Adder's-tongue and Orange-tip

With today's weather resembling a particularly feisty day in November, it seems like a good time to bring out a few recent images.


Seth Gibson had found a good sized colony of Adder's-tongue on Epsom Common a few years ago, (which I had miserably failed to locate), so when he mentioned that he had come across another patch I was more than keen to take up on his kind offer of showing them to me. And what a patch! Several thousand plants, to be exact, on an area of ground that has been recently cleared for the benefit of the wildlife of the common. It works! Many of them were not exhibiting a spike, and my attempts to get a decent close up of a plant that had one ended in failure, so you will have to make do with the image above. We also visited the original site and can report that they are still present in good numbers. My thanks to Seth for another enlightening tour of his beloved common.


Orange-tip at rest - is there a better butterfly underwing pattern in the UK? I doubt it...

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