Recently looking for bumblebees at Dungeness I came across a plant I'd never noticed before. It looked like moss at first glance, but something about it made me look twice. It was a very tiny plant with leaves only a couple of millimetres long with what looked like red flower buds. I posted the photos on a Facebook group for wild flowers, and it was identified as Sea-heath -
Frankenia laevis.
When I looked at sea-heath in my book it had mauve flowers which didn't seem to match with the red buds I thought I'd seen so I went back and found some in flower which were indeed mauve. The red buds turned out to be natural colouration of some of the leaves.
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| Sea-heath - Frankenia laevis with rabbit dropping for scale |
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| Sea-heath - Frankenia laevis |
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| Sea-heath - Frankenia laevis |
This plant that I found in a field near Boulderwall farm, Dungeness looked very much like tufted vetch except that if you look in the wildflower book tufted vetch is blue-violet. Apparently white forms sometimes occur in most plants. I could accept that but this specimen looks much blousier than normal tufted vetch. However, there are no other vetches that match either, even the white flowered vetches have blue or red veins in the flower unlike this one.
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| Tufted vetch - Vicia cracca |
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| Tufted vetch - Vicia cracca |
