Plantlife Survey

After my sister and I found all the plants around our patch in May, my mum decided to register for a 1km square patch to monitor as part of the National plant Monitoring scheme.

As we are not that good at identifying plants we started with the 1km Wildflowers path
through our square and mum's friend Barbara came with us to help out. We also only looked at 200 different plants in the picture guide rather than looking for the 400.

The first part of the path goes along side a farmers field with hedgerow on one side and wheat on the other.
Within the first 200m we already found about 7 plants.

Marsh Thistle

Tufted Vetch

Hedge Woundwort

Bugle

Bramble

Common Nettle

Red Campion

We then turned a corner and walked along side the field but with the wood on one side. Here we dropped off the trail camera at the badgers sett.

The next few metres was alongside a bare patch of earth the farmer hasn't planted on one side and wood on the other.

Oxeye Daisy

Scarlet Pimpernel

Creeping buttercup

Meadow buttercup

Cow Parlsey

Greater Plantain

Ribwort Plantain

We also saw forget-me-knots and around 5 or 6 other plants that weren't in the 200 plants book.

We now entered the wood

Cleavers

Bracken

last bluebell, the rest have gone over

The next part takes us down a path in the woods that has a crabapple tree and lots of honeysuckle.

One side of the path has a clearing

Gorse bush

The last part of the 1km path comes out of the wood with a horses paddock on one side and a field of crops on the other. The path is lined with Hawthorn and lots of nettles

Red Clover

Silverweed (not flowering)

Whilst walking we could see other plants such as Poppys but they weren't on our actual path so they didn't count.

We went back to pick up the trail camera.
(I changed the batteries, so the date and time went back)

The badgers were out so we stopped to watch them for a few moments but didn't take any pictures. We could hear lots of chattering from the badgers behind the brambles where we couldn't see them.

This is what the trail camera picked up.

We put a handful of monkey nuts out, the badgers didn't like the shells, they just opened them and ate the peanuts.