Aren’t plants disgusting? If you suffer from hay fever, and we are entering the time when the grasses really get going, then you need to check the pollen forecast from the Met Office. My eyes were streaming this morning after I went for a walk on my local patch. I think Plantlife needs to sort…
Tag: Plantlife
An end of year survey
What do you think of wildlife NGOs, political parties, this website and a few other things? Just a dozen easy questions – and it is anonymous. Click here to take part. Poll will close late December, results here early January.
Guest Blog – A is for acorn, or analogue? by Laurence Rose
Laurence Rose has worked for the RSPB for over 30 years. He also edits the website NATURAL LIGHT that explores the links between nature and the arts. A is for acorn, B is for buttercup. No, make that analogue and broadband C was for catkin, but now is for creep; D was for dandelion, but…
Reversing the trend – the future of meadows.
The following is a write-up, a personal one, that I did for Plantlife, the Wildlife Trusts and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust of a meeting to discuss meadow conservation which was held on 18 July this year. ’When people come to Highgrove and see the flower meadow there they often say that it reminds…
Pretending to be a botanist
I did the second visit to ‘my’ Wildflowers Count survey square recently. It was a nice walk on a hot sunny day with a pub at the far side of the square – what’s not to like about that? I am now much better acquainted with black horehound and marsh woundwort than previously. Because this…
Another meadow
I thought you might be interested to see how the uncut strip of grass in my garden is getting on. It’s a meadow! It must be a meadow because a Meadow Brown was flying over it. It’s not quite in the Seaton Meadows class yet, but there were some attractive damselflies in it yesterday –…
Being broad-minded about plants again.
The clue was really in the names. I saw Meadow Pipits (which I could identify but were nice to see), my first Meadow Browns of the year (which I also could identify) but also Meadowsweet (I know that one), Meadow Buttercup (there are an awful lot of buttercups), Meadow Cranesbill (I can do that…
Plants
At the weekend I became a volunteer for Plantlife and took part in their Wildflowers Count survey I had to walk across an allocated 1km square and record which plants out of a list of 200 I saw. Luckily, the list has such challenging species as Holly, Hawthorn, Common Nettle, Ivy and Daisy so I…
Branching out
You know how keen I am on plants – I wouldn’t want to walk on anything else. And so, it may come as some surprise that I am quite excited about starting to do some plant monitoring. There – I’ve said it. I promised the nice people at Plantlife last autumn that I would give…
Happy Easter!
I had a look at the Pasque Flowers at Barnack last week – they were wonderful but should be much more numerous now. Happy Easter!