What's in a name? This is Hedge Woundwort (Stachys sylvatica). It's quite common in the countryside and I introduced it to the garden because I'm fond of wayside wildflowers. As Piet Oudulf says in his book Dream Plants for the Natural Garden: "There is something to be said for having this plant in the garden, with its deep dark red spike-like inflorescence". However he includes it in the 'Troublesome' section noting that it spreads and seeds.
 When I write about a particular plant in this diary I generally give the common name and the Latin name. Botanists prefer to use the Latin name because it is the globally recognized nomenclature whereas common names vary from country to country and often from locality to locality. But it's worth bearing in mind that the "Latin" name ain't what the Romans spoke.
 Botanical Latin and the binomial system was invented by Carl Linnaeus (born 1707, died 1778). Actually it would be more accurate to say he formalized it and expanded it hugely thereby creating the basis for modern botany. He it was who named the genera 'Stachys' after the Greek word which means "an ear of grain" (a reference to the inflorescence), and he called this one 'sylvatica' referring to woodland.
 Monty Python once asked: "What have the Romans ever done for us?" Not much in this case because Stachys sylvatica was named by a Swedish guy using a Greek word in the 18th. century!
  The common names of plants are worth considering. They too can tell us something about a plant's characteristics and history. For example when the name ends with "wort" it indicates that it was once perceived to have medicinal properties and "woundwort" tells us what for. "Hedge" provides a useful botanical pointer. I rarely see this plant growing in the woods, certainly not deep in them; hedgerows are its main habitat.         

 Two plants are particularly rampant in the garden at the moment (in a good way). In the back garden the Geranium shown above flowers in big clumps. I think it's one of the hybrid varieties of G. endressii and G. versicolor that are referred to as Geranium x oxonianum then get called names like 'Claridge Druce' and 'Wargrave Pink'. Actually I find it hard to discern much difference between them.
 Anyway it flowers in such profusion that honey bees are all over it, by which I mean Appis mellifera, the beehive bee. The sheer quantity of flowers is important for honey bees. Bumble bees will forage across different flowering plants as they go about their business but honey bees allocate themselves to a particular source and work it- so they're looking for volume.
 The other rampaging plant is the Trailing Bellflower (Campanula poscharskyana) which trails and scrambles all over the brick, stone and concrete in the front garden and back patio. It's a bit of a climber too and will mingle in and out of other plants as shown below. Like the Geranium this Campanula flowers so prolifically that the honey bees treat it as a crop to be harvested...

 Continuing the coastal theme of my last entry I caught up with a friend over the weekend who lives on the North Kent coast. We took a walk across the marshes at Seasalter which lie between the towns of Whitstable and Faversham. The stretch of water here is not the Thames Estuary itself, it's a channel known as the Swale which divides the "mainland" from the Isle of Sheppey.
 The coastal path runs along the land side of the seawall and here the grass is quite lush, and thick with red and white Clovers (Trifolium species). These have perhaps self seeded from the adjoining fields where they are used as part of the crop rotation cycle. I also noticed that swathes of various coastal wildflowers are about to burst into flower. I know from previous visits that marshes hereabouts like Seasalter and Reculver see an eruption of wildflowers between mid-June and late July.
 On the Swale side of the wall the grasses are sparser and tougher; they extend to where the shingle of the foreshore meets the mudflats. I say shingle but as well as pebbles it is the accumulation of millions of fragments of oyster shells.
 Spires of Viper's-bugloss (Echium vulgare) rise up through the grasses right down to the tideline. As mentioned in my previous entry coastal areas are one of its favoured habitats, so it's tough as old boots. Bumblebees were buzzing along the beach to feed on them. These grassy marshes are also great for butterflies and very important for migrating birds.
 So a different kind of walk to the one I describe below along the South Downs Way. That was steep, this was flat. That was long, this was short. And that day the sun shone and burned the back of my neck; today the weather was cool and cloudy...   

 I walked a section of the South Downs Way one day last week beginning at Eastbourne, over Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, inland along the Cuckmere Valley then back up on the Downs across to Glynde (about 20 miles in total).
 I treated it as a bit of a route march because I want to get my legs going ahead of another hiking trip in the States in July. I intend to use a stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail to traverse the Castle Crags National Park and Wilderness Area in northern California. The South Downs Way has some of the steepest gradients I could think within an hour's train ride of London. Though I won't be able to purchase a choc ice and a pint of beer on the PCT.

 Needless to say I kept an eye out for the local flora and fauna. I've often noticed that a particular plant will characterize a particular walk at a particular time of year. In this case it was the lovely Viper's-bugloss (Echium vulgare) which favours chalk grassland and sandy coastal habitats. Numerous studies have named it as one of the best bee plants.
 By the by I have seen it growing in some quantity along a gravelly stretch of the London Overground between Shoreditch and Dalston. As I recall the line was seeded with wildflowers when it opened in 2010. Most have failed to establish themselves but Viper's-bugloss and the inevitable Ox-eye Daisies seem to have naturalized.
 E. vulgare and Wild Mignonette (Resedaceae lutea) and of course Ox-eye Daises are the most showy plants along this clifftop walk (all growing together in the last photo of the sequence above) but much of the action is at ground level. Chalk grasslands have only a thin scraping of soil on top of all that chalk but conversely this spartan ground produces a very rich tapestry of low growing wildflowers.
 I'll write more about this in the near future because flowering grasslands like the South Downs are one of our most notable yet most diminished landscapes...

 

 Stop thief! This bumblebee is engaged in the act of "nectar robbing". I mentioned last week that the Comfrey on the allotment attracts the biggest, fattest bumblebees. Their tongues are long enough to reach right into the flowers for the nectar they crave (thereby facilitating pollination as they feed on the nectar).
 The smaller bees aren't able to do this but get around the problem by piercing a hole closer to the stem and drinking from it or taking advantage of a hole that has already been opened. However this bypasses the flower's reproductive structures and I noticed that even the big bumblebees were sometimes nectar robbing from open holes- an easy fix I suppose.    

 Here's a pretty flower with a curious name: Fox and Cubs (Pilosella aurantica) from the Daisy (Asteraceae) family. I can't see any connection to foxes nor can I fathom one of its other common names: Grim-the-collier. It's also been called Orange Hawk-bit and Devil's Paintbrush which make a bit more sense I suppose.
  P. aurantica is native to alpine regions of central and southern Europe but makes a charming garden plant at lower elevations. It can spread considerably by its running root stock and I see it naturalised as a non-native wildflower here and there- as above where it has taken hold in the overgrown fringes of a neighbouring allotment.
   

 Three wildflowers I'm seeing a lot of at the moment colonising neglected areas, particularly along railway lines which are useful corridors for nature.
 Ox-eye Daisies which were once called Moon Daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) grow in great luminous drifts. They're leggy but sturdy and rise up from the surrounding greenery in sunny spots.
  The bright yellow flowers of Ragwort (Senecio squalidus) have become more and more common over the years. It is sometimes referred to as Oxford Ragwort having been introduced to the Oxford Botanic Gardens around 1690 from its native habitat on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily.
 An account circa 1794 describes that by then it had become "very plentiful on almost every wall in Oxford". The gravel and clinker of railway tracks proved to be a reminder of home and it went to on to be spread ever wider by the rail network.
 Red Valerian (Centranthus ruber) also hails from the Mediterranean; introduced as garden plant it soon jumped the fence. Old walls and the aforementioned clinker suit it. Generally it is indeed red but as the photograph shows there is a less common white form (C. albus) and this crosses to make a pinkish variety where they grow in proximity.