Settle Wildflowers 124 - 11 April 2024: River Ribble with Blue Moorgrass, Sycamore budbreak, Salix viminalis female flowers, mosses and Collema lichen-

               

   

Other Blue Moorgrass - Sesleria caerulea blogposts:

1 Feb 2023-  30 March 2010 - 27 Feb 2019

(Note this post could do with splitting into four - see the four pictures above.

It is 11th April. After several grey and rainy days (weeks/months?) I set off at 5.15pm round the outside of the field with the Ladies Smock - Cardamine pratensis, and down the fenced off bank to the river edge.  The bank including the path at the edge of the field was fenced off about 10 years ago by the Ribble Rivers Trust.

 This narrow grass path has turned to mud. and with the aid of my trusty walking pole  I climb down this fenced of slope to the river.

Here what used to be be bare rocks  kept so by - occasional flooding by the river, by sheep grazing in the past and by droughts -  the area is now covered with moss.. I brought some back to go in yet more packets.

I usually plan to go up to the hills to look for limestone outcrops where Blue Moor grass might be growing. Two tufts were growing well on this outcrops exposed by the river.

 

A Willow shrub was flowering 

Is it Salix viminalis, The Osier?  I shall come back in a few weeks and see if the leaves have grown a lot longer.

There are at least two types of black jelly lichens growing amongst the moss in the deperseions on the "Clints", in the shade of the tree.

The sycamore bud is bursting.. It is only Aril 11th and "THe buds don't break until 16th April" I say.

But we have had warmish miserble weather for the last two weeks.. so the buds are breaking. 

Elsewhere on  the same tree there are some leaves appearing and one inflorescence. There will be more by tomorrow. A walk in Settle the following day reveal other sycamore trees in leaf.

Go to index of Settle Wildflower Lockdown walks extended..