Watching the Willowherb

This is Rosebay Willowherb. It is a wonderful plant for honey bees and it has a very long flowering season. However you can tell that the flowering period is coming to an end because most of the flowers are now at the top of each spike and there are many maturing seed pods below.

Soon these pods will start to dry off and burst open producing a thistle (or more properly a willowherb) down to be blown by the wind to pastures new.

My late father (who was also a beekeeper) knew the value of these plants and was not averse to a bit of "gorilla planting" To this day as I walk around the countryside I can see odd pockets of willowherb which I suspect might indicate that he might have been there before me.

The nectar from willowherb is very light in colour and can on rare occasions produce honey which beekeepers would say was "water white" in other words an unusually pale honey.