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With warmer temperatures forecast for the end of the week hopefully you’ll appreciate a watery theme for this week’s challenge! Find wild or naturalised aquatic plants in bloom and share for #wildflowerhour this Sunday 8-9pm using the hashtag #AquaticPlants 💦🌱

We joined the ride out for #DaveDay2025 today What a fantastic experience and a wonderful way to celebrate the life of a lovely man. The arrival at Barrow was just incredible!! 😍 #HairyBikers

Popped by to see another of my favourite wildflowers today. It has no leaves and indeed it contains no chlorophyll! This super-cool botanical vampire - the Ivy Broomrape, Orobanche hederae, obtains all of its nutrients from the Ivy it parasitises! #ParasiticPlants #wildflowerhour

‘Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have nodes right down to the ground’ This week’s challenge is to find a flowering sedge, grass or rush! Post your pics for #WildflowerHour this Sunday 8-9pm using the hashtag #GrassChallenge! 🌾

Spellbound by this amazing spectacle! A mass of stunning Seaholly set within a golden carpet of Kidney Vetch & punctuated by hundreds of the beautiful purple-tinted spires of Seaholly Broomrape, Orobanche minor var. pseudoamethystea!!! Absolutely dazzling!🤩 #wildflowerhour

A brand new challenge this week!

Postcard from the field, from our superb orchid tour leader Dr Richard Bate, leading two day trips this weekend to Helsington & Hutton Roof: We've been treated to a terrific variety of helleborines, their hybrids, and colour forms this weekend; and other great wildflowers besides!

Epic day at Hutton Roof with Dr Richard Bate First for me, hybrid between Dark Red & Broad-leaved Helleborine & the different colour forms of Epipactis atropurpureans! Also an absolute treat to catch up with some pristine Monotropa hypopitys!! #HelleborineChallenge #WildflowerHour

This is my favourite from a wonderful day with Mariposa Nature Tours at Hutton Roof. Epipactis x schmalhausenii, the love child between Dark Red and Broad-leaved Helleborine. Isn’t it an absolute stunner!!!! 😍#HelleborineChallenge #WildflowerHour

I adore this fascinating parasitic plant, it was so wonderful to see it again today! It was looking absolutely pristine too! 🥰 Yellow Bird’s-nest, Monotropa hypopitys 💛

Some are stellate, glandular, forked, simple or branched. What are? I hear you ask! Hairs!This week’s challenge is to find a hairy plant, the hirsuter the better and examine its trichomes! Post your bristly pics using the hashtag #hairyplants for #Wildflowerhour this Sunday 8-9pm

Darwin wrote of this orchid: "The remarkable length of the nectary, containing much nectar, the white colour of the conspicuous flower, and the strong sweet odour emitted at night, all show that this plant depends for fertilisation on the larger nocturnal Lepidoptera." Spot on!

It’s been so hot this week that I’ve been keeping in the shade. I’ve had good company though, lots of gorgeous Broad-leaved Helleborines!!! Thankfully they haven’t chomped by deer this year! #WildflowerHour

And finally after 4 previous attempts Alpine Woodsia, many thanks to those who helped for #wildflowerhour

Is there a wildflower more evocative of long summer days than the beautiful Harebell?! Campanula rotundifolia is of course also known as the Scottish Bluebell. The challenge this week is to see if you can find one for #Wildflowerhour! Share your pics this Sunday 8-9pm! 💙

Just some rather damp Harebells from me this week for #WildflowerHour! They might be bedraggled but still beautiful for the #HarebellChallenge 💙💦

New to me this week but because I’d seen it on #WildflowerHour I knew exactly what it was! 🥰 Duke of Argyll’s Tea Plant, Lycium barbarum casually growing from the walls of Runcorn Castle. Introduced from China and closely related to the Goji Berry, Lycium chinense.

For the #DeadNettleFamily challenge the delightfully fuzzy headed flowers of Black Horehound, Ballota nigra always look a bit confused to me! The flowers are so worth a closer inspection as they are prettily pencilled with delicate markings 😍 #WildflowerHour

Betony in Grafton Wood. #wildflowerhour #Deadnettlefamily

27/7/25 Cumbria - Some years, #HuttonRoof treats us to a very interesting #orchid. It's clearly from the Epipactis phyllanthes group but quite unlike anything else I've seen in the UK. It most closely matches the description of a Scandinavian taxon, var. confusa #wildflowerhour