Brimstone on Bramble.

 

 Bumblebees are loving the wildly pretty Echium wildpretii.

 

 A short walk on a cloudy Bank Holiday Monday. I've started walks from this point since I was a child. The vista is fundamentally unchanged yet the land and sky is always different. 

 A wild corner of the allotment. Comfrey, Field Scabious, Sweet Rocket, Greater Knapweed, Red Campion, Bramble, Nettles. Those last two were there anyway, the Comfrey self-seeded from elsewhere on the allotment, the others planted now self-seeding as well.

 

 Quite a few years since I last camped on Dartmoor. Nonetheless I was pleased to read today that the right to wild camp on the moor has been upheld in a unanimous ruling by the judges of the Supreme Court. In fact Dartmoor has long been the only place in England where wild camping is legal.

 The four thousand acre Blachford estate was bought by a wealthy couple who subsequently sought to ban camping. That provoked a good deal of controversy but sanity has prevailed.  

 

Plants are good at filling in the liminal spaces.

Taking part this weekend in the annual Telegraph Hill Open Gardens as usual. I'm making a point of directing visitors to have a look at the Echium wildpretii in next door's front garden. It's pulsating with flowers (and bees).

 I'm taking some of the credit because it self-seeded from one I grew in my front garden a number of years ago! These giant Echiums are triennial. They flower in their third year of growth then die but they seed copiously after flowering.

 Looking back over the entries of the past week it strikes me they are as much about habitats as wildflowers. That meadow of Buttercups must never have been sprayed or hardly ever. The anthills and Speedwells on Oughtonhead Common are indicative of an ancient turf. The Hawthorne thicket has spread from the remains of a hedgerow on the brow of Knocking Hoe. The Wild Clary exists on a couple of grassy areas that have survived within urban expansion.

 

 There are a numerous anthills on the dry parts of Oughtonhead Common (which is marshy in places). Quite a few are adorned with Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys). The mounds created by Yellow Meadow Ants have looser soil, extra nutrients gathered by the ants and function as microclimates within the wider grassland. This encourages a variety of herbs including the Speedwells.

Do you like butter?

 

 

 Three bursts of white blossom illuminate the land in springtime. The first burst is Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera) in early March, followed by Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) later in the month. Then Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) as seen above -sometimes called the Mayflower albeit in flower from late April.

 All were standard hedging plants hence their widespread distribution in surviving hedgerows or remnants of hedgerows. Left to their own devices they grow from large shrubs into small trees and perpetuate themselves in thickets by suckering and self-seeding.

 Of course a good many other shrubs and trees are laden with blossom but for sheer quantity these three dominate the spring landscape.  

 

 The urban margins can be productive places to search for wildflowers. This stand of Wild Clary (Salvia verbenaca) is to be found on an unkempt bank between a recreation ground and some garages. Phil Barron drew my attention to this location when we were discussing the much larger colony on Windmill Hill nearby.

 As noted in Monday's entry there would be a spectacular display on the hill with sympathetic management. Fortunately this bank seems to receive little or no 'maintenance' from the municipal mowers. Perhaps it gets an occasional strim that keeps the brambles at bay? 

 Left to its own devices Wild Clary can grow quite tall and prosper among tall grass and alongside taller perennials like Cow Parsley. A rare species these days yet it appears to be persistent/vigorous and these two colonies have survived the urban expansion of Hitchin. The habitat must correspond to its rural past. 

 Two Echiums are getting ready to flower in my neighbour's front garden in South London, They are sometimes called Giant Echium or Tree Echium with good reason. They appeared after a good deal of undergrowth was cleared a year or two back.

 I was delighted because I assumed they are the progeny of a spectacular species I grew in my front garden Echium wildptetii, sometimes called the Tower of Jewels. An apt description in honour of its thousands of red/deep pink flowers. 

 Echiums are triennial. Back in 2018 I was given a seedling of wildpretii by one of the gardeners at the South London Botanical Institute. Rarely grown in the UK it flowered magnificently in 2020 and became something of a local sensation coinciding with the first lockdown. Residents were restricted to strolling round the neighbourhood and this wildly pretty Echium was much admired.

 However I now think we may be looking at not one but two species. The Echium on the right has the slender pointed leaves I noted on E. wildpretii. The one on the left has the broader leaves I associate with the blue flowered E. pininana aka Giant Viper's Bugloss which has naturalised here and there around London.

 Time will tell! Indeed, in their native habitat of the Canary Islands the two species have a hybrid form known as 'Pink Fountain'. One way or another we're in for a treat...

 Windmill Hill overlooks my home town of Hitchin. I see the grass has been left to grow rather longer than usual on one side of the hill. Presumably that's deliberate and creates a nice vista of Buttercups, Daisies and most importantly Wild Clary.

 That's significant because there is a substantial colony of Wild Clary (Salvia verbenaca) which generally gets mowed and trampled. Sometimes known as Wild Sage it is rare. In previous years I have noted the wrinkly rosettes of grey-green leaves in profusion. So they're persistent but they get chopped and stomped before they begin to flower.

 The densest, tallest stands would be on the steep slopes at the edge of the hill where it meets the surrounding streets. Unfortunately they have been heavily mowed! Back in 2020 I saw a vivid purple haze of Wild Clary on these slopes. [see entry dated 14th. May 2020] I wondered how I had never noticed them before.

 The following year I went to have a look. The slopes had been mowed to the ground which solved the mystery. Of course the usual 'maintenance' had ceased when the world went into lockdown. As a result there was a spectacular display of the Clary. Here are a few pics I took at the time...

 The situation may improve however. A month ago I was walking over Windmill Hill and bumped into Phil Barron. He is a very knowledgeable naturalist and active in a number of local conservation initiatives. We spoke of the Clary and he has been able to convene a meeting with the council where he made the case to manage the slopes with the Clary in mind. In fact I believe he used the photos I took in 2020 to illustrate the point.

 A wonderful wildflower growing en masse in the heart of Hitchin. What's not to like? The best things in life are free!  

 Thousands of Ramsons are a grand sight but this solitary specimen has its charm.  

 The garden of my London abode is looking lush. I used to write about it a lot; less so these days as other things have come to the fore. My flatmates and upstairs neighbours have indulged my wild ways over the years and I continue to tend it.

 The garden is quite long but not all that wide. However it feels larger by virtue of the picket style fences on both sides which create a sense of open space with the adjoining gardens. A section fell apart over the winter so I made a rudimentary repair: a couple of lengths of 2x1 for the rails and the slats of a futon bed that was surplus to requirements

 I was chatting to one of my neighbours and joked that it was 'rustic' in keeping with the rest of the fence which is looking very rustic these days i.e. on the verge of falling down entirely. My neighbour understood straight away and said "Wabi-sabi". That is the Japanese aesthetic that has been described as "a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" and as "a beauty of things modest and humble".   

 

 A teeming mass of Ramsons aka Wild Garlic (Allium ursinum). A typical sight in Wales or the West Country but uncommon in Southern England. They grow in great profusion along Tatmore Hills Lane near Preston, Hertfordshire and in an adjacent dell. There are no other colonies of this scale anywhere nearby; this enclave must have persisted for millennia. 

 I have made mention before that this locale has a 'primitive' feel and may have been a sacred grove for the Welei. These were a group of 60-100 people who lived in the surrounding woodland and pasture a thousand years ago. They are referenced in the Domesday Book of 1086 and not much heard of thereafter-  possibly due to the arrival of the Black Death on these shores. [see entries dated 16th. December 2024 and 2nd. January 2025]

 Several local historians have suggested they lived communally and worshipped nature. Perhaps it's a bit fanciful to speculate that they were Pagan communards. But what is the point of wandering through the English countryside if you can't be fanciful?