A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

As we drove off towards East Kent we didn't really have an idea where to go. As we got onto the Thanet Way we decided to re-visit Monkton Quarry nature reserve, a place which we haven't visited since 2013. This venue is a medium sized old chalk quarry now given o ver to wildlife. As such, you get a huge diversity of plants, insects and animals there. We spotted Peregrine Falcons and Buzzards over the cliff edges. You can read all about it and see reserve photos here:   http://www.monkton-reserve.org/ It cost £8 for a family to enter, but is well worth it. It's much cheaper if you buy an annual ticket for about £15 (from memory). First off was a visit to a bird feeding area next to the entrance to hand feed live mealy bugs to a Robin which had a nest nearby. I couldn't quite get a photo of it in the hand as it was just too fast for me to capture. This is an excellent venue to see several orchid species as well as the usual chalk loving pla

I'm afraid I don't have the time to recount this trip in detail, but I thought I would share the photos with you and a brief account of each.  For the Dungeness area photos I would like to thank Owen Leyshon, the Romney Marsh Ranger (and fellow KBRG member) for his valuable assistance in finding some of the plants here. Starting out at Folkestone Downs above the Channel Tunnel rail link, looking across Greatstone Bay towards Dungeness in the distance. Folkestone isn't well known for Man Orchids, but there's a few dotted around. Orchis anthropophora There were plenty of Small Copper butterflies on the wing. But the star of the show here is always the Late Spider Orchids, confined to just a few sites now in Kent, though common on the continent. Ophyrs fuciflora There were only two plants flowering at this site, hopefully more will be flowering by the time I write this. T

TQ6273 is a grid square that covers much of the south of Northfleet, an urban/industrial area in North Kent. It had hardly any botanical records, so this day I set out to see what I could find. Much of the area comprises of houses and industrial estates (all kept neat and tidy) but a relatively new road now runs through what was an alkaline fen over chalk, so I concentrated on that area. It doesn't look too inviting does it! However, verges were wide on both sides of the road and largely left wild so I began my search. Near the industrial estate was a grassy area and within it I found these Bur Chervil plants both in flower and in seed.  They look very similar at first to Cow Parsley, but the former are mostly only a few inches tall. The seeds are also totally different to Cow Parsley so it's easy to identify it. Anthriscus caucalis I found several other species in the grass such as one would expect such as Spotted Medick, Daisy, Dandelion, Lesser Trefoil