7
These include:
Red admiral Small tortoiseshell Meadow brown Green veined white
Peacock Orange tip Speckeld wood Common blue
Comma Small skipper Large white Gatekeeper
Painted lady Large skipper Small white various moths
This year we had 5 Painted ladies there all at the same time and also 6 Red admirals at
once.
Each year a different main wild flower comes up more than the others. This year it was
Cut-leaved cranes bill, other years it has been Creeping buttercup and White deadnettle,
Pink mallow, Bristly ox-tongue.
The flowers I have recorded there are:
Buddleia
Parsley
Teasel
Creeping buttercup
Horehound
Cut-leaved Cranesbill
White deadnettle
Pink deadnettle
Pink clover
Common mallow
White daisies
Sorrell
White clover
Bristly ox-tongue
Ragwort
Pink campion
Spear head thistle
Stinging nettle
various grasses
Insects 1 have seen are honey bees, spiders , gnats, horseflies, hoverflies, green
lacewings, red and yellow black spot ladybirds, ants, buff tailed bumble bees and red
tailed bumble bees.
I have even seen our baby frogs in the nature patch, I think they must go there to
hibernate. Last year John Hall from the E.W.T. came out and did a recording with me
about the nature patch which went out on BBC Essex Radio in August.
Simon Patient (17)
18 Wordsworth Avenue, Maldon, Essex
STOP PRESS - NEW ESSEX PLANT
While exploring the overburden dump at Elsenham gravel pit on the 28th June, Peter
Harvey came across a patch of Yellow Bartsia Parentucellia viscosa in full flower. 35
spikes were found at the eastern end of a gulley, between the first two overburden ridges
to the north of the footpath at 549-550,265. When KJA visited the site on 18th July it had
begun to drop its seed. It's an annual with a markedly southern, (particularly
southwestern) distribution in Britain, with a scattering of sites on the west coast.
Elsewhere it is sporadic, and typical of damp grassland habitats on sandy soils. There is a
mysterious record on the BRC database for the Colchester square TM01, as an extra on a
1960 record card, and a corresponding dot appears in the new Scarce Plants in Britain
atlas 1994. Can anyone enlighten me re its origin? Otherwise it has never been recorded
in Essex before.
I have collected some seed from the Elsenham site. Has anyone got a suitable damp
gravel pit they would like to put it in?
Ken Adams