Small teasel

Another early start, and Ben's first day of lectures. He  was supposed to finish just after 2 pm, so I agreed to go and pick him up at 2.30 pm so he didn't have to hang around waiting for the college bus. To make the trip worthwhile, Pete and I finished the last stage of the eyebright project, which involved gathering seed from populations in Twyford Wood and just outside Stamford. This will go to the Millennium Seed Bank  at Kew.

As we were leaving Twyford Wood we spotted several plants of Small Teasel Dipsacus pilosus which is a very local plant of damp, fairly open woods, especially on calcareous soils, throughout England and Wales. It is closely related to its larger relation common teasel Dipsacus fullonum but can be distinguished by its size and the shape of the flowers and seed heads. It has oval, fairly long-stalked leaves and bears globular whitish flowers on branched, prickly stems. The seed head consists of long spines surrounding the seeds but is very different from the wild teasel being smaller and globular in form.


We got to the college on time, but then had to wait around until Ben had been issued with his timetable, which should have happened at 9am, but was eventually completed at 2.45 pm. He was very tired, after two nights with little sleep, but seemed to have had quite a reasonable day. So far computer science seems to be his favorite, which is ironic as it's the one subject that he didn't actually choose to do!