Winter Aconites

Today's the day ................... for a harbinger

We went to check up on another harbinger of spring yesterday - that you often find growing in the same place as snowdrops - and that was these winter aconites.  

Its posh name is Eranthis hyemalis and it is a species of flowering plant in the buttercup family, native to calcareous woodland habitats and widely naturalised in most of Europe.  Its life cycle exploits the deciduous woodland canopy, flowering at the time of maximum sunlight reaching the forest floor, before it completely dies back to its underground tuber after flowering.

There wasn't a lot of sunshine reaching any sort of floor yesterday but they looked cheerful enough - if a bit water-logged .......................