Equinox garden

 

Late flowers on Wild Marjoram/Oregano (Oreganum vulgare). Frome, 28 September 2025.

Its summer days shimmering with manifold bees and butterflies are long gone, but the rain has given us a few late sprigs of blossom. 

This is the herb "oregano", and it grows wild in the British Isles (hence its other name, "Wild Marjoram"). 

The herb "marjoram" is a more tender Mediterranean plant that wouldn't survive here.

Late flowers on Verbena bonariensis. Frome, 28 September 2025.

Each landing-pad seems to be able to produce new flowers all through the summer. Another plant beloved by bees. 

It's native to tropical South America, but has no trouble growing here in the UK. In a mild winter even the above-ground stems may survive, enabling a speedier start next year. 

I'm not sure what British gardeners call it. We call it "those tall things" or "the Verbs" (relying on context because there are lots of other kinds of Verbena).

Late flowers on Raspberry (Rubus idaeus). Frome, 28 September 2025.

The raspberry canes under the swing-frame carry on gallantly.

Late fruit on Raspberry (Rubus idaeus). Frome, 28 September 2025.

Japanese Anemone. Frome, 28 September 2025.

Less invasive and a deeper pink than the other variety in the garden. It might be variety "Praecox" (apparently that means "precocious").

As for the botanical name, I'm not sure whether to call it Eriocapitella hupehensis (like the botanists) or Anemone hupehensis (like everyone else) or Anemone x hybrida -- but I believe the latter are usually double or semi-double. 

Young fruits on Common Fig (Ficus carica). Frome, 28 September 2025.

These are the fruits that will be ripe next summer. They've already been on the tree for a year or so. I always forget that initially they are technically flowers. 

Leaves of Geranium macrorrhizum. Frome, 28 September 2025.

If you understand botanical naming and know why there's a double R in the middle of macrorrhizum, please enlighten me!

Cyclamens. Frome, 28 September 2025.

Close-up of Red Valerian (Centranthus ruber). Frome, 28 September 2025.

This is the pinkish-purple form, apparently the only one of interest to butterflies, though bees eagerly visit all the colours. (However, since writing this I've noticed an early-season Holly Blue visiting the crimson form. Nature is never that simple!)

It still attracts a few visitors at this time of year: Large Whites, a Hummingbird Hawk-moth, late bees and bumble-bees.

Michaelmas Daisies. Frome, 28 September 2025.

The ever-expanding stand of Michaelmas Daisies. That's as far as I can go with ID. The biggish toothed leaves look distinctive, but Google Lens isn't being helpful. 

Garden bench. Frome, 28 September 2025.

One of the benches that become plant-stands in their rickety old age.  

Sedum, more colourful in fruit than in flower. Frome, 28 September 2025.

The botanical name is now Hylotelephium spectabile, but I think a lot of people will stick to "sedum", just as they'll call the scarlet plant in the previous pic a "geranium".

Late flowers on fuchsia. Frome, 28 September 2025.

Of course I don't know what variety it is. It's a large shrub, been here at least thirty years. 

The bees love it. However I've just learnt that in South America the pollinators are hummingbirds, and that red and purple is their favourite colour combination. 

Dewdrops on Lady's-mantle. Frome, 28 September 2025.

The always entrancing sight of dew forming large drops on the leaves of Lady's-mantle. It only happens on the fresh leaves. The older ones let the water seep away. 

Dewdrops on Lady's-mantle. Frome, 28 September 2025.

Lucky finds

Rayed form of Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra var. radiata), with unusual coloration. Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

A few interesting plants I've found around Frome recently.

These were on a rough roadside that I decided to explore after seeing a flash of yellow plants as I sped by. It was one of those roadsides that's easy to see from a car but more difficult to walk to, and it turned out that sandals was definitely the wrong footwear: the place was a minefield of dewberry and bramble. The yellow plants (St John's worts) didn't prove particularly interesting, or at any rate I didn't spend much time looking at them, having soon found other things to look at. 

This is an unusual coloration of the rayed form of Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra var. radiata).  I didn't even know there was a rayed form. More correctly, the "rays" are the enlarged outer florets, which in the British Isles usually characterize Greater Knapweed (C. scabiosa) and are also rather common on Slender Knapweed (C. debeauxii), but much less so on Black Knapweed.  Anyway, the rayed form is a thing, though local and scattered according to the BSBI map. I'd better put this on iRecord.

The normal coloration is below.

Rayed form of Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra var. radiata), with normal coloration. Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

The Swedish name for Black Knapweed is Svartklint.

It isn't native to Sweden and is extremely rare, with only casual records except in a few sites in Västra Götaland and Skåne. (Apparently it's relatively common in Norway.)

Information taken from this article in Borås Tidning:

https://www.bt.se/bollebygd/svartklint-en-unik-blomma-i-hultafors/

The usual knapweed in southern and central Sweden is Centaurea jacea (Brown Knapweed, Rödklint), which contrariwise is a rare neophyte in the British Isles. 

Anyway, here's some more of the fancy blooms:

Rayed form of Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra var. radiata), with unusual coloration. Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Rayed form of Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra var. radiata), with unusual coloration. Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Rayed form of Black Knapweed (Centaurea nigra var. radiata), with unusual coloration. Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

On the same roadside, some Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare).

Included here as a blatant excuse for a link to my post about Keats' marvellous poem Isabella, Or The Pot of Basil.

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-pot-of-basil.html

 ...  which of course concerns an entirely different species!

Below, the same plant in context.

Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Still on the same rough roadside, I started to notice groups of a tall grass, showing up as reddish in comparison to the intermingled False Oat-grass.

I didn't know what to make of it, but the consensus of the Facebook group (British and Irish Grasses ...etc) was that it was Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis, aka Bromus inermis).

I was a bit worried about the awns (after all, inermis means "awnless" in the context of grasses) but it turns out that Hungarian Brome sometimes has awns up to 3mm in length, like these ones did. And in the course of later poking about I did indeed find some awnless specimens. 

Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Short awns on spikelets of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Flowering spikelets on Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Leaves of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Leaves: rather light green, broad, basically flat but shallowly keeled below, midrib raised.

Ligule of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

Sheath of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

The leaf-sheaths were closed (not split), except just below collar.

Stem-node of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

The stems were hairless except at the nodes.

A mainly vegetative patch of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis). Roadside near Beckington, 7 July 2024.

The grass produces a lot of purely vegetative shoots, with the leaves quite closely packed in a sort of herringbone pattern. In some spots (above and below) I found it subsisting almost entirely as vegetative shoots.

I am not sure if I shouldn't be using the name Bromus inermis instead. According to one scheme, all Bromes (except False-brome) are treated as Bromus. 

In the other scheme there are four genera, listed here with some (but not all) of their differences. 

Bromus: annuals/biennials with short awns e.g. Soft Brome.

Anisantha: annuals/biennials with long awns e.g. Barren Brome.

Bromopsis: perennials with vegetative shoots,

e.g. the familiar native grasses Upright Brome (Bromopsis erecta) of chalk grassland and the gracefully drooping Hairy Brome (Bromopsis ramosa) of woodland.

Ceratochloa: perennials without vegetative shoots. All species in the British Isles are introductions: e.g. Rescue Brome, California Brome. 

Bromopsis inermis is native from Hungary all the way eastwards to China: a basic component of the grassland of the Great Steppe. It has been widely introduced for hay, pasture, habitat regeneration etc. In N America numerous cultivars have been developed, e.g. suited to different growing conditions in the north and south. It is invasive and has become one of the commonest grass weeds in the USA. Much more scattered in the British Isles, where it's no longer used as a fodder grass. Another one for iRecord....

It's a similar story in Sweden where Foderlosta ("fodder brome") was first tried in the 1930s but never really caught on. 

Vegetative shoots of Hungarian Brome (Bromopsis inermis), growing through a bramble thicket. Roadside near Beckington, 9 July 2024.

Pale Toadflax (Linaria repens). Frome, 2 July 2024.

Let's go into town. 

Here's a dozen plants of Pale Toadflax (Linaria repens) growing out of a concrete tree-base in the car-park of ASDA. 

Not recorded before in Frome, yet very familiar-looking to me, I suppose from seeing lots of it in Spain where it's a native species. 

I had the same feeling of familiarity when I saw it last summer in Sweden where, as here, it's an introduction. (The Swedish name is Strimsporre.)

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2023/08/august-around-stockholm.html

Pale Toadflax (Linaria repens). Frome, 2 July 2024.

Cave Hawkweed (Hieracium speluncarum). Frome, 11 July 2024.

On Manor Road trading estate, Frome. The luck in this case is not about finding this glorious patch of furry-leaved Hawkweeds (I've watched it for maybe twenty years) but about finding someone who could actually identify the species. I posted pictures on the Facebook group Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland, Tim Rich noticed the unusual feature of clasping leaves, and along with the numerous glandular hairs he had it nailed as Hieracium speluncarum, sometimes called Cave Hawkweed.

Records are very scattered, but as it happens there are several from around here. It has been seen in the disused quarry at Vallis, just a couple of miles from this spot. Also in Nunney (2002), and in Mells (an old record from 1905).

Hieracium speluncarum is reckoned an introduction to the British Isles (a garden escape according to Sell and Murrell). It's known to occur in urban locations. For example it's apparently quite common on the walls of Maastricht in the Netherlands. 

Over the years this patch has been gradually spreading, colonizing stony substrate and low dividing walls. I'd guess there are about 300 plants now, some in smaller patches nearby. There's probably more in areas of the trading estate that are not accessible to the public. 

Clasping stem-leaves and glandular hairs on Cave Hawkweed (Hieracium speluncarum). Frome, 11 July 2024.

Cave Hawkweed (Hieracium speluncarum). Frome, 11 July 2024.

Cave Hawkweed (Hieracium speluncarum). Frome, 11 July 2024.

Basal leaves of Cave Hawkweed (Hieracium speluncarum). Frome, 11 July 2024.

Cave Hawkweed (Hieracium speluncarum). Frome, 11 July 2024.

The beginning of June

Armenian Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus). Frome, 3 June 2024.

A vast bramble thicket in Frome beside the river, and the bees were going absolutely crazy.

Blackberries (Rubus fructicosus agg.) nearly always reproduce by apomixis: the gene-bearing part of the seed is produced asexually and the offspring are clones of the parent plant. Nearly always, pollen is not used to fertilize the ovule.

Nevertheless insect pollination is required to set viable seed, in particular to stimulate the formation of the endosperm (the seed's food bank). This is called "pseudogamous apomixis", because pollination is required. 

Some other habitual apomicts, such as dandelions and hawkweeds, apparently don't need insect visitors. (Nevertheless bees often visit dandelion flowers.)

The effect of apomixis is to throttle down genetic variation. New DNA combinations occur, but only rarely. 

Instead clonally identical family lines can be discerned and each can be treated as a species ("microspecies"),  e.g. from the point of view of ecology, habit, habitat, distribution etc.

Yet they are unlike species in two huge respects. 1. All individuals within a microspecies are clones with identical DNA. In a normal species there is DNA variation. 2. A species normally delimits a population which is preferential for sexual reproduction. But in this case sexual reproduction, when it occurs, is presumably just as likely to occur between different microspecies as between members of the same microspecies. 

[All this is what I've laboriously worked out from asking the experts and reading stuff online. I could easily have got something wrong, or stated something with more confidence than it really merits.]

This particular bramble microspecies is Rubus armeniacus, native to Armenia and N Iran. It ought to be called Armenian Blackberry but is more commonly (and inaccurately) called Himalayan Blackberry. It's invasive in the British Isles, especially in urban environments, where it's easy to recognize because of its vigour and size. 

It has spread widely in Sweden too (Sw: Armeniskt Björnbär), competing with native blackberries in those parts of the country where brambles can grow at all (the south and west coast, basically).

Armenian Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus). Frome, 3 June 2024.

Nipplewort (Lapsana communis). Frome, 3 June 2024.

Nipplewort (Lapsana communis) by the river. The English name refers to the shape of the buds. In accordance with the "doctrine of signatures" the plant was once used to treat cracked and bruised nipples.

The Swedish name is "Harkål" ("Hare-cabbage").

The young leaves are certainly edible by humans. I have no idea if they appeal to hares.

Wall Lettuce (Lactuca muralis). Frome, 3 June 2024.

Wall Lettuce (Lactuca muralis), appropriately growing on a wall. 

I always associate it with the preceding species, I suppose because both have small dandelion-like flowers, are similar-size plants and flower at the same time. 

But only a rank beginner could confuse them, even for a moment.... well, that was me in 1982.

The upper stem and buds of Wall Lettuce are usually a rich dark purple-red but I've seen photos where they're green (like Nipplewort). So also check the dissimilar leaf-shapes and the flowers of Wall Lettuce having only five straps, whereas Nipplewort flowers have about a dozen.

Wall Lettuce is edible (young leaves and shoots). Like all lettuces, it becomes much less palatable when it flowers.

Swedish name: Skogssallat (Wood Lettuce).... common as far north as Gästrikland, present though rare further north.

Leaves of Nipplewort (left) and Wall Lettuce (right)

Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). Frome, 3 June 2024.

Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). Lots of pods, and a couple of final flowers.

In the British Isles it's an archaeophyte (ancient introduction). It's toxic, but was valued for medicinal use. Originally for eye impairment; Dioscorides reports the legend that swallows used it to cure their young of blindness. As often happens with already available medicines it was then co-opted for numerous unrelated uses. Fans of the doctrine of signatures decided that the yellow latex made it a good treatment for jaundice.

A useful history:

Sylwia Zielińska et al., "Greater Celandine's Ups and Downs−21 Centuries of Medicinal Uses of Chelidonium majus From the Viewpoint of Today's Pharmacology", Frontiers in Pharmacology 9 299 (2018).

Swedish name: Skelört ("Swallow-wort"), also sometimes Svalört.

[To be pedantically comprehensive, the plant known in English as White Swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum hirundinaria) is called Tulkört in Swedish. "Tulk" is thought to mean a wading bird such as turnstone or redshank (SAOB Tolk).]

Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii). Frome, 5 June 2024.

A single Common Spotted Orchid that's turned up on a Frome trading estate.

The Swedish name is Skogsnycklar ("Wood keys"). In Sweden it's considered a subspecies of Heath Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza maculata, Sw: Jungfru Marie nycklar ("Virgin Mary keys")).

Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii). Frome, 5 June 2024.

More flowers of the Torrevieja coast

I've been in Torrevieja, near Alicante, for a week at the beginning of March, and of course I've taken a few snaps of the common early flowers. 

I don't promise to identify them all. My guide over here is Wild Flowers of the Mediterranean by Marjorie Blamey and Christopher Grey-Wilson (1988), a book I don't often have much joy with.

The yellow plant above is a case in point. It must be the commonest wild flower round here, but I still don't know what it is. Here's some more pics of it.

It's a scrambly sort of plant. The leaves are pinnate with narrow, backward-pointing lobes. Some have clasping leaf-bases, flamboyantly pointed. The stems are fairly slender, solid and the ones I examined were basically hairless.

Hairless, that is, except for this distinctive white felty stuff at the base of the involucre and at stem-nodes.

The backs of the ray-florets are sometimes reddish, sometimes just a bit dingy.

Anyway, with the help of online image searches I've nailed it. It's Slender Sow-thistle (Sonchus tenerrimus). I think I was put off by Grey-Wilson describing the species as "often local". I'm sure that's true, from a pan-Mediterranean perspective. But round here it grows just about everywhere.

A smallish broom-like plant, flowers just starting on 2 March. Maybe Dyer's Greenweed (Genista tinctoria), a plant I last saw in a Sussex meadow 35 years ago.

A Stork's-bill. I'll have a guess at Erodium chium. (Other leaves I've seen are more distinctly lobed than the ones in this pic.)

Well this one's easy at least. It's the ridiculously pretty blue form of Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), with hairy margins to petals.

Blue-leaved Wattle (Acacia cyanophylla), native to W. Australia. A major part of the coastal scenery at this time of year.

Pretty confident this is Euphorbia segetalis, though I wish Grey-Wilson had been more specific about the height than "short". Anyway, it's a common spurge round here.

[I should say, I was pretty confident. These plants must be about 50cm, taller than most heights quoted online for E. segetalis (though they're a mixed bag). Also these plants don't look like annuals to me.]

The vicious fruits of Small Caltrops aka Maltese Cross (Tribulus terrestris). I picked them out of my hand after steadying myself to photograph the spurge.

More about caltrops:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/01/thomas-middleton-women-beware-women.html

Unopened male flowers of the local pine (Aleppo Pine, Pinus halepensis).

More about it here:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/11/aleppo-pine.html

Bermuda Buttercup (Oxalis pes-caprae). Introduced from South Africa to Malta in c. 1806, and soon a common sight around most of the Med, spreading vegetatively to form dense patches.

Yellow Sea Aster (Asteriscus maritimus), growing on a cliff wall.

It has other names. More about it here:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2016/03/asteriscus-maritimus.html

Don't know. It's very common, though. Every time I flick through Marjorie Blamey's pictures I hover over Urospermum dalechampii but that's supposed to be sulphur yellow and have backward-pointing leaf lobes, so no.

(Oh, I'd forgotten, I went through all this before. It's Reichardia tingitana.)

Purple Viper's Bugloss (Echium plantagineum)... I think. One of the commonest plants round here. You can find it at almost all times of year, but March is when it looks prettiest.

(It's also in the pic at the top of the post.)

Growing on the close-mown promenade at Mar Azul. A medick, maybe Medicago littoralis.

 

I was on my own this time, so there was a relative flood of reading.  I dived into a Spanish book that I'd bought the last time I was over, the Penguin Clásicos edition of El sí de las niñas by Leandro Fernández de Moratín, a comedy from 1806. I wrote about it in a separate post: 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/03/el-si-de-las-ninas.html

When I'd mopped up all possible entertainment value from Moratín's play I switched over to Swedish, a genre novel I picked up in a charity shop, Klar Himmel by Kristin Fägerskjöld. This was her first novel (2020); I think she's up to her fourth now. It's a saga, multiple times and narrators, revolving around three women during WW2 and a dark secret, set partly in Sweden and partly in England, just the thing for expanding my vocabulary. My Swedish is now at about the same level as my French: I relish an easy novel, but literary novels remain forbidding. I read more slowly and hence with more interest than if I was reading the same kind of book in English. (Consequently, I'm learning quite a bit about what life was like in Sweden and England in 1941.)

Reading Swedish being hard work for me, needing regular breathers, I spent more time than usual looking at the cover. It's a collage, bombers flying overhead while a girl in a summer dress walks her bike idyllically. That seems to allude to Léonie's bike rides in Lincolnshire, and it's her dress (red with white spots), but she would have been in uniform. I think the girl must represent all the female leads at once, and above all the reader, entering and delighting in the world of the novel. (The leads themselves are keen readers, always looking for a quiet corner.)

I spent a bit of time wondering about the leaves, too. I don't recognize them; not a European tree, I'm thinking. Shutterstock creates strange new worlds. 

Mind you, when Léonie arrives on her bike at the old ruin in the spring of 1944, "the daffodils and goldenrods competed to see which were the most numerous..." That feels a bit like a collage, too.

*

Meanwhile, I finally managed to finish off a post that's taken me forever, about Scott's inexhaustible novel The Heart of Midlothian. 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/02/sir-walter-scott-heart-of-midlothian.html

Torrevieja is a multi-lingual sort of place, and you hear a lot of Nordic languages being spoken. The first euros I made, I was singing Den första gång jag såg dig ... I was delighted to finally add a new currency to my income history, to go with sterling and kronor. I've been trying when in Europe the last couple of years, but never found the right place and time. Superficially, conditions didn't seem ideal here either, down on the seafront, which was windy all week (I don't use any amplification, so wind, crashing waves and traffic are major considerations). Nevertheless, something unlocked in the cosmos and people started coming over, the coins came and even one note. 

I cycled and ran but never felt like getting into the chilly sea. I made a batch of vegetable soup and mostly ate dinner in. But who could come here and resist tostada-tomate for breakfast, the occasional napolitana, the occasional krakauer...? My diary summarizes: Went to Bar El Botijo a few times, Elite a couple of times, Marco Polo (the one on C/ Scorpiones, handy for after shopping at Consum), El Carmen once, LaZia upstairs twice while using the launderette, Zenia Boulevard Bombon Boss twice, Miño (Av/ Desiderio Rodriguez) three times when heading Torrev direction. Andrea's bratwurst stall and our favoured restaurant whose name I think is Gelateria Italiana, though it's somewhat vague. (It's really a food place, with a German flavour to the menu; they stopped selling ice cream altogether when the electricity prices went mad, though I think it's back on now.)

Some other posts from visits to Torrevieja,  including some of the same plants...

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2019/03/spanish-reveries.html

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2016/03/more-march-flowers-from-torrevieja-coast.html