Casualty

I hadn't really intended to use the lightpad yet again, but like much of Britain, the weather in Peterborough has been unseasonably atrocious, with high winds and periods of heavy rain, so the furthest I've been is Waitrose. 

We have a large Crack Willow in our garden and branches have been dropping off it all day. One landed on our bed of annuals, where the Corn-cockle was just coming into bloom, snapping off this flower. So, as I had nothing else to offer, it became my blip of the day.

Corn-cockle was introduced into Britain as a contaminant of grain at least as far back as the Iron Age. It is a plant that can tolerate a range of soil types and was a weed of cereal and other arable crops. In Britain its stronghold appeared to be within rye on the light, sandy soils of the south and east of the country. Although never common it suffered a dramatic decline at the beginning of the twentieth century with the development of improved seed cleaning techniques. It is now virtually extinct in the wild.