A-Z Challenge 2016 - Wildflowers 'T'

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.

'T' - Tansy, Thistles

This is a shot taken alongside the River Tees at Yarm in North Yorkshire. You should recognise one of the flowers in it if you have visited 'I'

The pink flower is Indian Balsam but it's the yellow flower that was involved in a country practice, to eat in a Tansy pudding at Easter in remembrance of bitter herbs eaten by Jews at the Passover.

The Tansy can have up to 100 flower heads in its dense, flat-topped yellow clusters. An aromatic herb, its strong smell has medicinal and insecticidal properties. Its fern-like leaves once were used to staunch and to prevent miscarriages.

The ferny leaves may be used to spice up omelettes and cakes. At one time Tansy cakes were  a traditional Easter treat.

A more macabre use was its insect repellent properties to keep blowflies off meat and .... corpses!

In preparation for the Challenge over the last year I have taken hundreds of photos of flowers. Now I have have come to write the posts I have discovered that I should have paid more attention to their leaves as well if I was going to differentiate between species.

I never knew, for instance that there are 11 varieties of - 

Thistles

The AA Book of the British Countryside illustrates the various sorts.

Spear Thistle - the famous emblem of Scotland

This biennial which can grow to a height of 6ft grows in hedgerows, waste places and disturbed ground is regarded by many as a vigorous weed. There is no mistaking its prickly nature.

The welted, melancholy, musk and meadow thistle have no prickles. The stemless (or dwarf) thistle will make you painfully aware of its presence should you be unfortunate enough to sit down on one at a picnic.

The flowers of the cotton thistle (the tallest of them all) are covered in white hairs and the woolly's flowers with a white cotton like growth. I have not seen any of these nor the white flowers that make the carline thistle stand out.

Carline thistle

Attribution:

• Carline thistle heads - 18 May 2008, ex geograph.org.uk, by May and Angus Hogg - CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.

A-Z Challenge 2015 - Butterflies - C

C - Comma

A comma  is a punctuation mark, but it is also a butterfly in the Nymphalidae family.

                                       Caress

                                       Of a

                                       Moon-shaped

                                       Mark

                                       A pause

(Acrostic poem; Liana Mahoney  - Commashavewings.com)

When I came across this dead butterfly on my garden path last summer I had no idea what it was.

Dead Comma

It had definitely come to a full stop!

Not at all like a living specimen.

Comma butterfly at rest

Its tattered looking wings help it to remain undetected among dead leaves on the trees where it hibernates. The white comma marks on the underside of its wings give the Comma its name.

Comma butterfly - underside

As you can see the underside is dull in comparison with the upper side. This disguise enables it to hibernate safely as with its wings folded it looks like a dead leaf on the trees where it hibernates.

The population declined at one time due to a reduction in hop farming but has recovered since the 1960s with a preference for the common nettle as the larval food plant. It's now found throughout England and Wales; its range has also reached Scotland.

Eggs (on a nettle leaf?)

The caterpillars are brown and white and spiky; they feed on nettles (and hops) for about seven weeks before pupating.

Comma caterpillar

What a shame that I have cleared out all the nettles from my garden. I have no chance to see the caterpillar and must hope that I get to see adult butterflies in the countryside feeding on thistles, brambles, ivy or knapweed.

Love is like a butterfly

As soft and gentle as a sigh

The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings

Love makes your heart feel strange inside

Photo Attributions:

• Comma at rest: By P matthews 123 - CC BY-SA 3.0
• Comma underside: 7 July 2011, Zeynel Cebici - CC BY-SA 3.0
• Eggs: 6 July 2009, Giles San Martin - CC BY-SA 2.0
• Larva (caterpillar): Jan 1 2006, Lilly M - CC BY-SA 2.0

A Vegetative Thematic Photography

When I saw Carmi's theme for the week I had several ideas before finally setting on plants and vegetation. In 2007 I carried out a study on a small local wood which I visited once a fortnight throughout the year. I took many photos each time and even wrote some articles about what I saw. Unfortunately I could not get any editors to publish them.

An aerial shot of the area by the Tees Archaeological Society shows the wood is shaped like a boot - so I christened it Boot Wood.

Boot Wood (btm left) - © Tees Archaeological Society

My first shot is of the field just above Boot Wood; this is used as pasture for horses of a riding school.

Field of Buttercups (May 2007)

 In a clearing in the wood there are many types of vegetation.

Clump of Thistles (July 2007)

Earlier in March before the wood floor is covered in plants I came across these;

White Sweet Violets (and some Stinging Nettles)

Elsewhere among the ferns and more nettles were a wide varieties of grasses; this is one that caught my eye.

Grass - Seed Head (May 2007)

Towards the end of May some areas beneath the trees were a sea of white.

Parsley

When I was a boy the thickest stems of this plant could be used as peashooters.

To see what others have chosen for 'vegetative' shoot over to Thematic-photographic-242.