A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

Ranscombe Farm is a wildflower delight and no matter what time of year you visit, you are likely to find something special and this day was no exception. Very close to the car park in Longhoes Field were numerous beautiful Corn Cockles. Agrostemma githago A bumblebee on Red Clover ( Trifolium pratense ) White Bryony draped itself around trees and shrubs on the field edges, with its tendrils tightly coiling other plants for support. Bryonia dioica This is Broad-Leaved Cudweed, an endangered species that plantlife has featured on its Back from the Brink project.  See https://naturebftb.co.uk/ for details of this ambitious project. Longhoes and Kitchen Fields have thousands of them, though this was the first in flower that I could find. Filago pyramidata Lucerne with its bright blue flowers lined the approach road. Medicago sativa subsp sativa The declining Common Rockrose was prese

I remember going to this hoverport at Pegwell Bay when I was a teenager watching the giant hovercraft head across the mudflats towards the continent. For whatever reason hovercraft fell out of fashion and a giant concrete apron of several acres was left behind. Over the years, nature has reclaimed it, pushing through cracks in the concrete and growing on thin soils that now cover large areas of what was concrete. The almost white flowered plant and the almost black flowers below belong to the same species of plant, Sand Lucerne. It can be all manner of colours, often metallic as well, though to date I'd not seen the black flowered version. When I saw those below they looked black to the eye, but the photo shows it's a very deep purple. Very similar to Lucerne (which is always blue) and Sickle Medick (always yellow), these can be told by the seed pods if the flower colour confuses.  Medicago sativa subsp. varia Purple Toadflax is a long escaped ga