Sunday 19 June 2011

Botany Bay

Every other Wednesday evening for the past couple of months I’ve been wandering the field and hedgerows of  our village with a group of hard-core botanists led by Dr Ken Adams, the Essex Botanical recorder.

I say hard-core, because these guys don’t just know the names of a couple of virtually all the plants we come across, they will tell you just about everything to do with the plant including, of course, the Latin name. In fact they would rather talk Latin names, which is a bit frustrating for the likes of me.

IMG_3360

Although it’s hard to keep up, I’ve been enjoying myself immensely and it’s rekindled an interest in botany that I started just after I began serious bird-watching many, many years ago.

Today, I took out the big camera and went to the woods and the local fields to capture a couple of June flowering plants. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on some of these. Unfortunately, Ken wasn't with me today!

IMG_3254

Red Dead-Nettle

IMG_3257

Red campion

IMG_3269

Slender or Hairy St John’s wort (not perforate)

IMG_3274

Self-heal

IMG_3275

Arum lily berries

IMG_3290

Don’t forget to look up now and again – Buzzard.

IMG_3293

Field of Rape

IMG_3296

Poppy

IMG_3304

Redshank

IMG_3306

Common mallow

IMG_3313

Agrimony

IMG_3319

Field scabious with 5-spot burnet moths

IMG_3322

Bladder campion

IMG_3325

Oxeye daisy

IMG_3338

Rosebay willowherb

IMG_3351

Cinqufoil (with cut-leaved cranesbill)

IMG_3340

Ragwort

IMG_3260

Cardinal beetle

IMG_3349

Tall melitot

IMG_3345

Bugloss

Black hoarhound

Black hoarhound

White bryony

White bryony

Thanks for the visit.

No comments: