A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

Only a couple of miles from my home is an arable field on chalk that borders the railway line. As such, it was a good candidate for a large variety of plant species, so I took a walk there to see what I could find. I was pleased to see that the field had been left fallow recently and it was full of wildflowers as a result. Given the time of year, the margins along the railway line and field edges were also brimming with flowers. This is Small Toadflax - its flowers could easily be overlooked as they are quite small, but the plant itself is usually sufficiently large enough to grab my attention as I scan the ground.   Chaenorhinum minus Along the railway line verge were the usual chalk wildflowers, such as this beautiful Wild Thyme. Clinopodium vulgare This plant grabbed my attention and I was actually looking for it too, Round-leaved Fluellen. Believe it or not it was actually in flower too, so where are the flowers? Here is a flower hiding under the

This blog features some finds on road verges that border the 8 lane A2 (12 if you include hard shoulders and slip roads) and a rural country lane that joins it at Pepper Hill, Northfleet. I had surveyed this area some time before, but it's always worth another look, especially at different times of the year. Pyramidal Orchid populations have exploded in my area of north Kent, there are thousands lining road verges wherever there is chalk and a few weeks between council mowings. But what was special about these was that these were in an arable field edge, with about 30 of them around a fallow field. Last year the field had Wheat growing in it with the usual herbicides, so it is great to see these thriving along the field edges out of the way of the plough and the sprays. The farmer doesn't plough this edge of the field and why this is so will be explained later in this blog. Anacamptis pyramidalis Welted Thistles were numerous here. These have a te

My recording this day took me close to the Isle of Grain, a bleak area of north Kent bordering the Thames and Medway estuaries. Stoke overlooks the Medway estuary and is a tiny village just off the very busy A228. My first plant of interest was, for a change, a grass.    This looks like the very common Wall Barley, the plant whose seed heads are pulled off to make a dart. Kids then throw these darts at each other. Hordeum marinum However, this isn't Wall Barley. It looked different, being shorter, smaller and with the awns (bristles) spread much wider. It's Sea Barley, a Kent RPR species. I had found this last year in thousands at Allhallows a few miles away not far from salt water. These plants weren't close to salt water at all but on a salted road verge of the A228. I wonder if, in time, they will spread around the country in the same way as Lesser Sea Spurrey, Grass Leaved Orache  and Danish Scurvygrass? On a field edge by the road I fo