Wild Flower of the Day

White Campion - Selene latifolia

With crab spider

Rose - Rosa sp.

I planted a rambling rose to grow up and through the rowan tree:

Plenty of visitors;

Foxglove - Digitalis Purpurea

Garlic Mustard - Alliaria petiolata

Known as Jack-by-the-Hedge

Illustration from Adam Lonicer's Krauterbuch, or Herbal, Frankfurt, 1557

Newly emerging ferns fronds.

Charles George Haite ©Victoria and Albert Museum

Red Campion - Selene dioica

Well, they look pink to me. Male and female flowers are on separate plants. These are female flowers, which have five crazy styles each.

A male plant:

Struggling to capture the strange shapes of aquilegias.

Jeannie Foord manages to make them look calm and elegant:

Wild Strawberry - Fragaria vesca

In my garden on the weekend....

...supplemented with some close-ups I took in May a few years ago (different camera). I particularly like the little aphids lurking on the back of the flower!

White Dead-Nettle - Lamium alba

Dead-nettles are a family of plants so named because their leaves look similar to nettles, but don’t have the sting (therefore ‘dead’). Native throughout Europe, White Dead-nettle is loved by bees, and is perfectly adapted for pollination by them - the bee lands of the lower lip of the flower, and reaches in to the base of the flower tube with it’s proboscis to get at the nectar. The stigma strikes its back first, followed by the stamens, so that cross pollination is likely to be achieved.

Illustration for Flora Londinensis by William Curtis:

Unknown:

Illustration by P. J. Redoute for La Botanique  de J. J. Rousseau:

Sweet Woodruff - Galium odoratum

Perfect plant for the chaotic garden.

Welsh Poppy - Meconopsis cambrica

The Welsh poppy is a plant of shady places, roadsides and hillsides.

British Plants, James Sowerby 1813:

Honesty - Lunaria annua

A native of south east Europe, it is very common. The bees like the flowers, but the most interesting part of the plant is the seed pods. Later they will be lovely silver papery discs.