Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 90

THE SHARP-POINTED HORNBEAM buds are a streaky pink and green as they start to swell and open. If the warm weather continues, the leaves will soon be out. The natural hornbeam trees are broad-spreading and rather drooping. There is also a common cultivated variety, called fastigiata, with tightly bunched, upward-pointing branches that give the young trees the shape of a flame.

White dead-nettle flowers are opening along the lanes. There were some plants still in flower in early January, but these flowers come from the new spring buds. The leaves look like nettle leaves, but do not sting. However, young, pale green stinging nettle leaves are also coming up, and these can sting just as painfully as the older leaves.

Lesser celandines are now flowering in profusion, with beds of gleaming yellow flowers sometimes stretching for yards alongside ditches. There are also thick beds of cuckoo pint leaves, some with purple spots.