Despite growing the things in my garden, on a windowsill and in specially designed terrariums, I’d never actually seen any of the British native species in the wild. I’d had more than a few lonely walks across desolate heathland trying to find some, stopping only to poke in every single wet pool and patch of sphagnum moss I could find however.
Finally on a blazing hot bank holiday in the beautiful Devonshire countryside I found not one, but two (maybe three) species. Drosera rotundifolia is the ’round leafed’ sundew and Pinguicula lusitanica the ‘pale butterwort’. I had in fact actually given up and was walking back to my car when saw some bog asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum) then looked down and started to find the Drosera. Ten minutes of filling up my cameras memory card later and I found the beautiful Pinguicula in flower! I did also find a single example that looked too ‘elongated’ to be rotundiflolia so may have been ‘English sundew’ – Drosera Anglica, but I can’t say for sure as I didnt want to poke at it too much.
Didn’t do much else in terms of ID’ing species, mostly just enjoyed the environment, but did find some nice patches of Marsh st Johns wort (Hypericum elodes) and some huge Hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) flowers amongst all the gorse and heather.
