April flowers

Today, nothwithstanding all the calamities which surround us, is proving to be very pleasant with fine weather helping to raise the spirits. Chris and I, observing sensible precautions, have managed a walk of a couple of miles, with the absence of traffic giving better air conditions that for decades. Butterflies basked on patches of warm, bare soil, including this peacock.

This peacock butterfly was generally outnumbered by tortoiseshells.

4 April, 2020

Flowers were a feature of today's walk:


                Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king:
                Then blooms each thing...


But Thomas Nashe penned those lines towards the end of the 16th century. Many of the blooms we saw on our walk would have been unknown to him but surely he would have have marvelled at the flowers of Sophora microphylla tumbling over a wall.

Sophora microphylla, Badby Road West, Daventry. 4 April, 2020

This is the variety 'Sun King'.

This shrub hails from Chile, terra incognita at the time, but only a few yards away grew a far more familiar relative, gorse. Perhaps he would have call it furze, a name more widely used than today; almost inevitably it was in flower. Both the Sophora and the gorse are in the Fabaceae family, and so related also to our peas, clover and so on.

Gorse, aka furze, is in the same family as the Sophora.

Badby Road West, Daventry. 4 April, 2020



What would have saddened Nashe was the absence of birds. Only blackbirds, robins, wood pigeons and gulls were noted, together with a solitary soaring buzzard. With traffic now far more limited there will probably be little in the way of road kills so buzzards (and indeed Red Kites) may have to survive on slim pickings.

Nashe may have known Yellow Archangel, Lamiastrum galeobdolon, as it is - or was-moderately common in woods, but he would have been surprised to have encountered its variegated form, subs. argentatum. The origins of this rampant plant are obscure but it is now commonly encountered on damp waste ground as a garden escape and can be a real problem.

Lamiastrum galeobdolon, subspecies argentatum

Stefen Hill Pocket Park, 4 April, 2020

He would probably not have come across Norway Maple, Acer platanoides. Despite its common name it is not really associated with Norway because, although it is known from there, it is more of a central European tree, occurring in hilly regions as far down as the Caucasus.

The flowers of Norway Maple are striking at this time of the year.

Stefen Hill Pocket Park, 4 April, 2020

The foliage is attractive but it is the bosses of lime-green flowers, much visited by bees, which are currently its attractive feature. Although an introduced species, it seeds readily and seedlings are common. For most of my life the acers were placed in their own family, the Aceraceae, but most botanists now regard it as a member of the Soapberry Family, the Sapindaceae. (Horse Chestnuts have now been placed in the same family.)

Today was dominated by yellows, for when we got home our Erythroniums were in flower.

We only grow only one type, and that is Erythronium 'Pagoda', a hybrid of uncertain origin, although one of its parents was probably Erythronium tuolumnense.

The flowers of Erythronium 'Pagoda' have now opened.

Our garden in Trinity Close, Daventry. 4 April, 2020

Like so many hybrids, it is sterile but I am hoping it will gradually spread by vegetative means. Erythroniums are well represented it the north-west of the U.S.A. and in south-east Asia.

It is a sterile hybrid but who cares?

We do have one lovely European species. Erythronium dens-canis, the Dog's-tooth Violet. Much as I would love to grow it, it needs a rich humus soil in dappled woodland, a habitat I can't really create.

What a pity I can't create the conditions for the European Dog's-tooth

Violet. Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.

You can't have it all.