isabelbryony-blog

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Goatsbeard, Tragopogon pratensis, is one of my favourite wild flowers. I know, I know, I have a lot of favourites, like a teenager who describes 12 different people as her 'best friend'. But there are a lot of cool native plants, so...

Anyway, this member of the daisy family is just exquisite in my view. It has such lovely smooth flower buds. And such beautifully-structured inflorescences (members of the daisy family actually have flower heads made up of lots of little florets, rather than being just one flower). And those lovely big bracts that are much bigger than the florets and make the whole plant look so very neat. We haven't even got onto the seedhead, which is like a bling version of the common or garden dandelion clock. In fact, the whole thing is like a really classy dandelion, and that's why I love it.

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I knew that Broad-Leaved Helleborines, Epipactis helleborine, liked Glasgow (though who doesn't love Glasgow, with its wonderful weighty beauty and fabulous culture?). But I hadn't expected to find around 100 of them growing in the car park at the Science Centre, just as I walked in there for a family afternoon looking at exhibits on electricity, anatomy (and one on pubic lice, which was the wholesome and edifying experience I'd hoped for when banging on about how cool science is).

What I also hadn't expected to find, as I crawled about under the birch trees by the Science Centre, looking at the gorgeous flowering spikes and getting some rather odd looks from people who wondered what that woman was doing in the undergrowth, was a rare variation of Broad-Leaved Helleborine. It's the one pictured at the top of this post, Epipactis helleborine var. monotropoides. This plant has no chlorophyll, which is why it looks like a fairy flower. I've been envying southern botanists' finds of Epipactis purpurata var. rosea, which is a similar variant of Violet Helleborine and had been trying to work out how to see an achlorophyllous orchid this year. But because I believe in looking for treasure wherever I go, I managed to find one in a car park.

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Hypericaceae

Yes, even the name is confusing. Most people have heard of St John’s Wort. Most people have probably seen the shrubby species of Hypericum that everyone grows in their garden and calls buttercup bush because it, well, looks like a bush covered in massive buttercups. And most people are probably fine with that level of contact with these plants.

But I don’t really work that way with plants. I like to know everything I can about them, and it turns out that St John’s Worts take some getting to know. The above flowers are Perforate St John’s Wort, Hypericum perforatum, so-called because of the minute perforations on the edge of the petals. You can only really see those perforations - and the superb black dots on the petals too - using a hand lens, which sounds great until the plant happens to be at the edge of a path in St James’s Park and you’ve stopped by there on your way home from work, surrounded by the people you work with and tourists, all of whom are wondering why you are crouching by a random plant peering at it with a hand lens.

This is Imperforate St John’s Wort, Hypericum maculatum, and of course (of course), it doesn’t have ragged edges to its petals. But what it does have is lovely black streaks on those petals.

All very simple. But there are loads of other species of St John’s Wort, and you can only tell the difference between them based on whether those black dots turn up on petals, sepals, under the leaves or the stem, and so on. You also have to look at the shape of the stem - is it winged, square, round? - to be able to work out what’s going on. And then, after far too long staring at a botanical key (below), you still can’t work out what the darned thing is, and turn to a botanist who tells you it’s probably a hybrid (H.desentangsii, apparently).

Why do I bother with this stuff? Well, it’s partly my father’s fault. He is the one who passed on the gene that makes me want to develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of something random while still being unable to remember to do basic administrative things. He is the one who has, for all of my life, kept wonderful lists of all the birds he’s seen at every house we've lived in and every place where we’ve been on holiday. Ornithology has nothing to do with his line of work. He just takes pleasure in knowing and finding. Why not stretch your mind outside work as well as in it? Why not feel that satisfaction of knowing a little more each day about the richness of the natural world, and feeling just a little awe at the many different species and subspecies of St John’s Wort?

I find people who are languid about the world around them, who pretend that they’re too cool to be enthusiastic, as troubling as they find me with my hand lens. It seems like much more effort to resist finding things out than it is to enjoy the limited time you’ve got to explore and learn about a little bit of the world, right down to the little black dotty details.

And if you really don’t care about the difference between Hypericum maculatum and Hypericum pulchrum, then you might still like this member of the family: It’s ‘Stinking Tutsan’, Hypericum hircinum. It got that name because it stinks. Of goats. Yes, goats. And having found it on the banks of the Thames, I can assure you that those goats had not used deodorant for a while.

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Well, this is cool (in my definition of cool at least). When I was hunting Autumn Squill at Hurst Meadows last week, I also came across a plant that seemed oddly familiar.

It looked like a white form of Red Bartsia, Odontites vernus, which is prolific in these meadows too. But I’d never heard of such a thing. When I asked local botanists, though, they got rather excited, as there is a rare white-flowered form of O.vernus ssp. vernus- it's just that they’d never seen it at this site. A couple of them went to the spot where I’d found it to record it themselves.

So I discovered a rare flower. Now, I realise that this is about as exciting to everyone else as the time when my friend Jane and I marched around our primary school playground with a worm wriggling in the palm of Jane’s hand, shouting “we’ve found a worm!” to the general indifference of our peers. But to me it’s a satisfying little thing that reminds me of the importance of keeping those eyes firmly focused on the ground because all around lies buried treasure.

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There’s something about the words “Nationally Scarce” in a botany book that sends me a little loopy. This is an Autumn Squill, Scilla autumnalis, and it’s one such nationally scarce plant. Worse: it has only been recorded at only one site in Surrey, which is near enough to where I live for me to hop on my bike and pedal like mad to have a look.

The problem is that the Autumn Squill is really rather small. It’s like those Fly Orchids that I eventually found at Latterbarrow earlier this year. So small you could trample all over it without realising, even if you’re the sort of person, like me, who believes in staring intently at the ground at all times. So a local botanist agreed to show me the plants, and patiently did so while gently warning me I was about to plant my great big clodhoppers on top of another flowering spike.

Anyway, this Nationally Scarce plant is going strong at Hurst Meadows in East Molesey: I had a glorious time crawling around to count and record the GPS locations of 37 different flowering spikes. A number of people asked me if I’d lost something. Only my dignity.

Why do I bother doing this stuff? Why do you bother watching the Six Nations? Or attending amusingly expensive fitness classes that you appear to have to dress up for in garb more expensive than I would wear to a posh do? Because I enjoy it, it’s satisfying, and nature is limitless and amusing. Even on unprepossessing bits of grassland next to car parks where people take their dogs for a walk, there is treasure at your feet. And hopefully you’ll see it before you accidentally crush it.

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Two of my favourite plants in the world are called Bryony. White Bryony, Bryonia dioica, has such a quiet beauty and splendid tendrils. Black Bryony, Tamus communis, stays pretty low-profile with its glossy heart-shaped leaves until the autumn when it strings bright red necklaces of berries through the hedgerows.

Autumn is my favourite season. It’s not really the mellow fruitfulness stuff that I love so much as the full-on colour explosion. Bryony makes all the hedgerows so well-dressed and is just one of the best bits of this wonderful time of year.

You might expect me to say that Bryony is my favourite plant, given it’s my middle name. But that’s the wrong way round. I’m actually only adding Bryony now by deed poll. The forms are on my desk, underneath the beautiful botanical print from 1790 of the Bryonies that I found on Etsy. My family has never really done middle names. None of us have them. But as part of rebuilding my sense of self after a Bad Thing happened that made me ill, I decided to add a name to my name, one that reflected two of the things I find the most joy in: plants and the autumn. So Bryony it is, and it’s a lovely thing choosing to change my name to say something about me rather than my legal status.

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The Walney Geranium

This evening I was out for a walk along the west shore of Walney, hunting for Walney Geraniums, when a woman stopped me. ‘Excuse me, I’m being proper nosy,’ she said. ‘But are you checking up on all the flowers?’ She thought I was an Official Flower person, when in fact I’m just an Amateur Nerd. This being Walney, where everyone is very friendly and just a little bit nosy, she then nattered to me about the best time to see the seals from the west shore, and how no-one has any idea how wonderful this island is.

No-one does. Most people haven’t heard of Walney, the wonderful island that I now call home for at least part of my life. They know that Barrow-in-Furness is the town that makes the submarines that keep the UK (and others) safe, but they don’t even know this 11-mile-long strip of windy land exists at all. Still fewer know that this place has its very own geranium that grows only here and nowhere else.

The Walney Geranium, Geranium sanguineum var. striatum (formerly var. lancastriense), grows alongside its common relative, the Bloody Cranesbill. The west shore of the Island in particular is coated with these deep magenta flowers, but in between the clumps of G.sanguineum is the Walney Geranium, a much paler pink with red-pink veins. Finding it, even if it stops fellow walkers in their tracks to wonder what on earth you’re doing, meandering all over the grass like that, is so very satisfying as you really do need to keep an eye out. 

Keeping an eye out is exactly what I try to do the whole time these days - not sinking into my silly vat of worries, but hunting for the amazing natural treasure all around us. Easy, when you live somewhere as beautiful as Walney where the challenge isn’t so much finding flowers as hoping they’ll stay still for just a few seconds in the endless wind from the Irish Sea, but not impossible anywhere, as plants desperately want to grow, even where we haven’t welcomed them.

But if you do fancy hunting for this flower, then Walney is just, oh four hours from London and a million miles from it in terms of friendliness, beauty and happiness. Every time my train chugs slowly through Arnside, Dalton and Roose, towards Barrow and away from London grumpiness, I feel gradually happier. Even better when I’m there, looking out over the saltmarshes, or having my face stripped of all its skin by the sea wind.

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When I'm not very well, I try to distract my sick mind by going for wild flower walks. It doesn't cure it, but it often stops things from getting worse and also makes life seem a little richer. Yesterday I was struggling with a bunch of unpleasant flashbacks (I have PTSD, which despite the glamour attached to it by some celebrities, is just a tremendous pain in the backside and one I cannot wait to conquer). So I decided that I would photograph every wildflower that I saw on my walk back home through Barrow. Here's a little sample of what I found, just on a walk. My favourite finds are the ones in car parks and the cracks in pavements. The Ribbed Melilot, for instance, was romping all over the Aldi car park. From top to bottom: Spear Thistle, Cirsium vulgare; Pineapple Weed, Matricaria discoidea; Ribbed Melilot, Melilotus officinalis; Hoary Willowherb, Epilobium parviflorum; Great Willowherb, Epilobium hirsutum; Seaside Centaury, Centaurium littorale; Wild Mignonette, Reseda lutea; Wild Clary, Salvia verbenaca; Hop Trefoil, Trifolium campestre; Green Field Speedwell, Veronica agrestis.

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While I’m trying to heal my mind on long term sick leave, I’ve been succumbing to a new form of madness: orchid hunting. Cumbria is blessed with so many different species of orchid, and so many of them are flowering right now.

These are all very common orchids. The first two are Common Spotted Orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii. The second two are Northern Marsh Orchids, Dactylorhiza purpurella. And the final two are a hybrid between Common Spotted and Northern Marsh.

All these IDs were confirmed for me by the wonderful community of botanists on Twitter, who are so friendly and generous. Since adding an account for my botanical adventures, I’ve had so many people message me with ideas of where to visit next. There’s something wonderful about enthusiasm and finding people who share your particular strain. And it’s fair to say that plant twitter is a great deal more edifying than politics twitter, especially at the moment.

All these orchids were flowering on Walney, the wonderfully diverse Cumbrian island that I love to call home.

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Broomrape is such a cool wildflower. This is Common Broomrape, Orobanche minor, growing on the rocky shoreline of the Walney Channel. It is totally parasitic, getting all its food from the roots of the plant it preys upon. Therefore it doesn't need to make chlorophyll, and therefore it doesn't have any green leaves. I think this broomrape is parasitic on the white clover next to it: it feeds on a range of plants but especially those in the pea family, of which clover is a member.

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Gait Barrows Nature Reserve

What a lovely day I had plodding around Gait Barrows National Nature Reserve near Silverdale, Lancashire, yesterday. I visited for the Lady’s Slipper Orchids, which are ever so marvellous and weird:

Cypripedium calceolus has a marvellous backstory: it was thought to be extinct at one point and most of the sites where it grows are a closely-guarded secret. But Gait Barrows has sufficient specimens to allow people to visit without any supervision, and it really is a treat.

The Reserve in general is just brilliant. It has the most marvellous limestone pavement (I never thought I could get excited about a limestone pavement, but there we go).

Under the trees, the limestone is covered with wonderful moss - and in between some of the shady grikes (a wonderful Northern dialect word) grows Herb Paris, Paris quadrifolia, which I’ve never seen before.

There are also meadows full of Northern Marsh Orchids, Dactylorhiza purpurella, and a marshy area around Hawes Water where Bird’s Eye Primroses, Primula farinosa, grows. 

Primula farinosa is nationally scarce and listed as vulnerable, which means it is considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild in Britain, and that there are 100 or fewer recordings of it. I love stumbling across plants like this: it’s not just that I’ve never seen them in the wild before, but also that they’re difficult to find in the wild.  

I love spending my free time hunting for wild flowers: it is a methodical and peaceful activity and it really does help me when my depression, which I am still on sick leave for, is particularly bad. A few weeks ago, on a particularly mad day, I forced myself to walk along the shoreline by my home and photograph every wild flower that I found. It didn’t cure me, but it did distract me for an hour, and meant that even though I wasn’t well enough to work, I had still achieved something with my day, which stops me from becoming totally demoralised. If you have mental health problems, I would urge you to find a similar methodical activity that you can do even when you’re exhausted and low. It doesn’t require as much effort as my two-hour round trip to see rare orchids, and it does at least make a grey day much more colourful.

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Orchids aside, Latterbarrow is just a really lovely reserve. It has some superb limestone pavement, woodland and meadow. The best bit about it is the drifts of wild aquilegia. As I was toddling happily around the place, I met a lovely old man walking his dog who offered me some tips on where to find the best orchids. As he strode away up the bank, he pointed at the masses of purple blooms and shouted happily "isn't this the best! No idea what it is." Sadly as well as being lovely, he was also too hard of hearing to catch me shouting about wild aquilegia. From top to bottom: Aquilegia vulgaris, Common Rock Rose (Helianthemum nummulariam), Yellow Pimpernel (Lysimachia nemorum), Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys).

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Hunting for orchids is a grown-up version of a treasure hunt. I had a wonderful scour of the Latterbarrow Nature Reserve in Cumbria today, finding the secret little treasures among the grass and other glorious meadow flowers. The Greater Butterfly Orchid, Platanthera chlorantha, is the most beautiful of all the orchids I saw today, with such big, beautiful white flowers. But the most exciting orchid was the Fly Orchid, Ophrys insectifera, partly because it looks so weird, but also because at just 15cm, it was jolly hard to find. From top to bottom: Greater Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera chlorantha), Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii), Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula), Common Twayblade (Neottia ovata), Fly Orchid (Ophrys insectifera).

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South Walney Nature Reserve is so marvellous. There are seals, eider ducks and thousands of breeding gulls. And some superb wild flowers, too. I've never seen Common storksbill, Erodium cicutarium, before, but there it was, growing merrily away on the sheep-nibbled turf. And neither had I seen Marsh Arrowgrass, Triglochin palustris, in flower in the salt marsh. The rest: Common vetch (Vicia sativa), Common scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis), Hound's Tongue (Cynoglossum officinale), and Germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys).

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North Walney Nature Reserve is one of my favourite places on Earth. I found these flowers there this week: Iris pseudacorus, Lotus corniculatus, Rosa pimpinellifolia, Rhinanthus minor and Lepidium draba. I've never seen Lepidium draba, or Hoary Cress, before. It's not a native plant but was introduced to the British Isles accidentally in 1802, and spread across lowland areas, particularly rough grassy land next to the shore. Which is where I found it.

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Peonies. The biggest of flowers exploding from the tightest of buds.

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Sea campion, Silene maritima, pictured here on the West Walney shore. It has five white petals which are so deeply-cut that they appear to be ten, a habit of hugging the ground rather close, and a fat heavily-veined calyx tube. Its close relative Bladder Campion is a taller character, though the two can interbreed, just to mess with your head a bit.