The reopening of the Grand Western Canal

You may remember me mentioning in a previous post (which I can’t find) the Grand Western Canal and its breach after heavy rain in November 2012. Well it’s now been repaired and Frog, Dog and I went along to have a look last weekend.

Here is the breach, which sent tons of water into the field below. Luckily the canal rangers had managed to close floodgates one side of the breach before it happened. On the other side locals, rangers and the emergency services worked through the night to set up a blockade. (So water was not lost from the entire eleven miles of the canal, as reported by the Daily Mail.)

This is not my picture. I got it from Google but I think it was captured at the time on someone's mobile phone.

Here is the repaired stretch of canal. It looks a bit bleak at the moment, but I don’t think it’ll be long before nature moves back.

Spot the dog (and the frog)

A typical canal 'narrowboat'

Here is what the canal looked like a month before the breach:

Here is another canal (the Taunton and Bridgewater) in July last year, its banks a riot of wildflowers:

Yellow loosestrife, a plant that only grows in wet places

Hemp agrimony (the salmon-coloured flower in the background) and marsh woundwort (in the foreground), two more plants that need wet feet

 
At the time they were being built (about two hundred years ago), canals were hated by landowners for intruding on property, but now they are loved by walkers, cyclists, fishers, boaters and - most importantly - wildlife.

Violets - white and violet, sweet and dog

I have a migraine today which makes my brain work very slowly – if at all – so I won’t do much here except to bring you some more pictures of spring flowers.

Here is a white version of violet which I photographed at the weekend on a bank next to our local canal.

There are two types of violet – the ‘sweet’ kind which is scented and the ‘dog’ kind which isn’t. According to one of my wildflower books, bees love the nectar of sweet violet. I couldn’t detect any scent on these flowers, but here is a bee on one. (Sorry it's a bit fuzzy. As you can see, I still haven’t got the hang of taking close-ups.)

Here are some violet violets which I photographed at the end of April last year near the River Otter (for one of my contributions to Favourite Walks in Devon).

It was a beautiful sunny day

With our old friend, stitchwort

The hedge was full of them

Wild orchids

Primrose and the leaves of Early purple orchid

The lovely spotted leaves in the picture above belong to the Early purple orchid, whose flowers should be out in a few weeks’ time. I’ll try and get a picture of them for you.

All orchids are rare because they all have very specific and different requirements – for example, with respect to habitat, soil or pollinating insects, and because some of them flower only intermittently – ie, not every year. The Early purple is one of the less rare, but it is still uncommon.

It is illegal in this country to disturb any part of any wild orchid. In other words you can’t pick either leaves or flowers, or take seeds, or dig them up. Whether this protection extends to developing land on which orchids grow, I don’t know. I hope so. (It didn’t stop them driving the M25 through the North Downs however. This is where I grew up and where I first learnt about orchids, the Downs’ poor chalky soil being ideal for a variety of rare plants.)

I found these leaves in a small patch of woodland near home. The woodland has been left untouched because it is growing next to a stream in a valley far too steep to cultivate. When I wandered there on Friday, with the sun flickering through the bare branches and the tree trunks squeaking as the wind rubbed them against each other, I felt as if I was back in a fragment of ancient woodland, connected to the birth of the planet.

Ellie loved it too.

Ellie. (Picture by Rachel last summer.)

Lesser celandine

With a few days of sun (thank you, God), things are bursting into flower. Here's one of my favourite wildflowers, lesser celandine, which is suddenly all over the place.

Sorry for the chopped petal - I'm still learning about close-ups

The flowers only open when the sun is out*, and it takes its name from chelidon, the Greek for swallow. Goodness knows why since swallows (in my experience) arrive about April and celandines January–March.

My wildflower book says that it can be a troublesome weed but I love having it in the garden. It grows in the shade, provides good ground cover and makes way for later flowers with perfect grace.

A carpet of lesser celandine in the hedge. (Spot the dog.)

It’s a member of the buttercup family but not related to greater celandine (which is a poppy). I used to confuse it with winter aconite, another small yellow shade-growing early-spring flower but the leaves of the two are actually quite different. (Nor is winter aconite native.)

Winter aconite - which has what they call 'strap-like' leaves

 

Lesser celandine, with its adorable trowel-shaped leaves

* So the books say. I was out today (Sunday) in the rain and several celandine were open. I shall study the subject.