Grass vetchling

Another rainy start, but the weather brightened sufficiently to allow Pete, the dogs and I to go up to Ring Haw. The Wildlife Trust is holding a Family Day there in a fortnight, and I've agreed to produce s self-guided nature trail for the occasion, so we were scouting out a suitable route. There were plenty of the usual flowers - bird's-foot-trefoil, self-heal, yellow-wort, fairy flax and common centaury in the quarry and black knapweed and red clover in the meadow.

But I was quite excited to find a good population of grass vetchling Lathyrus nissolia in the meadow. This species is virtually indetectable when its not flowering, as the leaves look just like grass, but the delicate pea-like flowers are a most amazing shade of pink - I don't know of any other wild plant that seems to have quite the same vibrant shade. It seems fairly uncommon, but may just be under-recorded as its only visible for a couple of weeks each year.

There was more excitement when I found a good-sized colony of wall bedstraw Galium parisiense on one of the reserve paths. This diminutive relative of goose-grass is very rare and there have previously been only a couple of records in Northamptonshire. I know this plant well because I regularly monitor two very large populations; this familiarity has helped me locate new colonies in a couple of places.

In the evening a group of Alex and Ben's friends came round for film night. Pete and I were invited to join in and I'm afraid to say we ended the evening playing drinking games. It was almost like being a student again!