Weardale in early summer: St. John's Chapel

Weardale is at its most beautiful in June.  These are a few photographs taken recently around the village of St. John's Chapel, in the middle of the dale.

Burnet rose, the most fragrant of all the native wild roses.

A single wood cranesbill plant in a sea of buttercups.

Meadows full of buttercups, seen from Chapel fell

A froth of cow parsley flowers along roadsides and around the edge of fields.

Hawthorn in bloom along the footpath beside the river Wear

Hawthorn still blooming beside Harthope burn. Water levels are low after a very dry spring.

Glorious hay meadows

Lady's mantle and wood cranesbill

Meadow foxtail grass in flower

Pignut's lacy umbels

Lambs fattening

Wood cranesbill

A Day on the Durham coast

Some plants and animals from a day walking on the cliffs between Seaham and Hawthorn Dene on the Durham coast last week





















Dozens of fully grown drinker moth caterpillars on the steps leading down to Blast beach ...






















..... some had even made it all the way down to the beach

Masses of bird'sfoot trefoil in full bloom on the edge of the limestone quarry

Bloody cranesbill coming into bloom on he magnesian limestone grassland

Wonderful display of buttercups in the meadows at Hawthorn Dene

Not many early purple orchids, but some nice specimens

Some glorious displays of hawthorn near Hawthorn Dene. Best year for hawthorn blossom that I can remember

Common milkwort around the quarry area

There's not a lot of sea pink along this coastline but in full bloom























A goldfinch that seemed to be ill and was reluctant to fly, but with no visible signs of injury

.... and finally, fulmars soaring along the cliffs

Now that's what a call a field of buttercups.....

Currently several of the fields around Blanchland in Northumberland have some of the densest displays of buttercups that I've ever seen. Double-click the image for a better view.....

Common

Buttercups are amongst the commonest of all wild flowers and tend to be taken for granted because of that, but they represent a vital, reliable resource for wildlife at the bottom of the food chain. All that pollen supplies food for an amazing array of small insects. 

This young earwig, was nibbling buttercup petals....

............ while this unidentified beetle was feeding on the stamens........

.... and this hoverfly was making a meal of the pollen.

Understandably, naturalists tend to be obsessed with rarities, but it's the common stuff that's really important when it comes to maintaining the stability of  ecosystems.

Teesdale in early June.........

In early June the meadows in the middle part of the dale, around Middleton-in-Teesdale, are full of buttercups, while...

... the hawthorn blossom beside the riverbank footpaths is just past its peak.

In the middle of the river this fledgling dipper has been parked on a stone by its parents that are away collecting food, though it looks like it could feed itself.

This young rabbit was using a coltsfoot leaf for cover but ....

... it would have done better to run for the dense stand of butterbur leaves that could hide a hundred rabbits.

Upstream of Middleton-in-Teesdale, on the way to Bowlees, there are globe flowers blooming on the riverbank, alongside the white umbels of pignut.

You can hear a spotted flycatcher's beak snap shut when it catches a fly ..... and there are plenty of those around, including .....

... dungflies that are plentiful wherever there is livestock grazing in the fields and ....

..... empid flies that use nectaries of wood crane'sbill flowers are fuel stations.

The wet weather hasn't been kind to bees and this little solitary bees resting on an oak leaf looked bedraggled. Can anyone help with an ID? 

Hay rattle is coming into bloom in the hay meadows .....

..... and mountain pansy Viola lutea is flowering well. The epithet lutea means yellow but pure yellow pansies are in the minority - most have variable amounts of purple in their petals and this has a hint of it in the petal tips.

Goldilocks and the Three Petals

This might look like a buttercup that's two petals short of a full corolla.... but it's a perfectly normal flower of the first species of buttercup to come into bloom in spring, known as Goldilocks Ranunculus auricomus.

Goldilocks comes into bloom well before the last of the lesser celandines have opened. Its leaves are distinctive, with long narrow lobes but its flowers are downright demented. All the flowers portrayed on this post are from the same plant and they are all quite normal... for this species. Floral development is unstable in goldilocks and each bloom on a single plant can possess anything between none or five petals......

........ with five-petalled flowers like the one above usually being in the minority.

This one has just three expanded petals .......

.... and this one has only one...

.... while in this one has three petals and a sepal with yellow petal-like edges (or is it a mal-formed petal with a sepal-like centre?). In goldlocks it's quite normal for each flower to be abnormal - in fact, if you look closely enough, you could convince yourself that every flower on a single plant has its own unique structure.

Buttercups: three easy species

All three common species of buttercup are now in flower now on my patch, making them easy to tell apart. Bulbous buttercup Ranunculus bulbosus is the easiest – just look at the sepals below the cup of petals. In this species the sepals bend back and touch the flower stalk (top picture). That leaves creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens and meadow buttercup Ranunculus acris, whose green sepals both support the cup of petals. For them, just take a close look at the flower stalk. In creeping buttercup (middle picture) it has ridges and furrows, whilst in meadow buttercup (bottom picture) it’s smooth and more or less round in cross section.