Walks among Flowers: Berkshire: Blewburton Hill and neighbouring villages

22 July 2013

All day OS map 174 Newbury & Wantage

We parked next to St. Mary's Church in the village of Upton SU515870. The churchyard has several yews Taxus baccata.

St. Mary's Churchyard, Upton

On the external wall of the churchyard were pellitory-of-the-wall Parietaria judaica, black horehound Ballota nigra, wall barley Hordeum murinum, red valerian Centranthus ruber, prickly lettuce Lactuca serriola and fox and cubs in seed Pilosella aurantiaca. The church walls had little except hartstongue fern Phyllitis scolopendrium, and the grassland nothing more exceptional than hoary plantain Plantago media, chalk knapweed Centaurea debeauxii and burnet saxifrage Pimpinella saxifraga, reflecting the chalky soil.

Hoary plantain, Upton churchyard

There were a couple of interesting introduced plants, however, near the church porch. One, perennial candytuft Iberis sempervirens, is mentioned as being here in the Berks flora and therefore appears naturalised.

Perennial candytuft

The other, hybrid clary Salvia x sylvestris, seems equally established. It has a spike of relatively small flowers but colour is added by the large purple bracts beneath each flower.

Hybrid clary

We walked north on the west side of the church, turned left and then right, this lane leading to a path approaching the embankment of the railway which was abandoned in 1962. The way along the top is now a footpath and cycleway and this was being enjoyed by many cyclists, walkers and young families. The embankment either side of the bridge where the path meets it, and on top, has a well-established colony of the rare hybrid knapweed Centaurea x gerstlaueri, a cross between the almost extinct alien C. jacea (brown knapweed) and either common knapweed C. nigra or chalk knapweed. The heads underneath the flowers have the pale brown appearance of jacea, but the filaments on the upper part of each scale (phyllary) are intermediate between that and chalk knapweed (obviously the other parent in this case, as it also grows here). The flower-heads are bordered by the enlarged pseudo-radiate flowers as is often the case with debeauxii, as it is with greater knapweed C. scabiosa, which was abundant along the embankment but has darker purple rays. Some of the leaves of the hybrid were somewhat lobed, but nowhere near as much as the scabiosa.

Hybrid knapweed Centaurea x gerstlaueri

Upper: phyllaries of hybrid knapweed

Lower: phyllaries of chalk knapweed

Flower-heads of (left) hybrid and (right) chalk knapweeds

The greater knapweed (and spear thistles Cirsium vulgare) attracted many insects, especially hoverflies, bees and butterflies (including marbled white).

Bumble-bee mimic hoverfly Eristalis intricarius on greater knapweed

Large white on greater knapweed

Another thistle here was the uncommon and impressive woolly thistle, just coming into flower at this date.

Woolly thistle

The rest of the tall-grass chalk flora along the embankment consisted of the expected plants like wild basil Clinopodium vulgare, although there were large amounts of kidney vetch Anthyllis vulneraria and some dwarf thistle Cirsium acaule, small scabious Scabiosa columbaria, dark mullein Verbascum nigrum, meadow cranesbill Geranium pratense and chicory Cichorium intybus.

We walked north along the embankment to the second track off to the right, leading to East Hagbourne. This debouches into a track beside a chalk stream, where there was abundant fool's watercress Apium nodiflorum, meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria, water figwort Scrophularia aquaticum and marsh horsetail Equisetum palustre.

Fool's watercress, East Hagbourne

Marsh horsetail

Passing the church on our left the stream also featured the leaves of marsh marigold Caltha palustris. The churchyard had little of interest apart from common garden escapes, but did feature a good cluster of Pontic blue sow-thistle Cicerbita bourgaei, told from other blue sow-thistles by the lack of sticky hairs and the pale purplish flowers.

Pontic blue sow-thistle, East Hagbourne churchyard

We continued east along the main street, but there were few wild-growing plants, the village obviously priding itself on its neat appearance, perhaps with a Best Kept Village competition in view, a highlight being a strikingly colourful community cottage garden.

East Hagbourne's community garden

We took a footpath to the right through the little village of Tadley and along a footpath between arable fields beyond, aiming eventually for Aston Upthorpe. Although there were not many wild arable annuals of note, we did pass scented mayweed Matricaria recutita, long-headed poppy Papaver dubium, rough mallow Malva neglecta, many-seeded goosefoot Chenopodium polyspermum and changing forgetmenot Myosotis discolor.

Scented mayweed

Many-seeded goosefoot

Long-headed poppy

Rough mallow

We also passed hops Humulus lupulus in a hedgerow, clover broomrape Orobanche minor, and a white specimen of chalk knapweed.

Clover broomrape

White form of chalk knapweed

The path crossed Mill Brook, which had chalk-stream water-crowfoot Ranunculus penicillatus.

Chalk-stream water-crowfoot

Beyond this stream, unfortunately, all the footpaths had been eradicated by large fields of wheat, the farmer leaving no way through or indication of where the paths went. We had, instead, to find a way as best we could east to South Moreton and approach Aston Tirrold by road instead. This involved a longer and less pleasant walk, and an hour spent trying to find any way at all. As we entered Aston Tirrold we passed hedgerow cranesbill Geranium pyrenaicum, wild clary Salvia verbenaca and tansy Tanacetum vulgare.

Tansy

We had hoped to eat at the pub in Aston Tirrold, the Sweet Olive, but this was closed and there was no shop here, so we had to continue with dwindling water supplies on what was now the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures soaring to 34ºC. There was little choice, but to continue, however, as the rest of our route was directly towards our starting-point. We walked west through Aston Upthorpe and along the track along Blewburton Hill. This passed between tall crowded plants of chicory and greater knapweed.

Chicory, Blewburton Hill

A gate on the right-hand side allows access to the rough grassland on the side of the hill, where there was musk thistle Carduus nutans and carline thistle Carlina vulgaris. Eventually we came to grazed grassland on the ramparts of the ancient hillfort itself. Whereas the previous section was unmanaged tall grassland, this next section was over-grazed and still relatively poor in species. We did however find some wild thyme Thymus polytrichus, rock-rose Helianthemum nummularium, harebell Campanula rotundifolia, and squinancywort Asperula cynanchica. Although we searched we did not find any bastard toadflax Thesium humifusum in what was supposed to be one of its few Berkshire sites. Although we might have searched longer in the absence of such high temperatures, it also seems quite likely that lack of appropriate management here has led to its disappearance.

Squinancywort on Blewburton Hill

The bare white chalk track down from the hill to Blewbury was particularly harsh in the burning sun, but we did stop to examine webs of small tortoiseshell caterpillars on wayside nettles Urtica dioica.

Small tortoiseshell caterpillar on nettle

Opposite the farm at the bottom of the hill a row of planted bird cherry Prunus padus was fecund with fruit and harboured mating forest bugs Pentatoma rufipes.

Bird cherry

Forest bugs on bird cherry

We continued due west along the main street in Blewbury, with a clump of the garden escape red bistort Persicaria amplexicaulis in the verge beside a stream with brooklime Veronica beccabunga and blue water speedwell V. anagallis-aquatica.

Red bistort

At the far end is a community centre with a small post office, apparently the only shop in all the villages we had visited. While it had little for sale it satisfied very well the desperate need by now for cold ice-lollies! Nearby grew a couple of plants of another much less familiar garden escape, tall eryngo Eryngium giganteum.

Tall eryngo

But we had yet to finish with interesting escapes. We left Blewbury along the footpath to Upton from the west side of the village. Right at the beginning of the path were two plants growing well in rank vegetation that we did not recognise. The first, almost finished flowering, was the so-called "Somerset" skullcap Scutellaria altissima, named from the fact that there has been an established population in Somerset since 1929, although it is very rarely seen elsewhere. The second, intermingled and overtopping the first, was the ornamental grass Siberian or tall melic Melica altissima 'Atropurpurea' with prolific dark purple one-sided spikes. With them was the distinctive hoverfly Chrysotoxum bicinctum.

Somerset skullcap

Melica altissima 'Atropurpurea'

Hoverfly Chrysotoxum bicinctum

The open fields beyond had much crow garlic Allium vineale at the edge of the crops, in which also grew the invasive great brome Anisantha diandra. By a stream close to Upton we were greeted by a splendid display 2 metres tall of elecampane Inula helenium in full flower.