Myrobalan

Now that sunrise is just after 7 a.m., I'm waking up earlier. By coffee break I'd already done a lot of work, so decided it was time for some exercise. I ended up at Ferry Meadows, where Chris had good views of snipe last week, but they seemed to have moved on. I'd forgotten that it was half-term, so the park was full of families, and some tree surgery was also happening, making it less than peaceful.

I returned home with no usable photographs, so again I delved into the dark corners of the garden, where I found the first few flowers of our cherry-plum, which is also know as a myrobalan - a prettier name I think - although there is a risk of confusion as this has also been used for Terminalia chebula, commonly known as black- or chebulic myrobalan, a useful tree native to South Asia from India and Nepal east to southwest China, and south to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Vietnam.