Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem

Thanks you so much to everyone who dropped by on my blip birthday, and left wonderful comments, stars and hearts. It was great to hear from lots of old friends, as well as some new ones! I will try to respond individually, but if I don't manage it I hope you'll forgive me...

A gloriously sunny start to the day encouraged Pete and I to go out botanising, but by the time we reached the Lincolnshire border it was cold, grey and foggy. It was tempting to turn back, but we persevered and made quite a few useful records, including refinding populations of Moschatel that hadn't been seen for over twenty years.

On our way back we dropped in to visit the largest Lincolnshire population of Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem, which only grows in two sites in the county. This species is found growing in woodland on basic soils and though rare, it can be very abundant where it does occur. Today we found many hundreds of plants, which were just coming into flower. I got very wet knees while trying to photograph it!


After several hours of walking and searching we were getting hungry, so visited Rassels nursery at Little Bytham, which has a very nice tea room. A steaming bowl of pea and mint soup, served with a salmon and cream cheese sandwich soon perked me up. As an added bonus we bought two Pulmonaria plants and a Brunnera which will hopefully be popular with our hairy-footed flower-bees!