The award for the year’s first common spotted orchid picture goes to Pete White.
Common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)
Common spotted orchid
Dog rose
Our hedges are full of dog roses. They are fragile, fragrant and short lived so come and visit them while the show lasts.
The header image is by Clive Knight.
Common vetch
Our common vetch (Vicia sativa) is just coming into flower. It’s a scrambling plant and you’ll find it among tall grasses, holding itself upright with the tendrils that grow from the tip of its leaf stalks.
This is black sedge (Carex nigra), also known as common sedge. It grows along the Lambrok tributary either in the shallow water or on the bank and there is a bed of it in the woods just past the wooden bridge. We think there must be a spring there because the ground is always waterlogged, making it perfect for black sedge, which likes to keep its feet wet.
Continue readingWild Garlic
Wild garlic goes by many different names: ramsons, cowleek or cowlick, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek and bear’s garlic are just a few of them.
Continue reading “Wild Garlic”Wild arum
This is wild arum (Arum maculatum) growing in the copse at the top of Brunt’s Field.
Continue reading “Wild arum”Charlock
This is charlock (Sinapis arvensis) photographed in the reserve this week by Clive Knight. It likes disturbed ground and Clive found this specimen growing in the spoil from the wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow.
Continue reading “Charlock”Ground Ivy
This is ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), a little blue flower so common as to be almost invisible. It grows all over the reserve and flowers at any time of the year.
Continue reading “Ground Ivy”Cowslip
For several years, we have been trying to establish cowslips (Primula veris) in the reserve’s fields but with less success than we would like. The problem is timing.
Read on to find out more
A gorgeous picture of late snowdrops from FoSCP member Peter White.
Continue readingNative daffodils
Battered by the winter, the one thousand native daffodils we planted around Village Green in 2017 are bravely flying the flag.
Click here for a gallery of pictures
Winter cress
Winter cress (Barbarea vulgaris) is another of the wildflowers first identified and recorded in the reserve by Country Recorder Richard Aisbitt when he visited last summer. It isn’t a rare species or even particularly unusual; it’s just one of those plants that are so commonplace that nobody bothers to look at it or ask what it is.
Continue readingHemlock water dropwort
These are the seeds of hemlock water dropwort (Oenanthe crocata), probably the UK’s most poisonous plant.
Continue reading “Hemlock water dropwort”Yarrow
Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, a late-flowering perennial, photographed by Ian Bushell, in the little triangular field between Simpson’s Field and Fiveways.
Continue reading “Yarrow”Teasel
This is wild teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), sometimes called the common teasel, photographed in Lambrok Meadow next to Lambrok Stream.
Continue reading “Teasel”
This is common fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica); it is a plant that grows all over the place but nobody ever seems to know its name. As the reserve’s wildflowers go to seed at the end of the summer, the fleabane is a welcome splash of colour beside the paths.
Continue readingExtra ragwort
When the County Recorder for Flowering Plants, Richard Aisbitt, visited the reserve in May, he found two different species of ragwort: common ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris) and hoary ragwort (Jacobaea erucifolia).
Continue reading “Extra ragwort”
Water plantain
Water plantain ( Alisma plantago-aquatica) thrives in the Lambrok’s tributary stream, even in conditions as dry as these.
Continue readingOxeye daisy
We would love to see drifts of summery oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) in the reserve’s fields but there is a problem.
Read on to find out what the problem is
Hogweed
The reserve’s common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) can grow two metres tall in places, with flower-heads the size of dinner plates. Every year, somebody asks if it is, in fact, giant hogweed and the answer is: no.
Continue reading “Hogweed”
Elderflower cordial
read on for a recipe for elderflower cordialCommon spotted orchid
There is always competition to be the first to send in pictures of our common spotted orchids. This year the prize goes to Countryside Officer Ali Rasey.
Rosa canina
Dog, used as an adjective, as in dog’s mercury or dog Latin, can be disparaging: it means something is not quite the real thing. But dog rose is a direct translation of the Latin, Rosa Canina, so named in classical times because the root of the dog rose was believed to be a cure for the bite of a mad dog.
Continue reading “Rosa canina”
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 