Spotting flowers growing wild in South East UK
Summer evening walk with many wildflowers I went for an evening walk after being recommended a visit to Cradle Valley on the outskirts of Seaford. I was particularly looking for Burnt orchids but came across many beautiful flowers including three more orchids: Fragrant orchid, Common Spotted orchids and Pyramidal orchids. Other highlights were finding many…
Chalk grassland surveys I spent some very pleasant mornings in July counting wildflowers on the South Downs with some like-minded people. Chalk grassland is an important habitat. Spotting chalk loving wildflowers at Crowlink The chalk grassland surveys were carried out by Seaford Natural History Society in association with the National Trust. These are carried out…
Flowering around the town This month, either side of my big campervan holiday I wandered around my Sussex hometown to see what wildflowers I could find. Early June blooms on Seaford Head On a hot early summer day I went for a walk looking for Twayblade orchids and found a Common Spotted orchid at the same…
Flora on the beach On the third and final day I walked West along the seafront to Winchelsea Beach and back. Most of the flora I spotted has already been covered in my previous two posts. I had been very lucky with the weather all week, although the wind was quite strong for the entire…
Flora of Rye Harbour in May I spent three whole days at Sussex Wildlife Trust Rye Harbour Nature Reserve in East Sussex this May. On Day 1 I wandered the reserve with my friend Mercy and did a spot of bird watching in the hides (not bird photography though, I prefer targets that don’t move!)….
Rye Harbour Nature Reserve Flowers On the second day of my visit to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve in Sussex, I walked out to Camber Castle and the reedbeds at Castle Water. Around the beach Of course there was plenty of sea kale, as seen in the pic above! Herb robert is one of my favourite…
Local floral highlights of May 2021 Flowers of very early May Call me a cheat but I couldn’t resist including these two lovelies from the 30th April! Both the English bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scripta and Garlic mustard Alliaria petiolata were looking so lush and abundant! In bloom in early May It was about this time that…
A summer of orchids I’m so glad I joined Seaford Natural History Society recently because they really helped me with my orchid spotting this year! Back in May I met Polly who was so helpful showing me the Early purple orchids, Orchis mascula on Seaford Head. She told me about the swathes of Green-winged orchids,…
Wildflowers of September On my usual half-hour health walk I passed through the Last Meadow (a dog walking field on the outskirts of town) and found a few interesting plants that weren’t in flower when I last visited in June. Possible Tall melilot – Melilotus altissimus I haven’t seen tall melilot before although I was quite confident…
Flowering in my Sussex garden this summer Following on from my similar May blog post about garden wildflowers, here is what was in flower a month later. White herb robert – Geranium robertianium This continues my theme of what is a weed and what is a wildflower? My friend Mercy sent me this plant, which…