Cornwall Botany - November and December 2024

 As the year draws to a close, the colder weather takes its toll on many plant species, so there is less to see than in the summer, which we all know already. But it's good to get out and about and there are always surprises, whatever the time of year. I am writing this at the end of December and we have had a few light frosts, hurricane gust storms, flooding, weeks of grey, still, misty weather with no sunshine and even a bit of snow in this period. However, the plants soldier on and the following are some of those plants I found on my recording trips at this time.

Heather is a late summer flowering plant, but early November is the latest I have ever seen it still flowering. I found this on a trip to the china clay country, which is pretty barren for plant diversity due to a lack of nutrients and stability in the soils left after mining.

Calluna vulgaris

  Some Sheep's-bit hanging on into the winter.

Jasione montana

The china clay waste sites are a haven for mosses and lichens, a subject I haven't really delved into yet, but I couldn't resist taking a  photo of some "Soldier" lichens, there were thousands of them.

Lunch at a Bodmin Moor pub yielded a Bacopa flowering in the tarmac of the car park. No doubt an escape from a nearby garden as there were no hanging baskets nearby. Car parks are often great places to find interesting plants; this same car park had most species of Willowherb in it in the summer, including the unusual New Zealand Willowherb.

Chaenostoma cordatum

A very late flowering Field Forget-me-not in the same pub car park.

Myosotis arvensis

A trip to a north Cornwall woodland revealed many hundreds of Marsh Ragwort. This species is found throughout much of the UK (excluding parts of the south east), but is is declining so much, it has been listed as Near Threatened. It likes damp or wet woodland rides and heaths in Cornwall. Note the very large terminal lobe on the leaves which other ragworts don't have. The flowers are also almost twice the diameter of common ragwort too.

Jacobaea aquatica

I sometimes photograph insects, provided I don't have to chase them around (like butterflies!). Given this was mid November, this beetle was rather torpid, clasping a Soft Rush stem. I was told online that is a Bronze Beetle.

Chrysolina banksi

Lesser Celandine leaves (and some flowers) are beginning to appear now, these are usually pretty much plain green, with perhaps some splodges on them of a different shade of green. Each year, I usually find some stunning looking variegated leaves, such as the one below that I found at Millendreath, near Looe. I had only heard of "Brazen Hussy" a purple leaved form grown in gardens and wondered why other varieites weren't listed on the BSBI database. So I dug deeper and reliable contacts informed me that all the Lesser Celandine variants grown in gardens are actually taken from the wild. They all occur as natural variations of Lesser Celandine. Of course, gardeners seek these out and cultivate them, but nature has already done all the work. I was given a link to some very interesting variants, so take a look at them and see if you can spot any this coming Spring.

http://www.johnjearrard.co.uk/plants/ficariaverna/genus.html

That link will take you to (mostly) all of the forms of Lesser Celandine currently recognised in the garden trade. Go to the home page and there are hundreds of plant species you can look at, a very good resource to bookmark. Anyway, the leaves below seem to fit the variant named "Brambling".

Ficaria verna "Brambling"

Mid month I took a trip to the Roseland Peninsular, around St. Just-in-Roseland, a picturesque place with an amazing flora too. Habitats ranged from churchyards with sub tropical plants to woodland, to salt marsh, rural lanes and wasteground. The more habitats you have, the more species you will find.

The following photos are some of the plants I found here, growing wild or naturalised.

 Thale Cress nowadays, is usually found in urban areas, like pavements and wasteground, so it was nice to find several hundred of them in an arable field.

Arabidopsis thaliana

 Also in the fields were Lesser Quaking Grass, which I'm finding more of in Cornwall recently. It grows much taller than Quaking Grass (Briza media) and its florets are all shades of green with no purple parts that the other two Briza species have. The stems are sturdy, but the stems holding the florets are flimsy, hence they "quake" in the slightest breeze.

Briza minor

 

 A stunning colour variant of Wild Radish, probably a crop relict previously sown as a cover crop.

Raphanus raphanistrum

 

Field Woundwort rounds off the arable fields, quite common in parts of Cornwall, but rare in other places. This species is also near threatened in England due to modern methods of agriculture.

Stachys arvensis

 

On some waste ground, I found a late flowering Black Nightshade. These are in the same family as potatoes and tomatoes; in fact, the flower is almost the same as that of a potato, but much smaller. Don't eat this plant or its berries though (which start off green then turn black) as they are mildly poisonous. A quote from https://www.wildfooduk.com/wild-plants/black-nightshade/ : "Ingestion causes effects delayed by 6 – 12 hours including vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, confusion, and abdominal pains." Personally, I don't eat any wild plants (other than the occasional blackberry).

Solanum nigrum

I had only seen Krauss' (or South African) Clubmoss as a weed in Heligan Gardens before. Although it was never planted there as it was introduced accidentally, being in a garden rather devalued the record somewhat. However, I found lots of it in St. Just-in-Roseland churchyard and a whole roadside bank covered in it nearby, the latter truly an escape into the wild. 

The BSBI plant atlas 2020 at https://plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9h.4kf shows a smattering of records across the UK. There are 908 records in total with the majority recorded after 2000, so it's spreading rapidly.

Selaginella kraussiana

In a couple of places, in woodland and a rural by-way, I found Yellow-flowered Strawberries. The atlas at https://plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9h.7q6xct shows a distinctly southern distribution. 

The atlas describes it thus "P. indica has been in cultivation in Britain since 1805, and grown in gardens for its yellow flowers and strawberry-like, but inedible, fruits. It was recorded from the wild by 1879 (Trengwainton, West Cornwall) and is clearly increasing, notably in south-eastern England and East Anglia, including Fenland. It may have been partly overlooked in the past in mown swards, since in leaf it can easily be passed over for Fragaria vesca" (Wild Strawberry). Credit to D.J. McCosh and J.O. Mountford for this description.

Potentilla indica

 In the churchyard, I found an unfamiliar species running rampant in neglected areas, spreading by stolons under the surface. A plant ID app got me to Creeping Saxifrage, later confirmed as this species. It's now fully naturalised here. Here's a composite photo showing the leaves and small flowers.

 Saxifraga stolonifera

Another unusual plant to be flowering this late in the year was a Tree Mallow, which usually flowers from spring through summer.

Malva arborea

Of course, one of stalwarts for providing lots of sweet almond smelling flowers in the winter is the Winter Heliotrope, widely naturalised throughout England and beyond.

Petasites pyrenaicus

For much of December, I didn't go out, due to poor health and bad weather. However, when I did get back, just before Christmas, I found some Round-leaved Water Crowfoot growing in tractor ruts on a china clay waste site. It will probably be flowering by February.

Ranunculus omiophyllus

Velvet Shank fungi looking great on a tree trunk.

 

This brings us to Christmas Eve, when I found I had a couple of hours of spare time, so I had a look around a small village near Rock to see what I could find. I recorded lots of species, but it was great to find Stinking Hellebore growing in a cornish hedge; only the second record for this that I've found here, they aren't native to Cornwall and are considered a neophyte. This one probably originated from fly tipped material.

Helleborus foetidus

 Some Leylandii  saplings on wasteground had me baffled for a while, but the nearby parent trees showed them to be Montery Cypress, self sown and growing well.

Hesperocyparis macrocarpa

An industrial estate tarmac road edge was the unlikely habitat for Corn Parsley, though I did also find it nearby in a field where it should be!

Sison segetum

That wraps up my winter finds of 2024 up to 28th December. My next blog will include my efforts on the BSBI's new year plant hunt, a project to find as many wild or naturalised species in flower as possible over the new year period. If you're reading this in time, see https://bsbi.org/ for full details and how to participate. Until then, happy plant hunting and a healthy, prosperous new year to you.

 

Dave

Cornwall Botany - October 2024

 It's stayed mild for the entire month which has encouraged the summer plants to continue flowering, such as Rough Chervil, but also has brought out many spring flowering species very early, such as Alexanders, flowering 23/10/24 at Pentireglaze). The plants below are just a few out of the many species that I found this month, I hope you enjoy the selection.

I started the month off with an afternoon walk around Rock Dunes. It is useful to be able to identify plants that are not in flower and I do so regularly. If I see a plant and can't identify it, I will give it a good try to put a name to it. One of the resources now available for this sort of botany is the Basal Plant Project, which has photos of young plants and rosettes of our native plants. By comparing your own photos of a plant to those on this site, you may get a match. I have contributed quite a few photos to the site, but it's focussed my mind on taking more non flowering photos to help teach others what some plants look like when not in flower. You can find this website at https://basalproject.org.uk/

Newly emergent leaves of Sea Bindweed at Rock Dunes - Calystegia soldanella

Car parks are often great places to find interesting plants and Rock was no exception. The sandy edges had a few Common Calamint flowering by the cars.

Clinopodium ascendens

Just outside the car park as a "weed" in an amenity planted enclosure was a stand of Cornish Ramping Fumitory, endemic to Cornwall. It's very rare East of the Rivel Camel so it was great to find some in Rock.

Fumaria occidentalis

I've been trying to identify any Eyebrights that I find this year, but some are so small it's impossible. This one was probably 2cm tall in heavily rabbit grazed coastal turf above Rock quarry. Th eonly way to identify it would be to pull it up in its entirety to examine the leaves and I wouldn't do that - plus, bear in mind it's illegal to uproot any plant without the landowners permission.

Euphrasia

I chose to go to Rock as I had found a solitary Knotted Pearlwort there two weeks before but only had my phone with me, and the photos I got from that were terrible. Fortunately, on this visit there were several more in flower in the same general area above Rock quarry. I'd previously only seen this species at Dungeness in Kent many years ago now. Note the "knotted" look of the leaves on the stems.

Sagina nodosa

There is  huge population of naturalised Sweet Alison around Rock and its car park, but up to now I had only seen white flowered forms. The one below had two flower colours, white in the centre with lilac outer flowers, a quite striking plant.

Lobularia maritima

I took this photo as I thought the deep yellow of Cat's Ear blended perfectly with the red Cotoneaster fruits. It looks nice, but the Cotoneasters (probably C. simonsii) are becoming a problem here, taking over large areas of dunes with dense shrubby plants crowding out the smaller dune plants. It will need some sort of control soon, or plants such as Autumn Ladies Tresses and Knotted Pearlwort will disappear.

Hypochaeris radicata

Other interest included some yellow waxcaps and snails.

Striped or Banded Snail -  Cernuella virgata

On a very rainy day, I saw that the weather would clear from the west early on in the day but stay wet for most of Cornwall, so I took the opportunity to look around parts of Sennen Cove and Gwynver Beach, about as far west as one can get without getting on a boat to Scilly. I was rewarded with a beautiful sunny day whilst the rest of Cornwall had rain and mizzle.

Sea Holly on the beach - Eryngium maritimum

A colourful composition including Sea Sandwort and Hottentot Fig, the latter being invasive. It stretched for over 30m in places along the beaches and really needs pulling up. Such are the problems we create when we bring foreign plants into the UK with no assessment at all on how they will affect our native plants and wildlife if they successfully escape gardens into the wild.

Honckenya peploides and Carpobrotus edulis

Borage is a fairly frequent garden escape over much of southern England. Habitation (or an allotment) is usually nearby. Bees really like these plants and along with the deep blue flowers, I can see why people like to plant them in their gardens. It readily escapes into the wild but causes no problems for other species.

Borago officinalis

It's always nice to find the pink striped version of Hedge Bindweed. I think it is absent from much of England, but it is more likely to be found in Cornwall, especially in the coastal west of the county. This one was found up a stream that drains into the middle part of Sennen Cove.

Calystegia sepium subsp roseata

Cyclamen or Sowbread was growing naturalised along a rural road verge, though not far from gardens from whence it likely originated. Here is a bee's eye view of the flower. This hangs down facing the ground, so we don't usually see it standing over the plant.

Cyclamen hederifolium

Perhaps the most unusual find of this trip was numerous patches of Purple Bugloss on the dunes at Sennen Cove. I had seen this plant before, but as an arable plant that thrived in a field edge in Kent, where previously sown many years before. It had not been previously recorded from Sennen Cove at all, with a single record in 2019 for Viper's Bugloss, which I think may have been mistaken for this species. I didn't find any Viper's Bugloss here. 

On checking the county records, I saw that this species had been recorded 3km to the north of Sennen, so that is likely where it came from. It's an attractive plant, though somewhat rough to the touch. It's superficially like Viper's Bugloss, but the flowers are not blue with purple stamens and Vipers has 4 stamens emerging from the flower, whereas Purple Bugloss has just two. Much like Borage, bees love it too.

Echium plantagineum

It has been the worst year I have ever know for insects, with butterflies in particular noticable by their absence, so it was nice to find several butterflies this day, including Small Coppers and many Red Admirals.

A few days later I took a walk around the Mawgan Porth cliffs. There wasn't much to see on the cliffs themselves, but the arable fields just inland held plenty of interesting plants.

A strikingly deep pink Common Ramping Fumitory - Fumaria muralis

The lovely Corn Marigold - Glebionis segetum

Field Pansy - Viola arvensis

In the last week of October, I visited the Pentirglaze Farm area and found another interesting field full of nice species, like lots of Musk Thistles with their oversized purple flowerheads drooping down..

Carduus nutans

Chickory - Cichorium intybus

A "looking skywards" photo of the common Scarlet Pimpernel - Lysimachia arvensis

Two more rosette photos for you, found on almost bare rock by the sea. The tape measure shows how small these plants are at the moment.

The first is Birdsfoot - Ornithopus perpusillus

The next is Blinks - Montia fontana

An unusual find in the arable field was a patch of Hairy Buttercups. I usually find these on sandy clifftop turf; however, they are annual plants and will grow wherever favourable conditions allow, this fallow field being one such place. Unless it stays very mild, it is unlikely to flower until the spring.

Ranunculus sardous

A late summer plant I found here was Field Woundwort, quite uncommon over much of England

Stachys arvensis

You can't beat these views for botanising, here are The Rumps (left side headland)  and The Moules (the island) from the walk at Pentireglaze Farm.

Corn Parsley is another easy to identify plant from a rosette, probable easier than when it is in flower. Note the pinnate form of the numerous basal leaves which tell it apart from Stone Parsley. In both species, by the time they are flowering, basal leaves have withered, making separating the two species trickier.

Sison segetum

The tiny flowers of Redshank. To easily separate this from Pale Persicaria, look at the ochrea (papery membranes along the stem below the leaves). In redshank, the ochrea has "eyelashes", in Pale Persicaria, they do not. There are other differences, but this is the easiest one to look for.

Persicaria maculosa

Below - the "eyelashes" on the ochrea of Redshank.

My final trip of October, was to Otterham in the north east of the county, with a stop at Davidstowe airfield to explore some recently felled pine plantation areas.

The first leaves of Lesser Celandine growing up through the mown grass in Otterham churchyard. This will flower in the spring, though last year I saw some flowering in November.

Ficaria verna

 Royal Fern beginning to die back for the winter by the River Ottery.

Osmunda regalis

 

The drooping flowerheads of Water-pepper.

Persicaria hydropiper

 

It was nice to find some Lesser Trefoil flowering again, it's been a few months since I last found them flowering.

Trifolium dubium

 The star find by the River Ottery was a stand of Devil's-bit Scabious, along with a Ragged Robin in flower (the photo of which unfortunately was blurred).

Succisa pratensis

At Davidstowe airfield there were hundreds of Toad Rush amongst the felled pine stumps, most in flower.

Juncus bufonius

 

Chamomile was frequent in the very short overgrazed parts of the airfield.

Chaemamelum nobile

Various stages of growth and decompostion of Shaggy Inkcap fungi at Davidstowe.

And finally, an oppportunistic Marsh yellowcress in a muddy tractor rut at Davidstowe.

Rorippa palustris

That wraps up October, I hope you liked the selection of plants. Keep a look out for rosettes over the coming months and see if you can identify them. Another useful tool is to be able to identify plants that are dead. It helps to look at plants as they transition from flower to seed to totally dead, as you then become familiar with them for much longer periods than just when they were in flower.

Take care

Dave