A Botanical Journey mostly from Kent & SE England

 Eyhorne Green west isn't a place as such, but that's the name of TQ8254 on the BSBI database. To me it's the A20 flyover by the M20 Leeds Castle intersection. This intersection has now long been built but I guess it would qualify as a brownfield site comprising of artifical banks made for that road junction. The soil is very sandy and the only reason I went there was to see Orobanche rapum-genistae or Greater Broomrape at its only Kent location. I found plenty of interesting wildflowers but I found no Greater Broomrapes at all. Very disappointing. It was likely that any spikes found would have gone over but there weren't even any of those. Perhaps it was the extended Spring drought we had this year, though why that should affect them I don't know. They attach themselves to Gorse and Broom and steal water and nutrients from them and they were present aplenty and in good health too. I hope they come up next year and aren't lost to Kent. Below are some of the othe

 Wrotham Water is a rural country lane at the feet of the North Downs with virtually no habitation near. I botanically recorded the area in Autumn last year but returned now to see some of the Summer flowers that I missed on my last visit. Here's some of what I found.  Nettle leaved Bellflowers are found all along the scarp slope of the North Downs and here was no exception. The flowers resemble Harebells but are much larger and the leaves are like nettles. Campanula trachelium  Common Centaury is usually less than two feet tall with multiple flowers. however if you find a tiny one, look for a basal rosette. If present it's this plant, if not it's a relative! There is a BSBI field guide to tell them all apart which is worth getting. Centaurium erythraea     Below is Long stalked Cranesbill which is one of the less common of these small wild Geraniums. It's the only small Cranesbill with a long stalk so is easy to identify when in flower.   Geranium columbinum        An

 From Covert Wood (see last blog), I drove a few miles east towards Dover to visit this RNR managed by Kent Wildlife Trust. It was one I had never visited so I wanted to have a look around. Here are some of the plants I found there.   There were many pink Pyramidal Orchids on this RNR which is a steep hillside by the Lydden Rd off the A2. Amongst them was this white variant which occurs approximately just once in a thousand plants.  Anacamptis pyramidalis var. alba   I found several over the area, quite unusual. There were of course, hundreds of pink ones too. The yellow flower in the foreground is Kidney Vetch ( Anthyllis vulneraria) a food plant for the Small Blue butterfly. There were over a thousand Common Spotted Orchids too, a delight to see and this verge reminded me a bit of the A229 verge near Maidstone before it was "accidentally damaged". Dactylorhiza fuchsii I even managed to find an all white variant too. Dactylorhiza fuchsii var albiflora     In amongst all of t