Bastard Toadflax

A long day of plant-hunting in the Lincolnshire countryside, with some keen local botanists. We started at Holywell Mound, a beautiful area of species-rich limestone grassland, where we found a single spike of fragrant orchid, but no trace of the frog orchids which had once been present. 

From there we went to Little Warren road verge, another stunning stretch of limestone grassland, to see Bastard Toadflax Thesium humifusum. There are only two extant sites for this species in Lincolnshire, and they are the most northerly in Britain. Its centre of distribution is in Wiltshire on the extensive chalk grasslands of the Salisbury Plain. This tiny plant is a hemiparasite on the roots of other grasses and herbs, which accounts for the rather strange, slightly sickly yellow-green colour of its foliage - it doesn't make any more chlorophyll than it needs!

After a leisurely picnic lunch in one of the botanist's garden, we had a full afternoon recording around Castle Bytham. Our meandering route took in a churchyard, the upper reaches of the River Glen, an ancient woodland and a species-rich meadow, so it's not surprising that we recorded well over two hundred species. The weather was just right, not too hot, although the black clouds that bubbled up in the afternoon were rather threatening. Fortunately we only caught the edge of a shower. It was past six o'clock by the time we got back to our  cars, tired but happy.