Dead-nettles

Some members of the dead-nettle family (Lamiaceae):

White dead-nettle Lamium album, a favourite plant of bumblebees

Red dead-nettle Lamium purpureum, flowers all year-round

Ground ivy Glechoma hederaceae, in damp grassy places, often on the edge of woodlands

Bugle Ajuga reptans grows in woodland and damp meadows

Self-heal Prunella vulgaris, in short grass and waste places

Henbit deadnettle Lamium amplexicaule, grows in disturbed ground e.g. edges of arable fields



Marsh woundwort Stachys palustris, in ditches and wet soils, hybridises with hedge woundwort (below)

Hedge woundwort Stachys sylvatica, common in shady hedgerows and woodland edges. Unpleasant pungent smell when crushed.

Wood sage Teucrium scorodonia, woodland edges, especially on acid soils

Black horehound Ballota nigra, hedgerows, stiff hairs make it rough to the touch, very pungent when crushed

Common hemp nettle Galeopsis tetrahit, often on arable land and usually with flowers tinged pink; this white-flowered form is a weed in my garden

Betony Betonica officinalis, often in grassland beside roads and footpaths

St.John's Chapel, Weardale

It was only a little over a fortnight since we'd taken our regular circular walk around St.John's Chapel in Weardale but, when we visited again on Saturday, the intervening period of almost dawn-to-dusk sunshine had transformed the landscape. All the early summer flowers, like the wood cranesbill, had run to seed and perfect haymaking weather meant that all the meadows had been mown. 

Even though this was only July, it seemed as though the summer is slipping by and it felt, as they say around here, 'proper back-endish'.

Harebells and crested dog's tail grass beside Harthope burn

Marsh woundwort in flower beside a ditch at the bottom of Chapel Fell

The frothy blossom of meadowsweet, once used for flavouring mead (the name has nothing to do with meadows, it refers to mead).

Monkey flower Mimulus guttatus in the gravel beside the river Wear. Thirty years ago, when I first saw it on this spot, this alien plant from the western United States was much commoner along the river than it is now - it seems to have gone into decline.

Rushes flowering on the slopes of Chapel Fell. For much of the year these are dull plants but for a brief period, when they flower, they look very attractive in the sunlight (double-click for a clearer image)

Timothy Grass Phleum pratense, flowering in corners of meadows that the mower missed. Very similar to meadow foxtail Alopecurus pratensis, but that flowers in spring and this flowers in mid-summer.

A most heartening sight - one of twelve freshly emerged small tortoiseshells on creeping thistles, on the flanks of Chapel Fell. These butterflies seem to be doing very well around here this year - we had seven at once on the Inula flowers in our front garden this weekend.

Spot the fish: a trout, keeping station in the sunlit river below a waterfall, catching whatever the river delivers and only given away by its shadow - the fish's back is a very close match for the colour of the underlying rock.

Up on Chapel Fell the lapwings have finished nesting and are now forming flocks with their juveniles.

Ripon Canal

The Ripon Canal, one of the most northerly in England, came within a whisker of being filled in the late 1950s, but now it has been beautifully restored.

It runs almost from the centre of the city over just 2.5 miles to its junction with the River Ure, through three locks and this elegant bridge.

We detoured here on our way back from Norfolk to Durham, and found a fantastic display of wild flowers along the canal bank walk and in the canal itself.

White water lily

Yellow waterlily (a.k.a. brandy bottles)

 

Valerian

Meadowsweet

Meadow Crane'sbill

Amphibious bistort

Mare'stail

Marsh woundwort

..... and with all those flowers, plenty of butterflies too - like this comma.

Well worth a visit if you're in the area and fancy a short but very enjoyable canal-side walk.......