A Wildflower Year

Our unusually dry summer continues.  It's been grey and overcast the last couple of days, but the only rain we've had has been a few spots.  As a result, the burns are running low and we're having to water the garden almost daily to keep our vegetables alive.  The other day someone suggested that we should buy a palm tree - which we're sure would do very well - but that might be tempting fate.

Despite the 'drought', and perhaps because of the sunshine, the wildflowers are having a wonderful year.  In the competition to reach the light, the lucky ones are the fastest growing.  The picture above is of one of the Woundwarts, perhaps the Hedge Woundwart, Stachys sylvatica.  Even a fancy digital camera struggles to do justice to its rich colours.

Rosebay Willowherb, also known as fireweed, Epilobium angustifolium, never has a problem keeping above the competition, and it really has thrived this year, carpeting whole hillsides with its brash pink.  Note the background of Kilchoan Blue Sky.

But this plant, which looks very similar, is more difficult to identify.  At first sight, particularly to someone as ignorant of wildflowers as The Diary, it looks very like Willowherb, but the flowers form a much more compact head.

This is a wider view of the same plant. It may be Lyrum salicaria, Purple Loosestrife - but can anyone confirm this?

The Foxgloves, Digitalis purpurea, always seem to do well whatever the weather, shooting up almost overnight.  In one little patch of bracken at the end of the Ormsaigbeg road we found three which wanted to stand out as different, two of them a delicate shade of pale pink, and this one which was almost white.  And, yes, that is water on them - from a brief and very light passing shower.

The vetches cheat by climbing on the shoulders of others to gain the light.  They come in a glorious variety of purples, this one relatively pale and delicately patterned compared to some species.  This might, or might not be Bush Vetch, Vicia sepium, but The Diary's failure to take a picture of its leaves probably makes full identification difficult.