Thyme check

I'm monitoring the wild flowers that are colonising and spreading in a group of chalk scrapes we excavated at the nature reserve. Three years ago they were bare chalk; now lots of special chalk grassland plants have become established and are gradually spreading. One genus I was checking today was Thymus. Both Wild Thyme (Thymus drucei) and Large Thyme (T. pulegioides) are present and it's interesting to see how well each is doing. This is the Large Thyme, which can have quite tall flower shoots compared with the more prostrate mat-forming Wild Thyme. It is also more strongly thyme-scented and has hairs just at the corners of the square stem.