
Wildflowers and other flowering plants
Below is a non-exhaustive list of some of the many flowers and shrubs to be found growing at Magog Down. Most of these articles include lovely descriptions and history about the plants, written for us over the years by plant pathologist David Yarham. Some articles have been updated recently with new photos of the plants thriving thanks to our Rangers' careful management.
We welcome visitors' photos to help enrich our website, so if you have any you'd like to submit, do send them along to photos 'at' magogtrust.org.uk. Perhaps you've spotted a wildflower that is not yet featured here?
Flowers and Shrubs at Magog Down prev : next
Red and White Clover - Trifolium pratense & Trifolium repens
Red and white clovers are sufficiently well known to need no description. Both are perennial plants, the white species being prostrate and enabled to spread vegetative by its habit of rooting at the leaf nodes. Being members of the Pea Family (Leguminosae), clovers provide the farmer with a valuable source of nitrogen as nodules on their roots are home to bacteria which fix the element from the plentiful supply in the atmosphere.
Of the many dialect names by which clovers have been known, “honeystalks” and “lamb-sucklings” are amongst the most descriptive. The origin of the former will be obvious to anyone who has sucked the nectar from a clover flower, and the latter highlights white clover’s value as a feed for sheep.
In Titus Andronicus Shakespeare has Queen Tamora boast that she
will enchant the old Andronicus
With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous,
Than baits to fish or honey-stalks to sheep,
When as the one is wounded with the bait,
The other rotted with delicious feed.
But sheep will thrive in a clover-rich pasture, so why should Shakespeare refer to the plant as “dangerous”? Certain strains of white clover contain a cyanogenic glycoside which, when the plant is eaten, is converted to prussic acid - not the most healthful of dietary additives! But glycoside poisoning is rare. It is more likely that the country-born bard was thinking of the “bloat” which can affect (sometimes kill) sheep if they gorge themselves too greedily when transferred from a poor pasture to a highly palatable, clover-rich one.
David Yarham
May 2003
See also...
Report of the visit from Cambridge Natural History Society in August 2017
News about a visit by the local branch of Butterfly Conservation charity taking place in August 2016
News about the very special area of Colin's Bank, published in February 2015
Pasque Flower
One of our Friends sent us this beautiful picture of some Pasque Flowers taken in amongst the Cowslips in May 2016.
Photo by Jill Butler