Dunwich Flora

Tags

asters, Bird's-foot Trefoil, boat winches, common green grasshopper, common restharrow, dock, Dunwich beach, fish-and-chip café, Going to college, hare's-foot clover, harrowing, hop trefoil, humming-bird hawkmoth, parsley water-dropwort, prickly sow-thistle, sea campion, sea mayweed, shingle, yellow horned poppy

Monday was a strange and busy day.  I was up much earlier than of late – 6.20 am to be precise so that I could wake E at 6.30.  It was her first day at City College Norwich and to get there on time we needed to leave home at 7.30.  R was travelling to Scotland later in the day and we wouldn’t be seeing him until Thursday.  He went into work for a few hours and then drove to Norwich airport to get a flight to Edinburgh where he got a hire car so he could drive to his hotel in Dunbar. E had three hours of English and then I would be collecting her again at 12 midday.  We got to the college through fairly heavy rush-hour traffic with twenty minutes to spare before her lesson started.  I dropped her off and then returned back home to continue with the washing which I had already started.  Home at 9.15, rushed about a bit, back in the car at 11.15 and was outside the college again just before midday.  E was already outside as her tutor had let them out a little early.  Thankfully, she had enjoyed herself and had met up with the Irish girl she had met on her ‘taster day’ last week.  They had joined up with another couple of girls and had got on very well in their twenty minute break.  We stopped off in Bungay on the way home so that I could buy birdseed for my mother and some art equipment for E.  This resulted in my purse being quite a few pounds lighter by the time we got back in the car.  This college business is very expensive! After lunch I realised that I needed some groceries and also had to collect my medication so got back in the car.  It was a lovely afternoon and after I had finished in town and as I was in need of a little quiet reflection time, I drove to Dunwich beach adding another eighteen or so miles to my driving tally for the day. The light was perfect, the breeze light and the air warm and balmy.  I walked on the beach for a while looking at the sea.  My small point-and-shoot camera doesn’t do justice to the colour of the sea which was true aqua-marine and much greener than in the photo. After wandering about on the shingle for a while I then decided to go a little further inland and look at the plants and flowers.  The shingle rises up from the waters edge and then flattens out for a couple of yards.  This is good to walk along when it isn’t too windy as it provides a good view seaward and landward. Beyond this ridge it then descends quite sharply to a lower sheltered area of sand and gravel which then becomes marshland and then woodland.  As the shingle gets further from the sea it supports some hardy plants like Sea-kale (Crambe maritima) and Yellow Horned-poppy (Glaucium flavum).  I was too late to be able to photograph the poppy flowers but the clumps of leaves were everywhere.

Leaves of Yellow Horned-poppy (Glaucium flavum)

All parts of Horned-poppy are poisonous and if they are eaten can affect the brain.  One of my plant reference books quotes from old records a strange story from 1698 concerning the Horned-poppy.  ‘A man made himself a pie of horned poppy roots under the impression that they were the roots of sea holly.  After eating the pie he became delirious and fancied that his white porcelain chamber pot was solid gold.  He broke the pot into bits in the belief that he owned a great treasure’.

Once down off the shingle bank there were many plants to look at.

Prickly Sow-thistle (Sonchus asper)

A bee on Prickly Sow-thistle

Sea Campion (Silene uniflora)

Not a brilliant photo I know, but it shows clearly the similarity between it and Bladder Campion (Silene vulgaris) with the swollen calyx and also shows the grey-green, fleshy almost waxy leaves.

Probably a male Common Green Grasshopper (Omocestus viridulus)

As I walked, grasshoppers were leaping out of the way; there were so many of them.  I tried to photograph one but the shot was not successful.  I was wishing I had brought our better camera with me.

Sea Mayweed (Tripleurospermum maritimum)

Common Restharrow (Ononis repens)

Common Restharrow

This is a very pretty pea flower though, as its name suggests, it wasn’t popular with ploughmen as it has deep roots and matted stems that root as it trails along the ground.  It also taints milk if eaten by cattle.  The leaves when crushed smell a bit like goats do – not nice!  Children in the north of Britain in the past dug up the roots of Restharrow and chewed them like liquorice – another name for this plant is wild liquorice.   The leaves are a little sticky to the touch and have an attractive crimped edge to them. As an aside, while I am typing this (Thursday lunchtime) the field at the back of our house is being harrowed.  I don’t think the large machines of today are much hindered by plants anymore. The weather today is gloomy and misty, as you can see.

Common Bird’s-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) with Dock seed-head (Rumex obustifolius)

Hare’s-foot Clover (Trifolium arvense)

I love this little plant!  The flowers are so soft and furry and tinged with pink.

Here it is again, growing with Hop Trefoil (Trifolium campestre)

These are either naturalised Michaelmas Daisies (Aster sp.)  or Sea Asters (Aster tripolium).  I cannot identify them properly.

Parsley Water-Dropwort (Oenanthe lachenalii)

The next series of photographs are terrible but with only my small camera with me I couldn’t do any better.  They are of a Humming-bird Hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellatarum) which flies very fast and to the naked eye usually looks like a blur anyway.

Humming-bird Hawkmoth with Sea Campion

Humming-bird Hawkmoth with Sea Campion

Humming-bird Hawkmoth with Sea Campion

I decided it was time to return home and just took two more pictures, this time of the car-park.

These little wooden shacks contain winching gear to enable the fishermen to pull their boats up the steep shingle beach

This is a fish-and-chip café that is so popular that in the summer, coach parties of visitors come to savour its delights

I am finishing this post off on Friday evening.  E has managed to attend college every day this week and though it has not all been at all easy for her she has kept going and has enjoyed a lot of it.  I am exhausted from all the driving I have done and my feet and ankles are very painful.  It has been worth it and I am so pleased with my daughter and very proud of her.

High Summer Walk Part 1

Tags

agrimony, bindweed, common knapweed, common ragwort, Gatekeeper butterfly, hoary plantain, hogweed, hop trefoil, oil-seed rape, peas, pineapple weed, ploughing, poppy, Ringlet butterfly, seagulls, silverweed, thatched barn, thrips, thunder-flies, walking

I had been shopping in Norwich with E two weeks ago and the weather had just changed for the better.  We had had a lot of very humid weather, with heavy rain and thunder and lightening.  We had had the usual accompaniment to humid weather of flying and swarming ants and thunder-flies.  These are tiny little thrips with feathery wings; a millimetre long and thread-thin.  They get everywhere – in your ears and eyes, up your nose, in your hair, crawling on your skin until you feel like screaming. They come in the house and die in heaps on every surface; they even get behind the glass in your picture frames.  And then, after a storm at the weekend, we woke on the Monday to fresh air, warm sunshine and a gentle breeze. As we were driving home I had such a longing to be out of doors, walking in the fields that instead of having lunch I found the camera and my hat and went off down the lane.  The verge at the side of our lane had just been cut but there were still a few flowers hanging on there.

Beautiful pink and white bindweed.  The flowers are almond scented.

The harvesting had begun.

Oil-seed rape stubble.

The stubble is almost a foot high and so hard and sharp like knives; it is almost impossible to walk through.

You can see for miles from here

There is a UFO in this shot. Is it a bird?  Is it a plane? No!  It’s…. you tell me!

Ploughing had started in one of the fields.  Seagulls love to follow the plough as it turns up lots of worms and grubs.  Black-headed, herring and lesser black-backed gulls.

A rather tired and tatty ringlet butterfly

This is agrimony and there has been a lot of this about this year.  Apparently it has a scent reminiscent of apricots; I haven’t noticed this but then I don’t have a very good sense of smell – at least not for nice smells!  The ancients found this a very versatile plant as it was held to be a remedy against snake-bite, poor sight, loss of memory and liver complaints.

Silverweed leaves. Potentilla anserina

Common Knapweed buds. These plants have been flowering for many weeks now; and for many to come if these buds are anything to go by.  Also known as Hardheads.

We have had lots of hogweed too

Hoary plantain. This is an unusual plantain in that it produces a delicate scent which attracts bees and other insects.  All other British plantains are wind pollinated.

A field of peas.

For many years, peas were grown everywhere in this part of Suffolk as there was a frozen food factory in Lowestoft on the coast.  We were all used to the enormous pea harvesters and the smell of burnt peas wafting on the air.  Then the factory was closed.  Many people were made redundant and the farmers here had to find a different crop to grow and had to sell their harvesters.  In recent years peas have started to be grown again.  Some farmers are working together as a collective, sharing harvesters and have found other customers for their peas.  This field is being left until the peas have dried.  I don’t know if the plants will just be dug into the soil as a source of nitrogen or if the plants are used for animal feed or the dried peas sold to a processing factory.  Perhaps someone can tell me. Red is so difficult to photograph.  This photo looks as though I’ve done some careless ‘photoshopping’. You will recognise this photo from my previous post.  This works better as the poppies take up more of the photo but they still don’t look ‘real’.

A snail hiding in a hogweed seedhead

A female Gatekeeper butterfly

An enormous thatched barn

This is hop trefoil.  The stems are downy and the seed-heads are covered with dead petals making them look like hops.

There was a lot pink and yellow.

Pineapple Mayweed

This smells of pineapple when crushed.

This is Common Ragwort, a poisonous plant and the food plant of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillar.

I will continue this walk in Part 2.