Spring Wild Flowers in Weardale

Last autumn I posted some pictures of a walk up through Slitt Woods in Weardale, following the course of Middlehope Burn upstream. These pictures were taken this weekend, following the same route, starting with masses of sloe blossom in the woodland, attracting the attention of this green-veined white butterfly.

All through the woodland there's a fine display of primroses and around the hazels ...

.....these flowers of toothwort, which is a parasite on hazel roots, are in bloom.

The mountain pansies are just coming into flower in the grassland on the moorland edge. There are numerous colour variations.

Sedges thrive in the short, sheep-grazed turf. The yellow 'paintbrush' is the male flower, composed of numerous stamens, and the white feathery stigmas of the female flowers can be see further down the stem

The ruins of the old lead mine buildings form a natural rock garden for dog violets. 

Field woodrush, growing in the short turf.

The early purple orchids at the top of the woodland are earlier than ever this year, thanks to the warm, dry weather.

Marsh marigold thrives around the old lead washing floors, where lead was separated from crushed rock using the force of flowing water. The parabolic flowers of marsh marigold focus the sun's rays and the temperature inside the flower is always a few degrees higher than outside, making them a popular resting place for sun-basking flies.

Up in the edge of the high pastures cowslips are in bloom.

Whiskers and Hairs

Some pond margins around these parts are taking on a distinctly whiskery look at the moment. After remaining intact all winter, the club-shaped seed heads of reedmace Typha latifolia are finally disintegrating, sending out clouds of plumed seeds just when cotton-sedge Eriphorum angustifolium is coming to the end of its flowering period. The white tassels on cotton-sedge are formed from bristles around the tiny flowers and these elongate once the flowers are pollinated and the seeds begin to develop. C. Pierpoint Johnson’s snappily titled Useful Plants of Britain and Ireland: A Treatise upon the Principle Native Vegetables capable of application as Food, Medicine, or in the Arts and Manufactures, published in 1863, records some interesting folk-uses for these plants. Apparently coopers used to sandwich reedmace leaves between the staves of barrels, to render them watertight. The author also reported recent attempts to use cotton-sedge 'hair' as a substitute for imported cotton and described how, although the spun thread was ‘very tolerable’ the fibres are more brittle than genuine cotton. Enthusing on its potential, Pierpoint Johnson went on to predict a bright future from this by-product of Britain’s bogs: “Some very fine cloth was made a short time ago .... with this vegetable hair,” he reported and speculated that “as it can be collected at very low cost, it is not improbable that it may eventually be brought into extensive use”. Another of those Tomorrow’s World inventions, then, that never made it into production.