Soooo many flowers! Here’s a few I’ve found recently round Paulerspury and Pury End. Hurry on out there, summer will be over before we know it.

Common Spotted Orchid

Orchids! Here! Oh yes! See these beautiful native orchids the wild flower meadows beside the path from the Plumpton End road through the Wakefield Estate. The path is open until 30th June (refresh yourself at the ArTEA Rooms in Wakefield Country Courtyard before you saunter back).

Yellow Rattle

Surrounding these orchids are swathes of Yellow Rattle. This plant partly feeds off the roots of other plants and reduces the fertility of the meadow. Our native wild flowers sometimes find it hard to win the battle for light and food in a fertile field but the Yellow Rattle gives them the chance to thrive. More varied wildflowers attract different insects and nature wins all round. Yellow Rattle gets it’s name because when the seeds dry up in the pod they rattle, simples!

Red Clover

More meadow mayhem! The second part of Red Clover’s Latin name, pratense, comes from the Latin word pratum, meaning meadow. This plant teams up with certain bacteria to change nitrogen from the air into a fertilizer in the soil. Farmers sometimes grow Red Clover as a crop and plough it back into the soil as a green fertilizer.

Herb Robert

Have a rummage in the hedgerows to find this one. At the end of their life the leaves turn red. Crush a leaf between your fingers and sniff, does it smell like burning tyres or is that just me?

Common Mouse-Ear

A teeny-weeny little plant, its flowers are just 6-10mm across. Stick your nose down close to the grassy verges or meadows and you might just spot it!

Dog Rose

Tadah! A rose in our ‘Rose of the Shires’. These are tumbling everywhere through our hedgerows now. Look closely and you will already see the rose hip fruit developing behind the flower, a reminder of how quickly the seasons pass.

… And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; …

William Shakespeare

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