Mixed day

"Private woodland - please don't start fires" - great attitude and very botanically rich paths into it. Just a pity they hadn't added to the notice "logging in progress" ! So I had to divert.

But then I got back and my pictures weren't that great. Realised I hadn't photographed Galeopsis tetrahit before (and so should have taken more pictures of it with more care !) and had probably seen G. bifida (a closely related species) as well ! (The carry-able book I take with me in my rucksack doesn't mention G. bifida.)

And my Heath Speedwells in this locality were blue, not lilac as usual. I still think they are that species, after careful checking in Stace when I got back - and the species is "highly variable".

I was partly hoping to get near Kilvert's Graig Pwll Du - not to see the waterfall which I know is regarded as a dangerous exploit these days** but just to see the scenery around. Well I did the latter briefly before diverting from the public footpath because of the logging and a lot of confers have just been cleared from the land above the area - hopefully to be replaced by broad-leaves...

** No doubt Kilvert was in full Victorian gentleman's garb when he climbed down to it with the Mole catcher...

Walking to Clyro

You don't have to walk along the road - the walk over the fields that Kilvert described is still a public right of way and reasonably easy to find. (Not much trodden though - the usual way to see where a path crosses a field from trodden grass doesn't work - at least at this time of year.)

Nice to come across a Welted Thistle at last - it's not particularly rare but eluded me until now. Because it is a tricky identification I took plenty of pictures of the "relevant bits".

And the marshy area by the Clyro Brook was a delight - particularly for the blue of Skullcap all over parts of the area. I must look out for mention of it in Kilvert's Diary - but I wonder was it called Skullcap then in this area ?

Nothing new

A lovely day for a walk along the Wye Valley Walk towards Glasbury.

I didn't actually find any species I had not photographed for FloralImages before but several good examples of some I need better photographs of.

The slight surprise was Marsh Woundwort in what seemed a dryish place. But it was near the Wye and a baby frog did leap out of the undergrowth as I positioned myself !

A disappointment (and worry)

The point of my first meeting with the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust was to find and count Bog Orchids.

So it was a disappointment to hear from the warden at the start that there were very unlikely to be any as they had been stolen.

It's sad that such people are still around (and worrying to hear that this sort of thing is on the increase again). Those, like me, who seek out rare plants to photograph undisturbed are going to have to be careful about revealing locations.

Hopefully some of the bulbils that grow on the leaf edges will have been scattered in the plunder.

But such meetings are never wasted - I would not have been able to identify White beak-sedge without having it pointed out (at least not without hours with a lens and book and some swearing) ! And it is an interesting little "grass" - declining in most places but increasing in the Elan valley.

This was my first encounter with flowering Marsh St-John's Wort as well.

How to pick the wrong day.

I don't let a little rain stop my quest - oh no !

Friday 20th July seemed the day to call in near the Witney bypass for a rare sight (unique to Oxfordshire and possibly declining).

I had family reasons to visit Oxford anyway and the rest of the week had been spoken for.

The rain was relentless even in the morning - I gave up soaked in this botanically rich area soon after getting some tolerable pictures of the Woundwort. Made my family visit in Oxford and set off for home at about 3 pm with my daughter, coming to stay for the weekend.

We eventually got back to Oxford at about 10 pm - which made us some of the lucky ones - many got stuck overnight around Gloucester.

Made it to Hay the next day via the M4 and superior Welsh roads from the new Severn Bridge up through Talgarth - a 50% increase on the usual distance travelled !

Oddly we never encountered rain requiring "fast" wipers. Just several flash floods at the limit of my preparedness to venture. But I heard that after the false lull in the early afternoon many people encountered monsoon rain such as they had never seen before.

Getting there late

This week was far too late for Globeflowers at Cae Pwll y Bo Nature Reserve but I went anyway and enjoyed getting to know the place. Several not uncommon but new to FloralImages species were added. And all was not lost with Globeflowers as I got to see a straggler with all petals lost - exposing the working parts of the flower to view. So my cultivated example still leads the FloralImages resource and it will have to wait for next year to get wild examples.

Vicarage Meadows nearby was also rewarding, if wet, and I saw Dyer's Greenweed for the first time together with some past their best Orchids. Another great reserve clearly but I will have to consider upgrading my walking boots to cope with Welsh wetness. (I'm not complaining - I gather Wilson's Filmy Fern grows in the area and I would not want that to be deprived of its preferred conditions. I must seek it out some day.)

On the (not direct) way back I stopped to investigate some spectacular spikes I noticed on the Brecon - Hereford Road (just after Brecon where there is a turning on the right for T******* 3 m - I can't reconcile my notebook scrawl with anything on the map but the turning is before Felinfach and the Orchids are on the left opposite the turning.

Dashing about after flowers

Fate is conspiring to keep me away from Hay and its environs at the moment - and the weather is not inviting for local foraging in any case - but I do find increasingly that going to known sites to see a rare-ish plant is oddly dissatisfying.

Necessary to some extent to increase FloralImages' scope but getting there to find you are too late / too early / the thing just isn't performing well this year can be a bit deflating.

So a half way house is to try to stop off on other trips that happen to go near. But then you don't really have time to do the job properly.

So actually the real buzz comes in such conditions when you either stumble across something unexpected or a good friend agrees to take you on a tour of his finds. The latter happened on a visit to Plymouth (young son to be visited). David Fenwick (see his site) bustled me around the area allowing me to add 20 more species to the site. I found another five or so, partly by accident as above, on the rest of the trip so it's been quite a productive week. (See them all at this link.)

But I can't wait to spend some days exploring the nature reserves and roadsides of Powys and Herefordshire at a more leisurely pace...

Getting wet

My early forays to explore the local botany seem always to end up focussing on pools.
Exploring The Begwns - a local National Trust open area above Clyro - I soon stumbled upon one and spent the next hour or so getting soaked as I strove for the best angle on the delights around the shore.

Shoreweed doesn't throw up a flower stem unless conditions are right (and then only a male one) so on spotting this I had to get a good picture. It's only when you get up close (and wet !) that you can appreciate that this is a flower of standard construction - just rather differently proportioned from most - and a very unusual Plantain (because that is the family) in having a solitary flower on each stem - hence the Latin name Littorella uniflora. Then I got wetter trying to get a good shot of the female flower lurking at the base of the plant.

...And of course all achieved with minimal disturbance - a principle I try to be true to whatever the problems - I know flower photographers have a bad reputation with some wildlife conservationists.

Not that the sheep who graze the area have such scruples - the Marsh Speedwell was holding on bravely despite them.

Local sites you never quite get round to

Eighteen years in the West country and I never once went to see the "Bath Asparagus" in it's flowering season.

So, now that I live in Wales, I decided that I must make a slight detour from a trip to a meeting in Radstock and see them. Well worth a drive through the lanes south of Bradford on Avon at this time of year. The local name reflects the fact that people used to eat it cooked like Asparagus. Maybe they still do - but if it was really great then wouldn't the TV chefs be using it ?

Reminds me of the reports that "Alexanders" used to be eaten as a vegetable "before the introduction of Celery" (I read somewhere). A correspondent who has tried it told me that, now he has done so, he understands why Celery replaced it !

Oh and I noticed that it (the Bath Asparagus) was still showing in the hedgerows towards but not right up to Radstock going back west - in lanes I have often travelled - but that would have been on the way to the pub...

Nice examples

It isn't all about finding rare and obscure flowers. Getting to know my new locality I soon found some old favourites on the Wye bank plus a really attractive spray of a Water Forget-me-not I have seen before but always in less than ideal conditions. So it's nice to be able to add a picture of which I am somewhat proud of a splendid species.

(What's more it is one that you would expect to find in such a location - unlike the Philadelphus near it - must be a garden escape from the houses nearby.)

Back now I hope

Installed in new house and the boxes emptied - and a lot of botanical opportunities missed during the period...

But some were grabbed - see Sticky Catchfly for instance and Lesser Marshwort found while exploring a botanically rich pool that is now "close to home".

But the tragedy was realising - just a little too late that I now live not at all far from one of the four known stations for Rock Cinquefoil - it had finished flowering when I got there !

It's not just the rarities that matter though - I am already enjoying finding relatively common flowers that were not common (or maybe just not spotted) in my old haunts. See the recent additions list.

Getting going again

Life is fraught - with the consequences of house moving (or rather trying to) but it is important to get out now that spring is springing.

Howard Parsons very gamely offered to take me to a Hutchinsia site he had been to on a field meeting I couldn't make. The forecast was dire but we set out down Nightingale valley and along the Avon river path. You need to be shown this plant - or be one of the eagle eyed and expert botanists that first found it - and with Howard's help we indeed found it again. I would not have spotted it I am sure. This is one flower for which I would blow my own trumpet about the calibrations on FloralImages - you need to know how small and delicate it is !

Then as a bonus we thought we would give Bristol Rockcress a try - despite it being a little early for it - success ! The weather was far better than expected and plants were (just) flowering - in fact I nearly trod on one quite far from the rocks and growing in grass nearby as we arrived at the location.

Then to a BSBI meeting to learn more about conifers - long an interest but also a mystery to me. A great meeting - haphazard in the best way - because there was always more to comment on before resuming the plan. FloralImages now has many more trees in it's collection including the rare in the wild Fitzroya. And an amazing illustration of the fact that Coast Redwoods can regenerate from low down on the trunk / stump - see this !

Searching for the few that flower now

It's hard to find much new for FloralImages at this time of year - but Mezereon is one flower that has eluded me so far and should be flowering soon if not now.

Well I failed in the location I tried yesterday. Plants were there in the 1990s but apparently not now (and the woodland in question seemed very denuded of all undergrowth by deer).

But nearby Green Hellebore was flowering beautifully at one of it's native sites - so all was not lost.

Radnor's own flower

A long wait for anything new and therefore well worth a longish drive to the only UK site for Gagea bohemica in Wales.

Howard Parsons and I set out soon after 8.00 am on the 25th January to meet the warden, Andrew Ferguson at the site, having been told by him earlier in the week that a few flowers were now out. It was invaluable having Andrew there to tell us the background and warn us how to avoid damaging the environment in our enthusiasm.

It turns out that "few flowers" does not mean "few plants" as the vast majority of the plants do not flower. The flower was overlooked by Victorian botanists (probably because they botanized in the months when G. bohemica is not visible at all (even leaves). The leaves, even when they are about, are very thin and insignificant.

It's a species which is able to exploit pockets of thin soil on acidic rocks where the likelihood of dessication in the summer is great. Reproduction is largely by bulbils that tend to form in most plants instead of a flowering stem and there is even doubt whether the plant can set seed. The species also grows in isolated sites in Europe - but with significant variations between the sites. A species for which there is more to learn !

We were lucky enough to visit two flowering locations - one easy with the flowers not fully out (despite waiting an hour for midday sun to coax them) and a perilous (ish) location high up at the reserve with two fully open flowers.

Notes on Gagea

Desktop wallpaper

Or does calling it that make me at least several weeks out-of-date ?

An obvious thing for FloralImages to offer and I took the trouble to look at my stats and find what screen sizes 99.9% of my visitors have. So images are pre-prepared at every build for these sizes (20 in all) and a bit of Javascript ensures that those who try this get the size for their screen.

The image to start with isn't the one I would have chosen - but I decided to make it randomised and so stick with it. The image should change each weeks and sometimes wide-screen users will be offered a different one from that for normal aspect ratio monitors. (Some images are suitable for wide screen, some for 4:3 and some for both.)

Fungi

How did I miss Draycott Sleights for so long ? A superb reserve and a must for next year for flowers.

But now, the reserve and the close-by Draycott Horsegrounds are home to several interesting fungi. I hope I got the IDs about right - I'm learning but still nowhere on the fungus "jizz" recognition curve.

Only realised on return I may have had a Magic mushroom - did I break the law taking a sample for a spore print ?

Back in business

The Camera is back - repaired free of charge by Nikon :-). It was the dreaded BGLOD failure that they are honouring repairs for even out of guarantee. (See the DPreview Nikon forums).

And Malcolm Storey sent a long email of IDs for my Quarantine fungi - plus some corrections for ones I thought I had IDed. Very good of him and FloralImages depends so much on unsolicited help like this.

Spurred me to try hard to get my fungus Iding up to scratch with a new overnight one in the lawn. Brown spore print and I think therefore it is Conocybe tenera.

I will go out tomorrow and find something to photograph if I possibly can !

Camera broke

Only a walk in November at Hestercombe Gardens so not the disaster it could have been. Or seemed ? As with most digital equipment the symptoms at first seemed to preclude any picture taking but further investigation revealed that all that was actually wrong was the metering (causing the display to generate alarmingly random messages / indications).

So I spent the rest of the afternoon exposing by trial and error - easy when you get used to it of course with an on-camera histogram to feed back the results of each attempt - and flowers, as I have said before, stay there for further attempts.

Vice Counties

I believe that one of the problems of a site like FloralImages is that it can be quite hard for users to find what they want. I try to help with this by having several different types of index and also several different browsing pages.

Just added are browse by Vice County pages - Vice Counties are a botanical recording concept - designed to be roughly all similar in size since the mid nineteenth century and unchanged (for consistency) since. I am only dimly aware if I am in North or South Somerset (vice county) much of the time (often erroneously thinking I was in South because I had driven quite a way south from Weston-super-Mare!) and even less sure where Mid Cork starts and West Cork ends. So it has been useful creating this additional categorisation for me.

See the BSBI website for more about Vice Counties and how they are used.

Slime moulds

Patches on the lawn when I wake up recently. What dog has been getting in and weeing ???

No - it's slime moulds. The first to appear was yellow. I think some species of Mucilago. Then two days later the more common (I am told) dark Physarum(s) appear.

Apparently they spend most of the year practically invisible. These are the fruiting bodies.