In March we had a hunt for Ramsbury’s wild daffodils. Most of the daffs you see on verges and other grassy places are cultivars, the result of decades of plant breeding, in much the same way as an Alsatian is the same species as a Chihuahua. Proper wild daffodils are native wildflowers, distinguished by their pale-yellow sepals, the outer ‘petals’ which point forwards, their short, bluegreen leaves and much daintier appearance, as well as growing in wilder places, notably ancient woodland.
Well, we found three colonies, all of them close to the parish boundary. (I had better not say exactly where). In one there was only a single patch, with a few outliers, but the second contained a beautiful drift of daffodils under coppice, much as Wordsworth might have seen at Grasmere. Unfortunately, they are on the wrong side of the border! As for the third site, Pentico Wood, the original wild ones have unfortunately interbred with some planted ones, and become cultivars themselves - with double trumpets. I’m told that Wordsworth daffodils have suffered the same fate. The worst enemy of wild daffodils is ‘tame’ one!
This is of course the time of year for first records. We saw our first swallow on Good Friday, 7th April, the same day that we spotted the first, very early Orange-tip butterfly. Frogs spawned in our ditch on 18th March. Primroses were opening on their bank on the Froxfield Road by mid-March and were a blaze of flowers by the end of the month, when the first bluebells were also opening. I have also had a report of a hummingbird hawkmoth. It is seldom that this flower-hovering summer moth will survive a British winter, but this one evidently did. On warm days at the start of April, bee-flies were about, their round, fuzzy bodies and dagger-like tongues sipping nectar at the hover, like miniature hawkmoths. They seem particularly fond of primroses, selfheal, and garden grape-hyacinth.
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