19th April 2009 (Sunday)
On a beautiful, sunny spring day in Somerset, I finally made it third-time lucky in my search for the
Tuberous Corydalis (
Corydalis cava) at Ston Easton, 10 miles or so south of the city of Bath.
In Terrace Wood, next to the Ston Easton Park Hotel,
C. cava forms the main ground-cover in places; unfortunately many of the plants had finished flowering, so the show wasn't as spectacular as it could have been, but there were still plenty of flowering spikes to be photographed!
(Tuberous Corydalis, C. cava; purple form & white form, the population's about an even split between the two types)
Leaving on a high from that success, I headed on a few miles to the nearby village of Stratton-on-the-Fosse. Here, the target was
Fairy Foxglove,
Erinus alpinus, naturalised on walls at St. Benedict's Church. First, the good news; I found the location & the plants very easily. The bad news; they weren't yet in flower, so I had to settle for a photo of the leaves
Never mind, though; at least I know where to come back to in a few weeks' time
(Fairy Foxglove, Erinus alpinus; sadly, not a flower in site... 
)
That was two new species for the photo list, then; I soon made it three, chancing across
Spotted Hawkweed (
Hieracium maculatum) on a roadside wall at Ashwick, another small village in the Mells area. Of course these weren't in flower, but it's the foliage that's distinctive and you could see where they get their name from
(
Spotted Hawkweed, Hieracium maculatum)
Finally, I ended an excellent few hours with a streamside walk near Mells.
Ramsons (
Allium ursinum),
Cow Parsley (
Anthriscus sylvestris) &
Wood Forget-me-not (
Myosotis sylvatica) made for a contrasting carpet of path-side colour, but by far the most noticeable species here was a long way from flowering;
Giant Hogweed (
Hieracium mantegazzianum), though, is distinctive at any time
(
Giant Hogweed, Hieracium mantegazzianum)
Nearby a patch of
Sweet Spurge (
Euphorbia dulcis) allowed me to take a close-up photo of its' tiny red flowers, and
Great Forget-me-not (
Brunnera macrophylla) was a change from the usual Green Alkanet. Oh; and a Yucca of some sort, which I'm still working on for ID, was presumably the result of some cast-out garden rubbish
(
Sweet Spurge, Euphorbia dulcis)
(
Great Forget-me-not, Brunnera macrophylla)
Yucca, as of yet unidentified