Cuckoo flower
Scientific name: Cardamine pratensis
Family: Brassicaceae
Common names: lady’s smock, milkmaids
Habitat: damp grassland
Conservation status: least concern, common and widespread.
Wood spurge
Scientific name: Euphorbia amygdaloides
Habitat: old woodland
Conservation status: common
Header image and image [1] taken in the reserve by Clive Knight.
Wild Garlic
Wild garlic is another of those wildflower species that go 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”Bluebells
Bluebells photographed in the reserve on Monday by Cheryl Cronnie.
Continue reading “Bluebells”
There are cowslips (Primula veris) flowering in the reserve, beside the path through Simpsons, at the top of Village Green and the bottom of Kestrel Field.
While we are on the subject…
…here is a list of ragwort’s many common names, some of them downright vulgar:
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Bluebell gallery
A Sunday Stroll
by Ian Bushell
As it was so pleasant, we thought we would take a gentle Sunday afternoon stroll.
Continue readingA closer look at weeds: part 2
Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are the commonest of our wildflowers. They grow everywhere: between our paving stones, in flowerbeds, lawns and roadside verges, and straight up through the tarmac of a well-maintained driveway.
Continue reading “A closer look at weeds: part 2”Fritillaries
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of snake’s head fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) flowering in Simpson’s Field Copse: a stunning and increasingly rare sight.
Continue reading “Fritillaries”
Anemone blanda…
…found and photographed in the reserve last week. Anemone blanda isn’t a native species so this is a garden escape but it naturalises easily in the partial shade of woodland edges and our bees will love it. Let’s make it welcome.
Primrose
The primroses are coming into flower. The woods will soon be full of them.
A host of golden daffodils….
After their short, golden flowering period, the above-ground parts of our daffodils will die back and they will spend the rest of the year hidden underground as bulbs. The bulbs are adapted stems and leaves in which the plants store their food to fuel next year’s spring growth.
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Wood spurge
Ian Bushell has sent us pictures of wood spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides) in the copse between the Arboretum and Simpson’s Field.
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Daffodil time! In 2017 the Friends planted 1,000 native daffodil bulbs in the woodland edges of Village Green. They are now well established and beginning to spread, and we are hoping that the sunshine forecast for next week will bring them all into flower.
Hazel’s female flowers
Hazel has both male and female flowers. The familiar yellow catkins are made up of about 250 male flowers. They produce the pollen; if you tap a ripe hazel catkin it will release a cloud of pollen. The female flower is a minutely small red tassel, somewhere on the same twig as the catkins.
Continue reading “Hazel’s female flowers”
Julie Newblé has sent us a beautiful image of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) flowering in the Village Green copse down by the decorated bridge. Thanks Julie.
Dog’s mercury
Dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis) is one of those mysterious, usually nameless, plants that is hardly ever noticed. It forms dense carpets on the woodland floor and beneath old hedgerows but appears to most passers-by as just background for the bluebells and primroses.
Continue reading “Dog’s mercury”Snowdrops
A lone clump of snowdrops in the copse between The Race and Sheep Field photographed yesterday by Ian Bushell.
A gallery of snowdrops
Header picture by DKG
Ten lords a-leaping
On this, the tenth day of Christmas, here are the extraordinary flowers of lords-and-ladies, the wild arum (Arum maculatum), photographed in the reserve in April.
Pictures taken in the park by Suzanne Humphries
Eight maids a-milking
Milkmaids is one of the many common names of Cardamine pratensis, a spring-flowering plant that loves our damp meadows and stream edges. In Wiltshire we know it more often as lady’s smock or, because it flowers when the cuckoo returns to Britain, as cuckoo flower.
Continue reading “Eight maids a-milking”
Prunella
Prunella vulgaris goes by many common names – heal-all, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter’s herb, brownwort or blue curls – but in these parts it’s best known as selfheal.
Continue readingOrchids
Why has this been such a good year for orchids?
This year, we have identified five species of native orchids in the reserve. Two of them, the common spotted orchid and the broad leaved helleborine, are old friends, but bee orchids, pyramidal orchids and southern marsh orchids also appeared for the first time in the reserve’s fields.
What makes a good year for native orchids? Here are five possible factors to take into consideration.
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 