Nowhere special but...........

Just a nice place on my morning walk. Common Ragwort, Rosebay Willowherb and a piece of limestone.

But did you know? Well most people know that it can be fatal to horses giving them cirrhosis of the liver. They will not normally eat it if it is in full flower but when it dies or is picked and left lying in grass they will often do so with fatal consequences. Hence all those Ragwort pulling parties in which some of my blip friends may have taken part. But it is essential to clear it away.
Interestingly it seems that sheep can tolerate Ragwort and if you go to sheep farming areas you will find less of it because they have eaten it when it was young.

Ragwort has been spreading and set aside schemes have encouraged this. But its brilliant colour has led at least one West Country farmer to find an answer. He picks it and sells it as bunches of Summer Gold. It looks good in a vase in suburban houses.

And did you know that Ragwort is the national flower of the Isle of Man?

Rosebay Willowherb has been something of a botanical mystery. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century it was a rather rare flower of woodland. How diid it spread to become such a common sight on WW2 bombsites, on carparks, road verges and waste ground everywhere? Well one theory is that it is all the result of building the railway network. Each plant produces 80,000 wispy seeds and the wind created by passing expresses pulled these along until they were all over the country. I do like the law of unintended consequences. But it is cheerful to see.

As for the lump of limestone - that will have to wait for another time.