About this Blog

This blog reflects our twin interests in walking and natural history, especially botany.



"Ich wandle unter Blumen

Und blühe selber mit ..."

Heinrich Heine





Walking is important to us as a way of being in direct touch with the environment, experiencing species and habitats in their ecological and historical context. By walking between different flower sites we experience the character of the general countryside, getting to know as much where flowers are not as where they are. Walking allows for the serendipitous - chance encounters with animals, meetings with local people, unexpected species - which enrich the experience.

We set up this blog to share a variety of mainly day-long walks centred on "iconic" flower sites and locations of rare plants, where these are publicly accessible. The accounts include descriptions of the routes taken, key plants seen, other wildlife encountered, and anything of general environmental or historical interest. All the walks allow time for looking around (some flowers need searching for), photography etc, and usually include a half-way stop for refreshment at some suitable establishment. The walks are seasonal, depending on the flowering/fruiting times of different species, although one cannot hit the peak time for all species seen on one walk, and the best timings will vary from year to year. Lengths vary but the walks may be anything up to 12 miles or more, so an early start is recommended.



A certain knowledge of our flora is assumed, but those less familiar should be able to identify most of the plants mentioned with the help of one of the good field guides - Blamey, Fitter and Fitter Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland (A&C Black) or Francis Rose The Wild Flower Key (Warne) - although occasionally recourse may be needed to more technical tomes such as Clive Stace New Flora of the British Isles (Cambridge) or the specialist volumes published by BSBI (Botanical Society of the British Isles) on grasses, sedges, umbellifers etc.



While examining plants it is interesting to note the galls, leaf-mines and fungi (rusts etc) that are often specific to particular taxa. For galls we use Redfern and Shirley British Plant Galls, for leaf-mines http://www.ukflymines.co.uk/ (which also includes lepidopteran and other mines), and for fungi Ellis and Ellis Microfungi on Land Plants, although this is a technical tome rather than a field guide.

Our completed walk around the coast and borders of England is described on http://www.coastwalking.blogspot.co.uk/ and our current walk around the coast of Wales is on http://www.coastwalkwales.blogspot.co.uk/




Friday, 8 July 2011

Buckinghamshire: Bledlow Lyde

22 April 2011                                 OS SP7702
Length: 1 hour
This is a short gentle walk particularly to see opposite-leaved golden saxifrage, which is rare in most of Bucks.  The Lyde Gardens were created by Lord Carrington from three watercress beds formerly established on the River Lyde, a tributary of the Thame. They are open every day from 8am to dusk and entrance is free.  It is a very sheltered, cool and restful place - a unique habitat for Buckinghamshire – in which to spend time walking among the flowers, plants and mosses.
We parked in the main street in Bledlow near the church.  The entrance to the narrow steeply-banked public garden is just to the east of the church in Bledlow, which had a good many primroses Primula vulgaris in the churchyard.  We descended to the cool, shady stream, alongside which is a long calcareous seep maintaining a permanently wet bank.  Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage Chrysosplenium oppositifolium grows abundantly on this seep and lower banks along the stream.  It shares its habitat mainly with lesser celandine Ficaria verna, wavy bittercress Cardamine flexuosa, hartstongue fern Phyllitis scolopendrium, and enchanter’s nightshade Circaea lutetiana.  The site was planted with various primulas, astilbes and hostas and its many interesting exotics include Gunnera and Lysichiton by the stream.  Most of the drier banks, however, have been completely covered by the invasive creeping comfrey Symphytum grandiflorum. 

The spring area, Lyde Gardens

Opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage

Gunnera

American skunk-cabbage
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