The wet weather seems never-ending but perhaps we will soon be worrying about a drought. One positive effect of all this water is the profusion of wildflowers and grasses in our hedgerows, verges and gardens this year.
Our village green in Tuttington is no exception to this. Broadland District Council have a policy of encouraging biodiversity on the land they maintain and this can be seen on the green where areas of grass have been left uncut to encourage early summer flowers.
A common verge side plant that has responded enormously to the increased rainfall this year is the oxeye or moon daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare). If you like this plant and want to see it in unparalleled numbers, take a ride around the Broadland Northway (the NDR or A1270) and the wide landscaped verges are a mass of beautiful white flowers.
The flowers of daisies and related plants like dandelions do not have simple flowers but the flower heads are composed of hundreds of tiny individual flowers. The arrangement of these flowers like in sunflowers for instance produce a pattern that in maths is called a Fibonacci sequence. This is a series of numbers where any number is the sum of the previous two numbers generating spiral arrangements of shapes with their values as sizes. The photo here shows how beautiful maths can be in the real world.
There are oxeye daisies on the uncut parts of the green mixed with interesting grasses, yellow vetches and many bee orchids. The bee orchid (Ophrys apifera) is not uncommon in the east and south-east of England but it is dramatic to see. Although the flowers are pollinated by solitary bees attempting to mate with this plant mimic, this happens more often around the Mediterranean where the plant and bees are more common. In our neck of the woods, the plants more often self-pollinate.
Most of us are familiar with plantain weeds in our lawns and gardens. But this year they have grown particularly tall flowers. The ribwort plantains (Plantago lanceolata) growing in and around Tuttington usually have flowering spikes of about 20-30 cm but in this wet year they are upwards of 3ft tall in places.
The road verges are these days often left uncut until well after the cow parsley has finished flowering in May. This has resulted in growth of a number of new members of the family (Umbellifers) we don’t so often see around our lanes. But the verges also have many flowering grass species including the cocksfoot (Dactyilis glomerata) which although very common has an important place in the lifecycles of pollinating insects.
Please enjoy but do not walk into or pick any of the flowers on Tuttington village green.