A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

To most people Dartford Heath is somewhere to walk the dog and many let their dogs mess everywhere which is a shame. The obvious flower most of the time is Gorse, the rest looking like parkland grass. What you don't obviously see if there are hundreds of thousands of flowering plants in the grasses, most very small and easily missed. Some are rare in Kent and nationally. However, I'll start off with the commoner plants. After all, if you see the rarities now you might not read the rest! Common Storksbill were flowering in large numbers, their tiny pink flowers glistening in the sunlight of this pleasant Spring day. Erodium cicutarium This is Common Mouse-ear, another common plant. Also present were numerous sticky Mouse-ears with glandular hairs and tightly bunched tiny flowerheads. Cerastium fontanum There were hundreds of tiny Dovesfoot and Round-leaved Cranesbills (pictured) dotting the grasses with pink flowers. This one is a varian

It was a nice warm day so with just over an hour to spare I thought I would explore a public footpath not far from home. I'd passed it many times in the car and knew it went straight up a hill into woodland but little else. As I walked up I spotted Wild Strawberries. These are becoming rare now and I record where I see them. The glossy, pointed leaves are the best way to differentiate them from Barren Strawberries. Fragaria vesca   The path entered a field where grazing occurs but hadn't for a while. I found a patch of these hard to find Hairy Violets. They are the only Violet obviously hairy and usually grow on chalk such as found in much of North Kent. There were all sorts of tiny plants of interest here, but none flowering yet. My eye was caught by this small hairy rosette. It's a Common Cudweed, which is far from common and on the Kent Rare Plant Register. I will return later hopefully to catch it in flo

This is a Kent Wildlife Trust reserve, famous for its colony of Green-Winged Orchids. While not endangered they are only found at a handful of sites in Kent, this being the most prolific. Today's blog is mainly not a diary, just photos of these beautiful wildflowers. Anacamptis morio I took about 100 photos, but whittled them down to just a few. Bugles were coming up as well. These attractive plants have blue flowers, but last year I did find some in pink form. Ajuga reptans The far end of the meadow was very damp and Cuckooflowers grew here in abundance, their flowers ranging from pink to white. Cardamine pratensis   If you could take your eyes off the orchids, these little beauties were in the grass, still quite small at the moment. They are actually a fern called Adder's Tongue.  Ophioglossum vulgatum Greater Stitchwort are out in large numbers in hedgerows an

The biting Northerly wind didn't seem too promising, though for the most part it was a sunny day. The onset of a cold Spring after such a mild Winter seems to be the norm now and the plants and the insects don't like it very much. At this time of year there isn't much botanical interest in much of the paths leading to the Thames, but I did find these Wall  Speedwells.  They can be identified easily by the single flowers having virtually no stalk. They are very tiny flowers so easy to miss. Veronica arvensis Greater Periwinkle had naturalised along the paths, well away from habitation. Look for larger flowers and a line of fine hairs around the leaf edges to tell them apart from Lesser Periwinkles. Vinca major Round-leaved Cranesbill were coming into flower en masse. These can be tricky to tell apart from Dovesfoot Cranesbill, so look carefully at the leaves and hairs on the leaf stems. Geranium rotundifolium