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 park’s summer wildflowers go to seed, the fleabane is a welcome splash of colour beside the paths.
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The lower leaves of a teasel grow opposite each other in pairs and each pair joins together around the stem, forming a cup. The cups fill with rainwater and insects fall into the little pools where they drown.
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This is wild teasel (Dipsacus fullonum), sometimes called the common teasel, photographed in Lambrok Meadow next to Lambrok Stream.
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Here is another member of the Lamiaceae family: Prunella vulgaris, commonly known as selfheal or all-heal. Like the other Lamiaceae that we have looked at, red dead nettle and ground ivy, it has the characteristic two lipped zygomorphic flower and a square stem.
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The 1959 Injurious Weeds Act does not just apply to ragwort. It names four more species as well: broad leaved dock, creeping thistle, curled dock, and the spear thistle . The park has all of them.
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This year the park produced beautiful hay: a variety of grasses, dry, sweet smelling, full of wildflower and not a single shred of ragwort anywhere.
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Water plantain ( Alisma plantago-aquatica) thriving in the Lambrok Tributary
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Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense) taken at dawn this morning by DKG.
A gallery of colour to lift the sombre, over-grown greens of all the latest pictures on the home page.
This has been a year of astonishing growth: more grass than we have ever seen, nettles at head height, trees and shrubs sagging under the weight of blossom. Our common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium) is standing seven feet tall in places with flower-heads the size of dinner plates.
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by Ian Bushell
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This is Stachys sylvatica, commonly known as hedge nettle, hedge stachys or hedge woundwort. It is growing at the far end of Lambrok Meadow.
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Chris Seymour’s pictures of the park’s common spotted orchids.
Dog roses (Rosa canina) are in flower in the park’s hedges. We are promised good weekend weather so come and see.
This is hemlock water dropwort (Oenanthe crocata), by some accounts the UK’s most poisonous plant.
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