Lady’s bedstraw is now flowering throughout the parish. It has a wonderful honey like scent. This picture was taken of a great flush of flowers on the footpath from South Farm to the South Downs Way. Flowers of the bedstraw family where often used in the stuffing of mattresses in medieval and early modern times, hence the name. Lady’s bedstraw was often used for the pillows as it has the strongest and sweetest scent, plus Read more…
Silver-washed Fritillaries are flying around in the sunny glades in Hen Wood today.
There a some wonderful patches of wild thyme flowering near the top of the path from South Farm to the South Downs Way as the track enters into a sunken section.
Meadowsweet is very fragrant, it has a smell like that of aspirin. This is due to the plant containing salicylic acid, similar to the synthetic acetylsalicylic acid of aspirin. Meadowsweet (filipendula ulmaria) originally had the latin name spirea ulmaria hence the link to the commercial name of ‘aspirin’.
This bee is taking advantage of one of the musk thistles now flowering on Park Hill. The musk thistles have a lovely scent, but take care when you get close up to smell them!
A froglet was spotted whilst the East Meon Nature Group was investigating the pond north of Duncombe Wood with regard to helping lessen the annual toad massacre on Coombe Road.
The Bourne that flows out of the spring fed pond to the north of Duncombe Wood, and then flows north to the corner of Coombe Road near the village, has run dry. This date varies every year, depending on rainfall. In Winter and early spring it was a minor torrent. (A bourne is an intermittent stream , flowing from a spring. Frequent in chalk and limestone country where the rock becomes saturated with winter rain, that slowly drains Read more…
Pyramidal orchids have started to flower in the nature conservation sections of the churchyard. Jonathan Iremonger
A number were spotted in Hen Wood yesterday, close to one of the main tracks.
A pair of spotted flycatchers have been seen in a large garden in the centre of East Meon for the first time in 20 years. Spotted flycatchers are Red Listed birds due to a massive decline in the UK in the last 20 years.