THE HAWTHORN BLOSSOM HAS ARRIVED






"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive" wrote Robert Louis Stephenson and if we travel hopefully in the British countryside this April we will see an abundance of white blossom in the hedgerows - the hawthorn blossom cretaegus monogyna, although known as "May Flower", has arrived. The hedges are also full of blackthorn blossom prunus spinosa. The two are very similar from a distance and can normally be identified by their off-set blooming pattern, but in these times of global warming it may be useful to look more closely at the flowers - blackthorn has firebrick-red pollen whilst hawthorn's pollen is mustard-yellow.

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