Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

Tag: flora

  • Mother Shimble’s Snick-needles

    Mother Shimble’s Snick-needles

    The famous Bluebells of Newton and Cliff Rigg Woods are having a lie-in. Give them a week, perhaps, before they are at their best. Meanwhile, the true prima donna of the woodland floor is the Greater Stitchwort, cluttering the place with its endless sprinkling of white, star-shaped flowers that seem to think themselves terribly precious.…

  • The Cuckoo’s Shoe

    The Cuckoo’s Shoe

    Yesterday I posted about the Cuckoo. Today, naturally, it is the Cuckoo’s Shoe — not, alas, footwear for birds, but yet another whimsical provincial name, this time for the Dog Violet. A harmless enough little flower, though my encounter this morning has sent me spiralling into yet more botanical trivia. The woodland floor is having…

  • Furze: Fodder, Folklore, and the Smell of Coconut

    Furze: Fodder, Folklore, and the Smell of Coconut

    A sudden change in the weather, as if the sky has grown bored. No more sun-drenched optimism; just a grey sheet of disinterest overhead. Still, Roseberry manages to look charming, despite being surpassed by the only plant capable of making scrubland smell like a tropical cocktail — gorse. Its yellow blooms, reeking of coconut and…

  • Lesser Celandine: Poetry, Pollinators, and Piles

    Lesser Celandine: Poetry, Pollinators, and Piles

    Lesser celandine is a welcome sight, provided one enjoys squinting at small yellow flowers. In a hailstorm, it folds itself up, retreating like a weary thing, as Wordsworth put it in The Lesser Celandine. Wordsworth is better known for his poem about daffodils, but he was apparently more enamoured with this unassuming plant, composing three…

  • Lent—A Season of Daffodils, Fasting, and Fuzzy Maths

    Lent—A Season of Daffodils, Fasting, and Fuzzy Maths

    Another year, another excuse to photograph some daffodils—sorry, Lenten Lilies, as they are so charmingly called in Yorkshire. Whether these particular specimens on the bank of the River Leven in Great Ayton are the pure, wild, English variety is highly doubtful, but that won’t be such a tragedy. Now, in case anyone was unaware, this…

  • Kildale Moor Revisited

    Kildale Moor Revisited

    Ah yes, for the second day in a row, I found myself wandering around Kildale Moor, once again staring down at Sleddale Slack—though, to keep things fresh, I chose a slightly different vantage point. Variety is the spice of life, after all. Off to the right, perched on the high ground, is Percy Rigg, home…

  • Where are all the Holly Berries?

    Where are all the Holly Berries?

    Two years ago, I posted a photo of a holly tree, heavy with bright red berries, a cheerful sight that now belongs to history. That tree has since been unceremoniously axed, part of the grand plan to reduce tree cover on Roseberry Common to a mere 10%. Why? To prevent the Common from succeeding into…

  • Roseberry’s Kissing Oaks

    Roseberry’s Kissing Oaks

    When two tree trunks or branches rub against one another long enough to wear away their bark and expose the cambium — the cellular plant tissue — they sometimes fuse into a single entity, forming what is charmingly called a natural graft. This process, termed “inosculation,” is derived from the Latin for “to kiss,” as…

  • Of Cloud and Candle-Rushes: Taxation, Tradition, and a Dreich Brian’s Pond

    Of Cloud and Candle-Rushes: Taxation, Tradition, and a Dreich Brian’s Pond

    What a profoundly uninspiring morning it has been—so much dull, grey cloud blanketing the Cleveland Hills that one might have suspected a conspiracy to make photography impossible. Still, in search of a morsel of interest, I plodded resolutely up to Brian’s Pond, which is quite possibly named in honour of that storied Irish figure, “Bryan…

  • Bracken, Oaks, and their Folklore

    Bracken, Oaks, and their Folklore

    Bracken—our most invasive ground cover, steadily browning itself to perfection. How marvellously it complements this oak woodland on Cockle Scar, on the west-facing slope of Roseberry. Who needs daffodils or bluebells when you can have a decaying fern carpeting your view? And did you know that bracken is charmingly referred to as the ‘oak fern’? Apparently,…