Brenda writes: “Today I took my walk through the lanes around Rockland St Peter and Rockland All Saints. Sadly both churches were locked but I was glad to sit on the bench in All Saints churchyard. The grass verges were full of greenery and colour. There were new labiates today, so called because the flowers look like lips, black horehound and downy hemp-nettle.
I also saw hedge woundwort again in some woodland.
There was spearmint just coming into flower and I saw water pepper, a larger relative of redshank which likes damp places and gets its name from the peppery taste of its leaves.
Sulphur cinquefoil is like creeping cinquefoil but rather than creeping along the ground it stands erect on a stout stalk.
Today’s star, of course, has to be teasel. Tall with bristly egg-shaped flower heads, the pale purple flowers work up the head in whorls. Once finished the flower heads turn brown and very hard. In the past they were used in the wool trade to comb the wool and fluff up the surface of woollen garments.”
New species for July 20th:
Flowers: black horehound, downy hemp-nettle, spearmint, water pepper, sulphur cinquefoil, teasel
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 207
Moths = 188
Wildflowers = 256