Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 28

MORE LEAVES OF wild flowers are coming up on roadside verges and in ditches.

Lesser celandine has kidney-shaped leaves, shiny and dark green, each growing on its own long stalk. Later they may take on a purple tinge. They grow in damp places, and the glossy yellow flowers will soon be following them, turning their faces to the sun. Buttercups, which belong to the same family, are also pushing up their leaves, which are deep-cut and fern-like. There are two common species, the meadow buttercup and the bulbous buttercup. These are best distinguished, when the yellow flowers come out in April, by the way the sepals of the bulbous buttercup hang down beneath the petals. The jagged-edged leaves of dandelion are sprouting everywhere: they grow in small rosettes that lie flat on the ground. All this progress towards spring could be arrested by frost or snow.

Chaffinches and blackbirds are starting to take up their spring territories, and the first of them should be heard singing in the next week or so.