Wednesday 21 December 2011

More Christmas Flowers

Also found this week on the slopes of Cowshed Field, the purply pink flowers of Knapweed.  You can see that this flower is related to thistles and cornflowers.  There are usually a lot of these at Filnore Woods in late summer, a favourite with butterflies like the Ringlet and Marbled White which are on the wing in July.  They feed from the cluster of tiny florets, which open in succession on each flower-head.

I read in the Reader's Digest Field Guide to the Wildflowers of Britain that the flowers can be used .  .  .
".  .  .  to foretell a maiden's future.  A girl must pick the expanded florets off a flower-head, then put the remainder of the flower-head inside her blouse.  After an hour she should take it out again and examine it.  If the previously unexpanded florets have now blossomed, it is a sure sign that the man she will marry is shortly coming her way."

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