A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

I'm very much behind on my blogs and I apologise for posting these later than I had intended. It would be easiest to just not bother, but some of the wildflowers are just too beautiful to end up in the recycle bin after a single post on Twitter, so here is my next instalment on botany in the South East. It was with trepidation that we headed off to Mount Caburn in East Sussex. Not because of the very long steep climb to see some orchids, but because I had learned that cattle had been grazing the site for over a week. I was rather worried that there wouldn't be any wildflowers left to see. The views are spectacular with wide open grassland vistas, however, much of it is has constant livestock grazing so is of limited value for wildlife. It's also very different to the North Downs which is much more wooded with steeper scarp slopes and often miles long dip slopes. As we reached the top of the long climb I could see our target area of Caburn Bottom below us. You can walk

I had decided to record species in a couple of 1km square monads North of Detling Hill just off the busy A249. I didn't expect to find much, as most of the area is arable fields with the usual heavy use of weedkillers applied to them. However, there is some woodland within the area, and I did hope to find some undiscovered orchids on the chalk, but that was not to be.  Oddly, the star area for this trip was a layby! This was an area that was only occassionally cut with no evidence of old grass cuttings, no weedkillers or fertilisers and of importance, the locals seem to have dumped garden waste here over the years. Strikingly obvious to the eye, was a group of Pot Marigolds, with their bright orange flowers standing out from the green of other plants. Calendula officinalis flore pleno  The first Slender Thistle of the season was in flower here, no doubt it's name is from the flower as the plant can sometimes be quite fat (so to speak). so

I've surveyed the fields on the Gallops at Longfield a few times over the years and one might reasonably expect that there would be nothing new to see. These fields had been left fallow for a couple of years up to recently, so were full of arable wildflowers normally sprayed out of existence. The fields have a new owner and rumour abounds on social media as to the impact this will have. My main concern was the rumour that the farmer will be growing crops for supermarkets - thus leading to intensive fertilising and spraying on the poor chalk soils. so far this hasn't happened, the field has been tilled and nothing else. As a result, there's been an explosion on some plants there, as follows.  Fumaria densiflora This sea of purple stretched for about a kilometre! It comprises of millions of Fumitories,  the ones I examined found to be Dense-flowered Fumitory. Just to confuse, Common Fumitories were mixed in, I wonder if they hybridise? I expect so!