Botanical Adventures in Cornwall: Botanical Finds for Mid August

This Spring and Summer have been so dry, I am amazed there's been any plants to see this year. But of course, our native plants are well adapted to most conditions the UK weather throws at them. Many are adapted to surviving with low levels of water and others simply flower and seed much quicker than usual due to the lack of rain. Given their survival strategies, this means there is always something to see or find, even during a drought.

One advantage of a drought is that I could visit venues where I would need wellies and now only wear normal walking boots. One such place was in mid Cornwall where Heath Lobelia grew. Around 6 clumps of it had been found a few weeks before, but given the dry conditions, I wondered if any would be left for me to see.

I'd never seen this plant in real life, so I made the trip to go on a hot mid August day to an area of heathland south east of Lostwithiel. The first plant I noticed was the striking red and yellow flowers of Wavy St. John's Wort, one of the prettier Hypericums found in the wild here. Not shown here are its wavy edged leaves.

Hypericum undulatum

The ground was still quite damp (though usually waterlogged here) and the Water Mint was still numerous and quite happy to flower profusely. Here's a view looking down onto one of their pom pom like flowers.

Mentha aquatica

Devil's Bit Scabious was also flowering in large numbers. Here's a photo of the flowers in close up. Each "flower" is actually made up of over 50 individual flowers sat on a flat saucer like receptacle.

Succisa pratensis

I had 8 figure grid references for the Heath Lobelia for 6 locations at one site. Unfortunately 5 of them had gone over and couldn't be found, however, I was lucky to find one clump of plants still with flowers. So, below is Heath Lobelia, a lovely rare native plant, a first see for me. It took a while finding them, but it was worth it.

Lobelia urens

I paid a price for seeing them though. I had left my insect repellent back home, so I was unprotected from biting insects. I suffered numerous horse fly bites to my arms and legs along with a couple of mosquito bites and even picked up a tick (thankfully walking across my leg and not buried in my skin). So be prepared and take the necessary precautions. I won't forget things like that again!

There were some friendly insects too, like this female Silver Washed Fritillary butterfly.

Argynnis paphia

The same day, I went south to Par Sands on the south coast of Cornwall. Rare Sea Daffodils had been found there recently and were in bud a few days ago. I rather hoped a flower or two might now be open. Fortunately, my timing was spot on. Par Sands is made up of old china clay waste from over a century ago, rather than shellgrit and silicon as most beaches are. This gives the sand a whiter colour than usual and it's not good at holding water. As such, this was an extremely parched environment.

What a stunning flower.

Pancratium maritimum

More buds yet to open.

I like the next photo the best as it shows the flower off well.

A close up of the anthers in an unusual position compared to other plants.

This species first arrived in Marazion, South West Cornwall over a decade ago and it was believed to have arrived by sea (their seeds and bulbs float) from Brittany and with our warming climate, it seems to have survived there and now spread up the coast to here. There was no evidence of them being planted and they were sufficiently far down the beach for a storm surge to leave the seeds behind. Sea Spurge, Sea Sandwort and Evening Primroses accompanied them in the habitat here.

The photo below shows where they were. The brown plants well behind it are dead and dying Japanese Roses that couldn't withstand the drought. Amazingly, no holidaymakers picked these flowers either.

Evening Primroses are a bit of a challenge to identify for sure. There are a few different species, mostly from the Americas that are naturalised in the UK, but they freely hybridise and can also back cross with either parent. This makes firm identification difficult. However, most plants do key out to a particular species, like this one did to Common Evening Primrose. Take notes or photos of all parts of the flower, its stalk, the sepals, the anthers and stamen arrangement, hairs and glandular hairs, stem colours and so on. The only parts of these plants that isn't useful for identification are the leaves. These were also at Par Sands.

Oenothera biennis

Japanese Rose is an invasive garden escape and it easily takes over dune systems and clifftops. So in a way, it was good to see it decimated by the drought as shown in the first photo below. As they die off, native plants can regrow and colonise the sands.

Unfortunately, there are still plenty of them that have survived, below shows one in flower during the drought, they have now set hips, and so the cycle will repeat itself.

Rosa rugosa

Below is the fruiting pod of Sea Radish which is usually a large plant with bright yellow crucifer flowers. They were quite rare back in Kent, but seem relatively common here in Cornwall. You can eat the pods too for a radishy taste if you wanted to.

Raphanus raphanistrum subsp maritimum

A drought specialist as it grows in sand near the high tide mark is Prickly Saltwort. Like many plants close to the sea the flowers lack petals and only the anthers are visible here. It can pack a nasty scratch too so be careful around it.

Salsola kali

A few days later and I revisited The Lizard area again, this time to Kynance Cove, home to many rare plants. Below is the humble Harebell, quite rare in Cornwall.

Campanula rotundifolia

The rare Great Burnet was also in flower.

Sanguisorba officinalis

Below is Saw-wort, relatively common along the Cornish coasts, but rarer the further east one goes. Due to the drought conditions, it was only about 3" tall. The lower right of the photo shows it sharply toothed leaves from whence its gets its common name.

Serratula tinctoria

The main reason for going to Kynance was to see for the first time, Cornish Heath in flower. There were huge areas covered in their flowers, a delight to see. They were quite bushy, but low growing with tufts of flower filled spikes arising from them.