We’ve set up our ‘Wonderful Wildflowers trail’ around the paths to introduce you to some of the fascinating flowers you can see at Pulborough Brooks. The trail will be running throughout the summer around our wetland nature trail – there’s no additional charge & no need to book a visit.
Here are a few highlights from the trail at the moment...
Close to the Visitor Centre is our Wildlife Explorer meadow and amongst an array of pretty plants, the ones that stand out are the beautiful violet and blue flowers of Meadow Cranesbill.
Meadow Cranesbill by Anna Allum
Take a closer look and you’ll see that the purple petals are decorated with fine coloured veins which guide any visiting bees to their source of nectar. And whilst the bees are enjoying a sweet drink, the plant dusts the bee with pollen ready for it to transport to another flower and pollinate it – a fair exchange! After pollination come long-beaked seedpods that are reminiscent of a crane’s bill!
On disturbed areas of ground look for Scarlet Pimpernel.
Scarlet Pimpernel by Anna Allum
On bright days you can set your watch by this flower – its perky flowers open at 8 in the morning and close at 3 in the afternoon. If it is cloudy or wet they will shut themselves up. It was once believed that Scarlet Pimpernel could cure madness, relieve misery and bring laughter – quite a super-powered plant. The ancient Greeks used it as a cure for melancholy – in southern Europe the Scarlet Pimpernel is often blue.
One of the most statuesque and architectural plants is teasel, with its large egg-shaped spiky heads, speckled with tiny purple nectar-rich flowers.
Teasel by Anna Allum
As well as looking mighty fine, teasels are great all-rounders in the wildlife they support, being good for bees and butterflies whilst in flower and then popular with birds, especially goldfinches, when they have gone to seed. One of teasel’s common names is ‘brushes and combs’ referring to the use of the spiky dried heads to ‘tease’ out the fibres during cloth-making. Another name is ‘Venus’ basin’, named for the water that collects in the cup-like base of the leaves. Folklore has it that this was sacred water used to ease inflammations of the eye and as a cosmetic to ‘render the face fair’. I’m not sure that I’d use it – the cups trap insects and it is possible that the plants make use of the nutrients released from the dying insects.
We’ll end our wander by having a good sniff of Meadowsweet whose fragrant and frothy white flowers were once used to flavour mead. The scent of the leaves is quite different from that of the flowers; the leaves have an almond-like smell and the flowers have a stronger and sweeter aroma. The main ingredient of aspirin (salicylic acid) was discovered and extracted from this plant, but it’s not just us who have made use of Meadowsweet, it is popular with all sorts of wildlife too.
Sedge Warbler perched amongst Meadowsweet by Graham Osborne
You can find out more about our wildflower trail here: