For illustrated talks on natural history and history see www.peterlovetttalks.co.uk

For illustrated talks on natural history and history click here for www.peterlovetttalks.co.uk

Sunday 15 April 2018

Townhall Clock or Moschatel plant: one of my favourite spring flowers


Townhall Clock or Moschatel plant: one of my favourite spring flowers is bursting into flower now in Surrey.  Eleven days ago the flowers were just starting to open on the north slope of Wolstonbury Hill on the South Downs, where plants flower a week or so earlier than Kingswood, Surrey.  It is far more abundant in Kingswood though, where great swathes of it flourish.  On Wolstonbury Hill there are only isolated small patches.
These pictures, above, are alongside the permissive bridal path (reasonably churned up by horses as it is a bridal path) adjacent to the Surrey Hills golf club in the nature reserve, "The Long Plantation" of Shabden Park
The exquisite, tiny flower is cube shaped with a flower on each vertical face and one on top... so the fairies can tell the time as they fly overhead, if you believe in fairies!  The stamens look like numerals on a clock face, although there are only ten: never mind!  This is a short lived, exquisite and fun little plant.
 Townhall clock plants are really abundant here in Chiphouse Wood, a Woodland Trust reserve on the edge of Kingswood.

Look!  Loads of it alongside the footpath which runs alongside the railway.  It is pollinated by flies or moths.
It is a plant that is featured in my talk at http://www.peterlovetttalks.co.uk/page13.html

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