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.

Holkham NNR

We spent a couple of days last week exploring Holkham National Nature Reserve, just east of Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast. It has a wonderful variety of habitats, including sand dunes and salt marsh....

- conifer woodland behind the dunes .....

... and then deciduous scrub ............

which is excellent bird and butterfly habitat, where on this trip we saw ....

... comma butterflies ....

.. long-tailed tits...

.... wild cherry that was a magnet for bumblebees ....

.... and a lot of silver birches loaded with catkins.

It was still a bit early for most wild flowers but on the dunes we found the ....

... miniscule early forget-me-not, 1cm. tall with flowers  that were only about 1mm. in diameter and .....

... stork'sbill - you can find fine pictures of these last two wild flowers at Rob's excellent Wight Rambles blog

There were a couple of other rather more unusual species that we saw while we were there, but I'll save those for subsequent posts. An excellent reserve to visit, at any time of year ... we'll be going back in the summer