EARLY SPRING FLOWERS

For those of us who love nature, late winter – early spring is an exciting season as so many plants start to ­­­do a flower count in my garden every January 1^st and I usually find thirty or forty plants with open flowers. Many, such as winter aconites, Viburnum x bodnantense “dawn”, winter clematis, heathers, Christmas box, Algerian iris, Christmas rose, yellow winter jasmine and winter honeysuckle are garden plants, of course, but they do offer nectar to the earliest insects. This year I saw a queen bumblebee visiting the winter honeysuckle Lonicera x purpusii on January 1^st when I was doing the flower count.

You may find a few non-native but naturalised flowers in greenspace outside gardens such as winter heliotrope Petasites pyrenaicus which has been naturalised in Britain since the 1800s, and is sweetly scented; also snowdrops, crocuses, the first daffodils and hardy cyclamens. Truly wild species to look out for in flower early on our greenspaces include primrose Primula vulgaris, wood anemone Anemone nemorosa, gorse Ulex europaeus, white dead-nettle Lamium album, daisy Bellis perennis and some of the less conspicuous ones such as groundsel Senecio vulgaris and petty spurge Euphorbia peplus.

Betts Ecology are always interested to hear from you with photographs of any interesting winter flowers or the insects visiting them.

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