An autumn viola

Langley Vale Farm has been very kind to us Surrey naturalists this year, with plenty of arable gems appearing in the very few places left for them to do so. 95% of the farm has now been harvested, so with stubble to check for lingering plants I spent Saturday afternoon up hill and down dale.

Quite a way from any public footpath I stumbled across two flowering Viola plants - had this been woodland in March I would have walked right past, but this being mid-September and arable farmland, my alarm bells started to ring. Could they be Wild Pansy (Viola tricolor)?

Truth is, I don't know. I've read up about them and have so far been warned about variable leaf shape, variable petal colour and the likelihood of hybrids and garden through-outs. But if, after looking at the images below, you have an opinion, I'd be pleased to know.



Comments

Simon Douglas Thompson said…
VEry pretty, it's so good to find colour in autumn
20 September 2015 at 21:56
Derek Faulkner said…
Steve,
If I was pressed to make a choice it would be between Common Dog Violet and Sweet Violet, they seem to be the only two that, after Spring, have a second flowering in Aug-Sept.
21 September 2015 at 11:16
Steve Gale said…
Thanks Derek, I wasn't aware that the early spring flowering violets sometimes have a second flowering at this time of year. I live and learn...
21 September 2015 at 18:06
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Kwowww"

On Tuesday evening, at 20.05hrs, I was taking out the rubbish, when I heard a call from south-west of the house. I froze, knowing what it was at once, but scarcely believing it. I had listened to this call on Xeno-Canto many times, getting ready for such a moment but not really considering it something that I would hear over the back garden. After 15 seconds the call came again from the blackness, now directly over head. Yes, there was no mistaking it! Another 20 seconds it called a third time - now further away to the north-east... "Kwowww" A lazy drawl, part bark, part yelp. A Bittern. Nocturnal flight-call. I went back inside and played the call on Xeno Canto just to make sure that I had remembered everything correctly. I had. Bloody hell, a Bittern over suburban Banstead! And only a week after an Arctic Skua had blessed me just a mile or so away. Sometimes the birding Gods do smile on you. To some birders these two species are just small fry, mere starters to the main cou
Read more

Mike Netherwood

Image
I first met Mike Netherwood at Beddington Sewage Farm in early 1975, me being an ultra-keen and ultra-green 16-year old birder, he some 20 years my senior. Mike, together with Ken Parsley, were the remnants of a once much larger ringing group which carried out the trapping and ringing of birds across the open expanse of the sewage farm. Whenever I bumped into them, which I often did, they would both tolerate my many questions about what they had seen and trapped and listen to me waxing lyrical about my own observations. Over the coming months they showed me how they caught the birds, allowed me to witness the ringing and measuring of them and, if I were very lucky, allow me to help them out by holding mist-net poles, carrying bird bags or writing down (scribing) the data that they were collecting into notebooks. By the summer of 1976 I had joined them, proudly in possession of my trainee ringer's permit. For the next three years (until I 'defected' to Dungeness) I spent man
Read more

To tell it like it is, or not...

Image
I am grateful to Gavin Haig (Not Quite Scilly) who drew my attention to an opinion piece, penned by Matt Phelps, which appeared in the November issue of 'Birdwatch' magazine, entitled 'Positive Approach', which I have now read. In it, he suggests that there is too much negativity being posted on social media regarding the state of our birding world, which is then acting as a deterrent towards a younger generation in adopting conservation and wildlife study. He also suggests that a lot of this negativity is being generated by older birders, and that these old timers keep banging on about the 'good old days' which isn't helpful in encouraging the youth to pick up a pair of binoculars and get out into the field. Does he have a point? Now, I am undeniably an older birder, and I am also guilty of having posted, blogged, written and spoken about the slump in bird and invertebrate numbers. I also like nothing better than to revisit my notebooks and share in the hi
Read more