Home Turf

Back home again, it's time to re-focus on those little beauties to be found on our doorstep. Shipley Park is - despite the unusually cool Spring - looking green and flowery. Among the most numerous of the flowers have to be the Buttercups, thousands of which are carpeting the fields at the moment.

This particular 'field of cloth-of-gold' is part of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's management scheme and is jaw-droppingly golden.

The Hawthorne is all but finished now, but the branches have been laden with frothy, white (and sometimes pink) flowers.

Among the Buttercups, another flower is trying bravely to be seen through all the gold. These are the familiar pink flowers of the Red Campion (Silene dioica).

More colour is achieved by the small red flowers of the Sheep's Sorrel (Rumex acetosella), especially when seen against the yellow and orange flowers of Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).

Part of the Dock family, Sheep's Sorrel is common, but easily overlooked, but rewards closer inspection when in flower. Bird's-foot Trefoil - a Pea by any other name - is sometimes known as Eggs and Bacon because of it's flowers being of two different colours on the same plant.

All very colourful.