Tuesday 22 April 2008

21/4/08 – IT’S AN ISLAND LIFE FOR ‘UNCOMMON’ SCURVY GRASS

In a garden at the junction of Halsbury Road and Kellaway Avenue, a male Chaffinch was alternately calling and pecking half-heartedly at Rowan tree flower buds.

A small Stinking Hellebore seedling was noted growing by a small drain cover at the top end of Hill View in Henleaze. Elsewhere down the road the grass verges contained a fairly basic flora, including Self Heal and, on bare patches outside one house, Lesser Swine Cress. There was also some Slender Speedwell (Veronica filiformis) here and there. They’d just been cut, but like suburban grass verges up and down the country would benefit from a lighter touch with the mower/strimmer, so as to let the flowers have their head. The White Clover alone would provide a valuable extra food resource for our hard-pressed bee populations.

A Gorse, one of my favourite native plants, was in flower in the front garden of No. 53 Hill View. To my mind the overall balance of the plant, including the amount of yellow flower to green of the spiny leaves, is more pleasing to the eye than in the couple of the ornamental, exotic, yellow pea-flowered shrubs grown in this part of town.

A narrow alleyway cuts through onto Pyecroft Avenue. Front lawns with finer grasses always attract my attention. The one on the first corner contained Germander Speedwell, Spotted Medick, probable Lesser Trefoil, Cut-leaved Cranes-bill, Self Heal, Lesser Celandine and Common Cats-ear. Five gardens at the Henleaze Road end had significant swathes of Parsley Piert where the unfenced lawns abutted the pavement. These contrasted with several lawns that were monocultures of coarser grass.

Between Wyecliffe Road and Henleaze Road a grass area under trees contained a large number of Germander Speedwell Plants. There were a couple of beheaded Cow Parsley and a clump of Sorrel.

The traffic island in Henleaze Road, opposite the park, and just south of the Pyecroft Avenue junction yielded two Weld seedlings, approximately 90 Buck’s-horn Plantain on some bare soil (the largest agglomeration I’ve yet found in Bristol) and, growing amongst the projections of one of those sets of pre-formed ‘cobbles’ designed to keep pedestrians off, around 14 plants of Danish Scurvy Grass. This is my first record of this species anywhere. The Flora of the Bristol Region describes it as uncommon, with 7 records within the City boundary, local along the Avon coast, but more frequent inland, including along the margins and central reservation of the M5, spreading along trunk roads. It has fleshy ivy-shaped leaves and small pale lilac flowers in terminal clusters.

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