Its not pretty

Something of an adventurous walk with the spaniel this morning. We found ourselves cornered by thirty or more very assertive cattle. I managed to get the spaniel through a hedge and over a barbed wire fence but they kept on coming so I had to escape the same way myself. My arms got a few lacerations but my fleece top is completely shredded!

A little later I came across this group of Toothwort (Lathraea squamaria) one of the very few parasitic plants in Britain. Its not pretty, it has no chlorophyll (its sometimes called the 'corpse flower') and it draws its nutrients from the roots of the host plant (in this case a beech tree). Nice to find something of a rarity. The walk was topped off by seeing another hare. Like yesterday's it had disappeared before I could say 'lens cap off'.