A scattered tapestry of lousewort was one of the many wonderful things at Dorset's Kingcombe nature reserve this week. #WildflowerHour

Four #CabbageFamily plants for #WildflowerHour. Jack-in-the-hedge, a favourite of orange tip butterfly caterpillars, cuckoo flower (ditto), a miniature garden of common Whitlow grass by a lamp-post and wavy bittercress.

And here they are

Late for #WildflowerHour but #WoodlandPlants have been wondrous this week with the first bluebells and ramsons joining violets, wood anemones and cherry blossom and the biggest patch of town hall clock I've ever seen (approx 4 feet across).

The sky was blue, the first House Martin returned to my street, I heard my first willow warbler of the year in the Oswestry hills and saw a brimstone. Such joy. Then I read about the oil slick threatening one of the most valuable wetlands in the Middle East and my heart sank.

Cowslip flower

First cowslip where there will soon be a thousand of them. This little field was grazed bald when my partner bought it 16 years ago but has gradually grown into a wonderful flower-rich meadow. #WildflowerHour

Ladysmock, cuckoo flower, a beauty by any name, just opening out now.

The best way to control docks is to leave it to those gorgeous, iridescent dock beetles!

Time to give bog mosses their rightful due!

A galaxy of celandines opened to the sun around this oak tree. Photo taken looking down from an old railway bridge.

Kingcup plant in a marsh

Close-up of a golden yellow kingcup flower

Kingcups! One of my favourite marsh plants

End the sewage pollution scandal We're sick of it. Sick of the lies, sick of the greed, and sick of a system rigged against us. This is a scandal and this dirty business must end. For more than 30 years water companies have put corpo...

Did you watch Dirty Business? I can't believe how much water companies have gotten away with. They're putting profit before public health - it’s a scandal and the Government MUST take action! Sick of sewage? Add your name to the petition today: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/en...

Woodcock has the brightest feathers ever measured Researchers have shown that the largely brown Eurasian Woodcock's tail feathers outshine any other bird, and suggest why.

www.birdguides.com/articles/orn....

Topside of a woodcock's tail feather.

Underside of a woodcock's tail feather.

On a hilltop in Wales with a friend yesterday, we found this feather. Curious, I asked my birding friends what bird it was from. Woodcock! And then I discovered that the white tip of a woodcock's tail feathers is a brighter white than any other bird's. Ideal for dusk courtship displays. #feathers

Yes!

A coltsfoot flower opened its radiant flower, just where I always find it first. #WildflowerHour

Field speedwell growing in a crack between pavement and wall outside my house finally opened its petals this week after 4 months in bud, surviving frost and snow. A hardy soul. #WildflowerHour

Some 35 years ago my mother collected handfuls of wild daffodil bulbs, thrown up by the plough on a neighbouring field in Dorset, which was then cultivated for maize. She planted them in a dingle on her own land, where they multiplied each year. She gave me a few for my garden and I love them.

First sighting of 2026 of the crimson, female flower of hazel: the nearest thing to a sea anemone in landlocked Shropshire. #WildflowerHour

Now with picture...

The glossy, leathery leaves of spurge laurel act as umbrellas, the fragrant flowers hanging down to avoid catching raindrops. Petty spurge flowers are like tiny, pale suns, the dandelion soaking up a ray of afternoon sun. Primroses and stinking hellebore herald spring! #WildflowerHour

Blackbird singing in the rain.

Swift bricks to be installed on all new buildings in Scotland as MSPs back law Rest of UK has resisted calls to make builders install bricks that provide nesting for swifts and other endangered birds

Great news from Scotland www.theguardian.com/environment/.... Now England must follow.

Ancient oak on the Shropshire/Wales border. It would take four people with their arms outstretched to give this tree a proper hug. #fattrunkTuesday

Snowdrops and scarlet elfcups growing in Llanforda woods among the ruins of Edward Lluyd's house.

"No sight ever pleases me so well as the snowdrops now in the wilderness," wrote the renowned botanist Edward Lloyd in 1668, referring to his garden and home near Oswestry. The house is long gone but along the path through its ruins the snowdrops continue to flourish and delight. #WildflowerHour

Just 4 flowers for #WildflowerHour after the snow and frost.

Misty gold sunset on the Shropshire border looking into Wales.

Oak tree in Melverley, Shropshire #thicktrunktuesday

Snow on the ground but a woodpecker is drumming!

New Year's Day brightness: guelder rose berries with old man's beard seed heads.