Profile avatar
astridbiddle.bsky.social
Joint BSBI and BBS recorder for Hertfordshire. 🌱Celebrating the joy of Botany and Bryology. ❤️Aquatic plants & many other. Scarce Tufted-sedge. Plant ecology. Rivers, ponds & lakes.
921 posts 730 followers 819 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 13 Comments 37

I was in the New Forest this week and enjoyed seeing a fascinating wet heath with the underlying geology giving a calcareous input. There is superb species richness with such mixed influences. Pale Butterwort (Pinguicula lusitanica) in a mixture of stress tolerators.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

In Northants this week & marveling at the plant colonisation speed of a newly-created pond. Found in the landscape Common & Pond Water-crowfoots (aquatilis & peltatus). Both arrived within 8 months thanks to our feathered friends. R. peltatus is regionally rare. The power of aquatic plant mobility!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Chalk Fragrant-orchid (Gymnadenia conopsea) on another new site for Herts this week. Nice to see it can colonise new chalky places when conditions are right. Accompanied by the usual suspects, it puts into perspective places like Hexton chalk pit. @bsbibotany.bsky.social @wildflowerhour.bsky.social

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

A big thank you to the Woodland Trust, who have cleared a chalk grassland of scrub in Herts. A new record for the site: Four flower spikes of Greater Butterfly-orchid (Platanthera chlorantha). Let's hope that the Chiltern Gentian will also reappear! @wildflowerhour.bsky.social

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I had a trick alga yesterday in Herts. Not an alga at all but a ciliated protozoan. Ophrydium versatile What's it doing in the southeast? Perhaps under recorded because it tricks people? Family unimpressed by blob in fridge!

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Common Water-crowfoot (Ranunculus aquatilis) this week in a beautiful pond in Little Hallingbury. Joined by Thread-leaved Water-crowfoot (Ranunculus trichophyllus) in the shallows. Nice pond edge, gently grazed, and boosting biodiversity. Light, dappled shade promoting plant establishment.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Maybe clonal plants should be allowed to drink alcohol and drive a car later than non-clonals? plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com/2025/05/28/w...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Thin-spiked Wood-sedge (Carex strigosa), Wormley Wood yesterday & Herts Flora Group. Compare with C. sylvatica. 1) Utricles have a very short beak (0.3 mm). It gives the flower spike a smoother profile. 2) The ligule is much longer & often unequal. C. sylvatica is 2–4 mm long. 3) Leaves broader.

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

For #wildflowershow at #wildflowerhour Yesterday at Silvermead, Broxbourne, edge-to-edge filling a pond. The sun showed through the thin-walled stems of Water Horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile), giving them an ethereal quality. The pond was filled with Common Stonewort (Chara vulgaris) 3 years ago.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

The glamorous location of a pond near the Cambridge Service 🚗 Horned Pondweed, Zannichellia palustris ssp. pedicellata, which seems to be a first for this ssp. in Cambs. The fruits look like a bunch of bananas, with short stalks. They appear to be laterally compressed, which surprised me.

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

End of a hot day surveying with a drink and a Hieracium for later.😁

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

Walking to Victoria Park, London this morning, I was amazed at the strange selection of plants along the Regents Canal. A dock with strange venation turned out to be Greek Dock (Rumex cristatus), & I saw Tall Nightshade (Solanum chenopodioides). Beneath the water, forests of Potamogeton pusillus.

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

Marsh Speedwell (Veronica scutellata) found today in Wiggington, Herts—a nationally threatened plant which I don't see often enough. It took me by surprise at how white the petals were, as the last place I saw it, it was definitely pink.

submitted 21 days ago • 4 comments