There are plenty of wild plants in flower even in January as evidenced by the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt. I go walking most days, and either I walk to my dried flower workshopAMP or for a brisk half hour health walk, and there is often something new to spot.
For my health walk, I do the same route about twice a week. I like it because it only takes half an hour, and has some gentle slopes for exercise, and variation in scenery. But the area I walk is mostly built up, so the flowers I spot are mostly in the pavement or verges. Visiting the same places twice a week means I get to see the same plants at different stages of growth.
My walk takes me alongside some allotments, past the entrance to a cemetery with pine trees, along a lime walk, to the edge of Seaford, where the road passes though a thin stand of trees leading to a dog walking field. When I get to the end of town, I loop round and continue home.
Although there are houses nearby, the stand of trees contains a great spotted woodpecker which I sometimes hear, and some long tailed tits. The pine trees in the cemetery attract goldfinches from time to time, and I often hear great tits, starlings and wood pigeons too.
Here are some pics of flowers I spotted in the last two weeks or so. Flowers seen but not photographed this month include: dandelion, daisy, shepherds purse, grounsel, nipplewort, smooth sow-thistle, common chickweed, annual dog’s mercury and red deadnettle.
If you are wondering how I identified the two violets – more in my next post!
End of the month update! Spotted on 29th January: Lesser celandine (was Ranunculus ficaria now Ficaria verna), and snowdrop (although from their size and location I suspect the latter have naturalised from an initial planting).