Oval sedge

The hot summery weather seems to have rapidly disappeared. I whisked Alex down to Huntingdon, as we left the house rather late, but amazingly we arrived at the bus station with five minutes to spare. I then headed to Monk's Wood with the dogs, but to tell the truth it was a bit of an anti-climax. The hot weather had caused most of the woodland flowers to go over, but the grassland species were mostly not quite out.

I wandered down to the meadow, which had a very fine display of ragged robin, as well as large populations of two sedges which are quite local around Peterborough. I'm trying to build up my archive of photographs of local plants, and spent some time trying to get good portraits that can be used for identification. I really love these overlooked plants - and the fact that they can be challenging to identify appeals to the detective in me!

I hadn't intended to use this photograph as my blip, but by the time I arrived home, the rain had set in and I didn't get a chance to take any more photos. So today you have the subtle beauty of the flowers of oval sedge, a species of acid grassland, which is very common over most of the UK, except for a few areas of southern and eastern England where the soils are mostly calcareous. You can see both the creamy anthers and the sinuous, slightly feathery stigmas. Even though it looks so different to yesterday's blowsy poppy, it still has all the same functional parts, but being wind-pollinated, doesn't need bright petals to attract insects.