I took a long three mile walk down to Trehunist and then down the hill to Hepwell Bridge where my lift home was parked up knitting.

On the road hedges were some honeysuckle plants out in bloom but these displays were few and far between. It might be just me, but there doesn’t seem to be very much of it about this year. As a boy we used to pick these plentiful honeysuckle flowers and suck out the very sweet nectar. This sweetness is probably how the climber acquired its name.

There were quite a few tutsan plants on the hedge creep showing their beautiful yellow flowers that produce green berries that turn red and then black. Its leaves have genuine antiseptic properties and were once used to cover flesh wounds to aid healing.

On the way down the hill towards the bridge I saw a scorpion fly flitting down beside me. So named for its looks and for the fact that the male’s tail curls upwards, a bit like a real scorpion’s. These flies are scavengers and have perfected a way of stealing prey from spiders webs without being captured themselves.

There is a shallow ford across the road where some hedge woundwort was growing. This red flowered plant also has healing qualities and has been valued, along with its cousin, the pink flowered marsh woundwort, since the time of the ancient Greeks to treat wounds and to stop bleeding.

Down beside the bridge saw some meadowsweet out in bloom. Growing in damp meadows and on marshy ground their plumes of creamy white flowers have a very sweet smell and it has been said that a Tudor lady who was expecting a visit from Queen Elizabeth (imagine that) would cover her floors with meadowsweet blooms.

A plant that is a bit hard to identify, indeed, sometimes with disastrous results, is hemlock water–dropwort. This is one of Britain’s most poisonous plants and has proved fatal to those who have eaten it after mistaking it for some other harmless member of the parsley family, of which there are nearly forty members. Don’t forget that a potion made from this plant was what saw the Greek philosopher Socrates off to his grave.

There are large clumps of this white flowered plant growing down beside the Tiddy and after photographing the flowers and leaves I compared them to pictures in Marjorie Blamey’s excellent book, The Illustrated Flora of Great Britain, and decided this was hemlock water–dropwort, growing in profusion.

I noticed a red and black moth just sitting on our gravel path so I put it on a leaf to photograph it. As far as I could tell it was a scarlet tiger, but it was in a bad way as a leg and part of one of its antenna were missing. There was no sign of its outer wings either. When I went to take another look later on, it had gone.