16.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE BOTANISTS' YEAR
This year has been no less exciting
than the last for the botanist, despite the
low temperatures and incessant rain. Many
plants seem to have been hit hard by last
year's drought followed by the extreme wet
and most habitats look rather devoid of
their usual rich variety of colour this year.
The Sheep's Sorrel however has provided a
spectacular blaze of orange where it has
colonised last year's heath fire patches and
the birds are busy cropping the flowering
heads of the Annual Meadow Grass which has
moved into the bare patches vacated by grass
species that succumbed to the drought in
meadows, lawns and pastures.
In the sudden warm spell in early July,
the more chalky Boulder Clay verges brought
forth a magnificent showing of Bee Orchids
and Grass Vetchling. In one place over 80
Bee Orchid flowers were crammed into a two
square yard patch of ground and in another a
scattered colony of 17, devoid of all antho-
cyanin pigment, revealed their common ancestry.
In the spring the Small-flowered
Buttercup, virtually given up for lost in
Essex and getting very scarce nationally,
burst forth in profusion in several places
including its stations at Hatfield Forest,
Danbury Common, Great Holland Pits and
Hadleigh. Of last year's specialities, four
Fly Orchids appeared again this year and
over 70 of the new British plant Orobanche
crenata reappeared at Cranham parasitising
once again a prolific patch of Vicia tetra-
sperma . The plants first appeared in mid-
July but are rather small and stunted
compared with the magnificent spikes that
appeared last year.