A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

This blog is about a month out of date but I've finally got around to writing it! I walked this country park on the banks of the tidal Medway recording plants as I went. The OS square to the West of the car park was under recorded, so that gave the trip a more defined purpose. There's a reasonable amount of salt marsh to explore when the tide is low as it was today, and scrubby areas inland. The most obvious flowering plant on the salt marsh edges was Sea Aster. They are like a saltwater tolerant version of the Michelmas Daisies. There are two forms, one with lilac rays and the other with the rays absent. I only found the rayed form here today. Aster tripolium var. tripolium Glassworts were common too. I keep missing the Kent Botanical Recording Society field trips that concentrate on this species. If I could have attended I would be able to identify each type. Believe it not, this one was in flower! On the lower branch are two tiny yellow

For this blog I visited Littlestone, Greatstone and the ditches and dykes of the Romney Marsh in South West Kent. It's a lovely under-rated area both for beaches and wildlife, never crowded and always peaceful, though in Winter, quite bleak as well. But Winter is not yet here and I made the trip to the South coast of Kent to see what botanical marvels I might find. My first stop was on the Romney Marsh. This is an area intensely farmed with widespread use of pesticides and herbicides, but the ditches (or dykes) that criss cross the marsh are filled with wildlife. A single track road going from Brenzett towards Fairlight produced a few fine stands of Marsh Mallow, a RPR species in Kent. The Romney Marsh and the Leybourne area are the only places I know where to find it. Here's a habitat photo I took on the Marsh for this wonderful flower. Related to the Common Mallow and the Musk Mallow, the Marsh Mallow has been picked almost to extinction in the county, as Marshmall

I'm well behind (again) with my blogs, so I apologise for that. Having had 34.4 degrees over the last few days and now down to low teens in temperature, the seasons are topsy turvy. Most wildflowers have gone over in the SE of England now, thanks to weeks of hot, dry weather. So I hope this and the following blogs rekindle the flame for finding unusual (or plain usual) wildflowers in your area. Of course, if you are from the North it's been raining a lot so I guess your wildflowers are still going strong! Rye Nature Reserve is in East Sussex, just West of Rye and Camber Sands. It's mostly a shingle habitat, which can make for interesting species. Most people visit in the Autumn and Winter for the birds, but I go there for the flowers. As you leave the car park, you walk along the edge of the River Rother, a tidal estuary with limited salt marsh. Here you can find Common Sea Lavender and other salt marsh loving species. Limonium vulgare Here'