After weeks of rain the last week in May is hot and sunny. Sunlight through yellow flowers, a meadow of buttercups and dandelion flowers and seed-heads. Oak catkins are almost hidden in clusters of new leaves. Purple catkins on alder show best in winter when the trees are thick with catkins and bare of foliage. By the time alder catkins flower the tree is in leaf.
After weeks of rain the last week in May is hot and sunny. Sunlight through yellow flowers, a meadow of buttercups and dandelion flowers and seed-heads. Oak catkins are almost hidden in clusters of new leaves. Purple catkins on alder show best in winter when the trees are thick with catkins and bare of foliage. By the time alder catkins flower the tree is in leaf.
0 Comments
During the unusually cold and wet weather of May there was no sign of the buds and flowers of Hoary Rockrose. Then the rain stopped, the sun shone and the temperature rose. Helianthemum canum, named for Helios the sun god. Hoary Rockrose responds to the sun, opens up its delicate lemon flowers. Closes them if the sun does not shine. The flower is a speciality of the cliff-face of Scout Scar escarpment, limestone rock facing south and south-west. Hoary Rockrose cannot tolerate competition, so it thrives on rock where other plants cannot. Mostly dry and fine, with the risk of isolated showers. That's the Radio Cumbria weather forecast today. Cloudscapes are sunlit and spectacular. During the morning, dark and louring cloud gathers but there's an elusive cuckoo who is calling- now above Scout Scar escarpment, now in the trees of Helsington Barrows. He calls through a pelting of hail and a rumble of thunder as I head home. He's somewhere in one of my images. Sunlight filters through down through a tracery of branches, shimmering through leaf-green, illuminating mosses and bluebells lush after rain. A cathedral of the woods. A rainy May, awash with bluebells . We meander country roads, windows open to birdsong and the pungent smell of wild garlic. A heron stands statuesque on a plinth, a dead tree anchored in rocks. Bluebells and wild garlic are enchanting, so we forget our destination and to take to the woods, In Upper Teesdale in April, I forgot to look for the rare Teesdale violet. We did find some lovely pansies on the grassy banks of the River Wear. Given their variable colours and propensity to hybridse, they are likely to be mountain pansy (viola lutea) hybrisided with heartsease, wild pansy ( viola tricolor.) |
AuthorJan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books) Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|