A forest of Green Hound's-tongue


Green Hound's-tongue is a rare plant of restricted range - however, there are a few places where it can be common, such as Brockham, at the foot of the North Downs (not far from Box Hill). Within its range, this species will appear in good number where there has been some woodland edge clearing, and this is the case at Brockham. This morning there were at least 1,000 plants spread along a 100m stretch (and going 15m into the wood). It was the commonest species within this area and boasted some of the largest and most 'flowered' specimens that I have seen. Most of the open ground had individual plants generously spaced out, but in one or two places over 100 plants were crowded together. I do not doubt that a thorough search of the area would reveal many more...



Comments

dmcjournal said…
You seem to be getting surrounded by Green Hound's-tongue and Seth by Ramsons, knowing my luck I expect to end up surrounded by Triffids!
9 May 2017 at 17:40
Steve Gale said…
But Trffid would be a lifer David!
9 May 2017 at 18:25
Derek Faulkner said…
Went to see the Messiah in London last night for the umpteenth time - Bob Dylan - and he was brilliant.
10 May 2017 at 10:06
Steve Gale said…
Glad to hear that His Bobness was on top of his game
10 May 2017 at 10:36
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more