Buddleia

I have always been so familiar with the pale, wild buddlia which grows in profusion in the mortar of the brickwork that forms the Victorian railway viaducts carrying commuters between central London and its suburbs, that I had no idea about the variety of shades (species? sub-species?) available. But this glorious deep mauve stopped me in my tracks at lunchtime today. It's been quite a while since I took a lunchtime stroll, what with a dicky back and unenticing weather, but today I needed to get out, stretch my eyes and clear my head.

It wasn't until a holiday in the Dordogne in 2001 that I fully appreciated the attraction buddleia holds for butterflies, and it was because of that that I planted a couple of buddleia cuttings in the cottage garden in Greece.

I'd not noticed butterflies along London's railway tracks in my commuting days, and no matter how much I looked today, none were apparent on these bushes beside the esturial River Medway. I would have liked to have seen a butterfly today, for personal reasons.

I was bemused to find however, that the BBC article about railways that I linked to above was published on this same date exactly five years ago, which was exactly ten years after this event.

I chose this shot especially to compare the difference in shades between the surprising bolder variety in the foreground with the more familiar pale shade behind.