Centaury

 Wild flowers have bloomed early and flowered quickly in this year's summer heatwaves. The barley harvest has already begun and grassland in the landscape is parched, the colour of a well-baked digestive biscuit. So I was surprised to find these exquisite little flowers of centaury Centaurium erythraea in full bloom amongst withering grasses on a footpath verge, in a place I've walked many times but had never seen them before.

Centaury is an annual species that seems to thrive in dry locations, including sand dunes. Its seeds germinate in late autumn when water is plentiful, wintering as a rosette of leaves, restarting growth in spring and then sending up a spike of flowers in early summer. If this year's sequence of heatwaves and drought becomes established, maybe this winter-annual growth pattern will be a winning strategy.