A good day

Yesterday morning I saw this beautiful wild plant for the first time.

Flowering Rush

My Book says it’s Flowering Rush, rather uncommon, flowering from July – and there we were, Ellie and I, on our nearby canal in June, and it was dotted all along the bank.

Well, My Book is over 60 years old and it gets a lot of things wrong because so much of both countryside and climate has changed, but I love it because it was given to me by my parents on my eleventh birthday and it’s full of my annotations and observations over the years.

Needless to say, it’s falling apart now, and if you know of a good bookbinder who could repair it for me, do tell.

My ancient and  battered Oxford Book of Wildflowers

Next I saw this tall scruffy plant which I find rather menacing as it grows in gangs and looks like a Triffid (as in the 1981 TV adaptation of John Wyndham’s book). It’s called Hemp Agrimony, but is no relation to Cannabis (sadly) or Agrimony  - which is a small yellow spike of a flower, and one I also saw this morning along the canal.

Hemp Agrimony

Hemp Agrimony

Agrimony

The next plant to catch my attention was this Meadow-sweet, so-called I presume for its scent – a weird almondy one. I like its confidence and its scatty prettiness and am trying to grow it round the pond in my garden.

Meadow-sweet

Sunny St John’s Wort was in flower for the first time this year. As you probably know, the word ‘wort’ means any plant that was used medicinally and St John’s Wort is still used to cure depression (but take advice as it can also be harmful or interact with conventional drugs).

St John's Wort

Lovely Scabious, which actually prefers dry places, was in evidence from time to time, well attended by insects like all flowers of the Daisy family to which it belongs.

Scabious and Hoverfly

Yesterday was a good day.

 

The Grand Western Canal near Tiverton in Devon is a Local Nature Reserve and well worth a visit at any time of year. Yesterday it was full of birdsong as well as wildflowers, and when I find out how to transfer audio and video clips from my phone to my computer I’ll share some of that with you as well.