July Nature Notes

by David Tidmarsh - 10:43 on 10 July 2012

July  Nature Notes

Do you think it will ever stop raining? Every reservoir mush be full to the brim by now.
As mentioned in the May notes, Cherry trees in and around the area seem to be suffering badly, hardly any have any leaves left on them. At first glance you would think they had just been frosted and the leaves are brown and shrivelled, no new growth is visible, it must be down to the rain and winds if not the frosts.
There are some smashing wild flowers out at the moment, one, “Vipers Bugloss” I spotted in the wild flower meadow stood out like a sore thumb lovely blue flowers on a tall two foot stem, what a beauty.
There are a lot of blue flowers out at the moment with the “Meadow Crane’s-bill” being a particular good example. I like to think of them as the wild geraniums.
Moving onto the yellows, a very tiny member of the Pea family is the “Black Medick” it is a strange name for a lovely yellow flowering plant, extremely tiny flowers but beautifully formed. Another beauty which is in abundance is the “Vetch” family and with one of the yellows is called “Small Scorpion Vetch” fantastic names as well as blooms.
The dreaded Ragwort is also spreading at an alarming rate, these are extremely poisonous for animals to eat and you also have to be very careful touching these plants as the toxins can enter your body through your hands, always wear gloves for protection.
There are a lot of the purple creeping “Vetch” working their way into the hedges around the area, these are easily spotted. They belong to the Pea family and when you get a close look at the flowers you can recognise the similarity to the Sweet pea.
Clovers are doing really well, with the common Purple ones adding splashes of colour around the fields and the odd White flowering ones.
Himalayan Balsam seems to be growing everywhere at the moment; it is an evasive weed that smothers everything out that tries to grow under it. It is a mammoth task we have at the moment trying to pull it out before it flowers. Of course it is an impossible task trying to rid our area of this plant but if we can slow down its progression we have to try. The good thing is that it is fairly easy to pull up, but if it snaps off it just carries on growing. So I you see these growing when you are out for a walk feel free to uproot it.
The apples in the allotment orchard seem to be doing ok, and the plum tree is looking good with plenty of fruits on for the coming season, all we need now is a lot more sunshine to make us all feel better. So fingers crossed and sun glasses at the ready.

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