Collecting many new species of roadside plants for Dartmoor
It is always, so tempting, to just have one more cup of coffee, before leaving a friends house; and another and so on. Well; it was late afternoon, by the time I left. I had miles to walk, before I got to the point, from which, I could start hitching, and to think; I was contemplating getting safely home to the middle of Dartmoor! It was a mission doomed to failure.
The Cumberland basin, in my perception anyway is a spaghetti junction of roads (by Devon standards), which cross the river Avon and it's adjoining canals, which used to make up the original border between Gloucestershire & Somerset. The (North) Somerset border has moved a bit further down the road now, past the park and ride.
Anyway, this is where I began to be thoroughly distracted, by many seeding wild plants, growing on, under and around, this huge concrete flyover.
The Long Ashton By-pass
I think I chose to come this way, because it's the way I would normally drive home. But it was obvious from the start, that I should have headed towards the motorway, especially when half of the Long Ashton by-pass was dug up and traffic was squeezed into just 2 fast moving lanes, one going in either direction. This rush hour traffic was basically just a fast moving Que of traffic stressed out, tired and unable to stop, even if they wanted to; which it didn't look like any of them did.
Long Ashton is a kind of lump of linnier development, just outside Bristol, its quite posh and the centre is quite old. I used to do quite a few gardens there, when I used to live in Bristol. Long Ashton is where they have that Balloon festival each year, when there are no gales. The by-pass is about 4 miles long and is a 3 lane duel carriage way, with no pavement or walkway of any kind. The structure has been cut quite mercilessly through the limestone hill, but that was quite a few decades ago, and now life is flourishing in these newly created, sheltered slopes.
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| Ox eye Daisy seeds |
Seeds
All the way along this road, when I wasn't trying to avoid being run over by lorrys; I was finding extreme amounts of wild flower seeds and set about collecting as many as I could of them, only ever taking a modest few, from any given spot, but to collect from as many places as possible, to help ensure a mixed and varied gene pool for where they will hopefully flourish on Dartmoor; and where there will probably not be any contact for pollination from any other plants of most of these species.
Allot of our traditional meadow land flowers, which would have once commonly grown in hay meadows; now, due to the widespread use of herbicides, other chemicals and allot of modern farming practices, have been ousted to these roadsides; where they flourish. Just think, if it wasn't for roads; allot of these plants may have become extinct.
Made a few futile attempts at hitch hiking, but the traffic just couldn't stop, so I just walked miles and collected loads of seeds and quite a few rooted clumps of perennials as well.
Apples and Pears
North Somerset has allot of wild fruit trees. I think they must like the alkaline soil, created by all that limestone.
Here, they just grow profusely,as part of the army of quickly forming shrubby thicket, which is gradually taking over from the grassland plants, and will some day; mature into woodland, if left to it's own devices.
This process would eventually displace much of these grassland weeds, I have been collecting from here, but would create habitat for woodland plants instead.So song as we use these roads; there will always be a cut and strimmed bit of grass, right beside the road, so many grass land plants can survive on the edge of woodland, just like they do in a hedge.
These wild forms of Pyrus (Pear) & Mallus (Apple) are notably very suckering, although they must be spreading from seed, since they are on both sides of the carriageway.
Around Dartmoor we get these yellow Crab Apples, much different to these Cultivated species will not fruit on Dartmoor, too acid, I suppose. These ones here are very nice to eat, even this early in the season, especially sine I hadn't brought any previsions with me and they served to quench both thirst and hunger.
Wild Flowers
Ah! Prickly Ox Tongue, I believe!
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| Prickly Ox Tongue |
Many relatives of this plant, both on the Thistle and the Dandelion sides of the family; reside quite happily on Dartmoor and this particular species grows near Okehampton.
I seemed likely that this plant might survive on Dartmoor, so I decided to break off a few soon to open seed pods, from various clumps of this plant, as I walked along the duel carriageway. There are a few different species of Sow Thistle up on Dartmoor and they do very well, so I'm sure this will too.
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| Flea bane |
By this point, I had even arrived at a lay by, where I could stand, without having to walk and avoid traffic + I could stand with my sign and grin cheesily at on-coming vehicles.
The lay-by gave plenty of room where cars could have easily pulled in and given me a lift, but none of them did.
Eventually the thought of Coffee and food back at my friend's house won over my thoughts and I decided to cross over to the other side of the road and see if I had any more luck, hitching back to Bristol.
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| Tansy |
It was a bit dodgy, with hurtling lorrys on both sides, but the central reservation was laced with wild flowers, many of which were not present along the darker shrubbier verges at the sides of the road.
Mallow was one example. This plant is fairly common near the coast, as this site is. It likes full sun and fairly poor soil. There arnen't any wild Mallows on Dartmoor, as far as I'm aware, but it grows well in My garden, so I collected just a few experimental seeds, from; as is usual practice, from many different potential parent plants.
Diversity
On Dartmoor presently; there are few, but the most common species of wild flowers.
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| Mallow |
What hopefully I will achieve, by missions, such as this one, is to increase the varieties and sub-species quite a bit, as well as hopefully introducing many completely new things too.
Well, nobody hooted at me, this time!
Once I did eventually make it to the other side of the road; One lazy thumb in the air, to my astonishment; caused the first car to stop. I then got a lift all the way into the city centre, by this Muslim guy, who said he was fasting for Ramadan, and could only eat during the hours of darkness, until the end of the month. He said he tried to wake up, before it got light, so he could have breakfast, before fasting all day.
Back in Bristol
Safely back in Bristol.
Just a long walk back to my friend's house deep in the inner city. But much much quicker, than if I Had walked the whole way.
Knackered and with rucksack and carrier bag full of biological material; I trudged wearily through Bristol.
When I got back to my friends house; it turned out, that I had left loads of my stuff there. Hmm, perhaps that's why I had so much room in my rucksack?
My friend had cooked up a really nice meal too, so perhaps I just was not supposed to leave Bristol just yet.
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