common, but very few seem to flower. Those that do are often eaten by woodland animals which bite off the dark brown spadix. Arum maculatum Very soon the wood was awash with Bluebells. Their scent filled the air. Most were native Bluebells which have the strongest scent, however, there were numnerous hybrid Bluebells in amongst them, an inferior pl...

Some late Spring/early Summer flowers are now beginning to overlap, so it has been a very busy week recording as many as I can find in between domestic life and work. While it's turned cooler, the warm spell  of weather last week has really progressed development of many species and some are flowering up to 2 weeks earlier than usual. A far cry from a month ago, when the first Spring plants were late! I'll start with a relatively quick but productive visit to Dartford Heath.  There are many rarer wildflowers here at certain times of the year and the purpose of this visit was to find Petty Whin in flower. I'd only seen it in books but it was supposed to look like a spindly sort of Gorse with similar yellow flowers. Of course Gorse covers a huge area of the Heath and along with Broom, the place was a sea of yellow pea like flowers. Ulex europaeus In the short turf areas were some Early Forget -Me-Nots with their miniscule 2-3mm wide flowers....

Perhaps best known for its old castle by the lake, the National Trust's Scotney Castle also has extensive grounds, mostly neat and manicured to exhibit their ornamental species. However me being me, I like to look for the "weeds" and wildflowers that the gardeners have missed. First up was the successully naturalised Ivy-leaved Toadflax, whcih has colonised walls all over the UK since its introduction many years ago. This grew abundantly on the wall from the house down to the gardens. Cymbalaria muralis I almost walked past this one thinking it was a Shepherd's Purse, but the leaves on the rosette didn't look right. Sure enough, it was a Thale Cress, the first plant to have its complete genome mapped. Arabidopsis thaliana These Snake Head Fritillaries are planted, but I could't resist taking a photo of them amongst the Daffodils. Here's another cultivated plant, a do...

Just a few days on since my last blog and the mild weather this last week has brought forth several more delightful Spring flowers, bringing an uplift to the soul after months of Winter blues. This half day was a visit to the National Trust's Ightam Mote and its estate and nearby Kent Wildlife Trust's Ivy Hatch nature reserve, all in a few hours before work. I was hoping to find some early Rue-leaved Saxifrage on the old walls around the Mote but it was too early yet. However, I knew that the boggy streamlets running into the lake would now be full of an early flowering Spring plant. This tiny plant is Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, quite common and easy to find.  It has no petals, but the golden anthers catch the sunlight and look like golden specks of Spring. Chrysosplenium oppositifolium   Not quite what I was expecting in Spring, but interesting nonetheless. I don't have time to identify fungi now, but I'm fairl...