Settle Wildflowers 132b: Down the Ribble on 30 May SD8163: Flowers

Reflections on - visiting a site too early, some new flowers for 2024, almost the lowest part of the Ribble and my hectad  (c 135 m) and sense of place  - and YES it is Xanthoria calcilola at the stile.

This post 132b deals with flowers  
(Read about the Lichens here)

Geranium dissectum

Dame's Violet - Hesperis matronalis

Dame's Violet - Hesperis matronalis

This monad SD8163 includes 

most of Settle (except Upper Settle.)

most of Giggleswick (except the church, The Mains,  all three - four schools, Stackhouse Lane and Four Lane Ends)

The Ribble from Queens Rock down to Penny Bridge and the two Fields below that.

Todays walk was the Ribble in the second field below Penny Bridge.  I had had a wonderful time there in Lockdown at the end of June 2020.  (26 June 2020) I explored it this evening to see what was there and out a month earlier: 

Answer: not as much as in late June/July. So negative results are as good aa positive - and if you are only going to walk this path once, then I say come back a month later. and don't go just after the river levels have been high.

However I can say - the Rest Harrow is still there (but not flowering yet) , The Dames violet (Hesperis matronalis) was there in the form of three shoots with only tow flowers fully open, - (It may be a garden escape anyway), There were lots of Ox-eye daisies in bud.

The Monkey flower - Mimulus guttatus had its golden yellow flowers nodding, but was draped in mosses and other river debris left from high river levels two days previously.

Three was one plant of Pyrenean Scurvey grass.

The field is a flat field leading to the barn, and is well grazed and will be well fertilised - or at least manured and slurry treated. The river bank shows slippage. Here there ought to be good species - maybe I should come back in August. The river cuts into the alluvial material (rounded boulders)  There is an area of (very old) concrete which might have been put here long ago to stop river erosion. 

On the slippage area I found Geranium dissectum (I had seen this in Giggleswick Station) and I found Trifolium dubium - Lesser Trefoil.. but this is leading into the next monad SD8162

Monkey flower  Mimulus guttatus

Monkey flower  Mimulus guttatus

Rest Harrow - distinctly not in flower 

For the record and not because it is a good plant or picture - Pyrenean Scurvy-grass.

Red clover 

First field next to  this wall has the stile in.
And lots more lichens on the rest of the wall.

Read more posts about about Wildflowers of the Settle Area here