Friday 20 January 2017

January&February from British Wild Plants Calendar 2017


Common Hogweed

Heracleum sphondylium


Order: Apiales
Family: Apiaceae
Genus: Heracleum

habitat: in meadows, open woodlands, on roadside verges
distribution: widespread and common throughout the UK isles



Common hogweed is a carrot family, common hogweed is found almost everywhere in the UK.  As the winter here, south east Wales, is mild, delicate buds comes out from the grounds in the late winter such as common hogweed as well as other wild plants.  

Seeds are elliptical and hairless, of which umbels radiate outward from the centre of each stem.  In early summer to summer tiny white flowers in umbels blooms among other carrot family plants.

Giant hogweed is in the same family, but it was introduced as one of the ornamental plants to the UK, and naturalised.  Its appearance is similar to common hogweed, but it is impressively gigantic (2-3 meters) and grows mostly at riversides.

So, this image can be seen in the winter when  we walk in meadows.  The sees pods are almost fallen on the ground but some seeds are still on the umbels.

Today, it was cold but dry and sunny afternoon.  The January blue sky was above the wintry meadow with the mixture of brown of dead plants and green of grass and ever green.



*I had used one vinyl plate for each print before, which means I put a lot of colours on on plate.  For this year's calendar, though, two plates were used for each print.  To be noted; one wild plant print is for 2 month.  I will update the plant story in January (now), March, May, July, September and November.

Sunday 15 January 2017

December Calendar 2016: Holly

I haven't updated for a while.  This is the story about the december plant of the last year.


December: Holly

Winter Feature

Ilex aquifolium
quifolialesOrder: Caryophyllales
Family: Aquifoliaceae
Genus: Ilex

habitat: sunny to shady space
distribution: widespread throughout the British Isles




Holly is the send time for my calendar series.  This holly is very common in the UK, and we can find everywhere in gardens, parks, woodland, etc.  Addition to that, I know now, these prickly leaves belong to young shrubs.

They can become quite tall tree up to around 15 metre. As they grow the leaves become not prickly, just like camellia's ones.  (Though, there are many species with not prickly leaves.)

Our holly trees had fairly amount of red berries in the autumn.  Alas, they were eaten up by birds before I needed them for decorating my Advent (Christmas) wreath.