14/5: Jay seen from train window in cutting just west of Barnehurst station. An infrequent species in the area. Brooms in flower towards Bexleyheath. Very dark-flowered Lilac before Falconwood (most 'escapes' are pale-flowered forms).
15/5: Holly Blue butterfly in the garden, Wood Mouse in the compost heap. The native Broom deliberately planted in the garden is flowering well.
18/5: Holly Blue in the garden again. An adult Common Frog after dark.
19/5: Brown Rat on edge of old Pitch and Putt course by Bursted Wood. Several Swedish Whitebeam saplings (from street tree seed, no doubt) in the wood. Thyme-leaved Speedwell and a couple of the umbellifer Pignut (where the grass hasn't been cut around Daffodils) in the grassy area between Erith Rd and the hospital turn-off, Bursted Wood.
Showing posts with label Thyme-leaved Speedwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thyme-leaved Speedwell. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Monday, 26 April 2010
26/4/10 Gravel Hill, Hall Place and south of the Dartford Loop Line
A male Chaffinch was seen at the Erith Rd edge of Bursted Wood.
Some Brooms were in flower on the south-facing railway embankment just west of the Erith Rd bridge over the railway line.
A Red-tailed Bumblebee was the only insect around a strip of flowering Berberis darwinii at the junction of Highland Rd and Albion Rd, Bexleyheath.
A rather wayward pair of Mallard came down on a grass verge in Rossland Close, at the junction with Gravel Hill.
A Green Woodpecker was feeding along the shrub line at the top of the hill at Hall Place North (the parkland on the east side of Gravel Hill). At the bottom of the hill, near Bourne Rd, Thyme-leaved Speedwell - just coming into flower - was intermingled with Germander Speedwell. There was also some Slender Speedwell nearby.
In the newish shrub beds at the south east corner of the extended Hall Place car park parallel to Bourne Rd, there were 12 Common Fumitory growing up through the bark mulch, and not quite in flower yet. As far as I have been able to determine so far, this is a very infrequent plant, in the east of the Borough at any rate. No way were they going to overwhelm or inhibit the shrub planting, but it wasn't long before someone weeded them all out anyway...... A typicallly unintelligent, unimaginative and inflexible approach to vegetation management.
An attempt has been made to 'soften' the appalling car park recently built by the east side of the walled garden, and running right down to the river, with a couple of bits of ditch and an over-densely planted jumble of shrubs, full of natives, but some of them not indigenous to the local area. Is the assumption that half of them will die off?
Apart from the litter that had inevitably been blown - or thrown - into the ditches, and left there, there was a Grey Wagtail in one of them (and a Pied Wagtail on the roof of a building in the walled garden). Also several Celery-leaved Crowfoot just above the rather low water line. Here also, presumably brought in on the tyres of digging machinery, was a single plant of Shining Cranesbill (Geranium lucidum), my first record of it in Bexley, indeed in London south of the Thames.
Finds in the scrubby area (called The Old Orchard on one map I have) that is immediatly south of the railway opposite Hall Place, and on the east side of the A2, included the following (I haven't been here since I was a teenager in the 70s. My recollection - I have photos somewhere - is that is was then much more open, and people used to dig a Victorian (?) rubbish tip there for old bottles):
Rabbits
Dunnock
Long-tailed Tit
Pink-flowered, purplish-leaved Cherry (derived from garden cultivar)
Gorse
Broom
Marjoram
Hemlock
Ground Ivy
Hop
Some Brooms were in flower on the south-facing railway embankment just west of the Erith Rd bridge over the railway line.
A Red-tailed Bumblebee was the only insect around a strip of flowering Berberis darwinii at the junction of Highland Rd and Albion Rd, Bexleyheath.
A rather wayward pair of Mallard came down on a grass verge in Rossland Close, at the junction with Gravel Hill.
A Green Woodpecker was feeding along the shrub line at the top of the hill at Hall Place North (the parkland on the east side of Gravel Hill). At the bottom of the hill, near Bourne Rd, Thyme-leaved Speedwell - just coming into flower - was intermingled with Germander Speedwell. There was also some Slender Speedwell nearby.
In the newish shrub beds at the south east corner of the extended Hall Place car park parallel to Bourne Rd, there were 12 Common Fumitory growing up through the bark mulch, and not quite in flower yet. As far as I have been able to determine so far, this is a very infrequent plant, in the east of the Borough at any rate. No way were they going to overwhelm or inhibit the shrub planting, but it wasn't long before someone weeded them all out anyway...... A typicallly unintelligent, unimaginative and inflexible approach to vegetation management.
An attempt has been made to 'soften' the appalling car park recently built by the east side of the walled garden, and running right down to the river, with a couple of bits of ditch and an over-densely planted jumble of shrubs, full of natives, but some of them not indigenous to the local area. Is the assumption that half of them will die off?
Apart from the litter that had inevitably been blown - or thrown - into the ditches, and left there, there was a Grey Wagtail in one of them (and a Pied Wagtail on the roof of a building in the walled garden). Also several Celery-leaved Crowfoot just above the rather low water line. Here also, presumably brought in on the tyres of digging machinery, was a single plant of Shining Cranesbill (Geranium lucidum), my first record of it in Bexley, indeed in London south of the Thames.
Finds in the scrubby area (called The Old Orchard on one map I have) that is immediatly south of the railway opposite Hall Place, and on the east side of the A2, included the following (I haven't been here since I was a teenager in the 70s. My recollection - I have photos somewhere - is that is was then much more open, and people used to dig a Victorian (?) rubbish tip there for old bottles):
Rabbits
Dunnock
Long-tailed Tit
Pink-flowered, purplish-leaved Cherry (derived from garden cultivar)
Gorse
Broom
Marjoram
Hemlock
Ground Ivy
Hop
Monday, 3 August 2009
3/8/09: Barnehurst and Bexleyheath botany
Knopper Galls on Pedunculate Oak on the north edge of Bursted Wood indicates that there is a Turkey oak nearby, as the gall wasp responsible needs both species.
Dogs Mercury was noted by the south east corner of Bursted Wood school field, where a Fox was out and about in daylight following the hedge line.
Within the hospital grounds here was a small patch of Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella officinarum), which I've so far only found in small amounts in a few scattered loactions in the north west of Bexley Borough.
There was a plant of Black Nightshade in Lavernock Rd.
A number of Robinia pseudoacacia saplings were growing under a hedge in the graveyard of St. John's, Bexleyheath.
The usual assemblage of plants for closely mown grass was in evidence aroound the youth club at the junction of Oakhouse/Highland/Albion Rds, including Buck's-horn Plantain, along with some 'relics' of cultivation such as Sedum (probably album) and Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias). There were 3 White Campion. Also Hoary Cress in a nearby shrub bed.
If I'm to add to my lists and make them more comprehensive for given sites, I need to get my head around Compositae. So I got the book out on some tall, distinctive-looking specimens on a 'raised bed' on the south side of Albion Rd. There were several plants, and they were identified as Perennial Sow-thistle (Sonchus arvensis).
Dogs Mercury was noted by the south east corner of Bursted Wood school field, where a Fox was out and about in daylight following the hedge line.
Within the hospital grounds here was a small patch of Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella officinarum), which I've so far only found in small amounts in a few scattered loactions in the north west of Bexley Borough.
There was a plant of Black Nightshade in Lavernock Rd.
A number of Robinia pseudoacacia saplings were growing under a hedge in the graveyard of St. John's, Bexleyheath.
The usual assemblage of plants for closely mown grass was in evidence aroound the youth club at the junction of Oakhouse/Highland/Albion Rds, including Buck's-horn Plantain, along with some 'relics' of cultivation such as Sedum (probably album) and Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias). There were 3 White Campion. Also Hoary Cress in a nearby shrub bed.
If I'm to add to my lists and make them more comprehensive for given sites, I need to get my head around Compositae. So I got the book out on some tall, distinctive-looking specimens on a 'raised bed' on the south side of Albion Rd. There were several plants, and they were identified as Perennial Sow-thistle (Sonchus arvensis).
Perennial Sow-thistle, Albion Rd, Bexleyheath. There were a couple more on Watling Street, outside the former Woolwich Building Society premises. There was a single specimen of Meadow Buttercup (Ranunculus acris) in flower on the Erith Rd side, a species that appears to be infrequent hereabouts.A mosaic-variegated Sycamore sapling was growing out of the hedge round Gravel Hill Primary School (I saw another in a hedge round Russell Park some weeks ago)
Spotted Medick was amongst the species in the grass verge on Epsom Close, and there were two specimens of Sun Spurge on the 'island' in Midfield Parade, Barnehurst. A heather, in flower, was growing out of a split old sack of compost (presumably peat) outside the hardware shop here.
Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) was noticed in flower in a lawn on Hillingdon Rd, only my third or fourth record in the Borough of Bexley.
I'd recorded the Himalayan Balsam in a front garden by the path off Northall Rd to Barnehurst station last year, but the collapse of the brick wall since now revealed Common Calamint, a couple of plants of which had now seeded into the wall/tarmac crack along the edge of the public side of the path. This is my second record of the species after finding a few in Martens Grove recently.
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