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Botany Group
by Margaret & Beryl - 17:15 on 22 May 2016
U3A Botany Group 17th May 2016
by Margaret & Beryl
After a break for the winter months five members of the Group met at Rerwick Head for the first outing of 2016. The picture below suggests that maybe we were a little early but as ever, if you look, there are interesting things to be found.
Wet Wanderers
As we wandered we found, in flower, cuckooflower, daisy, dandelion, marsh marigold, celandine, bird's foot trefoil, thrift, scurvygrass, spring squill, tormentil and best of all marsh violet.
Not yet in flower were sea mayweed, orache, sow thistle, common creeping thistle, cleavers, chickweed, meadowsweet, flag iris, hogweed, angelica, nettle, heather, sorrel, ragwort, meadow vetchling, silverweed, self heal, red and white clover, docken, blinks and plantains of the ribwort, sea and buck's-horn variety.
We also found field horsetail, common sedge, carnation sedge, field woodrush and creeping willow.
Marsh Violets
Field Horsetail & Woodrush
Not only did we see plants but also a white and grey moth clinging to dead umbellifer stem which at the time could not be identified, 9 common scoter, arctic terns and a freshly dead gannet on the beach with no obvious external cause of death.
A grey moth waiting to be identified
It was an interesting if damp afternoon.
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