Common British wild flowers

Local Nature Reserve Flowers

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Our local nature reserve has a small artificially-lined pond that is rapidly drying up because there hasn’t been much rain. This is surrounded by a very wide expanse of well-mown grass! A narrow margin around the whole site remains untended with tall grasses and cow parsley. A roughly circular area to the far end of the site has been allowed to grow naturally – at least so far this summer  (I can remember one year when a village resident who had never heard of biodiversity or considered the meaning of  “nature reserve”,  thought he was doing a good turn by bringing in a mower to “tidy up” the nature reserve and cleared away every vestige of wild vegetation down to the ground. It took a long time to recover). In this remaining wild area there is an abundance of beautiful wild flowers right now. I feel happy that I was able to walk the short distance needed to take these pictures. It lifted my spirits to see them. I think my favourite is the Ladies Bedstraw with its fragrant clusters of small yellow flowers that at one time in history were collected and dried for stuffing straw mattresses.

8 Replies to “Local Nature Reserve Flowers”

  3. Your story about the man with the mower reminds of something my mum said recently when she saw Cow Parsley…”That would be really pretty if it wasn’t a weed!”
    Beautiful photos….

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  4. Thank you, Yvonne. What is a weed except a plant that is growing where we do not want it. In our area, the number of insects is way down this year. I suspect it is because the refuges of wild areas around the grounds have been “tidied up” and the native plants on which the eggs are laid and that the larvae eat have been eradicated.

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  7. It certainly seems to have recovered. My sweetheart tells of a garden club lady who instinctively bent to pluck a wildflower from his garden as he showed her around – it was one of his favourites and he only had the one.

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