Cornflower blues

After the visitation of the Painted Ladies in August, ( Blog 31/07/19 ) other butterflies having been appearing in the garden. The recent burst of hot weather has helped to bring out more species fluttering around the fields and by-ways

Following a path by woodland, I tried to capture the latest batch with the phone camera but their compound eyes mean that they are off as soon as you approach, dancing enticingly from plant to plant never settling long enough to get the phone close to them. (Memo to self - bring the SLR the next time.)

Green veined white on thistle

Comma

They did lead me to a field of pasture being munched by a contented flock of ewes and there, along the field edge, growing among the sheep sorrel, were cornflowers.

Once, these "weeds of cultivation"were common in cereal crops as their names suggest, - cornflower, corn spurrey, corn marigold, corn cockle. Now, due to the use of agri-chemicals, most are rare but their seed can survive for a long time as witnessed by the proliferation of poppies along any roadside verge after digging by local councils or service providers.

Cornflowers, like poppies, grew in the churned up fields of the Western Front in WWI and were adopted by the French as their flower of remembrance – le bleuet de France

Now, they are seldom found in Britain except in gardens as part of a "wild flower" sowing or where environmentally friendly farmers have reintroduced them.

Wild flower meadow

My few were almost certainly survivors from an older time still managing to set seed despite the munching of the sheep.

Sheep sorrel

Sheep sorrel is a food plant for the small copper butterfly. I saw none that day but worth another look (with a better camera!).

Odd how the flowers of remembrance the field poppy and the cornflower are scarcely to be found in the countryside where they were once so much part of the landscape - a lost generation of blooms.