A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

With history back as far as the Romans, Reculver lies on the North Kent coast and is relatively unspoilt by development, as such, there' always something of interest to see here. Habitats range from small pockets of salt marsh, brackish dykes, cracked concrete and earth sea walls, grassed areas and a rural road verge, so there's plenty of interest here.  Sea Mayweed can be found all along the coast, here it's growing on the edge of the main car park. Tripleurospermum maritimum Strawberry Cover (a Kent RPR species) is abundant here in large colonies. Trifolium fragifera     Great Plantain is often overlooked when flowering as it lacks petals and is very common. Often trod on or driven over, it's a tough little plant. But look up close when flowering and you may see the delightful purple anthers. Plantago major subsp major Spiny Restharrow is also found here and is another Kent RPR ...

The Isle of Grain is a peculiar place in that much of it is industrial with huge energy and shipping complexes and vast areas fenced off with no public access. Another chunk is restricted as it's a MOD range. However, there are still hamlets, country lanes, saltmarshes and old grazing land with brackish dykes that make it an interesting place to visit for botany. It's also pretty good in winter for bird watching as well. The bridge in the distance is the relatively new crossing from the mainland to the Isle of Sheppey, miles away by road, but less than 5 miles in a straight line. In one area were hundreds of Lesser Centaury, an uncommon plant in the county which doesn't tolerate competition, thus it's found in very poor soils. In this case, very thin soil over an old industrial concreted area. The easiest way to tell them apart from Common Centaury is that Lesser has no basal rosette, the flowers are a darker pink and smaller and the calyx under the ...

Of course, as I write, the 7th July is a long way back in the past, it now being mid October. Rather surprisingly, it's warmer now than it was then. 13/10/18 (today) was 24 degrees and very humid with tropical air being drawn up from the South. I'm sure that will end soon! However, here's the best of the photos from this lovely trip to a special venue in July. I'm trying hard to identify as many grasses as I can this year, so it's fitting that I start the blog with a grass, albeit an easy one to identify. This is Marram Grass, a dune fixer and a common grass on the tideline. The photo above also shows the typical habitat found at Sandwich. In front of the grass is a stand of Sea Sandwort, the light green low growing plant. Not shown, is that once the shingle ends, the soil tends to be sandy. Ammophila arenaria The beautiful Pyramidal Orchid, in what now seems a long distant memory. Thousands were to be found along the dunes...