Ayres 2

And too many flowers to mention!

 

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 (Part 2)

 

If you haven't visited the Ayres - just imagine acres of flat land covered with wild flowers, naturally bonsai-ed by the wind and salt spray and sand.  Surrounded by beautiful pebble beaches and as much blue sky and sea as anyone could possibly want.  Heaven on earth on a sunny summer day.

 

After the obligatory rose photos in Part 1 of the walk, I am going to concentrate mainly on the smaller, typically Ayres flora.  I couldn't include them all.  Some that I left out are the blue sheep's bit, tiny fairy flax, eyebright, sea spurge, English stonecrop, red campion, and foxgloves - either because they are not typical of the area or have featured in recent walks or because they are too small to show up well in a photo.  And there must be plenty of others that I have simply forgotten . . . or can't name like the various yellow composites . . . or some missed photo opportunities. 

 

George E Quayle writes that the study of wild flowers as a hobby has " . . . one great advantage, your specimens are always static" but he didn't take into account the fact that the student of the wild flowers might be in a hiking group.  There should be some sort of variation on Murphy's law for flower photographers.  I have noticed that every time, after I take a photo, I will subsequently pass numerous clumps of the same type of flower and every plant that I pass will be better than the one before - so I get more and more photos of the same flower.   But, if I decide not to take a photo and to wait for a better flower, it will be my last chance and I will not see another one for the rest of the walk. 

 

A flower that I have seldom seen anywhere apart from the Ayres is common centaury (Centaurium erythraea).  The first patch that I came across near the road only had unopened buds and I wondered whether it hadn't quite come into bloom yet.

 

But I came to the conclusion that centaury must be one of those flowers that close at night and wait for the sun to wake them in the morning because there were starry pink flowers on all the centaury that we saw later in the morning. 

 

 

 

Another pretty pale pink flower is restharrow (Ononis repens).  The flowers look rather like miniature sweet peas and the plants get their name from the time when fields were ploughed by man and horse.  The matted stems and deep roots would get tangled with the tines on the harrow and stop work.

 

 

 

I expected to see wild thyme (Thymus polytrichus) and I wasn't disappointed.

 

 

 

And there was also plenty of the sulphur coloured Ladies bedstraw (Galium verum) growing near the road.

 

 

 

There were even little flowers on the path beneath our feet - an identified pinkish clover and a scattering of the ubiquitous yellow birds foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).

 

 

 

Plant growth is very stunted on the area between the plantation and the dunes with a lot of lichen growing between the plants.

 

 

 

But the roses grow taller in the shelter at the edge of the marram grass on the dunes.

 

 

 

Near a path through the marram grass, I found one little pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) - the only one I saw all morning.  The other end of the Ayres near Rue Point is a better place for seeing pyramidals.

 

 

 

We headed north of the visitor centre and came across an oddity - a white puff ball.  They are quite common on the Ayres and I wondered whether there are any on the neighbouring Glen Truan golf course.  They might confuse a golfer looking for a lost ball.

 

 

 

We had passed the dunes now and were walking along a path at the top of the bank above the shingle beach.  There were some lovely patches of bright yellow stonecrop (Sedum Acre) - also known as biting stonecrop.

 

 

 

And then I saw some seakale (Crambe maritima) which reminded me of Sarah.  She used to walk with us and liked to gather wild food.  Seakale was one of her favourites.

 

 

 

I was just wondering whether the yellow horned poppies (Glaucium flavum) were flowering when I saw the others stopping ahead of me to take photos.  They had found a patch of poppies.

 

 

 

I had decided to use only Ayres flowers but rules are made to be broken and I couldn't resist this mallow growing near Cranstal on the road back to Bride.  I thought it might be a common mallow because one of my wildflower books says that they are one of the handsomest of our common wildflowers.  But,  after investigation, it turned out to be a tree mallow (Lavatera arborea) and I think it is even more handsome than the common mallow.

 

 

 

Here is a closer view of the flowers.