Snowball pink

The Beast from the East as the bitterly cold Siberian anticyclone has been dubbed brought heavy snow showers this morning.

Just outside our window were the skeletal remains of a Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) with each grey brown shuttlecock of seed head delicately holding up a small ball of snow like a supplicant making an offering.  This pink has been surviving as a self sown annual in our garden for maybe 30 years and needs no looking after.  It often seeds itself into pots of other plants where it can be left as its slender shoots do not mask the main attraction.  Then, in summer, it produces a sequence of small dark pink flowers.

There is a fine appreciation of this modest native flower by Andy Byfield here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/21/deptford-pink-plantlife

The lane in the cold

Along the lane they have been cutting the hedge by machine (permissible until 1st March).  The rather brutal results with shredded wood and white broken branches harmonises well with the bitterly cold wind from Siberia.  It reminds me of of Totes Meer, the painting by Paul Nash: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-totes-meer-dead-sea-n05717

There are some very Gothic shapes among the battered bushes, especially where the hedge is thin, but I expect it will all fill out quite nicely.  The other day we had a visitor from Alberta in Canada and she asked why we had hedges round our fields instead of fences - that gave me an opportunity to hold forth on the English landscape and its conservation.

Despite the frigid weather and brutal hedging work, there were some signs of spring in the lane.  Patches of snowdrops, little 'tommies' (Crocus tommasinianus) escaping from our neighbour's garden and a few flowers on lesser periwinkle.

Knapweed phyllaries

Yesterday I received my copy of the BSBI News from the Botanical Society of the British Isles.  It has been redesigned and has a new editor - Andrew Branson - and the results in my view are excellent, though I shall always have fond memories of reading and writing for the previous version under the editorship of Gwynn Ellis.

One article that interested me was "Ambiguity in recording Centaurea (knapweeds) taxa using MapMate".  This had coloured pictures of the phyllaries of what are considered to be the three British species (C. nigra var. nigra, C. nigra var. nemoralis and C. jacea) though it pointed out that hybrids were common.  ('Phyllaries' are the small leafy structures, or bracts, that surround the base of the flower/seed head.)

I immediately pulled on my boots and set off to my favorite patch of 'old' meadow where I found plenty of knapweed seed heads still perched on stiff, dead stems above the fallen grass.  These were plainly the nominate subspecies Centaurea nigra var. nigra.

A wonderful excuse to do some useful botanising in winter and to remind oneself on what to look forward to when summer returns.