Road Verge Wild flowers

Most of the major road verges around here have been mown but on some of the unmolested minor roads and farm tracks there are fine displays of wild flowers - like this handsome patch of giant bellflower Campanula latifolia in a farm gateway near Wolsingham.

This was the finest specimen of spotted orchid that I've seen this year, growing all on its own beside a minor road near Crook. This was the only spotted orchid that I spotted along a mile of verge - all on its own. But that's the magic of orchids - their minute wind-blown seeds can land almost anywhere.

The same verge hosted masses of tufted vetch Vicia cracca, climbing up through the hedgerow and a great attraction for bumblebees.

Froghoppers

Too hot today to do anything except sit in the shade with a cool beer within easy reach and a camera with a macro lens, watching the froghoppers which are beginning to turn into active adults. This nymph in the late stages of development had left its bath of bubbles behind, then settled on the underside of a lily bud and begun to produce some more 'cuckoo spit'.

This one was keeping cool in its pool of bubbles, while....

... this nymph went walkabout. You can see its wings are developing but have some way to go yet, unlike....

... this adult.

Today's biggest challenge was making sure that none of these little jumpers landed in my beer when they were pinging around in the undergrowth.

Vegetable Vampires 4: Eyebright

Eyebrights Euphrasia spp. are possibly the most attractive of all the hemiparasites, which all link their roots to those of surrounding plants and siphon off their water supply and mineral nutrients. There is a bewildering number of species in this genus - 21 species and over 60 hybrids listed in Clive Stace's New Flora of the British Isles. This little ground-hugging example, which I haven't identified, was growing on lead mine spoil tips at Middlehope Burn in Weardale, and ...

.... this much taller one, part of a dense population of thousands of plants, was growing amongst yellow rattle in one of the high pastures on Chapel Fell in Weardale.