Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) were growing all over the place in Edale. Foxgloves are a popular garden plant but these self-seeded wildlings look altogether tougher.

 Another tough customer: Cirsium palustre -and equally prolific. It probably helps that both are inedible to the roaming cows and sheep. C. palustre is viciously spiny and D. purpurea is poisonous to animals (including humans). Bumblebees however were all over them and these two plants appeared to be their main food source at this point of the year.

 I only saw these in one spot which was by a shady babbling brook. This is our native Bistort (Persicaria bistorta). I gather they're not uncommon but I've never seen them in the wild before.

 I spent a few days in Edale this week where the Pennine Way begins. I pitched on a campsite on a farm at Upper Booth, a mile or so from the village. My ideal campsite really- a field basically.

 Even in late June England can be damp and chilly. Low cloud obscured the hills at dawn as the sun began to illuminate the scene.

 There's something very special about Edale. The outskirts of Shefield and Manchester are barely fifteen miles to the east and the west but the parish is enclosed on all sides by the hills of the Peak District.

 I did a couple of short walks when I arrived on Wednesday and before I left on Friday but my main purpose was to hike all day Thursday on Kinder Scout, the plateau overlooking Edale from the north.
 My way up was the track to Grindsbrook Clough. By now the cloud had burned off and the sun was beating down.

 The trail follows Grinds Brook ever upwards.

 At the top looking down. The last section is not really a path and requires stepping from rock to rock up the bed of the brook; I imagine it would be a fully fledged waterfall in winter.

 The heights of Kinder are an expanse of moorland morass and peat bogs.

 I had been intending to cross the moor but after traversing a section I found there are no reliable footpaths and the terrain is a featureless plain. Actually I should qualify that statement by noting that it is in fact a fascinating ecosystem but I decided to continue my hike along the edge of the plateau where great views and vistas abound...

 Case in point the chap perched on the edge of this outcrop had one of the best seats in the house.


  

 This is the view from that very rock looking down Crowden Brook, a similar water course to Grinds Brook. Indeed on a previous visit to the area I ascended Kinder using the trail up Crowden Clough which is also part track, part riverbed.
 In the distance is a patch of woodland- my tent was pitched about fifty yards to the right of it!

 The next section of the hike was memorable for the landscape of grit stone stone rocks and tors that have been morphed into strange shapes by the eternal abrasion of the elements.

 Kinder Scout is grand and severe whereas Edale is sheltered and pastoral. As I made my way down I reflected that it is the contrast of the two that made this hike so memorable.

 I always find it cheering that the hard edges of London are softened by the proliferation of the humble little plants that get called weeds (aka wildflowers). For example a fine display of Nipplewort (Lapsana communis) has appeared in the cracks and gaps between the front garden's low wall and the slabs of the pavement. Apparently the common name of L. communis derived from the belief that it can cure sore nipples- though I'm not sure how!

 Bath Asparagus (Ornithogalum pyrenaicum) grows from a bulb; I tried to establish it several times in different parts of the garden without success. This year however a couple have poked through.
 I've read that the stems can be eaten like asparagus spears. O. pyrenaicum is rare but particularly associated with woodlands around Bath. Since Bath was a Roman town it's speculated they might have introduced it to the area, then again it might be native.
 Ornithogalums are from the plant family Asparagaceae which includes A. officinalis i.e. Garden Asparagus. Some plants in the Ornithogalum genus are regarded as edible, others are poisonous but apparently Bath Asparagus was considered a local delicacy.
 I won't be eating any of mine however- they cost several pounds each for a bulb so I'm happy just to look at them. Nor would I forage for them in the wild due to their scarcity. I gather they can still be found in woods near Bath but are not as prolific as they once were.  

 Phacelia tanacetifolia is a plant that ticks so many boxes. It's an annual that germinates very easily and grows very quickly. I scattered seed on a vacant bed on the allotment a couple of months ago and now it's in bloom (as seen above). The haze of pale blue flowers above the lacy foliage is gorgeous and it's rated as the bee plant par excellence for both nectar and pollen.
 Phacelia is also particularly useful as a cover crop and green manure. Certainly no weeds have grown through the patch I sowed and in due course I will chop and drop to make a mulch and/or dig it in. Some sources recommend doing this before flowering but the flowers are too good to miss. I don't mind if it self-seeds (in fact I'd like that to happen). The stems will be a bit "woodier" by then but that should actually be helpful to improve the rather light soil we have on the allotments.
 Bare earth and a sunny spot is crying out for Phacelia tanacetifolia- the bees agree!

 The longest day dawns. I rose early and went for a stroll in the local park. A graceful heron perched in the middle of the pond.

 I took myself to the Devil's Dyke on the South Downs today- a deep valley hewn in the chalk when the Ice Age ended. I walked up onto the Downs from Hassocks, then over the undulating hills to the Dyke itself which has some of the severest gradients roundabouts.
 A nice walk in its own right but I'm looking to do some steep walking ahead of hiking in the States next month. There's a charming little cafe nearby at Saddlescombe Farm so I stopped off for some light refreshments en route- I wouldn't want to peak too soon!
 From a distance the chalk slopes look merely grassy but up close there is a teeming tapestry of plants. The area is particularly noted for orchids:

 Some nice radishes from the allotment. I love radishes- the crisp texture and the peppery aftertaste. Radishes germinate and grow very quickly producing a crop in as little as 4-5 weeks. This is faster than most weeds and by seeding a patch of them (rather than in rows) they seem to form an effective groundcover between the taller vegetables:

 Crimson Flowered Broad Beans are a variety that dates back to the 1700s. They would have been lost had not a lady called Rhoda Cutbush retrieved the last few beans in existence from a tin in her shed in Kent in 1978. She donated them to the Heritage Seed Library who returned them to cultivation.
 I mentioned back in February that I bought a packet at a seed fair with the intention of planting them on the allotment and now they're flowering nicely in a deep shade of crimson. Rhoda Cutbush passed away in 2003 at the age of 98 but the Crimson Flowered Broad Bean lives on.

 Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) is native to the UK yet is a relative of the towering Tree Echiums (Echium pininana) from the Canary Islands that I wrote about in my last entry. Indeed another colloquial name for E. pininana is Giant Viper's Bugloss.
 Our native Bugloss thrives on chalk grassland and rough ground, particularly in coastal areas- as seen above on this stretch of the South Downs near Beachy Head.

 Viper's Bugloss is a noted bee plant and I often see it in eco-minded gardens these days. I watched this bumblebee (one of many) making it's way round a patch on a neighbouring allotment at the weekend. It grows easily from seed if the conditions are favourable and it's starting to spread round the allotments by self-seeding.
 The giant variety is similarly attractive so its arrival in the UK may well be a boon for the bees.  

 Giant Echiums were mentioned in a recent entry [26th. May]. I noted that Echium pininana -sometimes called Tree Echium- is naturalising in warmer parts of the country far from its natural habitat of La Palma on the Canary Islands.
 Apparently the various islands host twenty two species but E. pininana is the one that is making itself at home in the UK. The sub-tropical scene above is in fact St. James's Park in the heart of central London. A few minutes walk from the Houses of Parliament and the gates of Buckingham Palace can be found this majestic stand of Tree Echiums that have grown to their full height of 3-4 metres.
 E. pininana has the somewhat unusual characteristic of being triennial. In the first year of growth a small plant grows from seed. In the second year a large rosette of leaves forms on a thick stem about a metre tall. In the third year it reaches full height, throwing up the tree-like spike that is a mass of small blue flowers. Then it dies having first shed thousands of seeds and the cycle begins again.

 The shape of flowers. Flowers and pollinators have co-evolved over millions of years. Case in point Umbellifers like this Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) are in effect platforms for bumblebees to alight upon and rummage around.

 Fox and Cubs (Pilosella aurantica) glowing like embers in long grass on a rainy day at the allotments. In full sun the flowers are even more fiery:

 I see no connection to foxes or their cubs but the common names of plants are often curious and obscure.

 In praise of neglected areas. I saw these three Mulleins (Verbascum thapsus) growing in the corner of a semi derelict pub car park. V. thapsus puts on a tall spike of yellow flowers and thrives on the margins- wasteland, railway sidings, disturbed ground etc.

 "It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under" to quote an old hit. I let the garden run wild as the year progresses with a bit of trimming here and there.
 The Geranium x oxonianum blooms prolifically in June with masses of pink flowers; some of a pale pink, some darker.

The flowers attract all kinds of bees, large and small.

  A few clumps have flowers with a curious mutation. I think it must be the same species because I have noticed the same phenomenon elsewhere among drifts of G. x oxonianum.

 As mentioned recently Purple Toadflax (Linaria purpurea) is particularly vigorous this year. The slender but sturdy stems are topped by a spike of flowers which bumblebees clamber up briskly, feeding as they go.

 Euphorbia oblongata -sometimes called Balkan Spurge- has been flowering in the garden for months now. It appeared last year of its own accord (though smaller); a seed or two must have come in from somewhere. And this year it has bloomed magnificently.

Bee happy.

 Happy to see this sturdy Foxglove in the garden. I was expecting it to be the Common Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) but it's turned out to be the less common D. purpurea f. albiflora i.e. the white flowered form of the purple foxglove. A happy accident- I grew it from seed and I'd forgotten that some seeds I saved a year or two back were a mix of both.

Several pots of this beautiful Aquilegia were given to me by my next door neighbour who grew them from seed. In shape it bears a clear resemblance to our native Aquilegia vulgaris -from which various garden varieties have been bred- but this is the American Aquilegia formosa. The intense red and yellow flowers are a striking contrast to the blue/purple tones of A. vulgaris.
 I was particularly pleased to accept this gift as I had seen them growing in great number last year on the slopes of Mount Eddy in northern California where the snow melt creates lush meadows in summer:

 I'll be heading to the States again this summer to do some hiking in the Lake Tahoe area on the California/Nevada border. The Meiss Meadows Roadless Area and the Desolation Wilderness can be accessed from Tahoe using the Pacific Crest Trail so maybe I'll get to see some more of A. formosa in its natural habitat.