A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

This was really a day out to Battle Abbey with the grand children but I managed to find a few plants of interest as we drove around the area, though this will be a short blog. First find was a Cut-Leaved Dead Nettle, much harder to find than the usual Red Dead-Nettle. It's leaves are heavily serrated with big teeth and once you see one, you won't mistake a normal Red Dead-Nettle for this again. Lamium hybridum I found it by a concrete block at the River Rother flood barrier which stops the tide from going further inland, just north of Rye. Here's a habitat photo. All the following plants were found on Hastings sea front at the far Eastern end by the cliffs and boatyard. Those who know Hastings will know the area just from this view. Thrift always grows on the soil at the base of the cliffs, though at this time, it wasn't quite in flower yet. Armeria maritima Above the public toilets, Wallflowers decora

Spring was well under way at this time, with the Beast from the East fading into recent memory. I did a circular walk around Matfield in Kent and here's what I photographed on the trip. The first of the Wood Anemones were coming into flower and at the time of writing (22/04/18) they now carpet many woodland floors. Anemone nemorosa I always seem to miss them when the leaves appear, then suddenly there's loads of flowers everywhere. They must grow form nothing to full flower very quickly. In a wood that backed onto gardens I found a relative of the Wood Anemone naturalised along the path. There are two species of garden anemone that are frequently found in the wild and they look almost identical apart from one having hairy underside to the petals (anemone apennina) and this glabrous form. Anemone blanda This Thale Cress is not the most attractive crucifer around and it mostly goes unnoticed. however, it was the first plant that had its entire gen

The cold has affected most of the UK with spring flowering species 2-3 weeks behind last year's flowering times. However, that isn't an excuse to sit indoors and wait for those warm spring days, so out we went to this reserve near Sevenoaks. It comprises several flooded old gravel pits with p aths around much of them. It's best known for birding and at this time of year I will photograph anything of interest within nature that I can find. On a path that caught the sun were the first Ground- Ivy plants I had seen in flower this year. They're quite small at this time of the year, smaller than the Sweet Violets now out and easily missed. Glechoma hederifolia I spotted the first Lesser Celandine in flower on 1st January 2018 on the BSBI's New Year Plant Hunt on the coast at Folkestone. However, it is only from now onwards that this plant flowers en masse . Huge drifts of them can now be seen on  many roadside verges and woodland paths. There

The Beast from the East arrived in full force this week  with around 10cm of snow, much of it drifting, ice and a bitingly cold wind chill from the Easterly winds of Siberian origin. On this day, I decided to take a day's leave rather than risk the perils of Kent's roads and possibly end up stuck for hours on a freezing cold motorway. That was just as well as the snow fell all morning with the wind driving it into my face, initially making my face sting, until the cold made it numb! I had decided to walk around Churchdown Woods near Longfield. I didn't have botany on my mind at all, but thought that a bracing walk through the snow might produce some photo opportunities, which of course it did. Once in the woods, I began to notice plants that I could still identify even with snow covering them. Of course, this is the Hazel tree. It's been flowering now for over a month with the male catkin flowers now wide open. The tiny red coloured female flo