weeds and brown butterflies

walking around the headlands of the big wheat-field what attracts me are the tiny flowers, opportunistic in a narrow belt of what is really waste land, ex-agricultural, hammered by tractors; these are the first plants to colonise it. scarlet pimpernel catches the eye.

scentless mayweed covers much of it, with its soft fringes of dark green tassel-leaves

thistles are springing up; they will be huge and should attract a lot of butterflies and other insects in August. this is a spear thistle; others listed in my reference book are melancholy thistle, stemless thistle, creeping thistle, welted thistle, marsh thistle, and musk thistle

burdocks grow in the shade of the old gravel pit trees. they are not tiny, quite the reverse; grandly heraldic in stature.

bugloss with its bristly leaves creeps across in the sunshine.

lesser centaury towards the damper bottom

redshank fills one wheel rut for a hundred yards

hawkweed amongst cleavers and self-sown wheat

wild pansy, viola tricolor; it spreads over stubble fields during the autumn and winter.

along the ditch near the green lane, jack-go-to-bed-at-noon, with it’s wonderful big dandelion clock seed-heads.

butterflies are very difficult to catch with the camera; there are plenty of meadow browns about – this dark one is a male.

with his wings closed he thinks I can’t see him.

pursuing this gatekeeper – eventually he stopped for refreshment on the bramble flowers.

small heath are less nervous.

the green-veined white hiding on toadflax flowers

and a female large white on the mallow.

I have also seen two small tortoiseshells, a red admiral and a comma flitting around the same bramble covered banks, and there were three red admirals in my garden this morning .. one of the buddleia is in flower.

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