More Wild Flowers Found in Burnley Lancashire

I love the idea that the foxglove was named because the pattern inside the flower reminded people of fox paw prints, as though foxes were wearing them when out and about at night and then hanging them on the stalks during the day. There are other, more likely, hypotheses for how the foxglove got its name, but that is my favourite.

As well as being beautiful it has also provided us with Digitalis a drug for treating certain types of heart failure. It is toxic though, so you're strongly advised against attempting to self medicate with it!

The purple flower was photographed near Lower Rosegrove Road, Burnley. The white one was photographed on the moorland verge of Crown Point Road and whilst it could be a wild mutation, may be a garden escape as there is sometimes fly tipping along that verge.

Sneezewort - the white flower in the picture below, is one I've never seen in any of the other counties I've lived in, but it is common on the moors around Burnley, because it likes acid soils. This one was by a path running through Dunnockshaw Community Woodland.

Smooth Hawksbeard, the yellow flower in the picture, is one of the dandelion's relatives and I must admit to finding it confusing to distinguish between the catsears, hawkbits, hawksbeard, and hawkweeds. However, if you look closely in the picture, you can see that the smooth hawksbeard has leaves a bit like the common dandelion, but they are very narrow and a bit like several arrowheads laced nose to tail.

This one was by a path running through Dunnockshaw Community Woodland.

Yellow flag is an Iris which loves a damp habitat or pond margin. This one was photographed along the margins of the Liverpool to Leeds canal between the Gannow tunnel, Burnley and Hapton.

A straight forward flower which brings me a lot of pleasure. This oxeye daisy was photographed against a backdrop of canal water, because it was growing from a crevice leaning out towards the water. It was one of many growing by the Liverpool to Leeds canal where it runs through Burnley.

Another yellow wild flower; this is a chunky flower with thick textural leaves. The flower's petals are comparatively short compared to the flower head size. Despite the name it isn't particularly common and I've only seen it in one area around Burnley. This one was growing beside a farm track leading from Billington Road, Burnley.

I love the billowy white flowers of the meadowsweet. It does live up to its name in terms of being sweet scented and enjoying a meadow or hedgerow habitat. This clump of meadowsweet was photographed in a treeless area of Dunnockshaw Community Woodland.

I can't see a buttercup without having a little chuckle to myself about a humorous monologue I heard Stephen Fry do once. The line in question went "I stooped to pick a buttercup - careless of people to leave their buttocks lying around!"

Although some members of the buttercup family are similar to each other, the creeping buttercup has courses leaves then the meadow buttercup (whose leaves are rather filigree) and the plant doesn't have the bulbous base of the bulbous buttercup.

I photographed this one in the meadow off Lower Rosegrove Lane, Burnley.

Ivy-leaved toadflax isn't a British native, but it has naturalised around the country and unlike some of the thuggish and invasive 'alien' species, such as Himalayan Balsam, I haven't heard a bad word spoken about it. It grows in crevices on stone walls where you hardly feel it possible for a plant to be able to sustain itself. This one was growing on a wall along St Matthew Street, Burnley.

Yes, I know you can find them everywhere because they're one of the most common wild flowers, but that doesn't make them less deserving of a mention. I have seen a wonderful sight of a field packed with dandelions which all gone to seed at the same time. It was a still day and there were a million perfect dandelion clocks laid out before me. That day there was no other plant sight that I would rather have seen. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me. Instead the picture is of a single dandelion flower on the moor near Crown point Road, Burnley.

Dandelions are actually a more complicated group of flowers then we imagine - even 'Collins wildflowers of Britain and Europe' admits they are a difficult group with many subspecies.

I particularly like this dandelion verse, which is part of a poem called Nature Notes, by Louis Macneice:

Dandelions

Incorrigible, brash,

They brightened the cinder path of my childhood.

Unsubtle, the opposite of primroses

But unlike primroses, capable

Of growing anywhere, railway track, pierhead,

Like our extrovert friends who never

make us fall in love, yet fill

the primroseless roseless gaps