Something has been conspicuously missing amongst the long grass and wildflowers of the links at Littleferry. Its ghost is there, in the form of....
....dried leaves and flowers, but the reappearance of this plant which we had expected in late summer simply hasn't happened.
It's the autumn gentian,
Gentianella amarella, about which I was so excited in late August and early September last year - see post
here. I was even more thrilled to find that we had a rarer variety....
....a white-flowered subspecies,
septentrionalis. Not that any of the local gentians did too well last year as, by the end of the season, it was obvious that they were struggling, with many plants dying before they had fully flowered.
However, my concern that we haven't seen any - not one - this year have, to some extent, been allayed. Apparently, gentians can be biennial, that is, only flower every other year, though it isn't at all clear to me why they should do this.
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