Flowering, Fruiting and Floundering

The managed (and mismanaged) open areas in August give us a limited choice: flowering heather (very welcome), ubiqitous foxglove, rosebay willowherb, the usual bog flowers (again disappointingly trampled), some bramble and some flowering grasses that have survived the jaws and hooves of cattle; you may find tiny white bedstraw and yellow tormentil too. The small white fumitory may also be found climbing bracken fronds in places. Where sheep graze you are lucky to see much at all apart from merde des moutons.

Those parts of Blacka where livestock are excluded are another story. This is where we can enjoy far more species including plants that, in our gardens, are consigned to the category of weeds, here allowed to thrive alongside others that we see less often. There's a particular satisfaction in finding pockets of flowers we may not have seen since last year or well before that, especially when they are holding their own against the more dominant species.

Much more picturesque than the common heather is bell heather, an attractive plant here set off by being found alongside the fruiting lingonberry - also known as cowberry or mountain cranberry.

Everyone knows willowherb but some may not know that we have here at least three different varieties. The pushy and showy rosebay willowherb is just coming into flower and unmissable withits leaves spiralling along the stem and flowers in a spike.

Smaller and more delicate broad-leaved willowherbs often hybridised have been around since spring and a constant visitor to my garden. Now the most stately of the willowherbs is also flowering - the great willowherb, a flower attractive enough to live in a herbaceous border.

One of its attractive features is its prominent  white stigma forming a cross.

Vetches also need some homework to identify. It's tempting simply to say yellow vetch and blue vetch (though see this). But it's worthwhile making more effort, so I'm calling this tufted vetch as against bush vetch or common vetch - all are blue or blueish.

It's a treat to see the tiny delicate leaflets and the way it climbs to the top of this small hawthorn. It scores too with the sheer number of flowers on one stem.

The thistles are well represented on and around Blacka. We've had the creeping and then the marsh thistles and we now have the great spear thistle in all its regal stature.

The one example of melancholy thistle still looks far too cheerful despite the heavy traffic disturbing its peace. I check on it occasionally and it refuses to bow its head. Close relatives are the burdock and knapweed. Burdock is a an oversized plant whose fruits used to be seized on with glee by small boys for whom they were always even more fun than goosegrass because you could throw them further.

Knapweed should be found alongside the same walk but couldn't be seen today. The best colony nearby is on the main Hathersage Road near the top of Whitelow Lane.

Close by is a colony that has so far defied my attempts to identify it Someone must know. It is a very large member of the pea family, a bit like a giant tufted vetch without the tendrils and erect enough not to need any.

Surely it must be a garden escape? *

Back within the Blacka woodland edge the Wall Lettuce is ready to launch its first seeds on the wind.

Enchanter's nightshade pushes through the grasses, and bracken alongside goosegrass.

Ragwort provides bright colouring.

Fruit lovers who believe free food tastes better than anything in the shops are spoiled for choice. Raspberry can be found in many places .....

and bilberry has never had a better year.  A feature is the amount of berries in the woodland areas where the berries are often a deeper colour than elsewhere.

And at the Strawberry Lee Lane entrance more interest for the weed enthusiast, the spectacular flowers of white hedge bindweed:

All of this reminds me that this is the time of year to take down from the shelf Richard Mabey's wonderful book 'Weeds'.

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Likeliest from pictures available via the web is a variant of crown vetch. Most of these have a 'globular flower head' but these are so -

Interesting that its sometimes planted (mainly in the US) as a ground stabilising plant on highway edges!