Street Flowers

21 January 2014

Horbury, West Yorkshire

Oxford ragwort, Senecio squalidus, is in flower on stone chippings around an electricity substation.

Ivy-leaved toadflax, Cymbalaria muralis

Although, like the Oxford ragwort, this plant originates from southern Europe, its glossy leaves stay green all winter. Growing in the crevices of an old stone wall on Twitch Hill, it's hanging onto a few of its crimson-purple flowers. What look like faded star-shaped flowers are the remains of the calyx which protected the coralla tube of the flower.

The flower stalks will now bend, so that the seeds are released in dark crevices when the seed-pods burst.

Smooth sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus, is also still in flower, just, a the edge of the pavement at the foot of a south-facing larch-lap fence.