Cornwall Botany - Late March 2024

 March turned out to be one of the wettest on record, so I chose not to go out as much as I usually would have done. There's a limit to enjoyment in heavy driving rain and gale force winds isn't there! I also try to include what could be called "every day" plants, that you, the reader might find locally to you but don't know what they are. I hope this blog helps you to identify a few more plants.

What follows are plants of interest that I did find when I got out and about.

 

Town Hall Clock, or Moschatel, is not that common in Cornwall, mainly due to the fact that the majority of Cornwall's ancient woodlands were felled a long time ago. However, they persist along the steep, wooded river valleys that dot the Cornish landscape. I found five clumps flowering along a road verge near to the Lanhydrock estate in late March. I've also noticed that the flowers tend to be smaller than those I used to see in Kent, I don't know why that should be.

Adoxa moschatellina

The first Garden Archangels had also burst into bloom. This garden escape is very common in Cornwall and can be told apart from the native species in that the leaves have silvery blotches on them and the flowers are a bit larger too.

Lamiastrum galeobdolon subsp. argentatum

The Dandelion season is now under way as Spring is the only time one can reliably identify plants from the 230 or so different species there are. This one looked striking, so I had it identified by the referee. This plant also taught me a lesson, in that the leaves looked spotted. Spotted leaves lead one to a specific set of Dandelions in the Field Handbook, so I found it difficult to determine what I had found. The reason for this was that the leaves aren't actually spotted at all, the blotches are from insect damage. A lesson learned.

Taraxacum hamatum

Spring is also the time that Slender Speedwell begins to flower. It has bigger flowers than most other common species and is common in lawns, greens and road verges that are mowed, and graveyards, which is where I found this one below. Note the kidney shaped alternate leaves that are typical of this species.

Veronica filiformis

The end of March also saw several grass species come into flower, such as this Meadow Foxtail, a common sight on Cornwall's road verges. Hay fever season has begun in earnest I suspect.

Alopecurus pratensis

There are two species of Parsley Piert; both are tiny plants with even smaller petal-less flowers and tiny stipules under the sepals. The photo below shows some hints on determining which species you have found. Generally, Slender Parsley-piert is only found on acidic soils, but not always.

Regarding the notes in the photo: cuneate means tapered (into the leaf stem) and truncate means horizontally flattened off (to the leaf stem).

Aphanes australis

Mossy Stonecrop is a tiny succulent leaved plant that only grows where there is little competition from other plants. As such, it is often found on urban paths, very short turf rural paths and waste ground. Below, it is flowering on a gravel path on the Camel Trail near Wadebridge. In a few weeks, as these plants go to seed, they turn bright red and are easier to see, even from a distance. Look for unexplained red patches in bare areas and you might find some. The £1 coin gives you some scale as to the size of individual plants.

Crassula tillaea

Blinks are tiny plants - blink and you'll miss them. This whole plant wasn't much bigger than that £1 coin in the last photo. It was growing in a damp gravel car park amongst moss. It is another species that doesn't like competition from other plants. When the flowers open, they have 5 petals. Note the thickened leaf stalks where the leaf blade joins the stem and the tiny bumps (papillae) on the leaves.

Montia fontana

Ivy-leaved Water Crowfoot is often found in wet areas of pasture fields for grazing animals. I suspect the animals distribute their seeds in mud on their hooves to other wet areas where they germinate the following Spring. Given the very wet weather, the plant below was in a huge patch of thousands of plants in a cow field entrance that had become a giant puddle from all the rain. The flowers are small and the leaves look like mini ivy leaves and often have dark blotches on them.

Ranunculus hederaceus

The next photo was so poor that I wasn't going to include it, however, it contains an important feature for identification, so I have. When I see a load of floating duckweed plants in a ditch, it's so easy to assume that they are just Common Duckweed and walk on. However, there are several species of duckweeds, so it's worth having a look. Dip your finger into them and pull it out and a few plants will stick to it enabling a closer look. These ones turned out to be Least Duckweed, evidenced by their small size, single root and most importantly, a single ridge line of papillae along the centreline of the upper side of the leaf. Other species may have 3 leaves joined together, tiny sacs of air bubbles on the underside or multiple roots coming off the base. All are slightly different.

Lemna minuta

On a wall in Wadebridge, I came across a Polypody fern that looked odd. The frame of reference of what looked odd for me, was that I normally only see Common and Intermediate Polypodies around Cornwall. The one below didn't fit either species, so was likely to be the rarer Southern Polypody. To tell them apart reliably, you need to examine them microscopically. The text in the photo shows the important points, but crucially, this plant had paraphyses (tiny hairs) between the sporangia (orange blobs on the underside of the frond). Only Southern Polypody has these, apart from a hybrid. The hybrid is sterile and under the microscope I found plenty of viable spores, thus ruling that out.

Polypodium cambricum

In damp woodlands and rural road verges, Pink Purlsane has burst into flower. They are attractive and though not native, are long naturalised in Cornwall and are now widespread in the east of the county. Most are pink or pink and white, but occassionaly I find all white flowered variants too.

Claytonia sibirica

Along a flooded rural road verge in the Luxulyan valley, I saw some Water Horsetail (not photographed). A short distance away, I found more, but they looked different, having denser branches and more rigid (but still weak) stems. This was the hybrid between Field and Water Horsetail, one I'd not seen before. A key tip to Horsetail identification, is to break a stem and note what the inner hollow in it looks like. Each species is different, some with large interior hollows and other with angled narrow ones. I've photographed the stem hollow below and it is intermediate between the two species, as expected.

Equisetum x litorale

The three most common early flowering wood-rushes are now out, including: Field wood-rush; Greater wood-rush and below, Hairy wood-rush. Oddly, the hairy wood-rush is not as hairy as the other two!

This species is easy to identify as the branches that hold the flowers and later nutlets are bent in all directions and thus are unmistakable. The second photo below shows this trait clearly.

Luzula pilosa

In a boggy area under Grey Willow trees, I found the first Marsh Violet of the season. Easily identified by their round leaves in a very wet habitat and when in flower, by the veins of the bottom petal going all the way down to the base. Most are quite small flowers, so if you look for them, they might only be a few centimetres wide.

Viola palustris subsp juressi

In the same area where I found the violet, I came across some Three-nerved Sandwort growing along the drier areas of a woodland path. Easily identified by the 3 prominent veins in the leaves along with 5 un-notched petals shorter than the sepals. Usually found in woodland or Cornish hedges.

Moehringia trinervia

Wood Sorrel is a declining species nationally, so it's always nice to find some. Quite often they grow in damp woodland on tree trunks or mosses. Anywhere shaded and damp where there is less competition from other plants.

Oxalis acetosella

Lesser Celandines (the yellow flower below) have been out for many weeks now and will begin to fade soon. However, they are being joined now by other wildflowers, so look even better. Here, one is enhanced by the deep blue of Germander Speedwell, a very common plant of open woodland, road verges and lawns. It has two opposite lines of hairs up the leaf stems and all the flowers are on a raceme as shown below.

Veronica chamaedrys

Many tree species are waking up from their winter slumber and most flower early. This peculiar looking bunch of flowers below belong to the common Ash tree.

Fraxinus excelsior

That sums up my March botanical finds. Of course, there were far more wildflowers open than what I photograph or show off here, but I hope my selection was of interest to you. I try to include a few ID tips too for the featured plants. 

As I write this, Storm Kathleen is howling outside and driving rain is hitting the windows of my house, so no change in the weather patterns we have had all through March, but I will get out and about in April regardless, I hope you do too.

Take Care

Dave

Cornwall Botany - Late Winter to Early Spring 2024

 As I write this on the 20th March, it has rained almost every day for most of the year so far. It's certainly the wettest early year period I can recall. As such, I haven't gone out that much, so this is a short blog on botanical finds or plants of interest found so far. With the rain has been very mild weather, with only two short periods of frost to date. As such, many Spring plants are coming into flower earlier than usual by up to two weeks or so. The wet and mild weather should also bode well for annual species in the coming weeks and should enable them to recover from the repeated Spring droughts we have had in recent years.

Here are the plants I've come across so far this March, many being rosettes or plants without flowers. If you record, it's important to try and identify plants in this state too. Plants may be present all or much of the year, but may be in flower just for a few weeks, so why restrict yourself to only identifying plants in flower?

My first plant actually was in flower and is a plant of acidic bogs and mires, Round-leaved Water Crowfoot. I found it at Retire Common, not far from Bodmin. The habitat where it grows in is usually in or by the stream that runs through the common or in pools where the water collects. However, it has been so wet this year, that seeds have germinated on the footpath through the common and the plant below (and many others) were in water filled footprints on the main path. The stream itself was full of these plants too. They've only just begun to flower, so in a couple of weeks, there should be drifts of flowers here.

Ranunculus omiophyllus

Another bog plant that was growing all over the place was Marsh Ragwort. Like the Crowfoot above, it had multiple plants growing on the path as well as by the stream where it is usually found. Of course, it was too early for flowers, so here's a photo of it's basal leaves. Note the very large terminal lobe and simple side lobes that distinguish it from other Ragworts.

Jacobaea aquatica 

Opposite Leaved Golden Saxifrage is a reliable early Spring flower to find. In Cornwall it's found almost everywhere there is flowing water or seepage, from rock fissures to road edges, streams and rivulets. These were some of the first to come into flower, but now there are thousands of golden little dots amongst carpets of plants. It's always a wonderful and uplifting sight to see them in flower in early Spring.

Chrysosplenium oppositifolium 

From late February onwards, I see lots of young Common Valerian plants. These are fairly common on Cornish hedges and woodland paths in Cornwall. However, back in Kent, they are very uncommon and were only found on dry chalk slopes, often in company with the likes of Musk and Common Spotted Orchids. It's odd how the plant has adapted to such different environments, but then, there are two subspecies and these are found in these two very different environments, but not usually together.

The chalk tolerant subspecies is called subsp. collina and the acidic tolerant one found in Cornwall is called subsp. sambucifolia. They are separated by having a different arrangement for their stem leaves. You might find both subsp. together in some places, so it's always worth checking the stem leaves if you are going to identify them to subspecies level and not solely relying on its environmental habitat.

The plant below will grow up to a metre tall with at least three pom pom like heads of small pink/white flowers later in the year, all being well.

Valeriana officinalis 

In Kent, Green Hellebore was considered a native plant and was included in the rare plant register and it was always great to find some. In Cornwall, they are considered neophytes and arrived within the last few hundred years by human intervention, usually as garden escapes. Having said that, the plants I have seen in Cornwall have fully naturalised. The plants below were first recorded in the wild at this location in 1927, almost a century ago. There are now well over 100 plants along a rural lane Cornish hedge and extended several metres into deciduous woodland, so they have survived here a long time.

Helleborus viridis subsp occidentalis

Here's one of the clumps in the woodland spread quite a distance from the original introduction.

A flower close up.

Wandering the lanes and by-ways of Cornwall, one never quite knows what exotic plant might turn up next. In this case, I came across several large Tree Ferns, similar to those found at Helligan Gardens. In this case, it was clear they had been planted as they were all in a straight line along a farm track. However, they are not cheap to buy and I wondered why someone would pay out all that money to plant them along a farm access road, a long way from the farmhouse or any other buildings. I put in a record for these as planted, as there are records of some growing wild in Cornwall, so should some be found growing wild nearby in years to come, they will know where they originated from by my record.

Dicksonia antarctica

Plenty of Scarlet Elf Cup fungi were now growing on the wet dead wood in several locations I visited. The wet weather meant there were lots more around than I saw last year.

 Sarcoscypha coccinea

My partner and I had lunch at a coastal pub at Trebarwith Strand and I noticed lots of these pale green rosettes, growing on a vertical wall with fresh water seepage constantly running over them. I recognised them as Brookweed, often found in such damp coastal locations here. Sea Spleenwort grew with them too.

Samolus valerandi

Some of the other species that had come into flower so far this month incuded:

Barren Strawberry - Potentilla sterilis

Wild Strawberry - Fragaria vesca

Lesser Celandine - Ficaria verna

Wild Daffodil - Narcissus pseudonarcissus subsp pseudonarcissus

Greater Stitchwort - Stellaria holostea

 

 Blackthorn - Prunus spinosa

 

Danish Scurvygrass - Cochlearia danica

  I'll end with a Dandelion. It's that time of year when they start to become identifable again. The one below that I found at Looe seafront had spotted leaves, a Section Naevosa species which I had determined by the referee as:

Taraxacum ronae

 There were of course many more species coming into flower than I have featured, along with many pavement plants, such as Rue-leaved Saxifrage and Common Whitlowgrass, but I won't feature them all.  As increased daylight continues into April, there will be many more species to see, and I am looking forward to discovering them all over again along with hopefully, some new species too.   

Take Care

Dave

Wrapping up my Botanical Finds in Cornwall for 2023

 This is a short blog to finish off 2023 in Cornwall. As we start 2024, the daylight hours are slowly becoming longer but that is rather negated by non-stop heavy rain and gales of late. The following is a precis of the few interesting plants I found in December.

Whilst walking through a wet woodland, I couldn't help but notice hundreds of rushes, most less a foot tall. The look of the plant said it was Slender Rush, but I thought I would take a sample home to double check. Using a new camera on my 3D microscope made it very easy to see all the tiny parts of the plant on my laptop instead of having to squint through the eyepieces. This plant has its outer tepals much longer than the inner ones and project far beyound the nutlets and Slender Rush is characterised by that alone. Some guides say this isn't on a rhizome, but the one I pulled up was - but it was very short, perhaps 2" long from which arose several plants, giving it a bit of a tufted look. I hope to explore Juncus more fully using the microscope and micro camera come Spring when they bear flowers and fruits.

Below is Sea Spurge at Par Sands in seed. It doesn't look a great deal different when in flower, though the central bracts have now enclosed the cyanthium (sexual parts of the flower) hiding them from view.

Euphorbia paralias

On "X", formerly Twitter, every Sunday between 8-9pm there is #Wildflowerhour where people all around the UK and Ireland post finds of native or naturalised plants flowering in the last week. It's a great way to see what's going on in different regions and a way to encourage newcomers into botany. If you have trouble identifying your flower, you can simply tag it with #WildflowerID and one of several online volunteer botanists will soon provide an answer. Many thanks to Rebecca Wheeler for keeping this going.

(her accounts are @wildflower_hour and @botany_beck).

 Here's some flowering plants I found in mid December locally that I posted on #Wildflowerhour.

Of course as a botanist, in winter, I don't just look for flowers. I notice all sorts of plants and winter is a great time to spot rosettes. Most species have specific leaves and leaf arrangement which help you identify your plant, like this Sea Storksbill below that I found in block paving outside a superstore in Par. This was a surprising find as they are usually very close to the sea and this was about a mile or so inland.

Erodium maritimum

Whilst at Par Beach, I also noticed many rare Sea Knotgrass plants still had leaves on them. I had previously thought that all knotgrasses were annuals and died off and withered away as winter set in, but no, Sea Knotgrass is actually perennial. It's the only UK Knotgrass that is.

In the first photo you can see the edges of the leaves rolled inwards and on the stem, the very short internodes between flowers (they've fallen off now of course). These features characterise this species. In the third photo you can see the thick tap root, as thick as a man's thumb going deep into the sand. The winter storm tides cover these plants and wash away their seeds aiding dispersal.

Polygonum maritimum

 

The long evenings in winter also allow time for peering through a microscope at Polypody spores. The three species (and a number of hybrids) cannot be reliably told apart without microscopic examination of their sporangia and spores. I came across one that looked a bit weird, like a cross between Intermediate and Common Polypody, and I suspected it might be a hybrid, visually confirmed by it looking almost sterile.

So I took a sample home and after careful study, it was apparent that this was simply a Common Polypody that looked a bit weird and wasn't too good at producing spores. The sporangia I examined were full of viable spores, ruling out the hybrid (which is sterile) and the number of annulus rings on the mechanism holding the spores matched Common Polypody too. Oh well, nothing unusual, but fun looking and learning.

Polypodium vulgare

The final two days of December and first two days of January are when the BSBI hold their New Year Plant Hunt. Rather than explain it in detail, you can read all about it at 

https://bsbi.org/new-year-plant-hunt

Lots of people all over the UK and Ireland go out and record everything they can find in flower that is native or naturalised in the wild on a 3 hour (max) walk. It's held over 4 days and the results are used to show trends on what and when they are flowering. Hopefully, the data will link into climate change so see what effects if any, that climate change is having on our flora at mid winter. You can go on a group hunt or go solo and I usually do both here in Cornwall. I often find new records too, with some plants inexplicably missed on summer surveys, but found now - like this Field Scabious below. Flowering on 30/12/23 by a football field.

Knautia arvensis 

Pot Marigolds are a common garden escape in southern England, but I don't often see them in the summer, however, you can't miss their bright orange flowers in mid winter. The one below had self seeded along a rural road wall, not far from a sports centre from where its parent plant probably originated.

Calendula officinalis

It's been quite a challenge to motivate myself to go out for the New Year Plant Hunt as the weather has been atrocious, with gales, heavy rain and even hail every day so far of the hunt. The gales and rain continue into January and as I write this, the windows are creaking and things are blowing around gardens with gale force gusts and driving rain. Having said all that, just half an hour outside with nature does wonders for your mental health regardless of the weather. Put the waterproofs and wellies on and go outside for a walk, see what you can find - you'll enjoy it.

Happy New Year

Dave