Pale St. John's-wort

Today was spent at Bonemill's Hollow SSSI, though we were a bit late starting as somehow the car had run out of coolant, so I had to go to Halfords to buy some more and then wait for the engine to cool down before I could put it in!

Bonemills is a wonderful limestone valley with steep flower-rich banks either side of a tufa depositing stream, with areas of Grey Willow carr over Tussock-sedge, and a Bottle-sedge mire. Quite an unusual assemblage of habitats for just west of Peterbrorough. 

Although it has many interesting plants present, I really wanted to photograph the Pale St John's-wort that I spotted in June 2021, but which wasn't flowering at the time. This perennial herb is almost confined to chalk and limestone districts, and only occasionally found over other substrates. It prefers well-drained soils, and grows by hedges and in thickets, amongst scrub, in rough grassland, open woodland and rides, and the grikes of limestone pavement. Although it is locally frequent in some parts of the country, this is the only extant population remaining in the East Midlands and so is very special.

In the evening we had a birthday celebration for Ben in the garden. Alex helped me make a Chicken Basque, which was followed by home-made Summer Pudding. Ben's partner Sarah was able to join us, but was definitely still rather subdued after her bout of Covid, and is the only one of us to have lost her sense of taste and smell. All the special plans that she's made for Ben's birthday had to be shelved, but life seems to be full of re-arrangement as a result of the current Covid wave.