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.

...... and now for the good news.....

If you let it, taking an interest in natural history could be very depressing because so much that is written about our flora and fauna in the press seems to be unrelenting bad news. The abysmal weather in the early part of this summer  produced also sorts of hyperbolic headlines of the disastrous/cataclysmic/catastrophic kind about its likely impact on birds/butterflies/insects and almost everything else in the natural world - and it's undoubtedly true that it has been a bad summer for all of these (although it's important to bear in mind that over last few thousand years there have been periods of far more adverse climatic conditions that our wildlife experienced and rebounded from: like investments, rates of growth in populations of living organisms can go down as well as up, all the time). The natural world isn't a natural history museum, it's a living, constantly evolving interplay between organisms.

Anyway, last weekend we happened to notice a positive effect of the wet early part of the summer, when we took a walk along the cliff tops between Dawdon and Hawthorn Dene on the Durham Coast Heritage Path. The summer wild flowers there seem to be flowering more spectacularly than I can ever remember. I have a theory as to why this might be so, and it's all down to the rain. 

The cliffs are porous magnesian limestone which is free-draining. In a 'normal' summer the surface soil dries out quickly and the plants suffer from moisture stress, so they flower quickly while they have the chance, when they are quite small. This year, with plenty of water, the well-watered vegetation is unusually lush and as a result the flowers are truly spectacular. So, without further ado, here are some examples....

Drifts of meadowsweet in the gullies on the cliffs and ....

.... forming a backdrop for devil's bit scabious which .....

...... includes some exceptionally fine examples ..... although this one looks a tad unusual - very short bracts under the inflorescence and it looks like it might be male-sterile, judging by the tiny stamens.

... along with field scabious .....

... flowering in profusion in the meadows at the end of Hawthorn Dene ...

... where there are some fine specimens of giant bellflower.

I suspect that alkaline soil might be the reason for the very blue hue of the tufted vetch on the cliffs but .... 

... this unusually pale betony plant (normal flower behind) is probably a genetic mutation.

Bloody crane'sbill always puts on a good show ....

.... and this year centaury has done well too, with some very floriferous plants ...

This is hemp agrimony .....a major constituent of the taller vegetation while .....

.... hoary plantain is blooming down amongst the grasses.

Plenty of knapweed Centaurea nigra, alongside the ....

.... greater knapweed Centaurea scabiosa.

Drifts of marjoram aka oregano (crush the leaves and sniff for a tantalising hint of Mediterranean cuisine!)....

Spear thistle already running to seed ....

.... likewise agrimony, producing its little bell-shaped hooked fruits ....

Yellow loosestrife ....

.... and some wonderfully robust specimens of yellow-wort, with its strange glaucous, stalkless leaves.

In dry summers yellow-wort, which is an annual, is often a stunted plant and only produces a few flowers - but this year some plants have responded to the rain with a wonderful display...

... and the North Sea provides a fine backdrop for the floral spectacle ....

..... and for haymaking ....