Ten flowers to spot at Conwy in May

While April can often be a cool month in North Wales, May usually brings some real warmth, and with it come many more flower species. Some of April's flowers, such as gorse and dandelion will remain throughout the summer, but others such as cuckoo flower and cowslip, will be over by the end of the first week of May.  Also in this series of blogs are flowers to spot in June, July and August.

Here are 10 flowers to spot at Conwy this month.

Common bird's foot trefoil

We have a lot of yellow flowers at Conwy, but none as numerous as common bird's foot trefoil. It likes soil with low nutrients but doesn't like taller competitors, so it does best where the grass is short, such as the grazed southern part of the reserve. It grows low to the ground (unlike the similar greater bird's foot trefoil that flowers at the head of a long stem). Flowering begins in May and continues through June, and in some years, the reserve is a carpet of colour. It's the long brown seed pods, which come as a set of three later in the year and look like a bird's foot, that gives the flower its common English name.

Marsh marigold

Also known as kingcup and mayflower, the marsh marigold would have been a common sight in damp fields, ditches and wetlands before much of Britain's pasture was drained for crops. We introduced marsh marigold to the dipping pond, near the Visitor Centre, used by thousands of children every year during school visits. and the insects love it. Each summer, we find the exoskeleton of dragonfly larvae attached to the undersides of its large leaves, from which the adult insect has emerged.

Herb robert

This is a member of the geranium family, and we have several similar cranesbill species on the reserve, but none flower as early as herb robert. As well as its small pink flowers, look for the red edging to the leaves. It grows in shady areas around the reserve, and has a rather unpleasant smell if you crush it, earning it the old English name Stinking Bob! People used to rub it on their skin as a mosquito repellent, but we don't recommend that; it's more likely to be a social repellent!

Hawthorn

April's white blossom of blackthorn is replaced by May's hawthorn blossom, and as the flower's unfurl early in the month, St Mark's flies (black flies with dangly legs) home in on its scent. It's the food plant of many other insects, including the caterpillars of some of the moths we have here, and its dense foliage provides nesting sites for many of our songbirds. In Medieval times the aroma of hawthorn blossom was associated with the Great Plague. Scientists have subsequently discovered that trimethylamine, a chemical that occurs in the blossom, is formed when animal tissue starts to decay, so it's an understandable connection.

Common vetch

A member of the pea family, this now grows in abundance along the estuary track, the seeds probably having arrived in the storm surge of December 2012 which dumped a layer of earth and seaweed along the path. Vetch is grown as a fodder crop for livestock and is able to fix nitrates, encouraging lush growth, so the seeds were presumably washed down the river and are now germinating.

Common cornsalad

The photo comes with a health warning: there are three cornsalad species, and the flowers look identical. It's only later in the year, when the seed pods form, that you can identify the individual species. That said, of the three, we've only ever recorded common cornsalad at Conwy. The flowers are tiny, with around a dozen at the head of each stem. It has been eaten as a salad accompaniment for many centuries, and it still grown as a commercial crop in central France. The German word for cornsalad is Rapunzel, adopted by the Brother's Grimm for their fairy tale character.

Bugle

The spikes of bugle flowers start to emerge in April, favouring damp, shaded woodland, so look around the wildlife garden and the dipping pond. Bugle is a food source for many species of caterpillars - at other sites, this includes the rare pear-bordered and small pear-bordered fritillaries. Its English name has nothing to do with the musical instrument, but it thought to come from the Latin verb abigo (to drive away) because it was widely used in medicine as a cure for disease.

Brackish water crowfoot

If you look in the smaller ponds, and in the Shallow Lagoon as the water level falls later in summer, you can see strings of tiny white flowers emerging from the surface. This is brackish water crowfoot, which suits the slightly salty conditions of the coast. It has declined in western Britain in the last century, but seems to do well here perhaps partly because the ponies graze the pond edges and scuff up the ground. In May, the best places to look are the temporary ponds beyond the Bridge Pond.

Stinging nettle

Stinging nettles are valuable plants, and we like to champion the underdog! The flowers are a string of tiny cream-coloured 'balls', while the sting comes from tiny hollow hairs on the stem and on the end of the leaves (there is a subspecies of stingless nettle that doesn't have these, but it doesn't occur here). It's the food plant for the caterpillars of peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflies and a good number of moths that occur on the reserve. As well as being used as food (in soup, or as a replacement for spinach), it's also used to make beer, and the fibres have been used to make clothing for more than 2000 years. In World War I, cotton shortages in Germany were so severe that the government almost resorted to making army uniforms from nettle fibre.

Silverweed

The yellow flower doesn't usually emerge until June, but you can spot the rosettes of silvery leaves around the footpaths from early May. Silverweed likes our sandy soil, and it's found across the world, even being cultivated as a root crop in Asia. It was allegedly used by Roman foot soldiers as padding in their boots - there is logic in this, as it's high in starch and so is good at absorbing sweat; ideal after a long march to quell the Barbarians!