Tag Archives: Creeping Cinquefoil

Environment, Love of Nature, Natural History, Walks

A Wraysbury Walk

Wraysbury Lakes is an area of former gravel pits and secondary woodland where the Colne Brook flows across the Thames floodplain. One of the lakes is used for sailing; some are reservoirs. The land has a pleasantly reclaimed and scruffy feeling to it; a patch is a solar farm; another area is used for grazing ponies; and another is delightfully “weedy” with many colourful flowers of waste ground, and their pollinators.

Himalayan Balsam grows beside the Colne Brook here and there, but has not become seriously invasive.

A Water Shrew, if the silvery hairs along tail and feet are anything to go by. Given its small size this must be a young one. The species is known in the area.

This Buddleia near the road bridge over the Colne Brook has attracted both male (blue) and female (green) Banded Demoiselles, an interesting sight having both together.

Out in the sunshine in the wasteland area are many tall flowering forbs, including Teasel …

Burdock …

Fleabane …

… and Wild Carrot.

Beside the paths you can find lawns of Creeping Cinquefoil.

Natural History

Kestrels, Linnets, and flowers in October

A Kestrel hovered persistently in the steady breeze, starting above treetop height and dropping lower in little steps, over the rough grass full of thistles, burdock, and teasels

Comfrey, once used as a medicinal herb to knit bones, still in flower in October. A solitary Chiffchaff sang its simple song nearby.

Germander Speedwell, a miniature beauty in bloom

Creeping Cinquefoil, an attractively bright flower in clusters among the well-trodden grass of the path

The extraordinary pink of the fruit of the Spindle Tree, a small slender tree with long and extremely straight twigs, that were ideal for medieval spinsters to use as spindles when spinning thread

Scentless Mayweed, a cheerful flower of waste ground, common in the pony field. A twittering flock of Linnets flew into a bramble patch in the field, perching atop the bush and making little flights, apparently catching insects, before returning to their perches.