Pictures to be added later
Three families, shortly to be joined by a fourth, and Judith (that's me) met at St John's Church at 4pm. F (aged 4) parked her bike and attached it to the bike stand. Good use of our new bike stands!.
Once through the gate to the Football Field area I led the group to a clump of yellow flowers: Perforate St John's Wort. I encouraged the six parents to use hand lenses to look at the translucent spots in the leaves of this plant. The hand lenses have bright red lanyards and have been lent to me (on permanent loan) by the British Lichen Society. I gave each family a list of the thirty flowers I had previously found at this site, arranged by colour and a coloured felt pen and asked each family to look for flowers of a specific colour - white, yellow, blue and (green and red) . They immediately started noticing ones I had missed off the list - e.g ragwort. .. Meanwhile the younger children seemed more interested in sculpting the remains of a pile of fresh sand that we were standing on.
We walked along the track. We found the Hairy Sedge. "Sedges have edges" - triangular stems - and only two have hairs on the leaves. Hairy Sedge is quite aggressive.. forcing its way up through the tarmac.
We came to the patch of Rest Harrow I had seen a fortnight ago, then only in leaf. A very few pink flowers were now showing. The leaves have a lovely smell of guava (a fruit)
We left the main track and followed a narrow path - narrow because - by July - the surrounding vegetation was growing tall, taller than the younger children. The patch cut through to a shingle beach beside the river. Here we made base camp - and the children tried skimming stones.
The shingle here must get moved every time the river floods (the river can occasionally rise over 2 metres so as to cover the football field) - so I was not too concerned about wildlife destruction.
Each family continued to look for their flower colour; I invited the oldest boy to hop across a wet area to a shingle bank to collect a small piece of Monkey Flower and Water Forget-me-not on behalf of the rest of us.
We discovered a big piece of shingle which was full of a colonial coral - which showed up well because it was wet.
In the water some cobbles had leeches on them.
We stuck flowers onto sheets of white card with sticky back plastic. We shared some chocolate biscuits including gluten free ones. I collected in several of the white cards so I could put them on the wall in the large meeting room or hall at church. Then it was time for home.
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Late that evening I started to tidy up .. and realised I only had three hand lenses and not the box with the other seven. I searched and searched.
Oh No! I may have left it at the river.
So early next morning I got up, and by 6.20am I was parking at the Swimming pool ready to retrace our steps. The sun was shining - and the sun high enough to shine over the high hills above Settle. (This was the first day of high pressure for many weeks/months)
I went thought the gate and there - next to the Perforate St John's Wort was my box of Hand-lenses.
Phew.
Thank you!
Nobody had taken them last night.
I took a few photos in the lovely early morning sunlight .. until the clouds came.
I walked along the track again and made a much more thorough list of plants .. So far I have got the total to 47! Including Water Figwort. Lesser Burdock, Tall Fescue.
Back on the road to the swimming pool I saw a pale creamy yellow lichen I had not noticed before -
Wonder what it is...
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