This morning I took delivery of Greenery: Journeys in Springtime, a new book by Tim Dee. If you haven’t read anything by Tim Dee, he’s well worth a try. His latest book is a fitting accompaniment to what we’re trying to capture about this particular spring, the spring of 2020, in our ownparticular neck of the woods. Tim Dee lives for much of each year in Bristol, and his parents live in Minehead. So our own neck of the woods is his, too. You’ll find references in Greenery to many familiar places – Dolebury Warren, Dunkery Beacon, Black Down, Burrington Combe, and Ham Wall – as well as to many less familiar, in East Anglia, Africa and Scandinavia, for example. It’s a book about places, yes, but it’s also a book about life and death, about happy coincidences, about loss and longing. About spring, but also about the meaning of spring.
My own week has included several highlights, not all of them botanical, but the best of the lot came on Bank Holiday Monday when Ben persuaded me to ‘break cover’ and dare to head out of town to Thurlbear Wood. In the car it took us nine minutes to get there, and seven to get back – being downhill on the return leg – so it was, I admit, marginally further away from home than the five-minute ‘rule’ for how far you can drive to reach a place for purposes of taking your daily exercise. It was strange to be sitting in a car again – my first trip out on four wheels in almost a month – and when we reached the wood I felt slightly light-headed, woozy. The wide open spaces seemed to me to be somehow wider than I remembered them, the lush greenery seemed greener and lusher than I had anticipated. The bluebells, carpeting the woodland floor, were somehow bluer – but the star-bursts of woodruff lining the paths were just as I was expecting them to be. We walked in the woods for about an hour, Gilly having a field day with sticks, me having a field day with flowers. We met one other person up there, so social distancing was a doddle. I think it may have been the bluebells, but I got a bit emotional; and it was a reminder – if I needed it – to never take a place like this for granted ever again.
So, spring continues its glorious gallop towards summer, a fact reflected over and over again in this week’s batch of first flowering dates. Of course, the weather helps, doesn’t it? It’s been a dry week, and for the most part remarkably sunny and warm; here in Taunton we had four days in a row – Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday – with temperatures above 23°C. By my reckoning, it was the warmest, and sunniest, Easter weekend for at least a quarter of a century. And while the sunshine has continued, the last couple of clear nights have produced grass frosts, even here in the middle of Taunton.
Let’s begin, like last week, with a few non-botanical happenings. It’s been another good week for butterflies: orange tips all over the place, plus our first green-veined whites on the 9th, speckled woods on the 10th, and then this morning (15th) the first small copper of the year. Flower bees and bee-flies continue to patrol the lungwort and primroses in the back garden, while mason bees emerged about a week ago and are busy around the ‘bee boxes’. We’ve also noticed large numbers of mining bees nesting on areas of bare, dry soil. Many such areas seem to be far less disturbed/trampled than usual, so this could prove to be an excellent year for mining bees.
On the bird front, last week’s ‘fall’ of willow warblers proved to be a transient affair; no sooner had they arrived than they left again – and I haven’t heard one since. But other summer visitors have taken their place. On the 10th, sand martins were back at their little colony beneath a road bridge at Creech Castle, Taunton – their nest-sites situated in drain pipes set into a concrete retaining wall. Then today Vicki had house martins down near the cricket ground, while I enjoyed ten minutes listening to my first whitethroat, singing lustily from a hedgerow on the northern flank of Cotlake Hill, Trull. Whitethroats make me smile. They seem to take everything terribly seriously, and get so easily agitated – like me on a bad day.
Turning now to botany – “at last!” you cry – it’s been another bumper week for first flowerings. Very many thanks, once again, to everyone for sending in their records. During ‘Week 4’ we have made, between us, more than 130 records and at least 75 species. A fantastic effort! And who would have anticipated that this week’s offering would include rarities such as Petty Whin, Genista anglica (Langford Heathfield, on the 14th, seen by Chris Loudon), Soft-leaved Sedge, Carex montana (Ubley Warren, on the 8th, Georgina Shuckburgh), and Green-winged Orchid, Anacamptis morio (Stoke Camp, Mendip, on the 10th, seen by Georgina’s niece, with a pin-sharp WhatsApp photo to prove it)?
This week we had 16 target species to look out for, four of them carried over from ‘Week 3’. Between us, we saw 11 of them during the week. Here’s a summary, in (roughly) alphabetical order…
The first report of Bugle, Ajuga reptans, was on the 5th. It came from Libby Houston, who saw it in her garden – the proper wild plant, not a garden variety – but then she realised that it shouldn’t really count because she doesn’t live in Somerset! The first records for Somerset sensu stricto came a few days later, when Margaret Webster saw it at Winford on the 12th, and then it was seen at Thurlbear (me) and near Wellington (Linda) on the 13th.
I have still not seen Greater Celandine, Chelidonium majus, flowering in Taunton – although my chances have diminished significantly as a result of Vicki’s enthusiastic weeding of the back path (a former stronghold for it) over Easter weekend! However, Linda produced a photo of it in flower which she’d taken in Wellington on 21st March – a very early date for it – while Alastair Stevenson saw it flowering in Minehead a few days later, on the 25th. The only person to see it coming into flower during ‘Week 4’ was Andrew Robinson, who recorded it in Brent Knoll village on the 9th.
And now for a few grassland species… I had my first Cat’s-ear, Hypochaeris radicata, on the 14th, in a front garden on South Road, while two of you recorded Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, this week – Andrew at Cross Quarry on the 12th, and Hilary Brownett at Bleadon Hill on the 13th. No doubt others will follow in the days ahead. Smooth/Spreading Meadow-grass, Poa pratensis/humilis, was noted on Taunton road verges for the first time on the 14th, while Salad-burnet, Poterium sanguisorba, was one of a whole clutch of first-flowerers up at Thurlbear on the 13th, although Andrew had already seen it flowering on Brent Knoll on the 10th.
Broad-leaved Dock, Rumex obtusifolius, and Common Comfrey, Symphytum officinale, were both found just starting to flower in Taunton, by the river Tone, on the 11th. The comfrey was more than three weeks later than last year’s first flowering date (FFD), possibly delayed due to high river levels and flooding in February and early March. Other early-flowering comfreys reported during the week included White Comfrey, S. orientale, and Creeping Comfrey, S. grandiflorum.
Elder, Sambucus nigra, was seen in Henlade on the 12th, the third earliest FFD for this species in the last twelve years. Pat Wolseley also had it on the 12th, at Nettlecombe, while Andrew saw it on the 14th, at Brent Knoll. Sanicle, Sanicula europaea, also recorded its third-earliest FFD, being about three weeks earlier than the average FFD for the last decade in the Taunton area. Helena and Jim Crouch were the first to spot it, ‘up north’ at Chewton Wood on the 12th; this was followed in the next three days by records from Nettlecombe (Pat), Langford Heathfield (Chris), Thurlbear (me) and Postlebury (Gill Read).
Lastly, Anne Cole recorded Lesser Trefoil, Trifolium dubium, at Hill Lane, Mendip, on the 9th, while Pat had it at Nettlecombe on the 14th.
Of the target species from earlier weeks, you have been sending in lots of records this week for the likes of Sycamore, Acer pseudoplatanus, Horse-chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum, Sweet Vernal-grass, Anthoxanthum odoratum, Pendulous Sedge, Carex pendula, Woodruff, Galium odoratum, Yellow Archangel, Lamiastrum galeobdolon ssp montanum, and Wood Speedwell, Veronica montana. But the species with the most records, by a country mile, was Early-purple Orchid, Orchis mascula, with reports of it from Gill (Postlebury, 10th), Anne (Littlestoke, 10th), Georgina (Long Wood, Mendip, 11th), Helena and Jim (Chewton Wood, 12th), me (Thurlbear, 13th), Linda (Wellington, 13th), and Pat (Nettlecombe, 14th).
While on the subject of orchids, two of us – me and Chris – recorded Common Twayblade, Neottia ovata, in flower on the 14th. This compares with an average FFD over the last 12 years of 4th May, and Walter Watson’s date from the 1930s of 23rd May. Grey Sedge, Carex divulsa, was seen by me in Trull this morning (15th), the earliest FFD for this species in the last decade, and (like Common Twayblade) more than five weeks earlier than in Watson’s time.
We’ve had several notable records of summer-flowering species ‘getting ahead of themselves’, so to speak. The most extraordinary, surely, has to be Linda’s record of Betony, Betonica officinalis, which she found on the 13th near Wellington. To put her date into some sort of context, Watson’s average FFD for Betony in the 1930s was 9th July, while my own average FFD for the decade 2008-17 was 5th July. The earliest FFD in the last 12 years was 6th June! Almost as surprising was Andrew’s report of Fairy-flax, Linum catharticum, on the 12th at Cross Quarry – a species that usually doesn’t start flowering until mid-May. Alastair’s Common Ragwort, Jacobaea vulgaris, and Pat’s Wild Carrot, Daucus carota, also seem to be in the same category; although some species, and maybe Common Ragwort is a good example, can sometimes continue flowering right through the winter, such that early flowering in the spring is perhaps best viewed as being exceptionally late flowering from the previous summer – since the flowers often continue to appear on the previous year’s shoots.
You recorded a number of other species during the week that are, broadly speaking, probably flowering at about the right time, but which weren’t on the target list due to a paucity of data from previous years – usually because they occur only very infrequently (or not at all) in the Taunton area. These included Lousewort, Pedicularis sylvatica,Heath Milkwort, Polygala serpyllifolia, Pill Sedge, Carex pilulifera, and Flea Sedge, C. pulicaris, all recorded flowering by Chris at Langford Heathfield on the 14th, and Bitter-vetch, Lathyrus linifolius, seen by both Chris on the 14th at Langford Heathfield, and by Linda on the 13th, on a lane bank near Wellington. Also Thin-spiked Wood-sedge, Carex strigosa, seen by Gill on the 10th at Postlebury, and by Chris on the 14th at you-know-where. And lastly, as a follow-up to Linda’s Wood-sorrel, Oxalis acetosella, on the 7th, there were two more records of it during the week, both of them ‘up north’: at Charterhouse (Georgina, on the 10th ), and at Postlebury (Gill, on the 15th).
Oh yes, and Pedunculate Oak, Quercus robur, was recorded coming into flower during the week too, the first records being from Chris Billinghurst by the river Chew on the 10th and from Steve Parker in N. Petherton on the 11th. My own date this year was Easter Day, the 12th, in Ruishton and Henlade. It’s not a species I routinely record – heaven knows why not – but the dates I do have for it suggest very little variation from year to year, the FFDs normally falling (like this year) between 10th and 20th April.
Right, that’s it! I’ve run out of steam, and need to get to bed. Apologies to anyone whose records should have been mentioned, but weren’t – like Andrew’s Buck’s-horn Plantain, Plantago coronopus, and Common Milkwort, Polygala vulgaris,Alastair’s White Ramping-fumitory, Fumaria capreolata, Margaret’s Soft-brome, Bromus hordeaceus, my own Yellow Oat-grass, Trisetum flavescens, etc, etc…