A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

I thought it would be a good time to go the the National Trust's White Cliffs of Dover area for wildflowers, so we set off in good weather, hoping for a great day out.  On arrival, we parked in the first NT car park and walked down a dodgy tiny path to the old tramway. There were sheer drops off the edge of it! You can just see it in this photo. As ever there were interesting views of the port and France was easily visible this day. Anyway, back to the wildflowers. The most obvious plant now flowering in their hundreds were Horseshoe Vetch. Hippocrepis comosa Also blazing the cliffsides with colour were many Wild Cabbages, pretty much only found in these habitats now in Kent. Brassica oleracea var. oleracea This photo close to the cliff edge shows Wild Cabbage, Wallflower and Hoary Stock all in the same photo. There were tiny surprises as well, like this Lesser Centaury, not even as big as

I'm falling behind writing my blogs, having discarded several short trips with interesting flowers as they will now be well out of date. Much of my spare time is spent recording all wild plants (that I can name) for the BSBI 2020 Atlas. There's a lot of under-recorded 1km square grid squares (monads) and even those that are well recorded need visiting now to record all the Spring flowers. Anyway, I took a break from recording to venture into East Sussex. On the way we stopped at Matfield village pond in West Kent where I found the Bogbean well and truly in flower. They are a delightful, delicate flower and I wonder how they came to get such a name as Bogbean! Menyanthes trifoliata The next stop was Scotney Castle which I thought was in Kent, but botanically the house and castle are in Sussex . Not unusually I found Ivy-Leaved Toadflax on the old walls, however, finding an all white form was unusual, they're usual