Botany visit to Swinsty reservoir on Tuesday 13th August 2024

We all met for a warm ,dry day on the beach of the reservoir. At first it looked very unlikely that we would find any plants ,as the shore line is quite a challenging habitat for plants, the water level rising and falling through the year. However we found lots of little gems.

One group of plants were the Persicaria, including Redshank-Persicaria maculosa pictured above.

We also identified white/green  flowered Pale Persicaria ( Persicaria lapathifolia) and Water Pepper ( Persicaria hydropiper).

Other plants included Sneezewort ( Achillea ptarmica), Bur Marigold (  Bidens tripartite), Marsh Cudweed ( Gnaphalium uliginosum) and Marsh Ragwort ( Jacobaea aquatica).

We spotted the Elephant Hawk Moth Caterpillar.

We found some little gems. Pink Sand spurrey (Spergularia rubra), Pennywort (Hydrocotyle vulgaris),Skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata) and Yellow Cress (Rorippa sylvestris). Also the invasive New Zealand Pigmyweed ( Crassula helmsii), it smelt of honey and we were careful not to spread it further. There was a very tiny St John’s Wort ,expertly spotted.

We found Thale Cress (Arabidopsis Thaliana), the first living thing to have its genome mapped.

The ground was covered with yellow Common Cats ear ( Hypochaerisradicata ). We walked through an area of old favourites, Curled dock,  Knapweed, Tufted vetch, Meadow vetchling,Betony, Devils bit scabious and Great Burnet.

There has been lots of Betony and Ragwort in the fields this year.

We had left our familiar limestone meadows for a rather drab damp area, but found some interesting plants and had a very enjoyable day out.

Rosemary

Thank you to J and P for photos.

Our next trip is on Tuesday 17th September, back to Swinsty for an autumn themed search for fruit and fungi. We hope you can join us.