9/5/10: From Sidcup to Hall Place North, via the Shuttle

Long walk back home from a celebratory Bexley Green Party post-election meal in Sidcup High Street. We got badly squeezed almost everywhere - but hey, we've got our first MP.

Some of the 'usual', but less frequent Bexley grass verge suspects along Station Rd - Buck's-horn Plantain, Bird's-foot Trefoil, Self Heal and Spotted Medick.

A Stinking Iris (possibly 'self sown') behind Sidcup station 'up' platform.

Hurst Rd - a Hart's-tongue Fern on Holy Trinity church, Lamorbey, and Thale Cress in the yard.

Field Madder in flower in a verge at the corner of Greenwood Close.

Pleasing sight of a mass of Cuckoo Flower in the lawn of a garden on Hurst Road - such a change from the usual car-parking / standard 'planting' / excessive mowing.

A Greater Celandine in the grounds of Hurst Community Centre.

Bexley Park Wood - good view of a Green Woodpecker. Bush Vetch (below) in flower by the River Shuttle near Parkhill Rd. Also here were Wood Dock and Hedge Woundwort (appears infrequent in the parts of the Borough I've botanised so far).

Bush Vetch (Vicia sepium)

Riverdale Rd alongside the River Shuttle

4 Long-tailed Tits were chasing each other in Riverdale Rd. Alder and a bunch of plants common to the Borough were along the river.

There were Greater Celandine in two gardens on Love Lane, and at least 7 Ranunculus acris - apparently the less common of the three common buttercup species hereabouts - outside the Royal Mail office on Bourne Rd.

At the bottom of the steps down from Bourne Rd to the A2, on the Hall Place side, was a lot of Danish Scurvy Grass. Further along the edge of the A2 were a lot of Geranium pyrenaicum , and a long strip of Tansy - again only occasionally found in these parts - north of the crossing of the River Cray. Also a Fennel.

The scrubland east of the A2 and south of Hall Place and the railway line from Bexley to Crayford - one map I have labels this as 'The Old Orchard'

This red-purple leaved garden cultivar-derived Prunus was just finishing flowering here

4 Rabbits were seen on this site today.

The Common Fumitory had been weeded out of the Hall Place shrub beds by over-zealous gardeners. What harm was it doing? There was a patch of Mouse-ear Hawkweed at the bottom of the Hall place North slope, near the tree line by Bourne Rd.