Autumn Gentians

One of the plants which is coming in to flower in discrete colonies on the grassland of the Littleferry links is the....

....autumn gentian. It's a plant which, ever since we first found it in 2020, seems to be having a hard time. In some years hardly any of them actually flowered but this year they seem to be having a little more success.

The local gentians come in two colours. The above picture shows the white variety which seems to be prevalent at Littleferry, while the purple variety is less common. The fact that the white variety has....

....purplish outer petals has led me to think that this is the purple variety: it isn't.

While the bell heather - the darker one in this picture - is already beginning to die back the lighter-coloured ling is coming in to its own.

With so many flowers in bloom and some bright sunshine while we were there this morning, there were - for. welcome change - a good number of butterflies on the wing, including this small copper, plenty of common blues, and perhaps even more small heaths, but what we noticed was that there was, for whatever reason, a total absence of larger butterflies.