The honeysuckle is in flower.
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The year’s best common spotted orchid, photographed last week by Ian Bushell.
Honey bee
A honey bee foraging for nectar and pollen among the flowers of hogweed.
Continue reading “Honey bee”Barbarea vulgaris
Barbarea vulgaris also called bittercress, herb barbara, rocketcress, yellow rocketcress, winter rocket, and wound rocket
Continue reading “Barbarea vulgaris”Ragged robin
Ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) growing next to the little tributary stream, between the Decorated Bridge and the Dog Pond.
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Our fields are beautiful at the moment: full of yellow buttercups.
The park’s yellow iris are in flower, always worth a visit.
Ground Ivy
This is ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), a little blue flower so common as to be almost invisible. It grows all over the park and flowers at any time of the year.
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Red campion (Silene dioica)
The park’s red campion grows up through tall vegetation at the edges of the fields and beneath the hedges. If you find it, take photographs and send them to us, please.
Bugle
Bugle (Ajuga reptans) photographed this week in the park’s copses.
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Germander speedwell (Veronica Chamaedrys) in the hedge in Brunts Field.
Pictures by Suzanne Humphries
Another new species
Bush vetch
Last week, Ian Bushell found and photographed bush vetch (Vicia sepium) at Fiveways, near the picnic place. It is quite a common plant in the park but, for some unspecified reason, it had not previously been put on our species list.
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Bluebell gallery
The Battle of The Spanish Squill
By Ian Bushell
For the last couple of Sundays, I have been looking for Spanish squill among the bluebells. I have gone early and used the allotment entrance to the park.
Continue readingWild garlic
The wild garlic is just coming into flower.
Wild arum
This is wild arum (Arum maculatum) growing in the copse at the top of Brunt’s Field.
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The extraordinary flowers of white dead nettles.
Fritillaries
The header picture was taken by Chris Seymour, the others by Clive Knight, Ian Bushell and Suzanne Humphries.
A walk in the Park
by Ian Bushell
I took my permitted exercise at the park over lunchtime. There were just eight cars when I arrived at noon and only fifteen when I left an hour later. People were well spaced all around the park; everybody seems to be taking the new regulations seriously.
Continue readingNative daffodils
Battered by the storms and drenched in rain, the one thousand native daffodils we planted around Village Green in 2017 are flying the flag.
Click here for a gallery of picturesA Stroll in the Park
Mail from Ian Bushell:
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Crocus vernus
Ian Bushell has sent in a picture of Crocus vernus doing its best in heavy rain, with this message:
“. . . this is the small clump of Spring Crocus (Crocus vernus) on the edge of the copse by the pond. Naturalised as a result of escape from cultivation/or possibly introduced to SCP.”
Continue readingDog’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.
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Early daffodils
These are not the daffodils we planted in the autumn of 2017; these are a rapidly spreading clump at the bottom of Kestrel Field on the edge of the copse.
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Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 