I can see the sea. I went to the seaside today for the first time in nearly two years! Caught up with a friend from college days who lives near Whitstable on the North Kent coast. The view seen here is looking towards the Isle of Sheppey with the mouth of the Thames Estuary beyond.

 Pre-pandemic I'd hop on a train to these parts several times a year. It was great to feel the sea breeze on a fine autumnal day and to smell the salt air and seaweed.

 

  Still getting handfuls of raspberries. The canes were already on the allotment when I started tending it. I had assumed they were summer fruiting raspberries because that is when they first start to crop. In fact they have became more productive in the past month or so.

 A fellow allotmenteer who is wise in the ways of raspberries provided what seems a likely explanation. Apparently if you do not cut autumn fruiting raspberries down to the ground over winter (as the books recommend) they will start fruiting in summer. I tend to leave the bare canes standing and perhaps they are indeed of the autumn fruiting variety.

 Sedums are a good late flowering plant for the garden. They attract both bees and butterflies. The clump in the front garden has been rather swamped by the Asters but it's still going strong. The varieties grown in gardens are generally cultivated from S. telephium or S. spectabile, not sure what this one is.

 I was surprised to read that S. telephium is native to the UK. I can't recall ever having seen it growing wild so I would be intrigued to find it in a natural habitat. 

 Michaelmas Daisy (Aster novi-belgii) flowers well into autumn and helps keep the bees in business for a while longer. It proliferates readily in sunny spots so there's plenty of it around at this time of year. The patch shown above is in the front garden but drifts of it are often to be seen alongside railway tracks. 

 It came to us from North America in the 18th. century and naturalised. On train journeys I sometimes see a haze of pink and yellow where it grows with Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), another species from across the pond. Both are of the Asteraceae/Compositae family. 

 We do have an Aster native to the UK. The Sea Aster (Aster trillium) can be found in coastal areas particularly salt marshes and sometimes on cliffstops. 

 Drifts of Cyclamen hederifolium. One of the few plants to flower in shady spots this late in the year. Plant a few and they will spread. Sometimes called the Ivy-leaved Cyclamen- unusually the leaves follow the flowers forming a good ground cover during the winter months. 

 Enormous fungus.

 Glorious. Drinking a pint of beer sitting outside a village pub overlooking the village green on a fine autumnal day.

 Rooters and runners. A few months ago I potted a sprig of Yellow Archangel and since then it has put out a long runner which will root where it touches the soil. NB this is not the native species of ancient woodlands that goes by that name. This is its vigorous European cousin Lamium galeobdolon subsp. montanum. 

 I dug up some Symphytum ibericum from a patch on the allotment a few days ago to pot up. It spreads in a similarly stoloniferous way. Needless to say these plants make good ground cover i.e. they are invasive! They are semi-evergreen (at least in my neck of the woods) and flower in late spring.

 Sad to say the wildfires in California have become a recurring theme in this diary. They didn't impact any of my hikes of recent years in the region but places where I travelled have been badly affected since then. The latest is the Caldor fire which has moved relentlessly across the Sierra Nevada mountains burning over two hundred thousand acres so far.

 Back in 2019 I used the Pacific Crest Trail (top photo) and the Tahoe Rim Trail to explore the Meiss Meadows. This area has just reopened after a month of closure as the fire passed through. It reached Echo Summit and jumped Highway 80 into the mountains beyond (second photo). Big Meadow (third photo) and the trail I took to Scott's Lake remains closed as the fire is raging there. The adjacent Desolation Wilderness (last photo) has also now reopened after a month's closure. Judging by fire maps the conflagration passed near the southern end of Desolation but didn't enter the heart of the wilderness.

  I thought Tahoe might be spared this kind of catastrophe. A lot of water drains into the Tahoe basin; areas like the Meiss Meadows are really quite marshy in parts and criss crossed by streams. I hiked hereabouts in late July and there was still a good deal of snow on the ground. I had a gruelling two hour hike uphill over thick snow near Echo.

 In fact my first plan was to cross the Desolation Wilderness. When I phoned the Ranger Station in early July to book a wilderness permit I learned the snow was still so deep that I thought better off it. I was seeking wildflowers not an alpine crossing. Instead I opted to circle round the Meiss Meadows which are noted for their remarkable displays of flora. I did do a day hike into the Desolation Wilderness- on 27th. July to be precise. En route to Lake Aloha I was passed by two hikers heading for higher elevations with skis strapped to their backpacks! 

 It's important to bear in mind that this landscape has frozen and burned across millennia but it seems to be especially volatile in recent times. Surely human activity is influencing these extreme climate events.

 There is still plenty of Comfrey on the allotment (probably some variant of Symphytum x uplandicum). The plants I cut down a couple of months ago have thrown out new foliage and the ones I didn't trim have got bushier and taller. I use the leaves to make Comfrey tea i.e. liquid plant food [see entry dated 4th. July 2021] so I've got another harvest for that purpose.

 And they've put on another flush of flowers; not as prolific as before but the bees are still seeking them out...

 As autumn is upon us thoughts turn to having a general tidy up. Not too tidy- nature thrives in untidy gardens. None the less a bit of a sort through is sometimes called for. 

 I filled this barrow with earth on the allotment a couple of months ago; since then the Nasturtiums have clambered all over it. It's a decent little wheelbarrow with only one defect: it doesn't have a wheel.

 

  I grew this Echium wildpretii in my front garden and I'm happy to say it became a local sensation last year when word of it traveled round the neighbourhood. The blue flowered Echium pininana has started to naturalise in London and warmer parts of the country but E. wildpretii  -sometimes known as Tower of Jewels- is rare in cultivation.

 These enormous Echiums hail from the Canary Islands though mine was given to me in a small pot in its first year of growth by one of the gardeners at the South London Botanical Institute. In their second year they form a stout stem about a metre tall with long slender leaves. In year three they produce a mighty spike of flowers, seed prolifically then die.

 I was thrilled therefore when my flatmate drew my attention to what appear to be Echiums that have self-seeded in the cracks of the paving stones below where the Tower of Jewels stood. I noticed them poking through a few weeks ago but didn't look too closely.

 They won't survive the attentions of the local council so I dug them out as best I could. I was able to prise out the whole tap root of the smaller ones. The roots snapped on the larger specimens but they might recover.

 I potted them up so hopefully some or all will be plantable in the spring.

 Not only that- they're sprouting all over! Here are some more at the base of a nearby cherry tree and they've germinated in other available gaps and cracks in the vicinity. The streets of New Cross Gate seem far removed from the volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands but Echium wildpretii seems to have gained a foothold. 

 A wealth of Scabious. I saw a great number of these dotted around as I walked the South Downs Way. As mentioned in Monday's entry the peak flowering of chalk grasslands has passed by now. Wild Marjoram was still plentiful as was this diminutive bloom which I take to be Devil's-bit Scabious (Succisa pratentis).

 Now that's a bit confusing because Devil's-bit is associated with damp grassy habitats and the free draining chalk at the top of the Downs would seem to be altogether drier. I saw some Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis) in the hedgerows as I walked towards the Downs from Hassocks. Enlarging the top photograph there also seems to be a smaller Scabious with lilac flowers like Field Scabious; might that be Small Scabious (Scabiosa columbaria)?

 All three are of the Dipsacaceae family. Then again Sheep's-bit Scabious (Jasione montana) favours dry grassland and resembles Devil's Bit. Round-headed Rampion (Phyteuma orbliculare) is the county flower of Sussex and endemic to the South Downs. It too bears a resemblance to a Scabious though both these last two are of the Campanulaceae family.  

 And yet... I still think the flower above looks more like Succisa pratentis. The lie of the land contains many variations where habitats and micro-habitats are concerned and plants have a way of finding their niche. Happy to be corrected by wiser heads than mine but I'll go with Devil's-bit for the time being.

 And this is a diary of impressions as much as botanical accuracy. So I what I can say with absolute certainty is that it was a beautiful sight to behold so many on a fine autumn day on the Downs. 

 I went up on the Downs today. I caught a train to Hassocks at the foot of the South Downs then walked a stretch of the South Downs Way eastwards to Lewes. Nicely autumnal, sunny/cloudy with a gentle breeze.

 Much of the Downs is chalk grassland grazed by sheep and to a lesser extent cattle. Dew ponds are dotted around the landscape; many of them are ancient but still functioning as water sources for livestock.

 Abstract shapes are formed where the undulating slopes of the Downs have been cultivated for crops.

 Chalk grasslands are carpeted with wildflowers in spring and summer. The nutrient poor soil is none the less a rich source of species adapted to those conditions. By this point in the year the majority of plants have flowered and gone to seed. One exception is Wild Marjoram (Origanum vulgar). I saw a great deal of it growing through the corse grasses.

 All in all a great day. I haven't been for many 'rural rambles' in the past eighteen months. It was fantastic to be on a hike, albeit a day hike. The weather was clement and the air wonderfully fresh at that elevation blowing in from the coast. Indeed I got a glimpse of the sea towards Brighton and the Seven Sisters. The land, the sky, the sea- that's the ticket.

 Lewes is a nice little town. I lingered there for a couple of hours with some fish and chips and a pint of beer before catching a train back to London. 

 

 I always like to mention Ivy (Hedera hexlix) at this point in the year. It's the last of our native species to flower in great profusion and provides nectar and pollen for many kinds of insect. The berries that follow are winter food for birds and it's a valuable habitat for wildlife all year round.

 The foraging months for pollinators have been somewhat extended by the introduction of various 'exotic' plants but for sheer volume alone Ivy is hard to beat.

 The patch above was covered in wasps.

 

  Speaking of 'exotics' Buddleja davidii is now as common as muck in the UK but it hails from China and Japan.

  Sometimes known as 'Butterfly Bush' it supports a wide range of pollinators in late summer and early autumn.

Every parcel of land has its Robin.

  Teasels (Dipsacus fullonum) continue to make their presence felt after they have finished flowering. The tall stalks and numerous seed heads are strikingly architectural. Various birds love to peck at them particularly Goldfinches.  

 The Nasturtiums on the allotment are as rampant as last year when they continued to spread and flower until the first frosts. Good foraging for bees as other flowers fade. A gorgeous late summer day today so the bees were being busy.

 

 We are entering the season of autumn colour. We've had plenty of rain so there's still plenty of greenery. The "fall" is ahead of us but the intense hues of ripened fruits are shining brightly. Case in point Lords and Ladies aka Cuckoopint (Arum maculatum) forms a spike of bright red berries.

 NB I use the terms fruit and berry in the botanical sense: a mature, ripened ovary and its contents.  They may or may not be edible where humans are concerned. Arums for example are poisonous.

We need weeds.