Tag: Strawberry Banks

Wingless butterflies and wild granny’s bonnets at Strawberry Banks

Well, to be accurate, you can find both winged and wingless butterflies at Strawberry banks – I know this sounds like a cryptic crossword puzzle. Mmmm, there’s a thought maybe I could start a new career! The answers would involve a lot of letters so they’d also make good Scrabble words. The wingless butterfly I’m talking about is the Butterfly Orchid, a lovely, modest flower which is the latest of a host of orchids that grow at Strawberry Banks near Chalford. Common spotted orchids are also gracing the sunny slopes right now and it won’t be long before pyramidal orchids are flowering. As for the winged butterfly, this idilic limestone grassland is also a place where you’ll find plemty of them of them zipping around, especially on a warm day.

Continue reading “Wingless butterflies and wild granny’s bonnets at Strawberry Banks” →

The devil went down to Strawberry Banks

Strawberry Banks Comma + db scabious - Caroline Aistrop

Hurrah! Another opportunity to write about one of my favourite places in Stroud district. I visited Strawberry Banks a couple of days ago and discovered a profusion of devil’s bit scabious creating a purple tapestry weaving through the grassland of this beautiful, hidden valley. Its delicate, lilac pom-pom flower nods on the top of stem about 2-2.5 feet high, and is primly arranged in pairs (though my wildlife-watching companions disagreed and said it was blue. I often have this argument with people ‘It’s purple’, ‘No, it’s blue’, ‘Don’t be daft, it’s obviously purple’…anyone else go through this when discussing flower-colour? No? Must be my funny eyesight, then. I magnanimously agreed on lilac).

It’s one of the last flowers to still be going strong at this time of year and if the conditions are right (not too much sun in September), it can even carry on into October. How grateful the autumn insects and butterflies must be to have this source of nectar to feed on and, when I visited during a spirit-raising sunny afternoon, there were butterflies in abundance zooming from flower to flower as if they couldn’t get enough of this high energy drink. In just half an hour, I saw commas, peacocks, red admirals, tortoiseshell, and large white butterflies plus heard umpteen grasshoppers and crickets calling.

Continue reading “The devil went down to Strawberry Banks” →