WE have had some lovely spring weather in recent weeks, and as a result spring flowers are in a good state of advancement.

I haven’t seen any native bluebells in flower at the time of writing but if the weather keeps mild I would not be surprised if a few were seen in bloom by the time this is published. I have seen a few Spanish bluebells blooming though.

This is not such a good thing as these, larger and generally paler flowered Spanish bluebells too readily hybridise with our native bluebells and the resultant hybrid plants don’t meet all the needs of the multitude of organisms that depend on both the native bluebell nectar or the plant itself to support their lifecycles.

There are plenty of flowers already in bloom which have transformed many of our woodland floors into a blaze of colour. The wetter woodlands have multitudes of sunshine yellow celandines, these are a welcome blast of colour transforming the woodland floor from its dead leaf coloured past.

Sme plants find the conditions much more to their liking one year compared to the next and during these years they produce a bumper crop of blooms that really bring these plants to our attention. This year wood anemones seem to be having just such a bumper year and many woodland now have a carpet of these white with pink tinged flowers.

Recently I pointed just such a woodland out to my family as we all drove by. Then a few days later they sadly reported they had gone, only to then say they had all seemed to have amazingly returned. A mystery? Not really.

Wood anemones are photo sensitive, only opening up their flowers when conditions are at their brightest, so if the suns not out, then from a casual drive by, it would appear that all the blooms were gone. This closing of the flower when conditions are drab or likely to rain, lead to a folk belief that wood anemones were shelters to keep the fairies dry. This is not the only disappearing trick wood anemones have, because once they have flowered and set seed the plant all but disappears in the woodland and by summer it is very hard to discern its presence at all, until the coming of February when it shoots out new leaves and then late flowers A closer look at the wood anemones flowers also reveals something surprising. What look like the white petals of the flower are not in fact petals at all but sepals (Sepals on most plants, are the small green leaf like structures found at the base of the flower). This trait marks out wood anemones as being one of our countryside’s most evolutionary ancient species of flower.