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.

11/4/10: Some west London wildflowers

Some notes from the journey to, and a long wander after, a London Natural History Society meeting:

Three, possibly 4 Mahonia aquifolium seen by the railway between Queenstown Road and west of Isleworth station.

Hounslow - A White Bryony in a front garden in Station Rd. Sun Spurge and Hemlock in a garden on Hibernia Rd., and several Greater Celandine and Geranium rotundifolium on a vacant lot at the Staines Rd end of this street.

Bridge Rd - Ivy-leaved Speedwell, Black Horehound, Spotted Medick.

Twickenham Rd. - Green Alkanet and Dandelion pictured enlivening a street corner:



Syon Park - lots of Tansy along a fence line, Ox-eye Daisy and Sorrel by the roadway from the Park Rd. entrance. A few Crow Garlic and Pellitory-of-the-Wall by the lane leading to the eastern London Rd. entrance.

This large Barbarea sp. at the foot of a London Rd. street tree. There were also several Sun Spurge here:


Bank with a large population of Common Stork's-bill (Erodium cicutarium), north side of West Rd., just east of Syon Lane:



Closer view of one of the plants:

On a somewhat bare, slightly-raised, roadside bed just past Harlequin Av. were Buck's-horn Plantain and Danish Scurvy Grass - the latter pictured here:

23/3/10: Dartford throws up my first local record of Danish Scurvy Grass

First noted under the crash barrier along Bob Dunn Way (just over the border from London in Dartford Borough) on 10th March, I was able to confirm the identity of Danish Scurvy Grass (Cochlearia danica), a small native member of the cabbage family that is salt-tolerant and naturally inhabits marshes and sandy areas. The leaves tend to be slightly ivy-shaped. Some plants were now in flower, with a slight lavender tinge to the petals, and there was a lot of it, all the way from the Thames Rd junction to the crossing of the Darent.

The one place I found it in Bristol was in the central reservation of a modest dual carriageway, and another local recorder there who had a particular interest in its distribution said most of his records were from along motorways in the area, so this Dartford record - my first for my 'local-ish patch' fits the same pattern for inland colonisation.