"I would I had some Flowres o'th Spring . . ."

". . . that come before the swallow dares,
and take the windes of March with beauty"

from "The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare

The clocks have sprung forward and it's now officially British Summer Time; after a dull and particularly chilly Saturday, the wind dropped and the sun came out yesterday afternoon; so we decided to walk one of our 'hare-watching' routes.

Sure enough, after walking quite a long way along the un-seasonably dry and dusty lanes, we spotted the hares – their whiskers shimmering in the slighty misty sunshine. We had to share a pair of binoculars and our digital camera doesn't zoom in that far, so sadly no photos. (Making a note to treat myself to a good DSLR this year so I can take photos of hares.)

The Pussy-Willows in on the field edges are going over, the catkins reminded me of hares' tails.

One thing I didn't expect to find, but was very excited to spot, were Oxlips, Primula elatior – these are the iconic flower of Suffolk (except these particular ones are in a wood just outside the county on the Essex/Cambridgeshire border).

'Perdita' by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys

Oxlips were one of the 'Flowres o'th Spring' listed by Perdita in 'The Winter's Tale', they are now a rare in the wild in England, their distribution now confined to isolated woods in Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire.

When Shakespeare mentioned Oxlips they were not known as a distinct species from all the various hybrids between Primroses and Cowslips, which botanists today refer to as 'false Oxlips'. In 1842 Henry Doubleday (yes, the same chap who founded what is now known as Garden Organic) studied Oxlips and decided that they were a distinct species in their own right. To get a second opinion, he asked his friend Charles Darwin to check his findings – who came to the same conclusion.

Luckily the camera is very good at close-ups, so I got a few nice shots. The first patch was in a ditch at a deer-crossing and near a small pond – deer love to nibble Oxlips and have a huge negative impact on the numbers of flowers. Maybe these have been spared because the deer are concentrating on crossing the ditch to the pond and not looking for snacks on the near-vertical bank.


A little further away I came across a much large area of Oxlips, these are in an open cleared ride through a large wood; the ground is usually waterlogged here – Oxlips love damp and shady conditions. I noticed that in open ground the flower stalks had been nibbled back, except for where the rosettes of leaves were protected by tangles of Dewberry briars, which obviously prevent close cropping by the deer's muzzles! However, due to lack of recent rain, these plants were dehydrated and therefore smaller and the leaves and flower heads were becoming limp in the sunshine.


By far the best plants were under a thorny hedge – difficult for deer (and me) to get close, but I managed to crawl near enough to get these photos. You can see the pale-yellow rounded petals and how the flowers hang their heads down to one side of the tall furry stalk.



On the way back from our walk we passed a pond and I decided to check it out for frogspawn . . .


. . . so, did you spot what I did? Do you see there's frogsawn AND toadspawn mingled together in the weeds?

Unlike frogspawn which is a blobby cloud-like mass of eggs; toadspawn is in ribbons, all laced and wound around the water plants. (Newt eggs are completely different – I'll tell you more about the amazing newt and how she lays her eggs, another day)

Celia
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