Meadow Cransebill (Geranium pratense)

Musk Mallow (Malva moschata)

 This has been a bad year for bees and butterflies as far as I can tell from my wanderings in Hertfordshire. The ubiquitous Garden Bumblebee and the widespread Meadow Brown seem to be the only species holding up reasonably well. I'm starting to see more bees on the wing e.g. Common Carder as seen above. Also a few other butterfly species - Comma, Marbled White, Red Admiral etc. but not in numbers, just the occasional sighting.

 Presumably the wet winter and the cool, damp spring into summer has hammered them. Ironically it's been a year of rampant growth for wildflowers and garden plants so the food sources are there; less so the pollinators to forage on them. 

 Gazing across that corn field at the blue hues of Echium [last entry] my eye was drawn to another plant dotted here and there. Its flowers were vivid magenta/purple. That colouration does not really feature in the palette of UK wildflowers. When I got close to one I realised it was a Mallow. Our Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) is very common indeed but it has pink flowers.

 I surmise this is Malva sylvestris ssp. mauritiana which is native to parts of Southern Europe and North Africa (sometimes said to be a variety rather than a subspecies). It strengthens my guess that this field was sown with a wildflower mix which for some reason wasn't quite native. As noted the Echiums are the non-native annual rather than our native biennial. Instead of Common Mallow we have have the uncommon mauritiana.

 NB query for the botanical Latinists. The annual and biennial Echiums are both referred to as E. vulgare though they are notably different from each other. M. sylvestris has the distinction between species and subspecies/variety; surely the same could be said of the Echiums? Are they even the same species?

 The categorisation of species or ssp. or var. or cultivar seems to be moot in certain cases. Anyway, plants are what they are whereas botany was invented by humans!

 I was intrigued to see drifts of blue flowers of a species unknown to me in a large cornfield earlier today. For one thing the field has not been sprayed which is unusual. There were also a good many Ox-eye Daisies, Poppies and other 'arable weeds' which would not have survived being doused in herbicides.

 These are native wildflowers but what could that haze of blue be? On closer inspection I think it's Echium vulgare. The bristly biennial Viper's Bugloss is another one of our native species but this appears to be the annual Echium 'Blue Bedder' which is not native. Confusingly the two distinctly different plants are both referred to as Echium vulgare and as Viper's Bugloss. Common names often overlap but the point of botanical Latin is to differentiate between species.

 I reckon this area was sown with wildflower seed as a set-aside scheme and the mix included the non-native E. vulgare, whether by accident or design I cannot say. I gather it's just as popular with bees and it obviously grows well at this location.  

The countryside.

 The "urban flower meadow" in my last entry is really no such thing. Rather it is a small patch of waste ground colonised by wildflower/weeds, notably various 'pioneer' species that spread quickly on bare and disturbed soils.

 There is however a fashion for creating urban meadows. A nice idea but sometimes disappointing in practice as seen above. Several large areas of this parkland were scalped of grass and seeded with wildflower species last autumn. [see entry dated 2nd. November 2023]

 As of last week not much to see. The grass (probably a rye grass) recovered rapidly and the seed did not take. It can be done, as seen here at the music school:

 Ox-eye Daisy was in full flower a couple of weeks ago when this photo was taken. Greater Knapweed is growing strongly at the moment. It's not possible to recreate the delicate balance of an ancient turf but vigorous species like these can prosper and multiply.

 I suspect the success of this new meadow is that it was seeded into an area that had been an old lawn that itself had meadow characteristics. For one thing our ancient meadows do not contain rye grass which is a very effective ground cover.

 It is ironic that derelict land generally becomes a cornucopia of wild flowers whereas planned meadows often do not. 

 In praise of derelict land. An accidental urban flower meadow.