July 4th & 5th Norwich

July 4th  Marriot's Way

 

After watching Norwich lose without scoring for the umpteenth time, I felt like I just had to get out and plant hunt to remove the thoughts of relegation from my mind. The weather was a bit gloomy, but I guess it matched the feeling I had for my team's performance. My route for this particular walk was to head to the river via Marriot's Way. 

 

A comment from a previous post of mine provided me a list of plants that I had know idea about which were all close to where I lived (thanks James). A couple of these plants were in front of a set of garages literally just around the corner from my flat. I never even heard of either of them let alone knew that they were so close to home. One, the dwarf mallow, was easier to find as it formed a small clump of leaves with tiny purple flowers by the garage door. The other, the common cudweed, was not quite so obvious. It was small and looked like something prehistoric but in miniature like a spiky club with minute flowers that are barely visible. Apparently, this strange plant is listed as Near Threatened though locally common in Norfolk.



Dwarf Mallow & Common Cudweed

 

When I eventually reached Wensum Park where I started to follow the Marriot's Way trail, the river looked picturesque. Lilly pads broke up the reflections of the surface. The water was crystal clear and you could see the bottom and the aquatic plants swaying in the current. Watercress clinged to the river sides with small white circles of flowers showing above their lush green leaves. Banded demoiselles fluttered above these plants in large numbers as if dancing a graceful ballet full of electric blue jewelled bodies with black patched wings doing semaphore-like movements in the air. There was even a Norfolk hawker patrolling part of this river, an insect that was once restricted to the Broadlands region. 

 

I followed the river on its journey under a busy road bridge and to a pumphouse. Once it flowed through this pumphouse, the river became more urbanised, seeming empty with plant life. The stretch of river before the pumphouse though had perhaps the best selection of plants on this city river.

 



Arrowhead, River Water-dropwort & Flowering Rush

Three special plants to note were found here between the road bridge and the pumphouse. The distinctive arrow-shaped leaves of arrowhead were everywhere here and I was pleased that some of them had spikes of white blooms with a blush of pink in the centres that I could easily see popular in someone's garden. Small cow parsley-like plants poking out the middle of the river turn out to be river water-dropwort, a scarce aquatic plant. And lastly, three or four pink bloomed heads of flowering rush could only be seen from one spot along this river. All three of these plants tell you that this river is healthy despite all the traffic polluting nearby and the occasional plastic bottle stuck within the vegetation while fighting the river flow.

 

July 5th  Catton Park and Waterloo Park

 

With success finding all the plants that were listed to me, I was given another list, a much larger list. The locations were a little bit varied too, ranging from nearby to being in another part of Norwich. So today I focused on the ones that were in two of my local parks. First up was Catton Park where I was told I could find fig-leaved goosefoot, flixweed and sand spurrey somewhere in the fenced off picnic area. I wasn't really familiar with any of these plants, so it was no wonder that I couldn't find any of them.

 

Hare's-foot Clover

I had more success at Waterloo Park where I not only found many really large great mulleins, but I also found a plant that was on my list at a different location. Along the sides of the disused bowling green and beneath the towering spikes of the mulleins were clumps of hare's-foot clover. The flowers were smaller than what I imagined and supposedly resemble the foot of a rabbit. I'm not too sure of this but I can't deny that they have this fluffy, cute kind of charm about them. For me, this is another one of those to add to my "I never knew that was in my neighbourhood" list that was growing day by day.