oil | A Suffolk Lane

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Black-headed Seagull, common ragwort, Common Sea Lavender, gorse, hare's-foot clover, harvestman, mudflats, oil, Perennial Glasswort, plants, sand dunes, sea, sea campion, Sea Sandwort, Sea-holly, seashore, Suffolk, sunset, thrift, Walberswick

After a busy day last Friday and a hot, sunny day too, we thought it might be nice to go to the coast for a little while. We knew that it would be extremely crowded for most of the day so we left it until after we had eaten our evening meal and set off just before 8.00 pm.

We decided that we’d visit Walberswick as we hadn’t been there for some time and parked the car in the car-park there at about 8.30 pm.

Walberswick. With its creeks, mudflats, sand-dunes and varied flora it is a favourite place of mine to visit.

The mass of mauve flowers you can see in the photo above are Sea Lavender.

Common Sea-lavender (Limonium vulgare)

I couldn’t get a clear picture of these flowers – mainly because I couldn’t get down low enough! Sea-lavender (no relation of true Lavender) is related to the cultivated Statices – everlasting flowers. Many people pick these flowers illegally to make dried flower arrangements. Strangely, the drier the ground in which it grows, the taller it gets. This plant grows in great masses on the North Norfolk coast and I would love to see it there again.

There wasn’t much Thrift or Sea Pink (Armeria maritima) left – mainly seedheads. Thrift is a relative of Common Sea-lavender.

There was a lot of rather scrappy Hare’s-foot Clover (Trifolium arvense)…

…and a small amount of Sea Campion (Silene uniflora)

I cropped the photo I took.

The calyx (the area behind the petals) is swollen, like Bladder Campion is and is similarly patterned with red veins. The petals are larger and thicker than other types of Campion and usually overlap each other.

Sea Sandwort (Honckenya peploides). I like the way this plant grows. It reminds me of children’s building toys.

In Richard Mabey’s ‘Flora Britannica’ he says ‘… (Sea Sandwort) is one of the earliest colonisers of sand-dunes and shingle, and remarkable for its sprawling concertinas of geometrically stacked leaves’. It is able to keep growing upwards so if ever it is inundated with sand or mud it can survive. As with many seashore plants it is succulent and edible.

More Sea Sandwort, this time with a Harvestman or Harvest Spider. Can you see it? They are not true spiders but are related to them. They have one-piece bodies and no silk-glands so can’t spin webs.

Common Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) in flower and Gorse bushes (Ulex europaeus)

The dunes and my shadow!

Richard and Elinor beat me to the sea. The cool northerly breeze was so refreshing.

The sea and sky were beautiful

The sun was just setting behind us

Lumps of oil

More oil

I was sorry to see this oil on the beach. This is evidence that tankers have been flushing out their tanks illegally in N W European waters .

The sunset progressed.

The view out to sea still looked good.

Seagulls were making their way out to wherever it is they go for the night…

…except these two Black-headed Gulls (Larus ridibundus) who seemed to be doing some synchronised beach-combing.

One last look at the sea…

We made our way back to the dunes where I found a couple more plants to photograph.

Sea-holly (Eryngium maritimum)

A most beautiful plant!

A cute little bug hoping I leave him alone!

Vetch and Hare’s-foot Clover

Perennial Glasswort (Sarcocornia perennis)

Another name for Glasswort is Samphire and like Common Glasswort (an annual plant which is also called Samphire) it can be eaten lightly boiled or pickled in spiced vinegar.

For many hundreds of years Glasswort was used in the manufacture of glass. The succulent stems were gathered at low tide, dried and burned in heaps. The crude ash which is high in soda was then fused with sand to make a poor quality glass. Saltworts were also used for this purpose.