The Countryside in August

The year is passing. The grain fields have become crisply golden, and the farmers are harvesting the barley crop; large and small golden straw bales are being loaded onto transport to be conveyed to storage areas or to other parts of the country, and trailer loads of the combined grain are being taken into barns for final drying before being sold to the merchants. Wheat and oats will be in the field a little longer yet. Some potatoes have been harvested, and many fields are already ploughed over for the next crop, possibly oil seed rape.

_Barley

On the roadsides and in wild places, Ragwort and Rose Bay Willowherb still continue to bloom, but the thistles are already sending their downy seeds way up into the air and on to their new homes, to germinate and carry on the species! Yet another umbelliferous plant has taken up the flowering sequence in the hedgerows - this time the False Elder, so called because its leaves resemble those of the Elder tree, and a non-flowering plant can easily be mistaken for an elder seedling. Its convex flowerheads have a pinky tinge to them, and they stand out amongst the dried up cow parsley, hemlock and hogweed which all now bear their brown seed heads.

_{Rose Bay Willowherb}

In fact most wild places are now brown and gold tinged as the grasses and many flowers have gone to seed. The trees are still green, but age is showing in their leaves; no longer are they fresh looking and transparent, but are leathery and possibly showing signs of insect damage. Their fruits are now quite prominent, and especially this month we see the extent of the hazel nut crop - the pale green nutlets standing out against the dark green leaves. The squirrels of course take most of the crop!! The Rowan berries have ripened to a rich red colour, and already the birds are feeding from them - especially in town gardens, and the beech tree has started to shed its nuts, although most of these are not really ripe yet.

_Scabious

The Wild Carrot is flowering now - it too is an umbelliferous plant, whose flowerhead changes shape and colour as it matures, from convex and pink to flat and white!! We have also seen the blues and lilacs of the wild Scabious, whose tall stems reach to the light above the seeding grasses, and the delicate pale blue Harebell, so fragile looking and dainty. The Convolvulus, which bears the largest wild flower in Britain, has rampaged up, over and into, as many hedges and other obstacles as it can, and has now opened its large white trumpet shaped flowers- pretty, but a nuisance in vegetable and ornamental gardens due to its overbearing habit.

_Convolvulus

The moors are a picture - the flowering Heather covering the landscape with pale lavender, and scenting the air with a sweet per-Fume. It is much loved by the bees, and hives have been taken to the moors for them to collect from the heather and produce wonderful golden runny honey whose scent in the depths of winter brings a memory of late summer(early autumn, and sunshine on the heather.

_Harebell