St Chad's Churchyard, Headingley

Wandering through St Chad's Churchyard you can't help but notice the flowering clumps of Ribwort Plaintain (Ribwort lanceolata) at the moment. A familiar perennial wildflower, its brown flower heads sit on top of tall unleafed stalks, with dark green, deeply veined lanceolate leaves.


Here's a fine description of the flowerheads from Botanical.com "The sepals are brown and paper-like in texture and give the head its peculiar rusty look. The corolla is very small and inconspicuous, tubed and having four spreading lobes. The stamens, four in number, are the most noticeable feature, their slender white filaments and pale yellow anthers forming a conspicuous ring around the flower-head. "

I seem unable to walk past these flowering grasses without lifting the camera, I'm certainly drawn to the near abstract qualities of the views they provide as they sway in the breeze.

Walking back through the campus this Crow was perched on a tree stump beak ajar and wings held open, similar to pose adopted by the Crow we saw at Rodley on Saturday. Couldn't help but think that it might have been more beneficial to pick a more shady spot....