Tag: flora
-
Butterflies, Thistledown and the Long Arm of the Law
Memory plays odd tricks. Yesterday mine dredged up a scene from some Disney film, the heroine wandering through a meadow with butterflies and birds fluttering about her like a doting entourage. Animators loved surrounding young women with woodland creatures. Saved them writing dialogue. This field needed video, really, to do it justice. Thistles stretched as…
-
Ragwort: The Weed That Feeds the Bees
Three heatwaves have hit Britain since spring, baking the ground and warming the seas. Humidity makes it feel worse. Soil has dried fast, wildfire risk is high, and marine life is under strain too. The Met Office, says cooler air is due soon, but rain is not, so dry days continue. Some plants seem to…
-
Valley Garden: Bluebells, Bog Plants and a Baffling Fern
In the early 1950s, Lord Feversham had a rather splendid idea. To keep his staff at Bransdale Lodge busy, he ordered a “wild garden” to be carved out of Gimmer Bank Wood, on the soggy banks of Blowith Slack, a tributary of Hodge Beck. In went azaleas, rhododendrons, flowering cherries and a good deal more…
-
Standing on Nature for a Better Angle
The path in this photograph of the bluebells in the National Trust’s Newton Wood is a monument to the perfect social media post. We love nature so much that we are treading it into the ground. It is so disheartening. Bluebells are sensitive souls. Their leaves are soft and succulent. They are generally intolerant of…
-
Ramsons—The Plant That Smells Like Trouble and Tastes Like Dinner
You will smell ‘em before you see ‘em. A whole wood reeking of garlic — this is wild garlic, or Ramsons, doing its thing for a couple of months each spring. The Old English word “brmsa” gave its name to places still on the map today: Ramsbottom, Ramsey, Ramsdell, Ramshorn. In AD 944, a royal…
-
The Ancient Yellow Field
Every spring, Britain turns yellow. These vast, almost aggressive swathes of rapeseed feel utterly modern — the crop of motorway verges, cooking oil, and biodiesel. Surely this is a 20th-century invention? Sort of. This is almost certainly some genetically engineered new cultivar, but let’s meet the navew. That is what our ancestors called rapeseed, and…
-
Farndale: Rather Less Yellow Than Expected
Last Friday’s trip to Farndale, home of the famous wild daffodils was, if truth be told, rather a mixed blessing. The display was, shall we say, not quite the riot of yellow one might have hoped for. The far bank of the River Dove, where the public cannot go, looked considerably more impressive. Years of…
-
February Fair-Maids
The signs are there for all to see. The frogs in the garden pond have woken, shaking off winter like old men rising from stiff chairs. Hazel catkins hang thick and yellow in the brief scraps of sunlight. A few brave daffodil buds test the air. The sun provides apricity, its setting creeps past five…
-
Witches’ Butter
Even in midwinter, when the woods look like they have given up, they can still manage a bit of a show. There are splashes of colour if you bother to look. Bright fungi flare up against the gloom, set among the stubborn brown leaves still clinging to oak and beech, and the thick brown carpet…
-
Clearing the Blackthorn: The Mother of the Woods Fights Back
A grey, soaking day settles over the National Trust property at Port Mulgrave. Rain drips from every branch and bramble. The task at hand: cutting back the blackthorn regrowth that is threatening to re-swallow the public footpath through a tangle of unyielding woodland. Far below, the North Sea heaves and claws at the base of…