A-Z Challenge 2016 - Wildflowers 'R'

My theme this year is wild flowers. Most of us will be aware of the flowers that grow in our gardens but what surprises me is how few wild flowers that I know.

I pass them every day but rarely look at them. Well this year will be different - even if many of them may fall under the letter 'X' for unknown.

'R' - Red Dead-nettle, Ramsoms, Red Clover, Rape

Lamium purpureum

This plant, in earlier times, was one of the many treatments for 'king's evil', or scrofula - glandular tuberculosis.

Last year I discovered someone picking it to feed to their guinea pigs. I know it by the name of - 

Red dead-nettle

As its name implies it doesn't sting, but it can become a pernicious weed. Cut-leaved dead-nettle and henbit dead-nettle are very similar and you have to study their leaves to tell the difference. Henbit dead-nettle is a food favoured by chickens - hence its name.

If you were very observant you may have noticed a flower included in my photo of bluebells under 'B'.

It carpets woodland floors in damp places, but you would probably be first aware of it by its strong smell, especially when its leaves are crushed.

Ramsoms

By its smell you would have no problem identifying it as wild garlic. The flowers are 6 - 15" high and often thousands are grouped together.

It was once call buckram's or bear's garlic and is referred to in an ancient proverb - "Eat leckes in lide (March) and ramsins in May. And all the year after physitians will play."

Whether this is better advice than eating an apple a day to keep the doctor away I don't know, but perhaps the garlic smell is so strong that no-one comes near you.

Ramsoms bulbs are too small for culinary use but its leaves can be used in cooking or in salads.


Clover is valuable for feeding sheep and cattle.

Red Clover

Red clover is important to bee keepers; its nectar attracts the bees - I've been trying for years without success to photograph a bumblebee on one. In some parts red clover is called bee bread.

It plays and important role in fixing nitrogen from the air via nodules on its roots which the plant can then absorb.

If you fly into the UK in early summer fields of yellow are a familiar sight.

Oil seed rape

As a consequence of fields like this rape plants are often seen by the roadside or waste places where seed has blown or been carried by birds.

Attribution:

• Lamium purpureum - 28 April 2005, by BerndH - CC BY-SA 2,5 generic.