By the middle of May, when we have such good growing weather as we are now experiencing, plants seem fairly to overflow with health, and flower after flower appears so rapidly that we miss detail and only notice the general effect. The grasses not only provide bite for the cattle, but are many of them in flower, and the red sorrel heads are showing above the green. Stitchworts and starworts, from the greater stitchwort to the ever-present and too-abundant chickweed, no longer dot the banks, but in many places spread white sheets; white, too, are the usually green ponds, for the water crowfoot, a different variety in nearly every pond we examine, hides the floating duck-weed and other water plants.
An abundance of flowering trees
Golden butter-cups of various species are replacing the bleaching celandines, and some fields are glorious with little else than the common dandelion, though in other places the white seed-heads, beloved of birds, are more plentiful than flowers. The hyacinths are not nearly over, neither are the primroses; there are blue woods and soft yellow banks in many country spots; in untrimmed hedge banks the trailing, climbing vetches, the wood loosestrife or yellow pimpernel, and the campions give pleasing variety, and the red, yellow, and white dead nettles and other labiates, though not so conspicuous, all help to beautify flowery May.
Unusual flowers now out
Amongst the more unusual flowers now out are the climbing corydalis and the alpine pennycress, reported a few days ago from Colwyn and by an expert botanist.
