Living and learning on the Jurassic Coast

Wednesday 1 July

Stantyway Farm on the East Devon coast is not just organic: it’s managed for wildlife. This was obvious as soon as we crossed the field that led to the coast path and passed through a swathe of wildflowers.

Lesser Knapweed (related to thistles and daisies) and a small butterfly. (I think it's a skipper.)

Among the wildflowers was Hedge Bedstraw, another of the plants seen on our Wet Walk and which I was waiting to see again so that I could take a picture for Trish. Usually it climbs hedges (unsurprisingly) but here it was sprawling on the ground.

Hedge Bedstraw

It smelt delicious, which I hadn't noticed the plant doing before, so must have been at its flowering peak. It's not the smell of the flowers however that give the plant its name. It's the smell of the dried plant as a whole, said to be long lasting and like new-mown hay. Because of this people used to pile it under their sheets as a fragrant mattress.

I also saw its yellow cousin, Lady’s Bedstraw, equally fragrant but not such a climber as the white variety.

Lady's Bedstraw

Women used this Bedstraw in particular as a mattress because it was said to help with labour. Interestingly, however, one of my reference books says that the Hedge version is now used for a drug to stimulate the uterus.

You don’t usually see Lady’s Bedstraw in Devon because the soil is wrong, but along the East Devon coast the rock starts to change from sandstone to chalk, and chalk-loving plants – such as Lady’s Bedstraw - mingle with the usual Devon ones.

Along the East Devon coast the rock changes from sandstone (the red in the distance) to chalk (the white in the foreground)

(Nearly a hundred miles of coast in East Devon and Dorset are called the Jurassic Coast and designated a World Heritage Site because the rock layers have tipped sideways making it possible to read the Earth's geological history in sequence. The chalk layer/stretch is famous for its fossils.)

Then, along the coast path, I saw this plant I’ve never ever seen before anywhere. I knew from its shape that it was an allium (of the onion family) and when I got home was able to identify it as Crow Garlic.

Crow Garlic

Both my beloved battered Oxford Book of Wild Flowers, given to me by my parents in 1964 for my eleventh birthday, and a 2008 wildflower book, list the plant as common, so perhaps it’s simply that I’ve never noticed it before. As Frog and I keep saying, there’s always something new to notice and learn about when you go for a walk, even if it’s a route you’ve done many times before.

My beloved 56-year-old wildflower book

Now, as well as swathes of wildflowers, there was a band of scrub, and it was here a couple of weeks earlier I’d seen my first Stonechat, which I identified back at home both from my bad picture – taken in a hurry at a distance as the bird flitted between vantage points – and because it was making such a noise and ‘chat’ seemed the perfect name. (In case you can't see the picture clearly enough, the bird is about the size and shape of a Robin, with a red breast and a partial white collar.)

My first Stonechat

I confirmed my identification with a birding friend by email. He used to work as a photographer and said, rather scathingly, ‘It’s a pity your photo is against the light as it’s a colourful bird.’ Yes, I thought, but the sea was in the way.

Today, I saw the Stonechat again, chatting to a similarly shaped but less colourful version of itself, which I presumed (and confirmed later) was the female of the species.

Female Stonechat

In the same area the year before I’d seen my first Dartford Warbler, a rare (and noisy) bird which I identified with the help of the same friend. ‘I’ve never seen one myself,’ he said wistfully. I've not seen another one since.

The Dartford Warbler is rare because it inhabits a particular sort of scrub, and scrub of any sort is in short supply. Long undervalued, scrub is however the habitat richest in wildlife. (For more on this read the fabulous Wilding by Isabella Tree.)

eritage Site, caH

Up on the cliffs, the sky was enormous and the clouds seemed to be exploding towards me. I had a moment of joy.

We left the sea behind and crossed inland to a shady lane, once open to motor traffic but now reserved for walkers and cyclists. A gorgeous smell erupted and even Frog – who doesn’t have the best of noses – noticed it. We followed the smell like Springer Spaniels and collided with this flowering tree.

‘Lime,’ said Frog. Sublime.

Down the lane, clinging to the hedge, was another surprise, another plant I didn't remember ever seeing before. Back home I identified it as Wild Madder.

Wild Madder

I must have seen it before however as I’d pencilled ‘especially by the sea’ in my Oxford book (information which on checking I found came from my serious botanical book that I only consult as backup because it uses so many abbreviations that its information is hard to decipher). I’d probably therefore seen it in the same place. Tut, tut. Why hadn't I remembered?

My serious botanical book says the plant, which grows only in Wales and the south and south-west of England, is frequent or 'locally abundant' (which means it's only found in certain places but where it is found there's lots of it). Neither frequency or abundance is my experience, so either the book is wrong, or the plant has become less common in the last 40 years, or I've not noticed it, or I've been looking in the wrong places.

Wild Madder is related to the plant which produces the red dye ‘madder’, as well as to our old friends the Bedstraws, seen at the beginning of the walk.

Books

The Oxford Book of Wild Flowers (Oxford University Press, 1960)

(Out of print now but available – at a cost - secondhand)

The Wild Flower Key by Francis Rose (Frederick Warne, 1981)

(The serious botanical book)

Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996)

(An enormous chatty tome, covering all aspects of wild plants – folklore, history, uses, variations of common names)

The Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland by Charles Coates (Frances Lincoln, 2008)

(Good on folklore and herbal uses)

Wilding by Isabella Tree (Picador (paperback), 2018) (A rewilding classic, telling the thrilling story of how the author and her husband turned Knepp, their 3,500-acre estate in southern England, back to nature)