Berkshire: Blewbury Churchyard

19 February 2013                                                OS 174: Newbury & Wantage

Length: 20-30 minutes (churchyard only); or extend into 2 hour walk via Blewburton Hill.

The main point of this visit was to look for the 'Blewbury Tart' variety of snowdrop first discovered in St Michael's churchyard, Blewbury, by Alan Street in 1975.  It is a very distinctive double variety of the ordinary Galanthus nivalis with erect, not pendulous, "double" flowers, the outer white tepals narrow and inconspicuous compared to the proliferating distorted green inner tepals.  It has been propagated and is available from sellers of garden bulbs.

We parked at the car park by the Village Hall, Blewbury (in the NW corner of the village).  Immediately we spotted a large clump of mistletoe Viscum album on a tree planted at the edge of the car park, along with several other small growths.  The tree was unfamiliar, but from the distinctive bark and the dried remains of small erect fruit clusters we worked out it must be Manchurian Cherry Prunus maackii.  A new host for mistletoe for us.

Mistletoe on Manchurian Cherry

 We walked down Church End towards St Michael's.  In the verge there were frequent snowdrops Galanthus nivalis, early crocus Crocus tommasinianus, and even an exceptionally early Dutch or yellow crocus C. x luteus.

Dutch yellow crocus

 The lane leads to the entrance to the churchyard, where a display board announces that it is maintained as a conservation area.  It was certainly colourful with a variety of winter-flowering species.  An early queen buff-tailed bumble-bee Bombus terrestris was exploring this oasis of nectar and pollen.

St Michael's Church

Blewbury churchyard - winter aconite, snowdrops and early crocus

These included primroses Primula vulgaris, winter aconite Eranthis hyemalis in perfect condition, stinking and Corsican hellebores Helleborus foetidus and argutifolius, early crocus, and pink and white forms of eastern sowbread Cyclamen coum with its kidney-shaped leaves easily confused with neighbouring lesser celandine Ficaria verna  leaves in the short turf but darker and more leathery.

Winter aconite

Stinking hellebore

Corsican hellebore

Early crocus

Eastern sowbread

 The greatest number of flowers, however, were snowdrops of several varieties.  Apart from Galanthus nivalis and its flore pleno version (the latter particularly near the church entrance), the most frequent were the striking large cultivars of nivalis, 'Atkinsii' (with 3cm long tepals) and 'Magnet' (with 2.5cm tepals), which dominated a patch to the NE of the church above a ditch.  There were also G. plicatus with its distinctively folded leaves and its hybrid with G. elwesii, which had the folded leaves of plicatus and the green mark at the base of the inner tepals of elwesii.  The 'Blewbury Tart' variety had apparently not survived after its first discovery, as Michael Crawley in his Flora of Berkshire says that it had been re-planted.  A diligent search today failed to locate any specimens, however, and we presume it has once again succumbed.

Galanthus nivalis

Galanthus nivalis 'flore pleno'

Galanthus nivalis 'Atkinsii'

Galanthus nivalis 'Magnet'

Galanthus plicatus

Galanthus elwesii x plicatus

 On the south side of the church stood a massive old yew Taxus baccata with a hollow trunk easily large enough to contain a person standing.

Hollow yew

 We returned to the entrance and continued east along the pedestrian-only Watts Lane, which gave us a chance to see some of the numerous streams that criss-cross this village, the result of springs that were presumably the reason for the siting of this community here in ancient times.  At one time there was a watercress industry as at Ewelme.  There are still many old cottages, including thatched.

Thatched cottages, Blewbury

 Some of the streams had been cleared of vegetation, but in others there was plenty of fool's watercress Apium nodiflorum.  Along the banks was much lesser celandine, including the first we had seen in flower this year. 

Lesser celandine

We kept eastwards along Bessels Lea Road to the B-road of Bessels Way, across which the walk continued as a bridleway past a farm (small nettle Urtica urens here) and towards the extensive ancient earthworks of Blewburton Hill, which hill-settlement presumably pre-dated Blewbury in the marshy plains.  The path was wide and metalled between ploughed clay fields and remains of last year's rape crop.  As we approached the summit the path became grass and much muddier from horse traffic, but here there is a gate to a path just above the bridleway, from which you can mount to the top of Blewburton Hill (the wide view dominated by the steamy clouds erupting from Didcot Power Station) or continue on the path below the crest through rough chalk grassland.  Either way are splendid views of the red kites circling overhead or perched in the trees.

Small nettle

Blewburton Hill

Didcot Power Station from Blewburton Hill

 At the east end of the hill it dips steeply down to the twin villages of Aston Upthorpe and Aston Tirrold.  We took the path that diverges slightly north from the bridleway, which brought us down past the church at Aston Upthorpe (little of botanical interest here, just a few snowdrops and primroses on the bank beside it).  Continuing along streets eastwards brought us directly into Aston Tirrold by a small War Memorial green where there were 'flore pleno' and 'Magnet' snowdrops.  Opposite is the Chequers Pub, now mainly a restaurant called The Sweet Olive.  This would normally provide a lunch opportunity, but we were unfortunate enough to arrive during the owners' annual holiday and had to depart empty-bellied.

We briefly continued to the east side of Aston Tirrold and its churchyard, but this again was devoid of botanical interest.

Aston Tirrold Church from west

The high old brick wall along the lane south from this church has a wide shelf near the top, on which we found henbit dead-nettle Lamium amplexicaulum growing.  We then retraced our steps back to our starting point in Blewbury, where we found the dark brown winter form of the Green Shieldbug Palomena prasina basking in sun among ivy leaves.