Sunday, May 13, 2012

Spring flowers & sallow seeds

Emthree is now starting to burgeon and it is good to see so many bugle flowers - probably the greatest number in the last nine years, though they nearly always flower in slightly different places.  Here the Cladonia lichen cover can also be seen on Butterfly Rock behind.

20120512 (9) Metre bugle

The grey willow/sallow, Salix cinerea, that flowered earlier in the year has already produced its fluffy bunches of seed as the catkins burst open.  They are very evanescent and will, I suspect, be gone by tomorrow.

20120512 Metre sallow seed

Close up these look astronomical, like whorls of gas in stellar space with the seeds as black holes.

20120512 Metre sallow seed (2a)